Category Archives: Federalist

As part of their job in screening visitors to the U.S. Capitol (should the complex ever re-open to the public, that is), U.S. Capitol Police often rummage through backpacks and purses. Lately, they may also be rummaging through more than that: your tax records, real estate holdings, and social media posts. All without your knowledge.

Besty Woodruff Swan and Daniel Lippman broke the details this week of a new Capitol Police initiative that involves deep dives into the speech, background, and lifestyle details of who members of Congress are meeting with, including donors, Hill staff, mayors, state legislators, and other Americans exercising their First Amendment right to petition their government.

In one example Swan and Lippman cite, a donor meeting attended at a private home by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, meant the homeowner and attendees had their social media scrutinized and evaluated for foreign contacts by Capitol Police. A donor meeting with Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House Republican whip, received similar treatment. The Capitol Police were directed to search for any information about event attendees, including donors and staff, that would cast a member in a negative light.'

In both cases, the lawmakers and the attendees were unaware these checks were taking place.

All of this is occurring under the guise of the enhanced security measures deemed necessary after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. However, it is unclear how such measures would have actually prevented the Jan. 6 events in the first place.

The Capitol Police have provided no detailed justification. Nor have they said what they are doing with the records, how long those records are being stored, or what other purposes they have. The agency is only subject to congressional oversight not to public records requests.

One can imagine how easily these searches could become politicized: Personal details on Capitol Hill staff, state legislators, or donors are dispersed to partisans and suddenly leaked at an opportune political moment by some agency conveniently immune to the Freedom of Information Act and subject to limited oversight. After the aggressive leaking, spinning, and shaming that bureaucrats engaged in during the Donald Trump years, weve seen whats possible.

This practice also comes dangerously close to burdening the free exercise of political speech, which includes the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances without fear of reprisal. As Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., a former criminal defense attorney, pointed out to Swan and Lipmann, these measures also walk right up to the line of spying on members of Congress, their staff, their constituents and their supporters.

Anybody involved with implementing this without making it known to the actual members of Congress should resign or be fired immediately, Armstrong went on. And Im not big on calling for resignations.

Subjecting American citizens to a virtual cavity search in exchange for petitioning the government they elect in the buildings they pay for is more than just a one-off, however. It is yet another hurdle thrown up by the Democratic regime in Washington to separate the rulers from the ruled.

The Capitol, as well as the House and Senate office buildings, remain closed to visitors as they have been since early spring 2020, the longest stretch in the countrys history. Its been longer than any closure for the Civil War, or even the 1918 outbreak of Spanish flu.

Football stadiums all over the country are packed, lawmakers fly to and from the Capitol on full flights and attend in-person events and fundraisers, and the Senate still votes in person (the House is still shamelessly proxy voting). But the corridors of self-government remain closed off to the people to whom they belong.

In addition to being transparently unnecessary, this undermines the nature of our self-government. Access to and interaction with those we elect is central to our representation. One of the qualities that makes America exceptional is our citizen legislature. That those we elect do not sit higher than us, but equal to us.

Placing heavier and heavier burdens on entry to the U.S. Capitol the seat of our democracy as well as access to those who represent us strikes at the heart of that relationship, and a central feature of republican government. It changes the detachment of our representatives from their constituencies from merely a rhetorical formulation into a literal one.

But perhaps that is the point. Security and safety theater in and around the Capitol keeps out the engagement that is part of accountability. It ensures the hoi polloi dont accidentally get to interact with the people they elect. It keeps the participation of the masses of unwashed voters and the accountability they might bring at a healthy distance.

Limiting access to the halls of our representative government is, in this way, a physical manifestation of the hierarchy that we now see all around us: between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, the people who follow The Science and those who have the gall to question it, between the corporate class and the underclass. Using theatrical excuses about Covid or Jan. 6 is a convenient proxy to further remove the political elite from the rabble they would rather rule than represent.

But this is our reality now. Working-class employees around the country are fired for rejecting a vaccine and blocked from going to restaurants and bars (including in the nations capital, which is overseen by Congress), wrong thinkers are cut off from the financial system, and bad social credit gets you cut out of the digital public square. The IRS is now requiring Americans to submit facial recognition data to access their tax records.

The hierarchy is here. Republicans in Congress should aggressively fight the new class system wherever they find it. And they should start within their own house.

Shut down the Capitol Police surveillance and re-open the Capitol, House, and Senate. Welcome Americans back into the seat of their democracy and the buildings that belong to them. In doing so, restore at least a modicum of the equality and access that has always been the hallmark of American self-government, but is now so desperately missing from D.C. and the rest of the country.

Rachel Bovard is The Federalist's senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute. She has more than a decade of policy experience in Washington and has served in both the House and Senate in various roles, including as a legislative director and policy director for the Senate Steering Committee under the successive chairmanships of Sen. Pat Toomey and Sen. Mike Lee. She also served as director of policy services for The Heritage Foundation.

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Report: Capitol Police Are Spying On Lawmakers And People They Meet - The Federalist

Mick Nardelli knew something had to be done. After weeks of pandemic apathy, wherein incentivized sedentary lifestyles at the onset of Covid introduced the Quarantine 15, Nardelli was nearing 300 pounds and had an uncertain future.

At 59 and 295 pounds in his mid-40s, the D.C. suburban father of a 3-year-old watched with a body mass index of nearly 44, (14 points above the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions threshold for obesity and therefore qualified as medically severe) while the Wuhan virus wreaked havoc on patients who carried excessive weight.

Not being around was staring me in the face, Nardelli told The Federalist. I hadnt had that realization until Covid.

Nardelli said he came across a study published in August 2020 that pushed him to move. Researchers had examined 75 studies to conduct a systemic meta-analysis that probed the risks to obese individuals by the new coronavirus. Obese people, they found, were at least 113 percent more likely to be hospitalized, at least 73 percent more likely to be admitted to intensive care, and nearly 50 percent more likely to die.

That was a scary enough statistic for me to take action, Nardelli said, signing up for a local weight loss program complete with regular in-person coaching.

The first time I started exercising I just walked, said Nardelli. He met with his nutrition trainers at Cpare, the wellness group that facilitated his diet training weekly.

Prepping for an eventual Covid infection, which the so-called vaccines cant prevent, Nardellis work paid off when the vaccinated 46-year-old lobbyist contracted the virus over the recent holidays after having lost 100 pounds.

Mild is not a word I would use, said Nardelli, who got Covid as the less deadly omicron variant became the dominant strain. Mild to what it was previously, but there were times when I felt a consistent breathing attack.

Nardelli, now 183 pounds with a body mass index of 27 and no longer considered obese, credits his weight loss with saving him from severe Covid complications, or worse, death.

I am convinced without any medical background, Nardelli told The Federalist, had I not lost the weight, I would have been in much much, much worse shape. The data backs this up.

After losing the weight, Nardelli was able to toss out the five medications he was taking for high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. A study from the CDC out earlier this month revealed that more than 75 percent of the vaccinated individuals who succumbed to the viruss worst outcome suffered from four comorbidities. In other words, the more comorbidities, the less the vaccine can do to save you. Nardelli reclaimed a high level of baseline health and defeated the virus instead.

Safe not only from Covid, which merely catalyzed his journey, Nardelli is now at lower risk from heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer than he was before, all of which motivated him to keep moving. More immediately, his quality of life has risen dramatically.

I can do so many more things, he said, with excitement and relief audible in his voice. I can jump on the ground and play with my daughter. Now she walks with me. The two also do Taekwondo together.

In light of an endemic virus that disproportionately targets the clinically obese, Nardellis story should be more common, but its not. As a whole, the United States which went into the pandemic with a minority of its population at a metabolically healthy weight continued to pack on the pounds, an average of 29 by one estimate from the American Psychological Association last year.

Vanessa Spiller, a certified nutritionist and coach with Cpare, told The Federalist shes seen Covid bring baseline health to the forefront for people coming to the clinic. She said she remains concerned, however, about cultural currents normalizing the unhealthy lifestyles that Americans seemed to become even more complacent with under lockdown.

Earlier this month, Self Magazine, a womens beauty publication, debuted a glossy cover of a visibly obese model at the center of its series on the Future of Fitness.

This is healthy! the magazine proclaimed.

Healthy can look many different ways, but I dont think were doing ourselves any favors promoting [obesity], Spiller said, emphasizing that it was important for people to listen to qualified experts on nutrition and fitness as opposed to cultural idols. Its not body shaming. Its educating yourself about being healthy.

Spiller said health and wellness ought to take more priority in peoples lives. If its number eight on the priority list, pick it up a couple notches.

Time is finite, but its go-time, she said.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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He Lost 100 Pounds Before Catching Covid And It Likely Saved Him - The Federalist

For almost as long as Covid-19s been around, parent anger at local school boards over this or that issue has been a reoccurring major news story. Weve all seen the viral social media videos and Facebook posts of parents skewering their local elected school boards over critical race theory, unscientific and abusive mask mandates, maddening repeat quarantines of healthy children, and other educational corruption that wrecks childrens ability to learn.

Weve also seen those viral videos have little effect on what the school board or state board of education subsequently decides. So parents have filed lawsuits and are mounting primary and general election challenges, all of which are great and a healthy part of self-government.

What these strategies dont do is provide immediate relief to children, whom parents claim are being abused, taught racism, and denied their right to an education. They require children to continue to be abused at least until the next election cycle or until three or five or more years when lawsuits finally reach the highest court that will hear them. Thats a third of a childs education years.

These strategies also are predicated on the assumption that the people who have created these outrageously irrational and abusive school climates should continue to be trusted to run schools. The entire leadership teams of most schools, school districts, and state education bureaucracies have disqualified themselves from leading any children at all by the kinds of abuses parents charge, but just filing a lawsuit or kicking a few school board members out of office will still leave almost all corrupt educators controlling millions of kids in perpetuity.

If you cant trust a principal or superintendent to keep teachers from teaching racism and to accurately assess childrens needs and vulnerabilities through Covid even though the data on that is plentiful and clear, how can you trust any other of such persons judgment calls?

More than being restrained by a lucky court order merely from putting toddlers in masks, a person whose judgment is so corrupt shouldnt be making any decisions about children. A person who puts a toddler in a mask, or allows teachers to shame children based on their skin color, cannot be trusted to do just about anything else important and needs to find a new and more productive line of work. Errors this bad are completely disqualifying, and they will not be rectified by merely changing a few surface policies such as the quarantining of healthy kids.

The fact that parents keep their children in schools they charge are teaching racism or delaying crucial development with Covid irrationality gives the schools all they need to keep ignoring the parents. Parents are saying one thing while doing another. They are voting with their feet, and their feet are voting for what they themselves acknowledge is oppression.

So its no surprise that school boards, principals, and other entities disregard what the parents say. What the parents say has no, or no immediate, enforcement. And therefore it really isnt credible. No wonder the school districts dont take them seriously.

If the parents wanted to be truly effective as well as truly honest they would pull their children from schools en masse until problems of such serious magnitude were resolved favorably. Sickouts and mass protests are highly effective forms of warfare on children waged by teachers unions all the time. But parents so far havent responded in kind.

Why is that? Why are parents all bark and no bite with their school complaints? Possibly they dont know how to be effective. And possibly, many arent willing to make the big sacrifices required to enforce their beliefs. They can see that something very serious is wrong, but they arent willing or able to fix it. Theyre still waiting on others to fix things for them.

They, and their children, will wait a very long time for that. They will certainly wait long past Covidtide. And thats why public schools are as bad as they are the people who are supposed to hold them accountable refuse to do exactly that even while claiming to.

In the end, schools and parents are basically fighting over something underneath all these disputes that almost nobody mentions: money. Schools get public education money, not parents. It gives them the power to abuse children while parents complain yet keep putting that mask on their kindergartener every single day, even after he throws up in it at school or it prevents him from being able to read or speak properly.

School boards dont care about complaints. They care about money. As long as they have it, and parents dont take it, schools will continue to do whatever they want to children. And American children will continue to be unhappy, uneducated, and unprepared for life while everyone pretends its someone elses fault.

Its clear that American parents have a codependent relationship with the schools they claim to despise. They are in fact enabling the very abuse they complain about. So while it is entirely legitimate to go yell at school boards and vote bad people out of office, its also time for parents to engage in some critical thinking about their own choices that enable this situation. As long as public schools continue to get money no matter what they do, this situation will continue, no matter how many uncomfortable meetings and lawsuits parents instigate.

If state legislatures do not yank money from Americas abusive public school systems, parents must yank their kids. Trust, me, it will work. It might already be happening.

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If Parents Pulled Their Kids From School For Covid Insanity, It'd Be Over - The Federalist

A Wall Street Journal editorial appeared on Tuesday entitled, The Best Summary of the 2020 Election: Rules were bent, GOP voters defected, and real fraud hasnt turned up. This conveys the position of many establishment conservatives concerning the 2020 election: There were some slight problems with the election that were overshadowed by normal political phenomena such as controversies about Donald Trump and GOP voters switching sides.

The Wall Street Journal begins with the expected anti-Trump admonishment: At his first big political rally of 2022, President Trump was again focused on 2020. We had a rigged election, and the proof is all over the place, [Trump] said. But Mr. Trump was apparently too busy over Christmas to read a 136-page report by a conservative group in Wisconsin, whose review shows no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

This is a lengthy report into allegations of literal voter fraud by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), for which they find little corroboration. But there is another side of the argument regarding the legitimacy of the 2020 election that The Wall Street Journal has relentlessly ignored.

The hypothesis is that a deeply corrupted corporate media, Big Tech censorship, legally questionable intervention by the courts, and infiltration of key election offices by lavishly funded Democratic activists resulted in heavy-handed election interference of a kind we have never seen before that decisively rigged the 2020 election in favor of Joe Biden.

The WSJ editorial board would know this if they had read this, this, this, this, this, this, or our work on the role of Big Tech money in Wisconsins 2020 election. All of these studies present indisputable evidence of a rigged election in Wisconsin and in other key swing states, where the highly partisan distribution of big Center for Tech and Civic Life money, and obvious election interference by CTCL-funded election offices, was more than sufficient to flip those states toward Biden.

The WSJ then opines the stolen-election theory doesnt hold up [according to the WILL Report]. President Biden won Wisconsin by 20,682 votes, and mass fraud would likely have resulted in some discernible anomaly. But this is a perfect example of the red herring fallacy. The problem is not mass voter fraud, but a very discernible anomaly involving a highly coordinated and privately funded shadow campaign for Biden that took place within the formal structure of the election system.

By injecting more than $419 million of Mark Zuckerbergs money, laundered through the CTCL and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), the professional left presided over a targeted, historically unprecedented takeover of government election offices by demonstrably ideological activists and nonprofit organizations in key areas of these swing states. Nothing like this has happened in at least the last 150 years of American elections.

Treating CTCL spending as if it were just another example of one campaign outspending another, or the insidious role of dark money in the 2020 election, misses the point entirely. Big CTCL and CEIR money had nothing to do with traditional campaign finance, media buys, lobbying, or Citizens United v. FEC-related campaign finance issues.

It had to do with financing the infiltration of election offices at the city and county level by Democrat activists and using those offices as a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods, ballot harvesting efforts, and data sharing agreements, as well as to launch intensive multi-media outreach campaigns and surgically targeted, door-to-door get-out-the-vote efforts in areas heavy with Democratic voters.

In Wisconsin and other swing states, big CTCL money introduced structural bias in favor of Biden into the entire 2020 election. This involved favoring certain voters and voting practices over others and disfavoring other classes of voters and voting practices, giving CTCLs preferred voting methodsespecially no-ID absentee ballotsand New American Majority voters and voting methods an outsized effect on the final election results. CTCL targeted heavily Democratic jurisdictions for heavy spending, and provided little or no funding to election offices in more Republican-leaning cities and counties.

The WSJ then goes on to cite WILLs deeply flawed estimate of CTCLs effects on Wisconsins election results in an earlier, self-published study. The editors note: A nonprofit tied to Mark Zuckerberg gave $10 million to help Wisconsin elections, mostly in five cities, a skewed distribution that WILL finds troubling. A statistical analysis suggests it [may have] lifted Mr. Bidens turnout by 8,000.

The fundamental problem with WILLs quantitative analysis is that it is entirely based on the assumption that any anomalies in Wisconsin were randomly distributed. They therefore derive their estimates by treating all counties in Wisconsin as if they were all equally affected by CTCL spending, when we know a priori that any such anomalies were limited to a very small set of Wisconsins counties, and were the result of deliberate selection of election offices to be heavily funded by the data analysts who determined where big CTCL money would go.

WILLs estimate of the impact of CTCL activity on Wisconsins vote total is therefore based on an inappropriate methodology. It gives rise to the astonishing claim that In those cities [that received CTCL funding], President Biden received approximately 41 more votes on average.

But this is absurd on the face of it when excess Biden votes (over Hillary Clinton in 2016) in Brown, Dane, and Milwaukee counties alone were more than 83,000, only about 13,000 of which (at most) can be attributed to population growth or general statewide increases in voter turnout. Are we expected to believe that the effect of CTCLs $4.79 million spending on Bidens vote totals in Madison and Milwaukee was 41 votes on average (which would amount to 82 votes in total), when between Dane (Madison) and Milwaukee counties Biden beat Trump by 364,372 votes? Obviously not.

These two counties alone were responsible for more than 15 times Bidens margin of victory in Wisconsin, which means Trump won the vote in non-CTCL funded counties by well more than 300,000 votes.

Without CTCL involvement in Wisconsin in 2020, Wisconsin would be a solidly red state. We estimate that CTCLs investment in seven Wisconsin counties resulted in 65,222 votes for Biden that would not have occurred in CTCLs absence. Thats more than three times as big as the final 20,800-vote margin between Biden and Trump in 2002. That CTCL-funded election interference so obviously flipped Wisconsin for Biden in 2020 is not merely troubling, as WILL alleges. It is outrageous.

The merger of public election offices with partisan private funding that we witnessed in 2020 involved an unprecedented type of election interference that poses an acute threat to the perceived legitimacy of elections. It should be one of the primary focuses of election reform efforts moving forward.

Credible claims supported by growing mountains of evidence of a rigged election have largely been ignored by the corporate media in favor of the occasional report that seeks to exonerate an election system that radically failed in November 2020. The 2020 election was not even remotely fair, and mainstream conservatives should not be afraid to say so.

William Doyle, Ph.D., is principal researcher at Caesar Rodney Election Research Institute in Irving, Texas. He specializes in economic history and the private funding of American elections.Previously, he was associate professor and chair in the Department of Economics at the University of Dallas. He can be contacted at doyle@rodneyinstitute.org.

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Why The Wall Street Journal Is Wrong About The 2020 Election - The Federalist

Documents obtained by Heritage Action revealed that Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest public school district in the state of Georgia, admitted plans to teach both critical race theorist and Marxist thought to students enrolled in an AP Language and AP Research Combination Class.

In an audit syllabus obtained by Heritage Action, the school district remarked that Students will bridge the skills from AP Language to AP Research, analyzing the value of using different lenses in social criticism (Critical Race Theory, Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic) to aid their analysis across issues, and the class will discuss how these perspectives apply to the different methods used by research fields.

The syllabus, which was originally found by Heritage Action here on Monday, was subsequently removed from the districts website on Thursday but can still be viewed here.

In a statement to The Federalist, Heritage Actions Executive Director Jessica Anderson decried the district, saying This is a clear admission of guilt from Gwinnett County Public Schools, the largest public school district in the state of Georgia. This week, Heritage Action staff uncovered an audit syllabus hosted on the GCPS website clearly stating teachers intended to teach AP Language students to analyze texts through the lens of critical race theory soon after, the document was scrubbed from the site.

Heritage Action is now submitting an open records request for all public documents and emails relating to why the syllabus was removed from the website and all documents containing the phrase Critical Race Theory,' Anderson added.

Gwinnett County Public Schools apparent attempt to hide their left-wing agenda from public view comes after State Rep. Brad Thomas introduced a bill that would ban critical race theory in public schools.

Anderson explained her support for the bill, saying This is exactly why State Rep. Brad Thomas bill is needed: HB 888 would require curriculum transparency, a commonsense tool that gives parents the ability to oversee their childrens education, and prevent state-sanctioned discrimination. The tenets of critical race theory, which divide students and Georgians on the basis of race, have no place in the classrooms of Georgias public schools.

Tarece Johnson, the chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Public Schools Board of Education, has publicly endorsed CRT and openly displayed her hatred of white children. In one Facebook post, Johnson remarked that theres a killer cop sitting in every school where White children learn.

This revelation is by no means the first time schools have attempted to conceal their vitriolic political agenda from parents and the community. The Federalist recently revealed that a private school in Dallas had lied to parents about teaching CRT. Other investigations from The Federalist found that school districts in both Riverside and Los Angeles blatantly lied about the presence of the anti-American theory in K-12 schools.

Gwinnett County Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.

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EXCLUSIVE: Ga. School District Hid Plans To Teach Critical Race Theory - The Federalist

President Joe Bidens domestic strategy is failing so hes trying to distract Americans with yet another inevitable deadly conflict overseas.

Less than one year after he sacrificed at least 13 American lives and stranded thousands more to score political points by haphazardly withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Biden is seriously considering sending more American service members to die on foreign soil.

On Monday, the president signaled that, after deliberations at Camp David over the weekend, he may send between1,000 to 5,000 U.S. reinforcement troops to NATO allies in Eastern Europe and the Baltics to potentially deter Russia from invading Ukraine.

The Biden administration hasnt directly stated that it will force American troops into combat in Ukraine itself, but the U.S. has already ramped up weapons shipments to Ukraine, the same county where the presidents scandal-ridden son, Hunter Biden, built his fortune. The State Departmenthas also already ordered members of the U.S. embassy in Kyiv to leave Ukraine, signaling that the Biden administration sees Russias threats as imminent.

Instead of addressing the unchecked inflation, bare grocery shelves, ongoing pandemic, rising urban crime, and the U.S.s own border troubles which regularly plague American families, the ever-unpopular Biden is using Russias conflict with Ukraine to pretend that his administration is doing something other than creating crises.

A myriad of new polls released this week shows that a majority, 56 percent, of Americans disapprove of the presidents job. So unhappy, in fact, that only 26 percent of Americans believe things in the country are going well.

Bidens efforts to gracefully pass his Build Back Bankrupt plan and nuke the filibuster didnt win the hearts and minds of voters as he wanted, so Biden is shifting his efforts abroad. Its a wag the dog strategy that other world leaders have tried and ultimately failed to execute successfully.

As early as the 1800s, those in power used their authority to start conflicts with foreign powers to manipulate public opinion. French Emperor Louis Napoleon was suspected of pandering to French Catholics and trying to boost his countrys crumbling reputation when he entered the Crimean War in 1854. Napoleon, experts say, wanted to lord Frances power over Russian Orthodox Christians to keep Frenchmens minds off of problems at home.

A more recent example of this distraction came in 1998 when President Bill Clinton suddenly decided, just days after he confessed to having sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, to bomb potential terrorists in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Some leftists in the corporate media even tried to accuse Trump of possibly gearing up foreign distractions to take off pressure at home.

While his own border is suffering, taking a toll on his and his VPs popularity, Biden wants to ship Americans into a frozen wasteland thousands of miles away to possibly engage Russia and defend a country that is near and dear to his heart and his familys pocketbooks. The homeland is suffering so Biden wants a distraction to prevent his reputation from falling further than it already has.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordangdavidson.

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Failing At Home, Biden Distracts Voters With Another Conflict Overseas - The Federalist

After news broke last spring that the University of Pittsburgh is using aborted babies for taxpayer-funded medical research, often in barbaric experiments, Pitt asked an independent firm to conduct an investigation into their researchers compliance with state and federal laws. The findings of that investigation were released last week, but the report arguably raises more questions than it answers.

Hyman, Phelps and McNamara (HPM), the D.C.-based law firm hired to conduct the regulatory assessment, said they found Pitts academic research with human fetal tissue to be fully compliant with applicable laws. But a close reading of the 40-page report shows that HPM intentionally limited the scope of their investigation, allowing investigators to turn a blind eye to some of the most damning allegations related to fetal tissue research.

HPM admits they did not investigate the two university clinics where university researchers source their aborted fetal tissue: the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC, where more abortions are performed than in any other hospital in the state.

HPM reasoned they could only investigate activities for which Pitt has regulatory control, and that excludes UPMC because it is a private nonprofit that the university has no role in managing or supervising. This is a significant omission because some of the most atrocious allegations, including labor-induced, partial-birth abortions, occur at UPMC. Investigators instead focused on fetal tissue that is collected and distributed by the Pitt Biospecimen Core (PBC). What investigators failed to mention is that PBC laboratories are located inside UPMC hospitals, including one in the Magee-Womens Hospital.

HPM tried to justify the serious omission with a caveat that even though they cannot hold Pitt responsible for UPMC, they did evaluate whether Pitt satisfied its independent duty to confirm compliance of specified activities related to fetal tissue undertaken by UPMC. In the limited investigating they did do of UPMC, HPM found issues with incomplete forms at UPMC used for obtaining consent from pregnant women to use their babies organs for research. Those forms were included in the report and tell us a lot about how consent is obtained.

HPMs report said they did consider whether there were any conflicts of interest between Pitt and Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, and found there were no illegal arrangements, but did not provide any details on who they spoke to or how they arrived at that conclusion. Yet they felt the need to explain that if Pitt did have contracts with Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, such an arrangement would not be inherently unlawful.

There is no law preventing Pitt from supporting Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania if it chooses to do so, HPM investigators wrote.

There may be no law, but conflicts of interests between Pitt and PPFA do run amok. Not only do Pitt faculty moonlight as abortionists at a PPFA abortion clinic located just six minutes away from Magee-Womens Hospital, but in 2014, Center for Medical Progresss David Daleiden recorded videos of Planned Parenthood associates admitting, there is a tissue bank at Pitt that we offer patients to donate to.

A vice chair of Pitts Institutional Review Board (IRB), Dr. Beatrice Chen, is also the medical director of Planned Parenthood Western Pennsylvania and oversees Planned Parenthoods abortion training fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. Chen, who alsoservesas Magees director of family planning, was listed in an annual report from Pitt as outreach/contracted care, along with three other doctors for Planned Parenthood Western Pennsylvania.

The IRB, a focus of HPMs investigation, is responsible for reviewing applications to conduct research involving human subjects conducted at the University, yet they simply concluded that Chen had no conflicts or violations.

Pitt has denied it has any procurement relationship with Planned Parenthood.

The study that first caught the publics attention about how taxpayer dollars are being spent involved grafting aborted baby scalps onto the backs of rats, who were then deemed humanized. The study, which was funded by Anthony Faucis National Institutes of Health, includes graphic photos showing little infant hairs growing on rodents backs, the same way they would on a healthy childs head, as well a note about where researchers obtained the baby scalps:

De-identified human fetal tissues at the gestational age of 18 to 20 weeks were obtained from medically or elective indicated termination of pregnancy through Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), with the University of Pittsburgh, Health Sciences Tissue Bank.

HPMs report contradicts that note included in the study, claiming that of the 31 studies they reviewed, this particular study was one of five that did not obtain fetal tissue from the Pitt Biospecimen Core (located within UPMC hospitals). Instead, HPM says, this particular study obtained their tissue from a commercial tissue supplier, Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR).

If ABR sounds familiar, thats because its the commercial tissue supplier who was exposed for trafficking baby body parts from Planned Parenthood facilities to researchers, and essentially became PPFAs scapegoat when they were first caught selling those baby body parts in 2015.

It remains unclear where the baby scalps for this study were obtained. Were they from ABR, as HPM found, or from UPMC, as the researchers who conducted the study wrote? What is Pitt trying to hide by contradicting its own research?

Although HPM declined to hold Pitt responsible for any activities at UPMC or Magee-Womens UPMC, investigators found primarily technical, but not legal issues with how the hospital obtained consent from women being asked to contribute their aborted babys organs and tissue.

Investigators focused on consent forms they found unsigned, as well as whether the person performing the abortion is involved in obtaining the consent. In focusing on this issue, investigators included the four-page form from Magee-Womens UPMC entitled Consent To Act As a Participant In Research Fetal Tissue Consent Form in their report. Statements on this form entice women with abortion, saying donating their baby may contribute to a new discovery or treatment, calling it a potential benefit to society.

In order to prevent any kind of persuasion, state law requires clinicians to wait 24 hours after a woman has consented to an abortion before presenting her a donation consent form. Yet its entirely possible that a woman who arrives for her appointment but has changed her mind about undergoing an abortion is influenced after a nurse or abortionist consults with her about donation.

Structuring a policy that allows elective abortions for experiments for research and new discovery is a perverse incentive on women and families. This practice must end, said Retired Pennsylvania Superior Court Judge Cheryl Allen in a statement.

Pitt and the lawyers they hired at HPM clearly have no intention of addressing the initial allegations or answering questions such as: Did Pitt facilities perform illegal partial-birth abortions or infanticide in operating a fetal kidney harvesting program? Instead, the report backfired, raising even more questions that lawmakers and taxpayers must demand answers to.

Those include: Why did investigators choose not to explore the relationship between Pitt and UPMC, in terms of both finances and shared resources? And why is Pitt now contradicting its own research by saying that the tissue grafted onto rats and mice was obtained fromAdvanced Bioscience Resources, not UPMC? Will HPM be releasing the documents or interviews their assessment was based on?

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U-Pitt Tries To Explain Away Barbaric Experiments With Aborted Babies - The Federalist

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker magazine and her fellow lefties are ramping up attacks on conservative Supreme Court justices, as they fear the court is getting ready to issue a host of decisions they wont like, most especially a ruling that may overturn Roe v. Wade. Mayer published a pathetic hit piece last week on Ginni Thomas, a long-time conservative activist and the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas. Its a dud.

Mayers article, titled Ginni Thomas Crusades: Is Ginni Thomas a threat to the Supreme Court? is full of falsehoods and distortions, consistent with the malicious and error-filled book she co-authored in 1994, Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Weaving together a mishmash of facts, conspiracies, and comments from dial-them-up liberal judicial ethics experts, Mayer argues that Ginni Thomas political activities and public comments on issues that come before the court require Justice Thomas to recuse himself from those cases.

But Mayer does not really care about judicial ethics. Rather, she wants to construct a case where only Ginni Thomas has to stop her political activity or Justice Thomas has to recuse himself. She invents a new recusal standard that liberal judges dont follow and misrepresents what other judges in fact do in facing the same situation as the Thomases. Call it Jane Mayers version of feminism in 2022: conservative women cant speak out on issues when their husbands are judges.

The relevant law requires a judge to recuse from a case if his impartiality might reasonably be questioned (28 U.S.C. 455(a)). Another provision requires a recusal if the judge knows that a family member has an interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding (28 U.S.C. 455(b)(5)(iii). Based on the law, standards, and past precedents, Ginni Thomass political and public policy activities have never in a single instance required Justice Thomas to recuse himself from a case.

It is well-established that a spouses separate political views or activities are no basis for such a recusal. In 2011, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a liberal icon, properly refused to recuse from a challenge to the constitutionality of proposition 8 (regarding same-sex marriage) even though his wife was the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Southern California (ACLU/SC), which had filed a brief at the district court level in this case, and despite his wife publicly expressing her views on the issue.

My wife and I share many fundamental interests by virtue of our marriage, but her views regarding issues of public significance are her own, and cannot be imputed to me, no matter how prominently she expresses them.It is her view, and I agree, that she has the right to perform her professional duties without regard to whatever my views may be, and that I should do the same without regard to hers, Reinhardt wrote in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (2011).

Reinhardt also properly rejected the claim that his wife had an interest under section 455 (b), even though the organization had filed an amicus brief in the district court for the case now on appeal before him. Thus, Judge Reinhardt demolished every argument from Mayer and her so-called judicial ethics experts that Ginni Thomas activities or views require Justice Thomas to recuse.

In fact, Stephen Gillers, whom Mayer cites as the gold standard for judicial ethics experts and who rips Ginni Thomas for behaving horribly and hurt[ing] the Supreme Court and the administration of Justice, filed a brief vigorously defending Reinhardt for not recusing:

We are long past the day when a wifes opinions are assumed to be the same as her husbands . . Ms. Ripsons opinions, views, and public pronouncements of support for the district court decision below do not trigger any reasonable basis to question Judge Reinhardts ability to honor his oath of office. A contrary outcome would deem a judges spouse unable to hold any position of advocacy, creating what amounts to a marriage penalty.

Gilllers unprincipled and hypocritical attack on Ginni Thomas permissible conduct and speech is despicable.

Judge Reinhardt also said it is important that judges not recuse themselves unless required to do so, or it would be too easy for those who seek judges favorable to their case to disqualify those that they perceive to be unsympathetic merely by questioning their impartiality. To succumb to Mayers argument would be to institutionalize judge shopping.

As the late Justice Antonin Scalia observed, overbroad recusal standards would also encourage so-called investigative journalists to suggest improprieties, and demand recusals, for other inappropriate (and increasingly silly) reasons. Mayers smear piece is the embodiment of these concerns.

D.C. Circuit Judge Nina Pillards husband is David Cole, the national legal director of the ACLU, who has been very outspoken on many hot button constitutional issues. He was particularly outspoken in his opposition to the Trump administration.

In fact, Cole wrote anop-edin May 2019 praising the D.C. district court judges May 26, 2019, ruling inTrump v. Mazars, rejecting President Trumps arguments that he did not have to comply with a congressional subpoena for his tax records. Cole wrote that Trump argued that House committees have no authority to investigate except where their investigation is tied to a specific piece of legislation. But that argument is dead wrong, and the federal courts have properly and resoundingly rejected it.

After the D.C. Circuit three-judge panel ruled against Trump on his appeal of that district court decision, Judge Pillard, a Barack Obama appointee, sat on the D.C. Circuit en banc panel that rejected a petition to rehear the case by the full D.C. Circuit. Judge Pillard voted to let stand the D.C. Circuit panel opinion that ruled the exact way her husband advocated in his 2019 article.

To be clear, Judge Pillard is correct to not recuse herself from cases where her husband has opined on an issue that comes before her court, even if he has specifically commented on a case before she considers it. Coles statements do not provide the basis to question in any way the impartiality of Judge Pillards rulings.

Despite Jane Mayers efforts to impugn the integrity of Justice Thomas for properly not recusing in cases involving issues in which his wife may have commented in the public arena, these examples demonstrate that other judges with spouses in the public policy arena do exactly what Justice Thomas does. The only difference, for Jane Mayer, is that Ginni Thomas is a conservative activist and Justice Thomas is an originalist.

In every example Mayer cites in her article where Ginni Thomas is involved with a group advocating a public policy position or making a filing in the Supreme Court, Ginni Thomas is not a party nor has an interest that would be substantially affected by the outcome of a Supreme Court decision.

In one example, Mayer even falsely claims that Justice Thomas attended a luncheon, Impact Awards. Ginni Thomas emceed the event where awards were given to conservative leaders. Mayer writes that a guest at the luncheon, Jerry Johnson, who was then the president of the National Religious Broadcasters, later recalled that the Justice sat in front of him and was a happy warrior, pleased to be watching his wife running the show.

Mayers claim is 100 percent false. Justice Thomas was not at this Impact Award ceremony. In fact, he has never attended an Impact Award luncheon ceremony. I spoke with Johnson, and he told me Justice Thomas was not at this luncheon. Moreover, Johnson told me that neither Mayer nor anyone from the magazine ever attempted to contact him to ask him if he saw Justice Thomas at this event or made these statements.

There are many more smears in this piece, the most snarky of which may be that Ginni Thomas failed to pass the bar exam. Mayer does not mention that Ginni Thomas passed it on her second try. Many others have failed on the first and passed on the second try, including Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Michelle Obama. But Mayer loves to smear.

I know firsthand how malicious Mayer can be. In Strange Justice, she accused me of violating the Anti-lobbying Act, a criminal law, when I was working on Justice Thomas confirmation in 1991 as a member of the White House Counsels office. Mayer wanted to create the false narrative of a White House willing to do anything to get Thomas confirmed, including me committing a felony. It was 100 percent false and defamatory.

I demanded a retraction and threatened to sue her, her co-author Jill Abramson, and the publisher if they did not strike this false accusation. I received a letter of apology from the publisher on behalf of Mayer and Abramson, and they struck that accusation from the paperback version of their book. Mayer was guilty of making scurrilous and false accusations then, and continues that practice today.

Ginni Thomas is a great patriot. She should continue to engage in her lifelong work of public advocacy, even on issues that could come before the Supreme Court.

This article has been corrected with respect to Judge Pillard and her husbands public discussion of court cases she has adjudicated.

Mark Paoletta is a partner at Schaerr Jaffe LLP. He was a lawyer in the Bush 41 White House Counsels Office and worked on the confirmation effort of Justice Clarence Thomas. He most recently served in the Trump White House as the general counsel of the Office of Management & Budget. You can follow him on Twitter at @MarkPaoletta.

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The New Yorker Lies Again About Clarence Thomas And His Wife - The Federalist

There is a growing eagerness on the right to talk frankly about the crisis of masculinity in America, and to defend traditional manliness against an ascendant left that wants to destroy it. A robust defense of manliness is salutary, and long overdue. But it requires defining what manliness is, and what it is for, because not everyone on the right seems to know.

For some conservatives, the conversation about masculinity has gone completely off the rails. It has devolved into a mere tough-guy pose. You see it in the tendency of certain high-profile conservative thinkers to deride all classical liberals and libertarians as effete and unmasculine. You see it in the growing penchant among some very-online conservatives to mock the physical appearances of their ideological opponents, and especially in the compulsivetweeting about physiognomy,mostly from anonymous trolls on the right but sometimes from young conservatives who ought to know better.

All of this is profoundlyunmanly, and it gives ammunition to those on the left who would brand traditional masculinity as toxic and dangerous. If were going to defend manliness as good and virtuous and necessary for a healthy republic, then we need to be clear about what it is and what it is not.

Yes, men should be physically strong. They should also exemplify traditional masculine virtues like courage, independence, and assertiveness. But why? Not so they can sh-tpost about how ripped or good-looking they are compared to libs, but so they can protect and defend those who are weak.

That is the organizing principle behind the entire concept of manliness: it is not a style or a pose or an adornment. It is a way of being, of living according to the principle that you are responsible for the welfare of others, and should sacrifice yourself for their sake.

What does that mean in practice? It means stepping in to help those in need, whether its a woman being harassed or a stranger whose car has broken down. It means risking your own safety to protect someone being attacked, instead of just filming the attack on your phone and posting it online like a beta.

It also means marrying and remaining faithful to the same woman your entire life, and raising a family with her. It means working whatever hours and at whatever job in order to provide for that family. It means going to church every Sunday, whether you feel like it or not, to pass your faith on to your kids. It means getting up in the middle of the night to feed a colicky baby. It means taking your two-year-old daughter to swim class and singing all the songs your own sense of dignity be damned.

That is, being a man means laying down your life for others. There is an apocryphal story about Robert E. Lee near the end of Douglas Southall Freemans four-volume biography that illustrates what we should mean when we invoke manliness. After the war, a young mother brings her baby to Lee to be blessed. He takes the infant in his arms, looks at him and then at the mother, and then says slowly, Teach him he must deny himself.

George Washingtons 110rules for civilityalso reflect a similar high principle. Although they concern mostly mundane matters about how to behave at the dinner table or how to comport oneself in public, the unifying theme is consideration and respect for others, even to the point of not showing yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy. (The tough guys who like to tweet about physiognomy should consider Washingtons rule 21: Reproach none for the infirmities of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind thereof.)

Without the animating ethos that a true man serves and cares for and defends others, especially the weak and vulnerable, the archetypical attributes of manliness physical strength, independence, assertiveness have no real purpose. They are empty gestures that amount to so much vanity. Theres a reason Lon Gautiers Ten Commandments of chivalry included, Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.

This is why someone like David French, for example, is unmanly. It has nothing to do with his appearance or demeanor. He is unmanly because heattacks the weak. He targets, repeatedly and viciously, those who are most hated and reviled by our ruling elite: Christians, the working class, conservative families whoobject to their children being taught critical race theory in school, or do not want their kids exposed to Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library.

These are the people French should be fighting to protect, even at great cost to himself. But instead hedenigrates and scorns themfor accolades and rewards from the powerful, who have rewarded him indeed. French, then, exemplifies an ancient species of unmanliness better recognized by its common name, cowardice.

I single out French because he has lately weighed in on this matter,intentionally misrepresentingthe rights defense of manliness as a dangerous cult of toughness focused on Donald Trump and the most shallow stereotypes of manliness imaginable. He takes particular aim at a piece by Hillsdale Colleges David Azerrad, whowrote in 2018that Trump might not be manly in the way a soldier who charges into battle is manly, but Trumps manliness is that of a man who is not afraid to say out loud what others only whisper and to incur the wrath of the ruling class for doing so.

Azerrad is of course correct. Trump might not be a paragon of manly virtue, but his willingness to stand up to the powerful on behalf of the weak is indeed manly, and deserving of praise.

So is Sen. Josh Hawleys willingness tospeak candidlyabout the need for American men to stop playing video games and watching porn, and embrace responsibility and family life. For his trouble, the corporate press has held him up as an avatar of toxic masculinity. No wonder: real manliness of the kind Hawley promotes is everything the left stands against, which is why they want to destroy it.

So lets have no more asinine talk of physiognomy, no more accusations that those who dont agree with our policy preferences are effete or unmasculine. This is not a small thing. If, at this late hour, conservatives cant define manliness and live according to its dictates, then we wont have to worry about owning the libs anymore, because the republic is finished.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Texas Monthly, The Guardian, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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If You Want To Defend Manliness, You Must Know What It Means - The Federalist

The Nebraska legislature passed a resolution on Friday calling for an Article V convention of states, making it the 17th state to do so.

After considering it for the past year, the unicameral body approved the measure in a 32-11 vote, with six senators abstaining or absent. According to the resolution, the Nebraska legislature seeks to call a convention limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.

The application also comes with a five-year sunset clause, which notes that the legislature will rescind the measure by Feb. 1, 2027 if efforts to call a convention before then fail.

Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures are permitted to call a convention to propose amendments to the nations founding document without the approval of Congress. Two-thirds of states (34) are required for a convention to be called, with three-fourths of states (38) necessary for any amendment proposed to be ratified.

The alternative method, and the only one used thus far, is for Congress to propose amendments. Any amendment successfully passed by two-thirds of the House of Representatives and Senate are then sent to the states, where three-fourths are necessary to ratify.

State Sen. Steve Halloran, who introduced the resolution, celebrated its passage as encouraging, noting the bills success shows thatwe respect the Constitution and the intent of the founding fathers when it comes to states having equal footing with the federal government.

Nebraska is the second state to call for an Article V convention this week, after the Wisconsin legislature successfully passed a resolution on the matter on Tuesday.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a student at the University of Mary Washington, where he plans to major in Political Science and minor in Journalism. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Nebraska Becomes 17th State To Call For Article V Convention Of States - The Federalist