Category Archives: Federalist

The extent to which corporate media rigs elections for Democrats has been rigorously documented since at least Tim Grosecloses 2012 book, Left Turn. In that book, the political scientist concluded through data-driven analysis that media bias on average shifts the electorate 20 points to the left on a 100-point political worldview scale. Without media bias, he argued, the average American state would be as Republican-leaning as Texas or Kentucky, and those two states would be even more conservative.

Media bias was highly visible even before Rush Limbaugh made it a regular feature of his top-rated radio show that became nationally syndicated in 1988. As the Trump era dawned, however, media coverage moved from biased to outright propaganda.

Corporate media went from picking left-friendly frames and omitting facts that reinforced right-leaning views about public affairs, as Groseclose documented in 2012, to outright mass hoaxing of voters by 2016. While hyperventilating about the minority of Americans who believe conspiracy theories like QAnon, leftist media not only inflamed but also outright fabricated conspiracy theories that the majority of Democrat voters believe.

For example, in 2020, a majority of Americans including 81 percent of self-described liberals believed the lie that Donald Trump committed treason for Russia. That claim was disproven by a two-year, Democrat-populated special counsel investigation that spent $32 million to find no evidence for this hoax, which effectively hamstrung a president from pursuing what voters put him in office to accomplish.

This corporate media smear machine was only one of the numerous unfair advantages Democrats exploited in the 2020 elections. My colleague, Mollie Hemingway, just put out a new, bestselling book that also documents things like big tech hiding election-shifting news from voters and Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg embedding Democrat get-out-the-vote operations inside local election offices which are supposed to be nonpartisan! Whats more, all these cheats affixed into our nations election machinery havent been scrubbed away, not by a long shot.

While I work with Mollie and am highly aware of media corruption since its our bread and butter here at The Federalist, she still had many surprises for me inside Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. Here Ill share a few things she reports in the book that made me gasp out loud.

I had to read this section of the book two or three times to absorb what it was saying. I couldnt believe it could possibly be true. Yet it is: Shockingly, the 2020 contest was the first presidential election since Reagans first successful run in 1980 in which the Republican National Committee could play any role whatsoever in Election Day operations.

What? Next sentence: For nearly 40 years, the Democratic National Committee had a massive systemic advantage over its Republican counterpart: the Republican National Committee had been prohibited by law from helping out with poll watcher efforts or nearly any litigation related to how voting is being conducted.

This section in chapter 1 goes on to explain how such an insane thing could be real. Essentially, after Democrats accused Republicans of cheating in a New Jersey race in 1981, a judge banned the RNC from poll-watching and voting litigation everywhere in the country, then kept re-upping the order until 2018, when it finally expired three years after he died.

This handicapped Republicans for almost 40 years while Democrats were free to do things Republicans couldnt, like give boosts to their voters all along the voting process and track them extensively, challenge ballots, document irregularities, and sue over election disputes. By 2020, then, Mollie writes:

Democrats had spent the last forty years perfecting their Election Day operations while everyone at the Republican National Committee walked on eggshells, knowing that if they so much as looked in the direction of a polling site, there could be another crackdown. As a result, there was no muscle memory about how to watch polls or communicate with a presidential campaign.

Thats a pretty big handicap walking into the election chaos of 2020, in which Americans filled out an unprecedented 65 million mail-in ballots, which are known not only for their margin of error, but also for being structurally biased towards Democrats.

Also made clear throughout Rigged is that lazier and sloppier elections strongly advantage Democrats. This means long election seasons, mail-in balloting, and loose ballot behavior such as mailing millions and opening dropboxes all tilt elections towards Democrats.

As Mollie writes, the vote-by-mail system was becoming a major part of the Democratic Partys get-out-the-vote operation. Regardless of fraud and other concerns, the press saw the success of the mail-in ballot effort in Wisconsin for what it was: an effort to turn out more Democratic voters. Republican voters, she shows, prefer to vote in person because they want to make sure their votes are reliably counted.

Why Republicans would ever allow voting procedures that structurally advantage their opponents is, to put it bluntly, only understandable as self-hatred. Democrats would never, ever do that, because they actually want to win.

In 2020, Facebooks interference in the election was a one-two punch. Mollie notes: [Mark] Zuckerberg didnt just help Democrats by censoring their political opponents. He directly funded liberal groups running partisan get-out-the-vote operations. In fact, he helped those groups infiltrate election offices in key swing states by doling out large grants to crucial districts. That funding was the means by which [Democrat] activists achieved their revolution and changed the course of the 2020 election.

Elsewhere in the book, Hemingway notes that Facebook executives have boasted that they can shut off 80 percent of the traffic to any link they want. Facebook and Google blacklisting of conservative news sites such as The Federalist, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart has been documented since 2017.

Atop this were whats been termed Zuck Bucks, the nearly half a billion dollars Zuckerberg gave to essentially fund a shadow elections system that again structurally advantaged Democrats.To list just a few things the book shows Zuck Bucks facilitated: literally designing mail-in ballots and their envelopes; sending partisan activists to help local elections offices in conveniently located swing districts; fix unclear or illegal mail-in ballots; designing absentee balloting instructions; and collecting absentee ballots.

The details are breathtaking. Mollie gives so many facts about the partisan tilt and effectiveness of Zuckerbergs grants to local elections offices that it truly leads one to conclude Zuckerberg flat-out bought the election for Joe Biden.

Id also never heard about this shocking story that illustrates the extent to which political repression is tolerated within the Democrat Party. In her chapter about the 2020 Summer of Riots, Mollie writes:

In 2017, Portland canceled its annual Rose Parade after violent threats from Antifa, which objected to the Multnomah County Republican Partys being included as one of the many civic groups marching in the parade. Forget Trump; it was unsafe for even an ordinary Republican to walk down the streets of Portland. And in canceling the parade, [Portland Mayor Ted] Wheeler effectively conceded that Antifa ruled the streets.

Mollie later quotes former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr describing how Antifa a violent group implicated in actual domestic terrorism use[s] legitimate demonstrations as a host body. Further, Mollie writes, they operated in liberal cities in blue states where local authorities were both reluctant to stop them and unwilling to help federal law enforcement go after them.

In other words, Democrats are willing to concede the safety of Americans lives, limbs, and property to ideological allies, even when those allies openly commit violent crimes and threaten more.

In discussing why Antifa is allowed to threaten peaceful American citizens with violence, Mollie uncovers one of the political problems with addressing this: The FBI is systemically biased on behalf of the left. [T]he agency had long focused its attention on right-wing extremists and was ill-equipped to deal with threats from the left, she notes.

Yes, this is the nations top law-enforcement agency that helped hatch the Spygate plot to frame a Republican president. Politically biased you think? Mollie writes further:

Even though decades had passed, the FBI was still skittish about the criticism it had received for infiltrating radical left-wing groups in the 60s and 70s.

The inaction in response to Antifa certainly helped take the pressure off Biden [in the 2020 campaign], who never had to answer for the bricks flying through windows, rampant looting, toppling of statues, and assaults on innocent business owners that defined urban life throughout the summer of 2020. To do so would have been to confront an uncomfortable truth the Democratic Party and its allies have been tolerating, encouraging, and mainstreaming political violence for decades.

As my opening to this essay explains, Im aware media bias has been transcended by outright propaganda. In her book, however, Mollie makes an excellent point about this after detailing other cases proving this shift.

She makes it in relation to what Id call a relatively minor offense The New York Times publishing a Trump-smearing piece from an anonymous author it described as a senior administration official, meaning someone in the upper echelon of an administration. Of course, it turned out this person wasnt any such thing. He was just a mid-level bureaucrat.

After giving the truly asinine details of that story, Mollie makes this comment:

If the New York Times was willing to lie about how high-level an anonymous source was for its very high-profile September 2018 information operation, what lies was it willing to tell about all the other anonymous sources it used? And if this is how one of Americas biggest newsrooms operates, readers are right to ask how much other papers and media outlets were willing to lie in support of their anti-Republican narratives.

If you dont believe it already, after you read Mollies book, you will come away with the inescapable conclusion that Trump was right when he called corporate media the enemy of the people.

Up to a quarter of a million votes were cast in Wisconsins presidential election without any identification check at all, Mollie writes on page 66. I already knew a lot about how error-riddled mail-in voting is I wrote about that when few would. But just encountering this new fact and realizing this represented just one swing state was another mind-blowing moment for me about just how corruption-enabling and confidence-destroying are vote-by-mail-tainted elections.

There are many more shocking things in Mollies book, and Im not even done. I just started the Hunter Biden chapter, and holy mackerel. Until I read further, a few thoughts.

Republicans expect to win a wave election in 2022. How many points will they have to beat Democrats by to prove it? How many dubious ballots will be produced or negotiated away by partisan election workers or judges? How many urban areas run by Democrats will produce suspicious numbers of ballots that outweigh the votes in the rest of their states? How many Republican voters will stay home because they cant trust elections run by some of the loosest rules in the developed world?

We shouldnt even have to be asking these questions right now. If Republicans genuinely want to win elections and that is sadly in doubt they have no choice but to use whatever power they have to make those elections trustworthy again. That means in-person voting, with ID, for everyone except the truly disabled, and returning to an election day, not an election season.

The left and their media are going to lie about Republicans no matter what they do, so they might as well get secure elections out of the never-ending smear cycle. Republican voters dont believe the media anyway, so why do any of their elected officials? Remember, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.

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7 Insane Things I Just Learned About How US Elections Are 'Rigged' - The Federalist

President Joe Biden will leave for the United Nations global summit on Climate Change in Glasgow next week to seek an international deal to meet the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

The world must limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared to preindustrial levels, so the story goes, with a preferential target set at below 1.5 degrees Celsius in order to stave off a manmade Armageddon. Current trajectories, however, put the globe on path to warm 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a new UN report out Monday released in anticipation of the COP26 in Scotland, which stands for the conference of parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The mess from this update is loud and clear: Parties must urgently redouble their climate efforts, warned Patricia Espinosa, the executive secretary of the convention, ahead of the 26th conference.

Yet Biden will arrive with nothing to show by way of enhanced U.S. commitment after congressional Democrats failed to pass major legislation this month. Even if the president promises to reduce emissions through executive order, the signal is clear Biden possesses no legislative mandate, and orders could be rolled back in three years as they were under President Donald Trump.

Heres why its a good thing Biden is showing up in Glasgow empty-handed.

The UN was characteristically dramatic with demands the world must rapidly meet ambitious targets of net-zero emissions to save the planet. But the world isnt ending. In fact, with the help of abundant reliable energy, the world is safer than ever before. To pretend otherwise to justify systematic change coerced through panic would itself prove catastrophic.

The exponential growth in development for the past century powered by fossil fuels supplying cheap, dependable energy has turned a climate thats always been dangerous to one in which humans can flourish. Climate-related deaths have plummeted more than 98 percent since 1900, with weather to blame for 0.07 percent of deaths worldwide, and 0.01 percent of deaths in the United States between 1980 and 2014. Thats after the planet already warmed 1 degree Celsius since the Little Ice Age century of the 1800s, which puts the real goal of the Paris Climate Accords at preventing average temperature rise by another half degree.

While catastrophic climate activists often highlight heat-related fatalities on the rise over the prior two decades, cold-related deaths have declined 150 percent more than heat-incident mortalities increased, as shown in the chart below from the Wall Street Journal.

Freezing temperatures are far more difficult to deal with than desert-like heat waves, where hydration and shaded areas may provide relief even without air conditioning. Heat deaths have still fallen where access to centralized air conditioning has risen.

Homes in the winter, on the other hand, require heat that is often prohibitively expensive for the poor. Thanks to innovation in hydraulic fracturing, the cost of natural gas has come down, saving more than 11,000 lives on an annual basis by 2010, according to one study.

The best way to protect people from heat or cold is access to plentiful, cheap energy, Copenhagen Consensus President Bjorn Lomborg reported for the Journal. That often means fossil fuels.

The central climate provision of the Democrats colossal reconciliation bill was given the ax after objections from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz. The $150 billion Clean Energy Power Performance Program (CEPP) sought to radically subsidize sources of unreliable renewable energy with monetary rewards to utilities that make the switch and penalties for those that did not.

The taxpayer-funded incentive to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind would have transformed the power grid from the reliable network most states enjoy today to a high-priced utility with intermittent blackouts seen in Texas and California becoming the norm. Europe is already bearing the consequences of undue reliance on unreliables amid a low-wind season.

Californias chase of 60 percent clean energy with renewable power by 2030 sparked repeated blackouts, which fueled the gubernatorial recall this summer. To make up for gaps in reliable power, California was forced to import more than a quarter of its electricity in 2019 from fossil-fuel heavy states such as Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.

In Texas, the only state that operates on its own power grid and relies on wind for more than a fifth of its electricity, an energy crisis left millions without power when residents were hit by record-low temperatures. The intermittency of the power grid by overreliance on wind power caught operators by surprise when they underestimated peak demand.

It appears that ERCOT, Texass grid operator, was caught off guard by how soon demand began to exceed supply, explained former State Rep. Jason Isaac for The Federalist in February. Failure to institute a managed rolling blackout before the grid frequency fell to dangerously low levels meant some plants had to shut off to protect their equipment. This is likely why so many power plants went offline, not because they had failed to maintain operations in the cold weather.

Bidens climate plans in the reconciliation bill seek to generate 50 percent of the nations power by wind and solar by the end of the decade.While the CEPP is dead, Democrats still plan to stack the partisan reconciliation bill with $235 billion in subsidies for non-carbon-emitting sources of energy. The new package carves out enhanced subsidies for wind and solar in particular, threatening to raise power bills while the handouts raise the unreliability of the grid.

The bills pending status, however, will still hinder the presidents overseas leverage to craft a climate deal that would do far more harm than good by restricting the developing worlds access to reliable fossil fuels when billions of people still need power.

Bidens failure to pass major climate initiatives beyond executive order in the run-up to the Glasgow summit tosses cold water on the presidents efforts to convince world leaders the United States is committed to European-style transformation of the power grid. The absence of a congressional mandate signals a repeat of back-and-forth commitment to the Paris Agreement, where the political pendulum could revoke a U.S. pledge to forfeit energy independence through the use of reliable fossil fuel by the end of the decade.

The Paris Agreement, which President Biden re-signed on his first day in office, did more to enhance the influence of global adversaries than achieve meaningful reduction in emissions. Renewable-reliant Europe, where more than half a dozen countries ban fracking, has become increasingly dependent on Russian natural gas just as California has relied on neighboring states to meet demand for instantaneous power. Even the Biden administration has come to acknowledge the Kremlins grip months after the president stripped the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline but gave the green light for the Nord Stream 2 to feed natural gas into Germany.

The climate agenda is expensive and is not even possible to implement in a medium-sized wealthy industrial economy, said former Trump EPA transition member Steve Milloy, pointing to the $500 billion renewable push in Germany, where residents pay the second-highest power prices in Europe. Yet the pressure to implement these demonstrably failed policies has taken on the air of hysteria.

In 2019, Germany was Europes largest consumer of natural gas, relying on Russian imports.

While Democrats demand billions in taxpayer dollars to meet emissions targets outlined by the Paris Agreement, a U.S. reduction in greenhouse gases means nothing without global cooperation. China is the worlds largest polluter, and with Russia, the two nations constitute 33 percent of global CO2 emissions. Neither nations leaders will be in Glasgow next week.

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Biden Is Showing Up Empty-Handed In Glasgow. That's A Good Thing - The Federalist

I am literally shaking right now. I cant believe the Biden administration is creating such an unsafe space. On the internet, no less, where it literally affects the whole globe.

Their new infographic depicting The Life of Linda for their Build Back Better campaign is so problematic, I dont even know where to start. If Joe Biden wants to really be an ally with the oppressed of the world, its time for him and the entire White House to do the work.

That work starts with getting their language right. Right here in the first slide, however, the gender-normative oppression begins.

Just let me count the ways this image equals genocide.

For one, they use the offensive term pregnant woman. Biden got this right with using birthing people instead before, so why not in public advertisements like this one? As even the Centers for Disease Control and aging House Democrats have established, its not just women who become pregnant. Its also transgender women and, soon, robots.

Second, the image above also misgenders the misshapen blob sucking the life out of Lindas body. We cant know a persons gender until that person himself, herself, or xyrself identifies it through a mystical experience of the Inchoate Self.

Thirdly, the image above falsely attributes personhood to womb invaders. Babies arent people unless they are wanted.

Fourthly, the White House missed a golden opportunity to enlighten Americans and celebrate trans individuals by replacing the dated Linda with a transwoman, perhaps one named Larry, if Democrats still have to somehow get votes from those disgusting flyover swamp creatures to cement their universal brotherhood of political power. The world needs not more white-presenting, white-named Lindas which kind of sounds like Karen, when you think about it but a more vibrant and forward-thinking image of a female Larry.

The Biden administration figured this out by naming a completely unqualified transgender woman to a four-star admiralcy last week. Thats what were going for here. Stop regressing.

Heres another highly problematic image in this series.

I cannot believe the Biden administration did not increase OSHA protections for manufacturing workers to prevent Lindas hearing loss. Since government decrees can save lives, its unthinkable that Biden wouldnt show how government can truly assume god-like powers and prevent all suffering, want, and need if only people do what it says.

None of the people in these depictions are wearing masks. Since the Centers for Disease Control is indicating this devastating pandemic will go on for at least three more years, after which we will need to pursue lockdowns to stop the climate apocalypse and limit the human population, this is an unconscionable image decision that will kill billions.

As the racially distinguished womyn notes below in her reply to a domestic terrorist, these images also display cultural appropriation by mimicking the work of indigenous Chinese artists.

The Biden administration has worked really hard to be a lot better than the Obama administration at fighting white men and championing government as their replacement so all people who arent white can live as their authentic selves. But they cant even do better than President Obamas Life of Julia?

I literally cant even. Im so overwhelmed with all the evil in the world right now. I need a personal health day.

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7 Problematic Things In 'The Life Of Linda' That Require Cancellation Now - The Federalist

In stark contrast to the Center for Disease Controls recommendations that all people over the age of two wear a mask indoors to mitigate transmission of SARS-COV-2, the sections of its website dedicated to seasonal influenza do not recommend wearing masks to prevent it from spreading.

Since the battle over mask mandates is most intense with regard to schools, its crucial to point out the pediatric mortality rate derived from the CDCs estimate of flu mortality is comparable to its estimate of COVID-19 mortality among children. The CDC attributes 542 deaths to COVID among those aged 0-17 total over the past 18 months, while estimating influenza deaths for the six-month 2019-2020 season at 486, as of this writing. Assuming these numbers are fairly accurate, this means the risk of flu-related death for children and teens is greater than for COVID.

While CDC Web pages dedicated to COVID-19 often include a banner photo of someone in a mask, this isnt common in the influenza section of the website. Masks also seem nowhere to be found among CDC recommendations on flu prevention for those who arent health workers. Instead, to help slow the spread of germs that cause respiratory (nose, throat, and lungs) illnesses, like flu, they suggest getting the flu vaccine, staying away from people who are sick, covering coughs and sneezes, and frequent handwashing.

Compare that to its guidance, updated in August, for COVID-19 mitigation in K-12 schools at the very top of the page: CDC recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status. Universal masking is also the third bullet point under key takeaways.

One might argue the flu vaccines are more effective than the COVID vaccines and therefore masks arent needed. But the CDC notes that a meta-analysis that included data from randomized controlled trials, the most robust form of medical research, found flu vaccines to be in the range of 51-67 percent effective at preventing flu infection. One RCT even found it to be as low as 16 percent in a season of low influenza infection rates. Influenza transmission cannot be prevented by vaccination because vaccination is only about 60 percent effective at preventing flu illness.

Wouldnt layered prevention strategies of the kind the CDC demands for COVID be called for to address a dangerous pathogen for which vaccines arent highly effective?

If masks are so effective at mitigating respiratory virus transmission, as Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky have told us, why would our public officials not recommend masks for the flu? Influenza is a respiratory virus that spreads similarly to SARS-COV-2. A 2016 study comparing detection of viable influenza virus in 53 subjects with confirmed influenza A infection found 22(42 percent) produced aerosols with viable virus during exhalation.

Another study by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety developed a two-stagecyclone bioaerosol sampler to separate aerosol particles into different sizes. Researchers discovered that the H1N1 and H3N2 influenza viruses were most often found in the 14 m and less than 1 m size fractions (emphasis added), meaning they were airborne, as particles less than 10 m in diameter can remain airborne for hours and are easily inhaled deeply into the respiratory tract.

In other words, this evidence indicates the flu can be spread just by breathing. Research on aerosols carrying SARS-COV-2 also suggest it also could be spread by breathing. Also, like health experts have been so often quoted as saying regarding COVID, asymptomatic spread is possible (although probably greatly overestimatedthe CDC admitted as much earlier this year in a report of school transmission).

According to the authors of a study of flu infection among health-care workers and patients during 2015/16 and 2016/17 influenza seasons, a significant proportion of individuals shed influenza virus without harboring any symptoms, thereby potentially exposing their vicinity. Roughly 8 percent of flu-positive swabs were collected among patients on days without symptoms, and asymptomatic transmission seemed likely in one cluster of infections. The CDC itself admits, You may be able to spread flu to someone else before you know you are sick.

So if the flu can be transmitted asymptomatically, its more dangerous to kids than COVID, and its vaccine allows for ample breakthrough infections, why dont they recommend masks for the flu?

Perhaps its because masks as a mitigation strategy for the flu had already been studied in controlled trials, and the results didnt reinforce their use. In 2019 the World Health Organization listed its top ten studies on masks and hand hygiene for flu mitigation, and although all had problems such as insufficient sample size, none found strong evidence for masks efficacy (see page 25, Table 7).

If the CDC were to start pushing masks for flu mitigation, the public and corporate media (albeit reluctantly) would have to address the lack of evidence in influenza transmission studies for mask-wearing. People would then start to wonder why, if the evidence of masks for flu is shaky, we should believe masks work for COVID.

Those who claim the science supports masks for COVID prevention should also be demanding masks for flu prevention. After all, if masks save lives, and if we can save even one life, then its worth it, as the proponents of universal masking tell us, then indoor masks every flu season for everyone ages two and over should be not just on the table but promoted emphatically and relentlessly by our public health institutions.

The fact that it isnt should give anyone, particularly parents with schoolchildren enduring strict mask mandates, great pause. Is the CDC the same trustworthy organization people looked to for science-driven, sensible guidance before the pandemic hit? The same one that assures them child deaths from the flu are relatively rare?

Or has it been corrupted by all the money and power that pandemic hysteria allows them to tap into? Is it really following the science, or are health officials selectively applying The Science based on what supports the their own financial interests or the controlling political partys narrative and agenda? Can we really say the CDC isnt politically biased when its director has also declared gun control a public health crisis?

The CDCs differing recommendations for respiratory viruses that can be dangerous and spread similarly suggest masks today are less about public health than about public manipulation. The only question left is how long well put up with it.

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If Masks 'Work,' Why Doesn't The CDC Recommend Them For The Flu? - The Federalist

The retired U.S. marine who thwarted an attempted robbery by three suspects in a convenience store in Arizona is a hero in more ways than one.

Veteran James Kilcer gained national attention last week after a video of him swiftly disarming an armed burglar in a Chevron gas station went viral on social media.

As the armed suspect walked by Mr. Kilcer while pointing the weapon at the cashier, Kilcer reacted without hesitation, quickly disarming the suspect and taking him to the ground. He was able to immediately gain control of the gun and detain the suspect until Deputies arrived. As a result, no victims were injured and no property loss was sustained, the Yuma County Sherriffs Office wrote in a press release.

Kilcers quick thinking prompted an interview with Fox News about his experience. Anchor Dana Perino wrapped up the segment by offering to buy Kilcer a beer, but the veteran had a different closing comment in mind.

And remember, Epstein didnt kill himself, Kilcer replied, which prompted laughing from Perino.

Very clever, she said.

As a result of Kilcers smooth takedown of the armed suspect, the Yuma, Arizona Sheriffs Office awarded the veteran the YCSO Citizens Valor Award: For extraordinary heroism and exceptional courage while voluntarily coming to the aid of another citizen during an incident involving criminal activity at extreme, life threatening, personal risk in an attempt to save or protect human life.

The YCSO Citizens Valor Award is the highest award for citizens whose actions warrant recognition, the press release noted.

Kilcers ability to think on his feet produced heroic results, but the veteran showed even more courage when he accepted the award from Sheriff Leon Wilmot in a Lets Go Brandon shirt and iconic red Make America Great Again cap.

Kilcer celebrated his award while The American Legion Post 19, Marine Corps League Territorial Detachment 635, the Chevron General Manager, and the Yuma community looked on.

Kilcer will not only go down in history as being one of the calmest people to take down a bad guy with a gun, but hell also be remembered for sticking it to the Biden administration and other elites in one of the most polite yet noticeable ways possible.

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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Heroic Veteran Who Disarmed Burglar With Bare Hands Publicly Sticks It To Biden - The Federalist

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi delayed a vote on the infrastructure bill on Thursday night after the most radical lawmakers in her party threw yet another round of fits about the legislations contents and the related $1.75 trillion spending bill that acts as a free pass for key elements of the leftist agenda.

Despite never promising to deliver on every talking point lodged in each of the legislative packages, President Joe Biden, Pelosi, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and the progressive squad have devoted weeks to bickering over these key bills. Their attempts to pass just one piece of legislation that the administration and vulnerable Democrat members could use to boost the publics image of them ahead of the 2022 midterms, however, has failed up to this point.

The president even delayed his European summit trip in hopes of convincing progressives to give him just one legislative victory but ended up pushing Democrat House leaders to bail on a vote.

While progressives appear more open to Bidens begging for a $1.75 trillion reconciliation bill that would win over holdout Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, they plan to hold out on the infrastructure bill until the final Build Back Better plan is passed.

The reality is that while talks around the infrastructure bill lasted months in the Senate, there has only been serious discussion around the specifics of the larger Build Back Better Act in recent weeks, thanks to the Progressive Caucus holding the line and putting both parts of the agenda back on the table, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Rep. Pramila Jayapal said in a statement on Thursday. Members of our Caucus will not vote for the infrastructure bill without the Build Back Better Act. We will work immediately to finalize and pass both pieces of legislation through the House together.

Sanders, who touted the reconciliation bill as an opportunity to move the nation even further left, seems less willing to compromise on the legislation packages unless the new round of proposals fills major gaps in his agenda to socialize health care.

At the same time, he did not draw any red lines and praised the plan as the most consequential bill since the 1960s, Politico noted in its Friday morning Playbook.

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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Biden, Pelosi, Sanders, And Squad Squabble Over Bill They Didn't Promise - The Federalist

Because the national media are still invested in defending the mass violence and race rioting that took place all summer last year, its safe to assume that any coverage they devote to the trial of 18-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse will be gross and misleading.

To wit, theyre already suggesting that Rittenhouses defense is getting an unfair advantage after the presiding judge, Bruce Schroeder, ruled this week that the three men Rittenhouse shot that August night of violent riots in Kenosha, Wis., cannot be referred to during the trial as victims, but that they could be described as looters, rioters, or arsonists.

CNNs Jeffrey Toobin said on Wednesday that the ruling should help Rittenhouses defense a great deal and that characterizing the men as lawbreakers suggests that Rittenhouse was justified in what he was doing because these were bad people that he shot.

Anchor Erica Hill said that same day that she literally cant wrap my head around this and that she was wondering how the heck something like this could happen.

Areva Martin, another one of CNNs legal analysts (though this one didnt expose herself while masturbating on a Zoom call), said the ruling was incomprehensible and that to call the men rioters or looters suggests they deserved what they got.

Im sure it will surprise you that this is an attempt to create yet one more false narrative about the race riots that were cheered on by the media last year in order to tip the election against Donald Trump.

The truth is that Judge Schroeder had said the term victim is loaded because it assumes a degree of guilt by a perpetrator. In this case, Rittenhouses legal team is expected to claim he was defending himself when he fired his weapon at the men, two of whom died. Prosecutors countered that it would likewise be as loaded, if not more loaded to characterize any of the men shot by Rittenhouse as rioters or looters or arsonists.

Schroeder rejected that argument on the grounds that there is actual evidence that the men were any one or all of those things. Prosecutors had, after all, actually admitted that one of the men, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, had lit a dumpster ablaze that night. Schroeder further said that in its statements to the jury, Rittenhouses defense was free to demonize the men, just as prosecutors were free to beatify them. But, he said, referring to them as victims was a question at the core of the trial and something to be determined by the jury.

This isnt a matter of Schroeder giving Rittenhouse a sympathetic leg up. As USA Today noted, the judge has a standard rule prohibitinguse of the term victim until someone is convicted of a crime.

The case isnt going to center on whether anyone deserved to be shot because they were rioting. Its going to be about whether Rittenhouse had reason to fear that his life was in danger. Reading the states own complaint against Rittenhouse, the answer is: Oh my God, yes he did, and is he OK?!

Rittenhouse had driven that night 30 minutes from his home to Kenosha, where mass protests and riots were taking place over the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black man who was wanted for violating a restraining order stemming to claims he had sexually assaulted a woman. Rittenhouse brought a rifle with him and set out to, in his words, protect businesses and offer medical aid to anyone injured.

The first shooting took place at a car dealership. According to a witness cited by the states complaint, Rittenhouse was running away and being pursued by Rosenbaum, who was first to engage Rittenhouse. While Rittenhouse was backing up, the witness said that Rosenbaum moved toward the teen with his hands up in an attempt to take his gun. Thats when Rittenhouse fired the gun, striking Rosenbaum multiple times. He was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

Rittenhouse then fled the area, and the complaint says a group of people formed and chased him. Video from the scene shows people yelling Beat him up! and Get him! Get that dude! Someone says, Whatd he do? and another responds, Just shot someone.

The complaint says that as Rittenhouse was running, a man appears to swing at the defendant with his right arm, making contact with the teen, knocking his hat off of his head.

Rittenhouse then fell to the ground and someone can be heard yelling, Get his ass! Video shows several men approaching Rittenhouse. One of them jumps at and over Rittenhouse, who fires his gun. The man retreated. The complaint then identifies 26-year-old Anthony Huber as appearing to try to grab the gun. Rittenhouse shoots him and he stumbles away before collapsing dead to the ground.

The complaint then says that 27-year-old Gaige Grosskreutz, who also was carrying a gun, made his own attempt at grabbing Rittenhouses firearm. Video shows that immediately after Rittenhouse shot Huber, Grosskreutz holds up both of his hands but then lunges at Rittenhouse, who fires his gun, striking Grosskreutz in the arm.

The crowd that had been pursuing Rittenhouse dispersed, and the teen then walked toward police with his hands up and pointing back in the direction from which he had come.

Should Rittenhouse have been there to begin with? Was he looking for trouble? I dont know, and thats not what hes on trial for. But judging from the videos and the states own complaint against him, he certainly had every reason to believe his life was threatened by a mob in hot pursuit.

A jury will get to hear all of what was mentioned above, just not from CNN.

See the rest here:

The Media Are Already Trying To Convict Kyle Rittenhouse And Taint His Trial - The Federalist

I understand the argument that Hillary Clinton has suffered enough for her husbands sins. (Of course, shes hardly suffered enough for her own.) But shes a beneficiary of the power and money Bill Clinton enjoys in the wake of his presidency. Shes his wife and a window into his personal life. So why are any serious news outlets interviewing her without asking about Jeffrey Epstein? If the press wants to treat allegations against Epstein seriously, why should Clinton get a pass when shes trying to sell books?

The former secretary of state is on a book tour, hawking her new novel, making stops at The View and The Atlantic to sell copies and complain about conservatives. Yet, in the years since her failed presidential bid, the public learned a great deal about Bill Clintons deeply suspicious ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex criminal with a network of powerful allies. She should hardly be on the hook for all of Bills personal failings but these allegations are credible and enormous.

In May 2020, Netflix dropped Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a docuseries bizarrely executive produced in part by James Patterson, Epsteins former neighbor and Bill Clintons repeated co-author. (Their latest book dropped this summer.) That documentary features two witnesses who say, despite the Clintons denials, that Bill visited Little Saint James, Epsteins private island that was literally nicknamed Orgy Island. Steve Scully worked on the island for six years, from 1999 to 2005. I saw Bill Clinton sitting with Jeffrey on the living room porch, he says in the show.

Virginia Giuffre, one of Epsteins most vocal accusers, also told documentarians, I remember having a dinner with Clinton. He was there, and I never saw him do anything improper. I wish, you know, he would just come clean about [it].

Giuffre made that claim in court documents as well, telling investigators in 2011 that Epstein said Clinton was on the island because he owe[d] me a favor.

There is also a serious discrepancy between the number of flights Clinton admits to taking on Epsteins plane and the number in reports from flight logs. Fox News reported that Clinton took at least 26 flights on the jet. Flight logs from Gawker show at least a dozen. Clinton admits to only four.

Did the former first lady ask her husband why he was photographed getting a neck rub from Epsteins 22-year-old massage therapist on a post-presidential humanitarian trip to Africa? That massage therapist, whos since accused Epstein of rape, says she saw Clinton partake in no foul play on the trip, during which he traveled on Epsteins plane. Fine. But what does his wife think of the pictures, which were released in 2020? Did she ask him about that? Does she think they suggest Bill had way too casual of a relationship with a convicted abuser?

The media largely treats Giuffres many allegations against Epstein credibly. Outlets have reported on the flight logs. Why, then, should Hillary Clinton be allowed to continue enriching her family and advancing her message without answering difficult questions about her own husbands ties to Epstein? Does the news value of her insipid political commentary really outweigh the value of asking these questions?

Of course, any outlet that asks Clinton about Epstein will be punished by her team. Thats how this works. Thats almost certainly why ABC News quashed Amy Robachs story on Epstein back in 2019, despite the networks denials. Yet Clintons ties to Epstein have made enough headlines, and are plenty serious, that his wife has presumably brought it up and presumably knows something more than the public. Shell, of course, deny wrongdoing. But she should actually have to do that.

ABC News let The View give Clinton a nine-minute tongue bath earlier this month. The networks executives and journalists are normalizing something very abnormal.

Every journalist should make these questions a condition of sitting down with Hillary and Bill Clinton. If the pair wants access to the media, they should have to earn it by answering important questions the media exists to ask.

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Why Is The Media Letting Hillary Clinton Sell Her Book Without Getting Epstein Questions? - The Federalist

A pair of left-wing billionaires teamed up to launch a new venture tackling media disinformation on Tuesday.

Called Good Information Inc., the latest enterprise backed by LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and left-wing financier George Soros will fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information, according to Axios.

The new group will be led by Tara McGowan, who previously ran the scandal-plagued non-profit ACRONYM which botched the Iowa Democratic caucuses last year. McGowan was married to a senior aide to then-candidate Pete Buttigieg, who, despite emerging from the caucuses with fewer votes than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders came out on top with the most delegates.

Both Hoffman and McGowan have their own history of amplifying manipulated narratives some might call disinformation.

In December 2018, Hoffman apologized for financing a deception campaign in the 2017 Alabama Senate special election race where fake online accounts were made to appear as Russian bots that operated in support of Republicans. The fake personas fed a news cycle of pro-Republican Kremlin interference to a media susceptible to such storylines.

McGowans ACRONYM on the other hand, is the liberal dark money group behind the Courier Newsroom, a left-wing outlet.

According to OpenSecrets, Courier has faced scrutiny for exploiting the collapse of local journalism to spread hyperlocal partisan propaganda.'

It claims to operate independent from ACRONYM and says ownership is shared with other investors. But a new tax return obtained by OpenSecrets lists ACRONYM as the full owner of Courier as of April 30, 2019, the most recent date on record. An ACRONYM spokesperson told OpenSecrets that Courier has attracted multiple private investors since that time. Websites affiliated with Courtier Newsroom that appear to be free-standing local news outlets are actually part of a coordinated effort with deep ties to Democratic political operatives.

Axios reported Tuesday that Good Information Inc. will acquire Courier.

The information crisis were in is so much bigger than politics, McGowan told Axios. Translation: my grip on the narrative is slipping.

The birth of Good Information Inc. marks a new addition to a growing campaign to instill objectivity in media poisoned by member groups ideological roots, where objectivity is a synonym for reporting with a progressive lens, and disinformation is the marker of a political dissident worthy of censorship.

First they developed the strategy of fact-checking to smear opponents operating outside the Overton Window established by legacy journalists. There are no shortage of erroneous fact-checks to highlight the ill-faith tactic of reporting, from fact-checking slogans on health care in Democrats favor during the 2012 election to fact-checking South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scotts blackness.

Over the prior decade, the fact-checking industry has exploded withmore than 300 fact-checking groups worldwide, 58 in the United States, according to the Duke University Reporters Lab. Some have been coopted by leftist elites at Big Tech empires with control over the digital public square to justify desired actions of censorship, from blockbuster reporting on Hunter Biden amid the 2020 election to studies against the Faucian consensus on COVID-19. Facebook has even censored a fact-check of a fake fact-check to a story that was a real fact-check.

The growth of the fact-checking industry has reflected the lefts desire to capture a monopoly on truth. That pursuit has now escalated to a blitzkrieg to discredit their opponents as champions of fake news with new institutions and demands for heightened censorship.

The introduction of the Hoffman, Soros-funded venture to the cause comes as the Aspen Institutes Commission on Information is expected to unveil a new report on misinformation. The commission is co-chaired by Katie Couric, who deliberately omitted criticism of NFL kneeling protests from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chris Krebs, a former senior official at the Department of Homeland Security official. In December, Krebs proclaimed the 2020 election the most secure in American history that featured record-number voting in the form of mail-in ballots with new procedures implemented to facilitate such a high turn-out at the last minute.

Also on the commission is Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, who believes the First Amendment is bonkers, and is now co-authoring a report to recommend what government and corporate leaders ought to do to enhance their crusade on political dissidents and serve as noble thought-police.

To compliment efforts from the Aspen Institute and Good Information Inc., which cited funding for the NeverTrump website Bulwark as an example of its bipartisanship, a recent Facebook whistleblower who is also a Democrat activist that helped suppress blockbuster reporting on Hunter Biden, has come forward complaining the tech giant doesnt do enough to suppress conservative content.

The left-wing obsession with fact-checking and censorship serves as nothing more than a relentless campaign to control the facts. Control the facts and control the narrative. Control the narrative, and control the truth.

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New Leftist Billionaire Venture Exposes The Fight For Monopoly On Truth - The Federalist

Sen. Josh Hawley pressured U.S. Department of Defense Under Secretary for Defense Policy Colin Kahl to answer questions about the alleged lack of vetting that occurred when the U.S. evacuated mass numbers of people from Afghanistan.

In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, the Missouri Republican revealed that an August 18 email fromthe consul general in Kabul claimed that President Joe Biden authorized officials to err on the side of excess when bringing people onto rescue planes.

This guidance provides clear discretion and direction to fill seats and to provide special consideration for women and children when we have seats, the email read. I expect that C-17 flight volume will increase.

Kahl claimed that this guidance was justified.

We had excess capacity to bring people out, Kahl said. And so what the president was signaling was if there were other clearly Afghans at risk, that we can safely bring into the airport and get off the airfield we should do that.

Hawley said he was not aware of evidence that U.S. officials vetted the 116,700 people who were not citizens and not special immigrant visa holders, but were packed onto planes and evacuated from Afghanistan after the Biden administrations hasty withdrawal

What Im driving at is, we know that weve got major problems of vetting of the people who were brought to this country, who were evacuated and brought to this country,said Hawley. So, you testified in September that those evacuated, about 6,000 American citizens, you testified in September that the SIVs were about 1,200 to 1,300, that leaves about 116,700 people, based on the 124,000 neo-number that youve been offering, 116,700 who were not citizens, who were not SIVs, and we just dont know much about who were those people?

Its a mix-mash of a lot of different categories, Kahl said About 84 percent of the people we brought out were Afghans at risk of various kinds.

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

The rest is here:

Hawley Presses Pentagon Official On Why Administration Prioritized Packing Planes Over Vetting Afghan Evacuees - The Federalist