Category Archives: Federalist

If Americans think the shortage of cars due to chip supply issues is bad, then consider what it would mean if the U.S. military were deprived of the advanced chips required for its arsenal of war equipment. Its a real possibility as the worlds largest and most advanced semiconductor manufacturers sit precariously, approximately 100 miles off the coast of communist China on the island of Taiwan.

In total, Taiwanese companies supply 63 percent of global semiconductors, compared with 12 percent by U.S. manufacturers. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) alone provides over half the worlds made-to-order chips, and an estimated 90 percent of advanced processors.

Chinas leader Xi Xinping knows of the technological power that lies just within reach. After pumping billions into Chinas chip fabrication efforts, the country is still trailing years behind TSMC. There is no substitute for simply taking Taiwans established world-class capabilities, which cannot be readily replicated. In one swift movement, the Chinese Communist Party could both supply itself and deny distribution to whomever it chooses.

If there were any doubts about Chinas intentions for Taiwan, the countrys communist leaders are quickly erasing them for all to see. Recently, its military held assault drills on the beach closest to the free soil of the democratic republic that it so desperately wants to own and control. A few months earlier, it had already set an annual record for flights around Taiwan nearly 400 aircraft.

In one day, October 18, Taiwans Ministry of Defense reported 56 Chinese fighter jets within its Air Defense Identification Zone, causing air defense missile systems to be activated. As if underscoring its point, Chinas intrusions came one day after the United States condemned its military activity near Taiwan. Xi has repeatedly stated his intent to unify China.

Asked recently if he thinks China will invade Taiwan, Gen. Michael Flynn responded, I believe right now that this is the highest level of threat against Taiwan that I have ever seen yes, I believe the Chinese are preparing the battlefield to basically take over Taiwan.

Commenting further regarding Chinas view of an apathetic and weak White House in the aftermath of the retreat from Afghanistan, he said, I dont think China is going to allow themselves to go another couple of years and potentially lose the advantage that they have with the Biden administration right now. The outcome is now inevitable. Like Hong Kong, he believes Taiwan will be subsumed by China.

We should at least know the consequences of such an action.

In the wars of the last century, oil was the essential commodity of armies. Japans attack on Pearl Harbor was largely sparked by Americas embargo of its imported supply. After war was declared, Japan immediately pivoted to seek and conquer supplies within its region to fuel its forces. Allied bombardments in Europe were largely focused on denying the Nazi machine of the oil that turned its gears.

Today, if you control access to microchips then you can control the world cars, iPhones, computers, cameras, and the machines of war. Every aircraft, warship, submarine, and many ground-based weapons require them, as do missiles.

It was reported in April that the secretive China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center was actively developing hypersonic vehicle technology. While the Biden administration was busy figuring out how to retreat from Afghanistan, those efforts continued unabated.

They culminated with the surprise launch of a nuclear-capable hypersonic test missile in August. It circled the globe at a more difficult to defend low-altitude orbit before missing its target by a mere few dozen miles. It shook the world, and it should shake politicians into the realization that it was only accomplished with American software and chips made in Taiwan.

Even as the United States is still regarded as a leader in chip design, it long ago outsourced most fabrication to more cost-efficient locales in the Far East. Realizing this strategic weakness, Congress approved $52 billion in June for domestic semiconductor manufacturing via the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, but it may be too little, too late.

As members of Congress crow to voters that theyve done something, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Chairman Mark Liu notes that his company is investing $100 billion in new capacity, and its not going to be enough. Investments from partner companies such as Apple, Nvidia, and others will amplify that number to a budget that is 100 times what you will see on their financials, according to semiconductor industry expert Daniel Nenni.

Contrary to popular belief on Capitol Hill, every problem cannot be solved with more money particularly one that requires replicating the capabilities of fabricators who have invested decades of time and effort toward learning how to create a transistor that is 1/20,000 the width of a human hair, using a process that involves more than 1,500 steps. Today, only TSMC and South Koreas Samsung Electronics can produce the most advanced 5-nanometer chips.

TSMC already has its eyes on a new 3-nanometer chip that will be 15 percent faster. According to Nenni, it will be impossible for any company or country to catch up to this huge ecosystem thats moving forward like a freight train.

Even if available for procurement, chips from overseas still present an inherent security risk. During the development of the Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon found that components were changing hands as much as 15 times before being delivered for installation, with many countries involved, including Taiwan and China. Each step in the process represented an access point for foes to compromise or study the technology involved.

To counter this threat, a Trusted Foundry Program was created in 2004 by the Department of Defense to control the militarys supply chain, but today it is unable to satisfy a need for the most advanced chips. There are no other options on American soil, and even billions in new investment wont change that any time soon.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger emphasizes the companys big new $20 billion investment in fabrication facilities in Arizona, but acknowledges it will take years to catch up. The company that largely birthed Silicon Valley today produces chips that are 30 percent slower than TSMCs.

Any restriction of access to Taiwanese chip fabricators would represent not only a loss of processing speed but of sheer volume of product required to keep all things electronic running. Two-thirds of the worlds semiconductors cannot be removed from the market without a calamitous impact on both military and civilian consumers.

Magnify the chip shortage in the auto market across all sectors, and its not hard to envision the degree of control China could hold. These chips control not just physical products but also the downstream systems that rely on them energy, transportation, communications, manufacturing, and, yes, national defense.

What is the White Houses position on Taiwan? When Chinas hypersonic missile launch came up at the recent CNN town hall, President Biden was asked, So, are you saying that the United States would come to Taiwans defense if China attacked? Yes yes, we have a commitment to do that, replied Biden. That answer lasted less than 24 hours before the White House backpedaled in the wake of a fiery response from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Clarifying that the president who said otherwise was not announcing any change in our policy, a spokesperson reinforced U.S. commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act, a Carter-era treaty that eliminated the United States commitment to defend Taiwan. Instead, we will continue to support Taiwans self-defense meaning, leaving a small island nation with an estimated 165,000 active military personnel to stand its ground versus a 2.2 million-strong Chinese army just across the Strait.

As the confrontation builds, Taiwans President Tsai Ing-wen warns of catastrophic consequences if the island were to fall to China: It would signal that in todays global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy. True and it would tangibly and irrevocably alter the balance of power amongst the worlds superpowers.

Bob Anderson is a partner and CFO of a hotel development company and a former aerospace engineer who worked on the International Space Station and interned in Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) at the Pentagon. He is also a licensed commercial pilot.

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If China Controls Taiwan's Chips It Will Control The World - The Federalist

Last Thursday, the Racine County, Wisconsin sheriffs office held an hour-long press conference detailing the results of an investigation into a complaint the office received of potential violations of state election law. While leftist media ignored the story, the investigation revealed both blatant violations of state law by election officials and detailed evidence of voter fraud by stealing elderly Americans votes.

The methodical presentation by the Racine County Sheriffs Office provided the context, as well as additional texture, to one discrete aspect of the irregularities that took place in Wisconsin during the 2020 presidential election. The press briefing highlighted the Wisconsin Election Commissions illegal directive to municipalities not to use the Special Voting Deputy process to service residents in care facilities, and instead to transmit absentee ballots to those voters by mail.

Those well-versed in the many violations of election law that occurred in the last election have long known of the WECs override of the legislatively mandated use of special voting deputies. But Thursdays presentation provided an accessible summary of the situation that (should have) resonated beyond political lines and put a figurative face to the fraud enabled by the states election officials own apparent fraud.

Sgt. Michael Luell, who led the investigation and presented his findings during the briefing, also has a law degree and has served as a prosecutor. This unique combination allowed him to simplify the situation, which he did by first highlighting key portions of Wisconsin code in a crisp PowerPoint presentation.

Section 6.875 of the Wisconsin election code provides the exclusive means of absentee voting in residential care facilities, the presentation noted. That statute requires the local municipality to dispatch two special voting deputies, or SVDs, to a facility. The SVDs must then personally deliver a ballot to residents of the facility and must witness the voting process. The statute further provides that only a relative or an SVD may assist the voter and then, following the vote, must seal the ballot envelope and deliver it to the clerk.

In addition to laying out Section 6.875s mandates for voting in residential care facilities, Luell provided quotes and video clips establishing that the WEC commissioners knew their directive to eliminate SVDs violated state law.

Further, in an attempt to justify their decision to violate state law, WEC commissioners focused on the dangers of COVID to the senior community, Luell stressed that in response to the WECs request that the governor suspend the portions of Wisconsin election law related to SVDs, the governors office informed the WEC that the governor lacked that power.

Moreover, the WEC continued to claim to override the SVD provisions even after the governors lockdown orderswhich did not ban SVDs from nursing homes in any eventexpired in September. Then, to illustrate the absurdity of the WECs position, Luell highlighted for the public the visitors allowed into senior facilities. His report detailed facility access allowed from April to November in 2020 for the following:

Luell also excerpted details from a document the WEC apparently distributed to nursing homes throughout the state. That document, entitled Absentee Voting at Care Facilities in 2020, informed care facility administrator[s] and staff member[s] that they could, among other things, assist residents in filling out their ballots or certification envelops, in express violation of Section 6.875.

Throughout the press conference, Luell made election law minutia understandable with the personal element, beginning with the fact that he launched his investigation based on a complaint his office received from Judy. As Luell explained, Judy discovered her mother had purportedly voted by absentee ballot in the November 3, 2020 election, even though Shirley had died on October 9, 2020.

Judy filed an affidavit with the WEC, stating she believed the residential care facility where her mother had resided, the Ridgewood Care Facility, took advantage of her mothers diminished mental capacity and filled out ballot(s) in her name. WEC refused to investigate and forwarded the complaint to the Racine County Prosecutors Office, which forwarded it to the sheriffs office for investigation.

As part of the investigation, Luell obtained a list of all Ridgewood Care residents who voted in the 2020 election: 42 in all. After subpoenaing the named contacts for each voter from the nursing homes file, Luell attempted to contact the next-of-kin to inquire if they had any concerns about whether their family member had actually voted.

In addition to Judy, the children of six other residents of Ridgewood Care Facility expressed concerns about a ballot cast in their parents names. The patients children detailed to the sheriffs office their parents lack of mental capacity and other facts indicating the votes did not represent the freewill of their parents, such as the difficulty in convincing one mother to sign any documents and one fathers statement that if he couldnt vote in person, he did not want to vote. Also, none of those other six residents had voted in the 2016 presidential election, or in any election since 2012.

Worse still was the case of SL, whom a court had declared legally incompetent. SLs legal guardian told Luell she believed SLs right to vote had been taken away. Records likewise showed SL had not voted since 2012.

In addition to these interviews, Luell interviewed the Mount Pleasant Village Clerk, who told him the rate of new people registering to vote and the number of people voting at the Ridgewood Care Center was unusually high in the November 20202 election. According to Luells report, the clerk stated that for most previous elections, including presidential elections, the number of people voting would total about ten, and the number of new requests for absentee ballots would be zero to two people.

The clerk further noted that the director of Ridgewood Care Center would call her and tell her that she had 80 people who were newly requesting absentee ballots, and that in 2020, 36 new requests for absentee ballots were received and 43 residents voted in the November 2020 election.

Also questioned was the director of Ridgewood Care Center and several employees, including one aide who spoke with the sergeant a second time after leaving her job at Ridgewood Care Center. Luells report from this follow-up interview included a note that the former employee claimed that she told Director [REDACTED] that she lied to the police and she should not have done that.

These interviews also revealed staffers improperly completed a portion of the absentee ballots, mishandled ballots, and discussed the elections and candidates with the residents beyond merely reading them the ballots or turning on NBC News to spark an interest in voting.

Before taking questions, Luell returned to the Wisconsin Election Code and Section 12.13, entitled Election Fraud. Here, he noted at Section 12.13(2)(b)(7) expressly provides that it is a crime if, in the course of the persons official duties or on account of the persons official position, the official intentionally violates or intentionally causes any other person to violate any provision of the election code, for which no other penalty is expressly prescribed.

He then noted several other relevant criminal provisions, including the crime of receiving a ballot from, or giving a ballot to, a person other than the election officer in charge, or receiving a complete ballot from a voter unless qualified to do so.

During the Q&A period that followed, the Racine County Sheriffs Office stressed that it does not make prosecutorial decisions, and had turned the results of the investigation over to the prosecutors office. The office also called for the Wisconsin attorney general to launch its own investigation.

Sheriff Christopher Schmaling also noted that Racine County is just one of 72 counties, and Ridgewood is one of 11 facilities within our county. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the entire state of Wisconsin, he continued, noting we would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state.

Unfortunately, we would also be foolish to think that the corporate media will care about election integrity. Absent a very public light being shined on the problem, it will continue unabated, leading to further distrust in our electoral process and the press.

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame.The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Wisconsin Investigation Uncovers Potential Tip Of A Voting Fraud Iceberg - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, author Michael Shellenberger joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how leftists drug policies are contributing to declining urban hubs and inhumane street conditions.

One of the things that happened is just that they basically ended both in the United States but more heavily in California and more heavily in San Francisco, we just liberalized drug use so that now basically, theres no consequence for criminal behaviors that are related to ones addiction or drug use. I would say that my change of mind was maybe a little bit less dramatic than the one around energy and environment but certainly, I strongly believe that there should be consequences for breaking the law. I think in the past, I never imagined it would spiral out of control in the way that it has.

Shellenberger said progressivism has created drug policies that do not promote rehabilitation and health, which is inhumane and lacking the social justice leftists often preach.

You hear a lot of people say completely incorrectly that crime is caused by inequality, the idea that people are sort of forced to commit crimes. Its total nonsense. I mean, theres literally never been any evidence for any of that, Shellenberger said. Its just ideological but I think that thats a big part of what I write about in San Fransicko, you know, both in terms of the justification given for things like shoplifting and drug use and public camping but also for things like defunding the police and anti-incarceration things that have actually been pretty terrible for poor and black communities.

You can find Shellenbergers book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities here.

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The Progressive Experiment Is Failing America's Cities - The Federalist

The federal and state governmental response to Covid-19 has accentuated an American debate dating back to 1781 which government has the power to do what?

American history is essentially the story of this enduring power struggle. Over time, the practical balance of power (as illustrated in the above image from study.com) between states and the federal government (federalism) changed as our society evolved. To date, our republic has experienced five distinct epochs of federalism.

Unfortunately, the hallmark of our current epoch, Ad Hoc Federalism, is inconsistency, which, as current events repeatedly demonstrate, produces dysfunction rather than stable, effective government. A major power shift sufficient to trigger a new epoch is necessary to save the republic from what appears increasingly likely to be a death spiral for American democracy.

In 1984, (the book not the year), George Orwell observed that Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. In that spirit, it is worth exploring how and why we have a dysfunctional government today.

After declaring independence in 1776, the United States operated as an informal coalition of allied sovereign states until adopting the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union in 1781. The primary goal of the Articles was preservation of each states sovereign independence with only narrow grants of state authority to a weak central government. The myriad dysfunctions of this system resulted in rapid replacement of the Articles with our current Constitution in 1788.

Of course, the Constitution did not receive universal support. The fight over adoption was based upon principles that are once again major issues of concern. Advocating for the Constitution were the Federalists, who favored a strong central government with independent power and the ability to compel compliance by the states. In opposition were the Anti-Federalists, who opposed a strong central government as a threat to individual liberties and state sovereignty due to an increased potential for tyranny.

In the 1790s, both groups formed political parties with Anti-Federalists becoming Democratic-Republicans (Democrats) while Federalists kept the same moniker.

In contrast to the confederacy it replaced, the federal government detailed in our Constitution is empowered directly by the people through application of democracy consent of the governed just like state governments. As we learned in high school, the federal government has enumerated powers based upon explicit grants of authority and implied powers from undefined general grants of authority that displace state powers. There are also concurrent powers shared between states and the federal government.

This governmental structure of shared responsibilities and authority is relatively unique in the world as 85% of world nations have a system in which all power resides with the central government.

Our multi-tiered government invites disputes over power. In the past, such clashes were based upon a consistent ideological interpretation over time. Until 1933, the Dual Federalism Epoch was premised upon the federal and state governments with distinct jurisdictions and responsibilities. Each government exercised its authorities without interference from the other.

In the early 1800s, federal funds accounted for less than 1% of state budget revenue. Of course, Dual Federalism emboldened some states to try unilaterally nullifying federal law, resulting in the Civil War.

By 1933, the Great Depression demonstrated that a rigid separation between state and federal jurisdictions was a practical impossibility given the nature and scope of societal problems. In response, the epoch of Cooperative Federalism, in which both levels of government work together to maximize effectiveness, was born. This paradigm shift is embodied in Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal programs, where the federal government took the lead in identifying problems, establishing a programmatic framework to address them, and providing funding, but turned over implementation and administration responsibilities to state and local governments. In the 1930s, federal funds increased to roughly 20% of state budget revenue.

By 1964, power shifted further to the federal government when it took over policymaking for all Americans by effectively compelling state and local governments to implement specified policies. This epoch of Centralized Federalism used federal funds (grants-in-aid) with detailed conditions that required states to support specific programs. Democratic President Lyndon Johnsons Great Society program exemplified this standardized approach to address poverty and racial injustice with spending on education, medical care, and urban renewal.

In 1980, Republican President Reagan implemented the New Federalism epoch, seeking to return power to states while reducing federal funding. Non-discretionary grants-in-aid were largely replaced with federal block grants to maximize state and local government discretion for greater customization. This approach, a reaction to the power shift begun during the New Deal, reflects the original Anti-Federalist ideal that government functions best at a level as close to the voters as possible.

The tug-of-war culminated in our current dysfunctional epoch of Ad Hoc Federalism that began at the start of this century. Politicians now demonstrate frustrating inconsistency advocating for either state or federal power in a self-serving manner contingent upon the partisan nature of the subject and whether the entity/official acting is from the same political party. This approach poses a unique risk to effective state governments because federal funds now account for 30% to 40% of most states budget revenue (37% for South Dakota.)

States also depend upon federal funds and resources in more than just the regular budget process. Threatened or actual withholding or delayed distribution of money/resources based upon partisan disfavor can have a serious adverse impact. For example, the Trump administration issued numerous threats to withhold federal disaster aid and other types of federal support to state and

local governments because they had Democratic leadership. Such actions illustrate the dangers of Ad Hoc Federalism, which is poised to get worse in the future.

Why so much history? Because when you are lost and in trouble, as American democracy currently is, finding your way to a better place requires three critical pieces of information where you came from, where you are now, and where you want to go.

Winston Churchill famously wrote Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. In determining where the U.S. should go, a better lesson is, Attempts to repeat history are doomed to fail, learn from it.

The epoch of Dual Federalism, when power struggles were largely resolved in favor of states, lasted nearly 150 years. In contrast, over the past 90 years, federal power has remained preeminent across four different epochs. The historical context of each epoch suggests why attempts to repeat similar outcomes today are unlikely to succeed.

The principal reason for enduring federal preeminence is the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment authorizing a federal income tax. With the federal government drawing taxes directly from people and businesses, states are deprived of the foremost source of budget revenue. When the Great Depression began in 1929, the federal government was the only entity with the financial capacity to mount an organized, comprehensive response. It remains that way today.

The driving force of the U.S. economy when the income tax was implemented, however, is not the same as today. In the early 20th century, the wealthiest Americans were oil baron John D. Rockefeller and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Industry had recently displaced agriculture as the primary method of making money.

Mass communication, mass entertainment, mass education and mass consumption based upon the standardized model of mass production became the norm. The 1920 census revealed such a huge population (power) shift from agricultural to industrialized areas that Congress refused to reapportion seats in the House of Representatives.

A century later, the wealthiest Americans are technology titans Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. The information economy (knowledge, information, and services) has displaced industry as the chief method of making money. In the process, it transformed the rest of American society by enabling a level of customization not previously possible.

In 1909, Henry Ford said a Model T was available in any color as long as its black. In 2021, an F-150 pickup has more than four million potential build configurations. Despite the possibility of getting exactly what you want in other areas of the economy, the federal government continues to function based upon the standardized model of 20th century industry.

Cooperative Federalism was empowered by President Roosevelts overwhelming mandate for change from winning 413 of 531 electoral college votes in 1932 and 523 of 531 in 1936. In 1964, President Johnsons win with 486 of 538 votes sustained his efforts with Centralized Federalism.

Similarly, President Reagans ability to implement New Federalism was facilitated by winning 489 of 538 votes in 1980 and 525 of 538 in 1984. In contrast, Ad Hoc Federalism is not the result of a presidential agenda. Establishing a new epoch requires a bold leader with an overwhelming popular mandate for change.

Since 1988, no president has won more than 365 electoral college votes. Ad Hoc Federalism developed in conjunction with the telecommunications and information technology boom (information economy) of the late 1990s. Infotainment stars from talk radio, cable television, and the internet shaped voter expectations requiring career politicians to follow along.

Our current epoch is thus guided by clickbait headlines and ratings as President Trump recognized.

Recall that the Anti-Federalists opposed a strong federal government due to the increased risk of tyranny (use of official powers to advance personal interests unrestrained by the rule of law). With Ad Hoc Federalism, tyranny is in the eye of the beholder. Recent events have shown that devolving substantial federal power to the states is necessary to minimize the existential risk to our democratic republic.

Presidents Biden and Obama were both labelled tyrants by Republicans. Obama for imposing the Affordable Care Act and issuing executive orders on immigration, Biden for imposing vaccine mandates on certain types of employees.

Similarly, Democrats objected to President Trumps blanket refusal to cooperate with congressional oversight efforts. He was also impeached for attempting to coerce a foreign nation into helping his re-election efforts and again for orchestrating violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after continuously deriding the legitimacy of an election without producing any credible evidence of alleged fraud.

So, this is where we are now. The federal government operates as a monolith in the 20th century industrial model. The 21st century information economy created and fosters the malign impact of Ad Hoc Federalism.

The risk of a tyrant destroying our democratic republic is no longer hypothetical. Polls indicate a substantial majority of Americans from across the political spectrum believe our democracy is in jeopardy. The question then is whether to blindly defend the worsening status quo hoping for a return to a lost past or put our faith in each other by charting a new path for the future.

As always, democracy offers the best way, the only way, to choose where we want to go.

Brian Bengs is an enlisted U.S. Navy veteran and retired U.S. Air Force officer. He has lived and worked all over the U.S. and the world but now calls Aberdeen home. He previously taught an array of law and policy topics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, International Institute of Humanitarian Law, NATO School Oberammergau, and Northern State University.

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The ongoing political struggle continues a debate first started in 1781: Who will make decisions for America? The South Dakota Standard - The South...

Voters in at least four cities are headed to the polls on Tuesday to determine whether they will defund the police amid rising urban crime rates. These referendums come on the heels of a growing crime surge in the United States, especially in urban areas.

While ballots in Austin, Texas, are asking voters to decide on an initiative that will actually increase staffing and law enforcement funding if passed, most of the defund the police proposals on the ballot in Cleveland, Denver, Minneapolis, and Albany, New York use vague language such as police reform to mask the policies true intent of dismantling law enforcement departments.

Minneapoliss proposal is by far the largest and most expansive law enforcement overhaul on the ballot. If passed, City Question Two will restructure the Minneapolis charter to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety managed by the leftist mayor or a possibly more progressive replacement and the City Council. The Department of Public Safety would be staffed by mental health and social workers who would take a comprehensive public health approach to fighting crime and only include traditional police officers if necessary.

While some cities such as Los Angeles got away with defunding the police after referendums during the 2020 election, public support for pulling funding from law enforcement is down across the board. In Minneapolis, 55 percent of voters said they dont support reducing the police force in the city.

A poll from the Pew Research Center published last week indicated that a rising number of Americans in general, 47 percent, actually want police spending in their areas to increase. That number is up 16 points from the beginning of the summer of rage in June 2020. Twenty-one percent of those who said they support funding hikes said the law enforcement spending should go up a lot, citing concerns about rising crime. Even 34 percent of Democrats admitted they wanted more funding for police moving forward.

Even some cities that dont have specific referendums or proposals to yank money from law enforcement are set to vote on whether they will elect a mayor who supports defunding the police. In Boston, Atlanta, New York City, and Buffalo, New York, voters must choose between supporting a Democrat mayor who plans to rally around defunding the police in the name of racial justice or a Democrat mayor who has estranged themselves from the progressive policy.

Democrat mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George in Boston has openly supported adding hundreds of officers to the citys police force to combat crime, but her progressive opponent Michelle Wu has already debuted a public safety plan that prohibits trained law enforcement officers from certain duties and hands them to unarmed civilian personnel.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

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Multiple Cities Voting Whether To 'Defund The Police' Amid Crime Surge - The Federalist

HAMILTON, Va. We attended a gathering of roughly 20 parents and other concerned residents of Loudoun County to tape footage for a documentary when the news broke last Thursday night that Superintendent Scott Ziegler had emailed the Loudoun County School Board on May 28 to notify them of the sexual assault that occurred at Stone Bridge High School earlier that same day. From indignation to validation to hope, heres how they reacted.

Its unbelievably shocking, but I think we all kind of assumed that that was the case, as heartbreaking as it is, I think we all kind of knew that he knew and were just waiting for someone to find proof, Gina Anders told us, as she and three other women gathered around an iPhone to read the breaking news. That the superintendent of LCPS actually knew about the alleged rape that occurred in the schools from the very beginning and failed not only lied to us at the school board meeting but also transferred the alleged perpetrator to another school where he victimized a second girl.

The most important part of all of this is they staged a question to the superintendent and had him answer it, and it was a lie, added Pegah Fowler. They staged an actual situation where they asked him this question and gave him a platform and an opportunity to actually lie about what he knew. Scott Ziegler flat-out lied.

At this point in time, its crystal clear that Loudoun County Public Schools are corrupt, Fowler added.

We need to get them all out, the entire school board, the superintendent, I mean, and this is an issue of accountability, noted Anders. I mean, they dont want to be, obviously, accountable to the parents. But these are our kids. Parents need to run the schools, not bureaucrats. I couldnt have imagined it even just a few years ago.

Several of the women emphasized that LCPS has promoted a facade of being an excellent school system. We moved here a few years ago to the best school district, and I feel totally lied to, jumped in Markie Sheets, holding her baby on her hip.

Its a facade: Lets repeat this lie over and over and over again. Lets pretend that we are providing the best education in the states, because Loudoun was the No. 1 growing county I mean talk about a facade, Fowler added. They flat-out lied, and they repeated it over and over and over again to a point where it caught on. And lets just pretend so we can line our own pockets, and then at the end of it all, lets sacrifice children, lets strip them of their innocence, lets take their souls, lets victimize them.

And lets pass [Policy 8040] so that more students can be victimized in bathrooms like the one they just covered up, chimed in Anders. They actually passed it, knowing that this incident occurred. Thats whats so just unbelievable.

Fowler added that out of roughly 81,000 students in Loudoun County, there are 29 of them, and thats probably a high number, that would have a need for transgender bathrooms. So were going to sacrifice our children for 29 people when we could accommodate those 29 appropriately by giving them a bathroom? Youve got family bathrooms in grocery stores, youve got family bathrooms in malls. Why cant we provide that for those individual kids and leave the rest of the children alone?

Fowler noted emphatically that she is absolutely not anti-trans. I think that as a child of Christ we need to love them, we need to embrace them, we need to have them part of our community, we need to extend that love.

Despite their disappointment and indignation at the actions of Ziegler and the Loudoun County School Board, the women felt validation for their efforts and hope for the future.

I think weve made incredible progress, Anders said.

All the time away from our families, all the nights, I mean, its incredible because its allowed us to bond, but I think its so worth it though, Fowler added. You know whats amazing about this, our Founding Fathers and the government that they created tonight, it validates what were capable of.

When we get engaged, Anders agreed.

Once we know we have the power to do so, thats why COVID was the best thing that happened to us because it allowed us to educate ourselves and come to the realization that we have complete control, Fowler concluded. A Third World country doesnt have this kind of control. And you know what, our civil rights, our liberty, our freedom, its just like a muscle. You dont use it, you lose it, and thats where we are right now.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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How These Loudoun Parents Reacted To Proof Of School Board Lies - The Federalist

The investigation into the fatal shooting of movie camerawoman Halyna Hutchins by actor Alec Baldwin with a prop gun on the set of the latters movie, Rust, last Thursday is ongoing, with new information and speculations appearing daily, so prudent people will let the investigation run its course before reaching conclusions. The fact that Mr. Baldwin has been a hard-core leftist activist, particularly against the right to keep and bear arms, should not lessen conservatives self-restraint in this regard.

We have been told several key elements so far. During a rehearsal, Baldwin pointed in Mrs. Hutchinss direction a single-action revolver that a film crew member had claimed was unloaded. The gun fired, perhaps because Baldwin cocked the hammer prematurely or pulled the trigger unintentionally, something got caught on the trigger, the gun malfunctioned, or Baldwin fired the gun intentionally for rehearsal purposes, thinking it was unloadedand Hutchins and film director Joel Souza were struck, the latter non-fatally. Also, the same gun may have been used by some film crew members for target shooting with conventional ammunition earlier in the day.

However, as with peoples reactions to many other topics in modern societys news cycle, in this instance self-restraint against conclusion-jumping is not universal. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who normally gadflies on topics more within his area of expertise, knee-jerked, What is needed now is a clear law that categorically prohibits any real gun or real bullet from being used on a film set.

Of course, no such need has been established. Movies have a good, if not perfect, track record where firearm safety is concerned and, although we should still wait for the results of the investigation, what has been reported thus far suggests, if anything, not that the movie industrys safety procedures are inadequate, but that they may not have been followed by Baldwin and some members of his crew.

One fact about the tragedy appears to have emerged: an effort to exonerate Baldwin, one of the hard lefts favored Hollywood personalities. Most conspicuously, Democrats and leftwing civilian disarmament activist groups, who would otherwise be using the tragedy as the launchpad for an indignant and self-righteous campaign against the right to keep and bear arms, are being silent.

More subtly, a Fox News article quoted a movie prop master explaining how people in his line of work are responsible for checking firearms before they get into actors hands. If you do enough safety checks along the way, nothing should happen. But, obviously, the gun on Alec Baldwins set was not checked. Because if it was, they would have seen the bullet in there, he reportedly said.

Another Fox News article stated that a camera operator who was working on the films set [the day of the tragedy] noted to detectives that Baldwin was very careful when it came to the use of prop firearms while filming prior to the tragic accident, and the actor observed all the safety protocols and even did an extra check-in with the crew to make sure no one was near him. Specifically, he made sure a child who was on set that day wasnt anywhere near him when discharging the weapon.

However, whatever the movie industrys protocols may be, in the firearm training world its universally understood that once a person takes a gun into his or her hands, he or she is responsible for it. And while the cameraman Fox quoted may be correct that Baldwin was safe previously, it wouldnt necessarily mean that he was without fault in Hutchinss death.

Furthermore, in the firearm training world, the Baldwin incident would not be considered an accidenta mishap that occurs despite someone doing everything correctly. Unless someone deliberately loaded the gun with conventional ammunition, knowing it would be fired by Baldwin in that conditionwhich at this point there is no publicly known reason to suspectthe tragedy was the result of negligencesomething that occurred because one or more people failed to follow safety rules and procedures.

Leading voices among firearm instructors, their organizations, and the firearm industry commonly advise many safety rules. Some apply to all firearms, some to certain types of firearms because of how they function mechanically, and others to certain situations, such as training classes, shooting competitions, and the making of movies. Furthermore, several rules are widely considered cardinal and may be relevant in this instance.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), which has thousands of certified instructors nationwide, has long advised three safety rules that apply to all firearms at all times. The military, which trains almost as many Americans annually as NRA instructors do, uses basic firearm safety rules that track with the first two of the NRAs rules.

The NRAs first rule is Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Normally that means, among other things, not at another person. Its meaning and purpose is so obvious that even someone with no experience handling firearms can understand it.

Its often described as the most important rule, on the reasoning that even if someone failed to follow every other rule, and as a result fired a gun unintentionally, if that person were pointing the gun in a safe direction at the time the gun fired, he or she might be embarrassed and would almost certainly be read the Riot Act by the range safety officer at a shooting range, but no one would have been hurt.

The NRAs second and third rules are Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot and Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use, the intents of which are also easy for almost anyone to understand.

Whether the intents of these rules were violated in Baldwins instance would depend on whether the scene he was rehearsing called for him to fire the gun (loaded with blank ammunition, of course) in the direction of Hutchinss camera with her manning the camera, whether crew members in the chain of custody of Baldwins gun inspected the gun according to movie industry safety protocols, and whether there was any lapse, even for a moment, in that chain of custody.

People who train seriously with firearms load, unload, and otherwise handle firearms so frequently that they must adhere to safety rules religiously, lest Murphys Law force a mishap. In training and competition events, participants are frequently required to unload firearms while observed by supervisory personnel, and go through various steps to demonstrate beyond any doubt that their guns are unloaded.

Serious gun owners dont follow safety rules only most of the time, or when they feel like it, or when someone else is looking, or when theyre not in a hurry, or when theyre not distracted. They do things correctly each and every time. This is because doing things the safe way is more safe, and because by doing things correctly every time, they program themselves to do those things even if tired or distracted.

No one is born knowing how to handle firearms safely. Liking guns is not the same as knowing how to handle them. Even having owned guns for many years, and having shot guns many times, is not proof of knowing how to handle firearms correctly. The right to keep and bear arms is, at a last resort, our most important right, thus its one that should be exercised with the utmost care and attention to detail.

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What The Baldwin Mishap Says About Guns Isn't What You Might Think - The Federalist

Watch the video for a monologue on article, followed by an interview with David Azerrad, a professor of political theory and government at Hillsdale Colleges campus in Washington, D.C., on what comes next.

The story of the past 100-plus years is the story of the rout of American conservatism and the near complete and total takeover of the country and its Commanding Heights by a cadre of highly intelligent, determined, and ruthless individuals.

How did the century begin? The left started from a humble base: a few people here and there, but certainly not dominating the levers of society. They were scattered about entertainment and Congress, and only truly formidable in the union halls and universities.

One hundred years later, its all over. The old rebels now control Hollywood and Silicon Valley and sports and television and the American Medical Association and both houses of Congress and Wall Street and the White House and the Boy Scouts and your childs elementary and the bathrooms therein. Oh, and they still have the big unions and nearly all the universities too.

So how did they do it? How did all their rage against the machine become the machine? How did they win the Second American Revolution? Its worth understanding how they won the second if well have any hope to win the third.

The first thing we need to do when figuring out the conservative revolution is to understand this: We may have been good at it once when men like John Adams, James Madison, and John Jay strode the earth but no longer.

Today, the left is better at revolutionary ideas, in part because theyre willing to be revolutionary in their thinking and in their governing. Notice: They dont tinker around the edges quite the same way we do. Read a left-wing publication like Vox or Mother Jones or The Washington Post, and theyre bursting with a whole list of things they want done to ensure the left gets what it wants in the years to come.

To them, theres no barrier too difficult to remove, no norm too sacred to violate. If the U.S. Senate stands in the way, just abolish the filibuster. Electoral College causing you heartburn? Come up with a clever go-around to negate it!

Conservatives actually believe in the Constitution and tradition so we arent willing to go these distances to get what we want. Thats fine its what sets us apart from the lesser beasts. But conservatives also have to escape from their self-imposed paralysis.

Too bad, we tried, time to go post a meme on Facebook owning the libs then feel sad when Facebook bans it.

Seriously: How many times have you heard its the law of the land delivered as some unassailable reason that thousands of years of Western tradition rooted in Gods laws ought simply to be abandoned?

We cant afford the political assumption that nothing thats been done can be undone. We need to look around us at the systems and institutions of the United States in 2021 and realize that in our current state, precious little of this is worth conserving at all.

Large aspects of our power structures are cancerous, but from time to time and place to place we have the ability to change that; we live in a representative democracy, and when we hold the levers of power, we are able to act without being shackled by the mistakes of the generations that lost the Second American Revolution.

How to go about this is a broad and serious discussion, but heres another idea: Take away the lefts privileges and their immunities the different protections and power perches theyve carved for themselves over the years.

These privileges and immunities are not self-evident rights by God, and they are not inalienable. They, like much of the rot in our society, are the product of policies from our executive, legislatures, and courts, extended at a time when we may have been feeling more generous, maybe more trusting and certainly less rebellious.

For example: Why are we funneling more than $45 billion every year to colleges and universities in the form of federal student loans?Think about how the system works: Weve given colleges a stranglehold on access to the upper tiers of the economy. There are people who succeed without a college diploma, but for far too many, its a functional necessity.

So colleges have been cashing in, raising tuition 5, 6, 8 percent a year and the federal government dutifully ponies up every time. We pony up by automatically giving massive student loans to every student who asks for one.

Who benefits from those loans? In the short run, its not the students its the schools. But the schools have no responsibility for that loan being paid back; that responsibility is the students alone. By the way, if a student drops out or his career doesnt pan out, he cant discharge those loans in bankruptcy.

Young people get crushed while colleges get a boom time that never ends: limitless federal dollars they can use to fund fat administrator salaries and tenured professors of anti-American studies. We dont need to accept this. Theres nothing in the Constitution that says colleges need limitless federal support. Conservatives can and should demand a better system.

At a minimum, a good start would be making colleges co-sign every loan taken out for a student to attend. If a student doesnt succeed enough to pay off his student loans, then the college should be on the hook; they sold the taxpayers a bill of goods and didnt deliver.

But we can dream bigger: Our public colleges and our public K-12 systems have massive diversity, inclusion, and equity bureaucracies. We all know what those really are: sinecures for the woke; ransom that we pay to the barbarians hoping they will spare our village for another day.

As Rudyard Kipling wrote, however, paying tribute simply means more will be demanded in the future. The diversity tumor only grows unless we tear it out.

There is no reason a single publicly funded school in a red state should have a diversity bureaucracy. Get rid of them; we have the power to act. The left wont like it; I can already hear the howls of execration. But so what?

For a moment, think like youre fighting for the survival of your country: Their disingenuous, shrieking street theater doesnt matter in a state where citizens disagree with them, and have chosen their politicians accordingly.

So lets look to the courts next. The right has been so fixated on overturning Roe v. Wade for so many decades its easy to forget how many other bad precedents are out there.

Why, for example, do we still have racial discrimination in school admissions and government hiring when it plainly violates the U.S. Constitution? Because of bad court rulings rulings that could be overturned if we made it a priority to select judges who do that.

Or how about this: If the University of Texas Austin wants to discriminate, then break their board and reconstitute it. The governor of Texas can do that; he doesnt even need to wait for Ron DeSantis to go first.

Heres another ruling that deserves a second look: New York Times v. Sullivan. That was a banger of a case where the Times libeled the leaders of a local police department.

That wasnt even in dispute: The Times printed damaging lies about them. But the Supreme Court ruled that because the police leaders were public figures, the standard for libeling them was almost impossibly high to meet.

You know what? That standard might have worked when we had a broadly bipartisan media that wanted to hold government accountable without being sued into oblivion for any mistake, but today we have hired creeps who lie with impunity to push the lefts agenda.

How about corporations? They havent had the best interests of the American people in mind in a very long time. In fact, nearly every single terrible move this country has made for the past 30 years has originated in a boardroom. So why are we protecting them?

Would our corporate executives act differently toward their colleagues, clients, and shareholders if they were responsible to more than just an ever-shifting stock market? Or if their own personal wealth and cars and car elevators were on the line?

Right now, top Wall Street bankers arent personally on the hook for massive losses (even when they receive a huge taxpayer bailout) because weve chosen to make the law that way. It used to be different, and we could go back to the old way at any time.

There are things worth conserving in this country: religion and the family, for example, even in their tattered states. But we need to think differently about the institutions that have been weaponized against us and we need to break them.

Once we understand how we got here, well realize this hypothesis isnt so scandalous. What is scandalous is our leaders refusal to know what time it is.

In the early 1960s, as the radicals raged and the liberals watched, the late great M. Stanton Evans wrote an article for Young Americans for Freedoms college-aged magazine, The New Guard. In it, he asked, can conservatives be revolutionary? Sixty years ago, he thought this was the correct way to think.

Today, its the only way.

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Conservatives As Revolutionaries: How To Fight When You're An Alien In Your Own Land - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Gen. Keith Kellogg, former acting National Security Adviser in the Trump administration, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss what happened behind the scenes of former President Donald Trumps foreign policy.

He would use language in his unscripted way of getting a point across and he would make it a common language, common to the people of United States. It wouldnt be diplomatic language. There was clarity with the president. It was simple, it was direct. It was hard, and you understood it, Kellogg said.

Kellogg also said that Trump wasnt afraid to stand up to the corrupt corporate media and offered insight into the former presidents real stance on Julian Assange.

I thought President Donald J. Trump was treated unfairly by the press. I think there were people out there in every, for the most part, most major mainstream media who, it became a personal attack, it was an ad hominem attack, it was [not just] an attack on his policies. And he wouldnt back down, I mean, not at all. And I think he kind of saw that with Julian the same way, like okay, this guys not backing down,' Kellogg said.

You can find Kelloggs book War by Other Means: A General in the Trump White House here.

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Behind The Scenes Of Donald Trump's Foreign Policy - The Federalist

Racine County, Wisconsin law enforcement blew the 2020 election integrity question wide open on Thursday after an investigation into one nursing home. It revealed not only that state election officials flagrantly broke the law and ordered health-care employees to help them, but that the problem likely runs much deeper throughout the swing states other 71 counties.

An election statute was in fact not just broken, but shattered by members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, Sheriff Christopher Schmaling said during a Thursday press conference in which he and Sgt. Michael Luell detailed the findings of an investigation into Ridgewood Care Facility.

The investigation came about when a woman named Judy signed a sworn affidavit with the Wisconsin Elections Commission after she discovered that her mother, who had died on Oct. 9, 2020 after a period of severe cognitive decline, had voted in the 2020 presidential election. The affidavit was later passed along as a complaint to the county district attorney.

Judy alleged that her mother Shirleys mental state had deteriorated so far that she was having hallucinations and wasnt able to recall what she had eaten during a day or even what day it was. According to Judy, her mother couldnt see her glasses were broken, and she couldnt even recognize her own daughter so even if she were of a sound mind, she wouldnt have known whether someone assisting her with a ballot had voted according to her wishes.

Luell, who led the investigation at the request of the district attorney, found an unusual spike in voting at this care facility: 42 people had voted in the 2020 presidential election. That number is usually 10. Furthermore, in 2020, 38 people had requested absentee ballots, up from the usual 0-3 in normal years.

When Luell attempted to contact the families of these voters to check whether their loved ones had the cognitive capacity to cast a vote, seven replied no, and almost all of them hadnt voted since 2012. One of the family members said his mother would ask him who he was, meaning she didnt recognize her own son. She hadnt voted since 2012 yet MyVote Wisconsin revealed she voted twice in 2020.

This surge in voting was the result of Wisconsin Elections Commission officials breaking state law. The commission which is made up of six commissioners, including three Democrats and three Republicans, who are appointed by legislative leaders or the governor and serve as an agency in the executive branch under the governor authorized nursing home employees to help residents vote, which Luell noted is a direct violation of law.

According to Luell, employees would ask residents how they voted in the past and then vote according to that party. In other words, if Judys mother could only recall JFK, staff would vote Democrat for her.

According to state law, however, nursing home staff cant assist residents with voting. In fact, nobody can help the voter other than a relative or special voting deputies, which are people appointed by municipal clerks or elections boards to conduct absentee voting at care facilities.

In March, however, the Wisconsin Elections Commission sent out a letter mandating that municipalities should not use the special voting deputy process.

Ladies and gentleman, its not a process. Its the law, Luell said, citing state Statute 6.875.

The original letter was issued under the guise of COVID guidelines. Nevertheless, in September, after the governors lockdown orders had expired and the initial shock of the pandemic had passed, the Wisconsin Elections Commission sent a letter to all residential care facilities telling the workers how to help residents vote, including even marking the ballot for them, in direct violation of state law.

Racine law enforcement looked at 2020 visitor logs and found that other visitors were let into the nursing home throughout the pandemic, about 900 times between the decision in March not to use special voting deputies and November 2020. Those visitors included someone to clean the fish tanks and birdcages and even DoorDash delivery people.

Those people were allowed into the Ridgewood Care Facility, but heaven forbid we make an exception for special voting deputies, Luell said.

Under Wisconsin state statute 12.13, breaking these laws about special voting deputies constitutes election fraud, which is a felony.

Were just one of 72 counties, Racine County, Schmaling noted. Ridgeland is one of 11 facilities within our county. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the entire state of Wisconsin. We would be foolish, we would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state. I would submit to you that this needs the attorney generals investigation, the sheriff said, calling for the AG to launch an immediate probe into the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

This bombshell investigation is only the latest in the long list of malfeasant actions by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, especially regarding the 2020 election. As Wisconsin radio host and lawyer Dan ODonnell put it, the commission was downright derelict in its duty to fairly and impartially oversee an election.

As ODonnell documented, the commission unlawfully allowed clerks to cure ballots, illegally permitted clerks to go home on election night and return to finish counting in the morning, and illegally told clerks they could relocate polling locations in the weeks before the election.

Furthermore, the commission failed to issue relevant laws and rules for training municipal election workers, special voting deputies, and election inspections. Worse, it failed to investigate voter rolls for the hundreds of thousands there incorrectly, including more than 45,000 first-time voters whose names didnt match Department of Transportation records, among other issues.

As The Federalists Mollie Hemingway outlines in her new book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, the Wisconsin Elections Commission also wrongly kept third-party candidates off the ballot, including Kanye West and the Green Partys Howie Hawkins. Third parties can significantly affect elections in the Dairy State.

Following the [Legislative Audit Bureau] report, what Sheriff Schmaling has uncovered + disclosed might only be tip of the iceberg of fraud in the 2020 election. The Legislature must be given the time, resources, and cooperation of election officials to conduct a complete investigation of allegations, tweeted Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin following the Racine press conference. Using elderly residents with cognitive decline to commit election fraud is reprehensible, and should concern every Wisconsinite and American.

Johnson continued: If Democrats will stoop this low to impact elections, one can only imagine what else theyre willing to do.

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Wis. Election Panel Told Nursing Home Staffers To Illegally Cast Ballots - The Federalist