Category Archives: Federalist

The following is a transcript of my radar from Wednesdays edition of Rising on Hill TV.

Two years ago I wrote about Greg Gutfelds eye-popping ratings. The ratio of news coverage to viewers, compared with the ratio of media coverage to viewers for comedians like Samantha Bee, said something profound about the media bubble.

It still does. Its the Coming Apart thesis in practice, a consequence of elite sorting.

Call it the Law of Rotten Tomatoes. Why do critics love Nat Geos fawning Fauci while audiences hate it? Why do critics hate the sharply new Chappelle special while audiences love it? Why is the consensus so different between classes? Because journalists have similar backgrounds, lifestyles, and tastes. The incentives to question that dogma are low. The incentives to champion it are high.

Despite being on cable Gutfeld is now the number two host in late night, behind only Stephen Colbert. Colbert, despite a legendary run at Comedy Central, now inspires more cringes than laughs. He is nearly unbearable. So why is he the king of late night?

This is an example I always use to illustrate a trend that gets way too little attention. Colbert and Gutfeld are nothing averaging somewhere in the neighborhood of two million viewers, according to Nielsen. It may seem crazy that Colbert is sharing the same top slot as Johnny Carson, whose last year on The Tonight Show was pulling in triple the nightly viewers 30 years ago.

So whats the big deal? This is a story about the business of commercial art as much as the quality of it. But its political too.

Gutfeld is an instructive foil for two reasons: first hes on cable, which has undercut the networks power along with streaming, and second because hes politically incorrect, which is an advantage since all the comedians whose asses hes kicking insist on following rules that needlessly handicap them.

And yet that doesnt explain Colbert. Hes not funny but he is, as Gutfeld recently said, Sesame Street for Democrats. Theres a market for that, and in the era of media fragmentation, so long as you corner the market on a niche, you can pull in two million viewers and win the late night race. So if theres a market for cringey Boomer resistance comedy, and there is, then all you have to do is produce that low-hanging fruit better than anyone else.

This has obvious upsides. It means scrappy alternative shows like Rising have more power than certain shows on dusty cable platforms like CNN. It means places like The Intercept and The Federalist are more powerful than they could have been before.

One story Ive been following closely at The Federalist is The Daily Wires very intentional and well-funded campaign to compete with the Hollywood establishment. Just last night, The Daily Wire announced itll release Terror on the Prairie next spring, anticipating more vaccine mandates in the film industry. See whats happening here?

When Disney booted Gina Carano from The Mandalorian,The Daily Wire immediately collaborated with her on this new film. As Ben Shapiro told me back in August, We entered the entertainment space in order to deliver a message to Hollywood: You no longer have a monopoly.

Why can a conservative media outlet make that claim in 2021? Because streaming makes the barrier to entry lower, allowing more players to compete. Political correctness is creating niches that are easier for new competitors to fill.

Every industry is starting to have its own version of Substack thanks to both these forces. An upside is that heterodox celebrities like Gina Carano increasingly have landing pads outside the industry establishment, which incentives artistic freedom and integrity.

A downside is that it encourages us to stay divided, to cluster in niches that let us share more with a few than less with more. Maybe you found Johnny Carson to be vanilla. Maybe, like me, you love political comedy and find the kind of comedians who made and make it in mass media to be uninteresting. When you have to appeal to everyone, you have to be a little less offensive, especially now. But without Johnny Carson and the mass media he thrived in, we are not forced to confront what we share, we are encouraged to emphasize what makes us different and live in that universe. Maybe you love Jezebel and Lindy West and fourth-wave feminism you can watch Shrill and The Handmaids Tale and never have your values questioned.

Mass media was quickly a success and then a causality of technological advances. This will have advantages and disadvantages but the least we can do is recognize that were in a very different place and its influencing our culture in dramatic ways.

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Will Media Fragmentation Solve The Culture War Or Make Us More Divided? - The Federalist

The critical race racket has become nearly ubiquitous in American education, as shown by the recent embrace of this radical ideology by Americas two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

As Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal reports, [a]t its annual meeting earlier this month, the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory. The NEA also vowed to fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric and issue a study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.

As Riley notes, the AFT has similarly embraced this radical orthodoxy sweeping academe, partnering with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites. Riley points out the perverse irony of Kendis assertion in How to be an Anti-Racist that [t]he only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination. Some anti-racism, indeed.

The teachers unions embrace of a radical ideology that until only recently was the preserve of faculty lounges at elite liberal arts colleges shows just how quickly this worldview has become mainstream not only in leftist circles, but increasingly, in elementary and secondary education as well. The great work of Heather MacDonald and Christopher Rufo in exposing the seepage of this pernicious doctrine into academia, corporate America, and even the military has shown just how rapidly CRT has come to dominate the national discourse.

This, despite gaslighting from the likes of AFT President Randi Weingarten, who claimed simultaneously that CRT is not being promulgated in Americas schools while pledging to defend, in a court of law if necessary, those teaching it.

To better understand how far CRT has been embedded into American education, we viewed more than a dozen webinars and lectures by leading social justice educators, CRT proponents, legal scholars, and elementary and secondary educators. They included: How to Use the Books You Choose: Elevating the Status of Marginalized Identities in Childrens Literature through Classroom Teaching, a February 9 webinar hosted by Boston Universitys Wheelock College of Education; Anti-Racist Teaching Practice, a November 2020 webinar hosted by California State at Fullerton; White Fragility, a lecture by Robin DiAngelo (author of the noted book of the same name) hosted by the Family Action Network; and Impacts of Racism on PK-12 Classrooms, a February 2021 University of Iowa anti-racism professional development webinar series.

The lectures ran the gamut geographically and covered education at every level, from pre-kindergarten to the graduate level. What they revealed was nothing short of pure indoctrination. To fully appreciate the destructive quality of intersectional education particularly in early childhood, when minds are malleable and nuance and perspective are elusive we highlight what until recently few outside conservative think tanks seemed to fully appreciate: Critical race theory is being adopted in education at the earliest possible age with remarkable zeal.

Several of the webinars we viewed, including those sponsored by the Wheelock School of Education, were designed for elementary educators. Its worth stressing that, lest one harbor any doubts about where American education is headed ideologically, these are programs that teach the teachers. What stood out is the nearly universal calls to radically transform, restructure, and reimagine curricula at every level to reflect critical race theory.

Take for example Teaching History for Justice, an April 30, 2021, webinar from Wheelock with Kaylene Stevens, program director for social studies education at Wheelock, and Chris Martell, assistant professor of social studies education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, co-authors of Teaching History for Justice, Centering Activism in Students Study of the Past (Teachers College Press, 2020). The webinar highlights the need to reorganize how social studies and history are taught.

For them, the powerful individual-based approach to teaching history, whereby students learn about leaders from Julius Caesar to Abraham Lincoln who have shaped history, is not only flawed but irredeemably grounded in white supremacy. What, then, should emerge to take its place?

For Stevens and Martell, the traditional approach must be supplanted by a movement-centered curriculum, one grounded in activist thinking, with the goal of encouraging students to become activists at the earliest possible age. Traditional models of instruction that aim to teach students to think like a historian or think like a democratic citizen are inherently lacking; they must be supplemented with thinking like an activist.

Figures they tell teachers are worthy of study, all cited approvingly, include Angela Davis (described as an activist for racial and gender equity and democracy, a prison abolitionist, and member of the Black Panther and Communist parties) and Marsha P. Johnson (an activist for queer and trans law and founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries). If only Caesar had been an activist.

Whats more, Stevens and Martell ridicule a 19th-century history textbook that deigned to praise Lincoln as one of the greatest of men. Even more disturbingly, the authors lament that their books recommendations only begin with kindergarten, since anti-racist work would ideally start in early childhood settings.

Finally, sources with which students engage should rely less heavily on written texts and more on oral history and artifacts to better capture certain communities. The upshot of this new mode of instruction is more activism and indoctrination and less rigor all at the earliest possible age. But dont worry, theyre quick to remind us that Teaching History for Justice is political but not partisan. One can only help but wonder if some forms of activism are more encouraged than others.

As if this new mode of instruction is not bad enough, the luminaries at Boston University also determined that childrens books can be harnessed for CRT indoctrination. In a seminar entitled How to Use the Books You Choose: Elevating the Status of Marginalized Identities in Childrens Literature through Classroom Teaching, Dr. Andrea Bien and Dr. Laura Jimnez explain the emotional damage visited upon primary school-aged children particularly those that belong to underrepresented groups due to a lack of self-representation in childrens literature.

Jimnez states, As a Latina lesbian, I did not see myself reflected in a book until I was 47 years old. . . . What that tells me is that my experience, my identity, my place in the world is not worthy of inclusion in literature. To right this supposed wrong, the speakers posit that including more politically correct stories in childrens curricula must only come with the erasure of what they consider to be harmful or outdated books.

To the speakers, The Rainbow Fish, a childrens classic used by teachers nationwide to teach our youth about the values of friendship and sharing with others, ought to be promptly removed from classrooms. Why? Because the protagonist of the story decides to share his colorful scaleshis unique and defining characteristicwith others as a token of friendship.

For Bien and Jimnez, this is not a kind and selfless act, but a harmful message to any child who does not fit the supposed societal norm that they must mutilate themselves to fit in. In the opinion of the speakers, the societal norm in the United States of America excludes any person that is not white, straight, cis, Christian, male, and able[bodied]. The Rainbow Fish is, unfortunately, a singular example in this seminars hour-long crusade to reshape childrens literature in the United States for an alleged lack of attention to racial identities.

Make no mistake. The purpose of this seminar and countless others like it isnt to simply engage in friendly discussion or debate. Rather, the purpose is to influence teachers from coast to coast to fundamentally reconstruct what and how Americas children are taught in schools.

What stood out as most striking across the board is how brazen social justice educators are in their calls for the transformation of Americas elementary education into little more than social justice bootcamps, while union leaders and liberal elected officials vociferously deny that CRT is being taught at all. After all, several of these experts contend that to refrain from this method of teaching is to set down a hidden or implicit curriculum, a tacit narrative inculcated by not teaching what ought to be taught. The message is clear: Teach this nonsense or you are complicit in oppression or worse.

Another example of this weaponization of elementary education for ideological ends was a social justice webinar hosted by Be GLAD, a self-described national organization providing professional development to states, districts, and schools serving as a professional development model in the area of academic language acquisition and literacy. Perhaps most concerning, Be GLAD boasts the imprimatur of being a U.S. Department of Education Program of Academic Excellence.

Designed to train elementary school teachers in social justice education, the webinar covered the usual topics of systemic racism and microaggressions, toeing the leftist line that virtually every facet of American life is saturated in racism from the banking and housing systems, to criminal justice, public health, and education. Calls for systemic anti-racism, a supposed panacea for these ills, include some familiar appeals to [d]ismantle[] barriers, and some novel ones perhaps unfamiliar to a lay (read: rational) audience, such as [d]ecolonization of the mind. Well, thats a tall order for 7-year-olds.

Most jarring of all is how the presenters lauded the use of a Black Lives Matter Process Grid, in which students map out their identities, presented in tabular form and replete with corresponding lists of those with a power advantage (unsurprisingly straight, white, Christian males) and those with oppressed disadvantage, broken down by age, social class, gender, race, ethnicity, language, ability, sexual orientation, and religion.

In nearly every webinar reviewed, the presenters go out of their way to dismiss the idea that this methodology constitutes indoctrination. It goes without saying that encouraging teachers to educate that colorblindness is inherently racist and that diversity can be oppressive hardly encourages independent thought.

Sadly, this approach seems to be working. For example, in a webinar hosted by Cal State Fullertons College of Education entitled Anti-Racist Teaching Practice, speaker Monique Marshall, an elementary school teacher, presented the audience a video clip of a 6-year-old student. In the video, when asked to define his multicultural identity, the young boy began his response by stating that the color of his skin defined his outside identity, which elicited smiles from the presenting speakers.

To be clear, there are people with whom we trust the education of our youth who actively encourage children to view the color of their skin as an individuals defining characteristic, thus dividing their students along the lines of race and identity. A far cry from not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. After all, for CRT enthusiasts, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.s noble aspiration is not merely impractical but a concession to injustice and oppression.

So where does this leave us? These seminars and workshops show CRT is no longer fringe but is well within the mainstream of elementary and secondary education. Its no longer confined to post-secondary and graduate levels.

Therefore, recent grassroots efforts to combat this dangerous ideology are imperative. They symbolize that parents are finally giving the issue the attention it deserves.

While it may provide a minutes solace that the Biden administrations Department of Education removed express references to CRT from its July 19 notice in the Federal Register soliciting grant applications, these seminars demonstrate that American educators dont need the governments encouragement to import these views into the classroom. CRT is in the pipeline, and doesnt seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Continuing to expose its advance is necessary so American elementary and secondary education can escape the grips of a worldview that, despite its professed aim of racial progress, is deeply flawed and divisive.

Peter Kirsanow is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Christopher Ross served as a legal intern at the commission and is in his third year at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Maximos N. Nikitas, who is a second year at Notre Dame Law School, also served as a legal intern at the commission and as speechwriter to U.S. Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt.

Read more:

Teachers Are Being Re-Educated In Critical Race Theory - The Federalist

The divisive national debate about abortion is in the news as much as ever. Texas new ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy was blocked by a judge on Wednesday but allowed to continue on Friday, Democrats huge spending bill is in part being held up by an amendment allowing federal funding of abortion, and, in what will be the most-watched case in decades, the Supreme Court may overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling later this year.

The Roe ruling highlighted the greatest logical flaw in support for abortion: for abortion to be illegal at some point before birth (and even most pro-choice Americans agree it should be illegal in the very late stages), you have to pick that point in time. But when?

With Roe, the Supreme Court first took a trimester approach to when abortion should be permitted. As the Roe opinion was drafted, the justices disagreed on the stage at which abortion should be regulated, even changing that point from the end of the first trimester to the end of the second.

In its final form, Roe forbade virtually all abortion regulation in the first trimester, allowed regulation only if serving the mothers health in the second, and banned prohibition in the third trimester when a mothers health was a consideration. The latter was broadly defined in the companion case Doe v. Bolton to include emotional, psychological, and family health, thus effectively allowing all abortions.

The justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe, Harry Blackmun, even wrote in a memo to his colleagues that Roes use of trimesters was arbitrary but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability (of the fetus), is equally arbitrary. In Roe, the court did not resolve the question of when life begins but ruled that a fetus did not qualify as a person as used in the Constitution.

Later, the Supreme Court abandoned the arbitrary trimester framework in favor of another arbitrary and selected point Blackmun had identified in that memo. In its 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling, the court barred undue burdens on abortion before fetal viability.

But drawing the line at the point of viability is also problematic that point will continue to get earlier in the pregnancy as medical advances create better means of keeping the unborn alive outside the womb; indeed, viability is now weeks earlier than it was when Roe was decided. Yet the unborn child did not become a person because it could survive due to modern science. Newborns are not technically viable either, as they cannot survive on their own. By this logic, we should consider it acceptable to kill newborns.

As the issue comes to the forefront of national debate yet again with the court hearing oral arguments on December 1 in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization, here are the many reasons the arguments in favor of abortion are wrong.

Pro-Abortion Claim: The government should stay out of peoples private lives. This is a womans choice, not anyone elses, and a womens rights issue.

Why Its Wrong: Laws often restrict an individuals rights, including the right to hurt another person or infringe upon anothers rights. In taking the life of an unborn child, a woman is taking away the most basic of all rights.

An unborn child is not part of a womans body, but a separate, individual human being with its own rights. It is not the mothers property, just as parents are legal guardians of children but not the childrens owners and are not allowed to abuse their children.

Pro-Abortion Claim: When most abortions take place, in early pregnancy, a fertilized egg is just a mass of cells, not a human being. It doesnt feel pain.

Why Its Wrong: A new life begins at conception and should not be destroyed by human interference.

First, one-third of abortions take place after nine weeks of pregnancy. From the moment of conception, the zygote has its own unique DNA structure, is alive and growing, and is equipped to become a mature human being.

Six weeks after conception, the unborn childs heartbeat is detectable but began beating before then. At week three, neural development begins. At week four, the eye, ear, and respiratory systems begin to form. At week six, the mouth and lips are present. At week seven, the embryo looks like a baby.

The beginning of life could be defined by many different points of development fertilization (the fusion of the nuclei of the sperm and egg cell), implantation, the first movement, heartbeat, or brain waves, consciousness, or birth. Any point you choose could be just a days difference between life and death for an unborn child. Nor does the absence of pain at early stages make it moral to kill the unborn child, just as it would not with an adult.

Abortion can involve sucking a baby out of the uterus (or as Planned Parenthood putsit, the suction machine is turned on and the uterus is gently emptied), causing a stillbirth by injecting a salt solution into the uterus, and other horrors.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Abortion cant be a crime against nature if fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried in nature.

Why Its Wrong: The occurrence of an event in nature does not justify deliberately mimicking that event. The elderly die of natural causes, but that doesnt make it right to kill them. And many miscarriages are associated with extra or missing chromosomes.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Birth control isnt 100 percent effective. When it fails, women have been responsible and need abortion as another method to avoid having a child.

Why Its Wrong: Seven percent of women report having unprotected sex in the past three months, not including 8 percent who have unprotected sex but are seeking pregnancy or already pregnant. Many people who use birth control do not do so effectively. The pregnancy prevention rate of birth-control pills used consistently and correctly is 99 percent. For that small portion who correctly used birth control but it did not work, they have to accept the risks of sexual activity, which include a child. Contraception is free with most health insurance plans and easily available.

Pro-Abortion Claim: In the case of rape or incest, when a woman was an innocent victim of an involuntary act, she should not be forced to carry a child. She would be forced to suffer even more.

Why Its Wrong: One percent of women say they want an abortion because they were raped, and less than 0.5 percent say they are pregnant as a result of incest. Even in such very rare cases, an unborn child should not be killed for another persons evil deed. The pregnant woman needs love and support, not more trauma.

An estimated 800,000 abortions take place in the United States each year. Common reasons given for seeking an abortion are that a child would disrupt the mothers education (38 percent), interfere with job or career (38 percent), or be unaffordable (73 percent). About half of respondents said they didnt want to be a single mom or were having relationship problems.

About a third said they didnt want any more kids; 25 percent said they didnt want people to know they had sex or got pregnant; 32 percent said they werent ready for a child; and 22 percent didnt feel mature enough to raise children. More than half of those seeking abortion have had at least one previous birth.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Minors are too young for the responsibilities of parenthood.

Why Its Wrong: About 3 percent of females who get abortions are younger than 18, and 8 percent are 18 to 19 years old. Parents of minors should teach their children about the consequences of sex, the benefits of abstinence, and the limitations of contraception, among other things: Sex can lead to pregnancy and if it does the unborn child should not be killed. Accepting truths that you dont like is part of maturity and sex should be reserved for mature people ready to care for a child.

Pro-Abortion Claim: If abortion were made legal only in cases of rape or incest, women would lie.

Why Its Wrong: The court system could settle the truth of their claims and more reporting of rape and incest would help bring perpetrators to justice.

Pro-Abortion Claim: Abortion is safer than continuing a pregnancy to term.

Why Its Wrong: Even if abortion is safer than pregnancy, that doesnt make it right. But with modern medicine, the death risks for both abortion and pregnancy are low.

Pro-Abortion Claim: It would be better for abnormal fetuses to be aborted than live with poor health or a disability.

Why Its Wrong: In the case of the small minority of fetuses with a potentially life-threatening abnormality, a natural death may result, but, if not, the child should be given the benefit of the doubt, not be killed. Its wrong to kill disabled people for their disabilities.

Pro-Abortion Claim: If abortion were outlawed, women would just get riskier, dangerous abortions.

Why Its Wrong: People break other laws with repercussions too, but we dont avoid that outcome by not making those laws. Plus, outlawing abortion would save millions of unborn babies lives.

It is difficult to know the number of abortions resulting in death before abortion was legalized, because many illegal abortions went unreported. Education is the best alternative, so that women know the risks of trying to get an abortion illegally, how to effectively use birth control, and how they can receive assistance as mothers.

Pro-Abortion Claim: The right to an abortion has led to a more prosperous society as women have continued in their careers and low-income couples have not been burdened with an additional expense. Abortion has reduced the child abuse and crime that arise from unwanted children.

Why Its Wrong: Abortion has been bad for our society, as it devalues human life and the fulfillment that only family and children, not a job, can provide. If women want to put careers first or cant afford children, they should practice abstinence or correctly use birth control and accept the consequences if those fail.

If women are poor and do have children, the government provides assistance. Adoption is also a better option than killing an unborn child. Many loving, screened, financially stable parents are waiting to adopt babies.

As for whether studies prove that abortion has reduced crime or abuse, this is a dangerous line of argument. Should we abort babies of certain groups more likely to be criminals?

Pro-Abortion Claim: A woman has a right to privacy, as recognized by the Supreme Court, and to make her own decisions about her life and happiness.

Why Its Wrong: Roe v. Wade continues to be so strongly resisted because it was deeply legally flawed.

In the majority opinion in Roe, Justice Blackmun acknowledged that the Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy, and thus abortion, but that a number of prior court decisions have found a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy grounded in the First, Fifth, and particularly the Ninth and 14th Amendments.

The latter reads, No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. The Ninth Amendment states, The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The legal arguments are lengthy, but the short version is that the constitutional right to liberty simply does not grant the right to kill another person, and an unborn child is a person. The Constitution does not explicitly guarantee a right to privacy or, by extension, abortion. The Supreme Court has been gravely wrong before (such as with racist rulings in Dred Scott v. Sandfordand Plessy v. Ferguson).

Abortion is a deeply divisive issue, and about half of Americans consider themselves pro-life and half call themselves pro-choice. Overturning Roe would not end abortion rights but return the issue to the states, allowing for a more democratic process.

Continued here:

12 Pro-Life Truths To Counter Every Abortion Myth - The Federalist

Like everything else, the Austin City Limits music festival was canceled last year, so even though serious rain had turned Zilker Park into a humid, puddled swamp, I went last weekend, just like I have every year since 2005.

I was there for the Dust Bowl year when all the grass in the park died, and everyone who went coughed up black dust for months afterward. I was there for the mud year when it rained buckets and the park turned into a pit of stinky Dillo Dirt that required millions of dollars and acres and acres of new grass to fix.

I was there for my bachelor party, since its my favorite weekend of the entire year. Well, based on this years visit I think this festival is dying, and its a problem of their own making.

The festival was founded to celebrate the sounds of Austin: folk, rock n roll, and outlaw country. So much for that. Outside of the legendary George Strait, who headlined Fridays lineup, I knew almost none of the major acts performing this year. Meghan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, Tyler the Creator? I have no idea who these people are.

The headlining acts that I do know, I am not very fond of: Billie Eilish and Miley Cyrus. Really? This is the same festival where Willie Nelson has played (multiple times). So have Bob Dylan, My Morning Jacket, Arcade Fire, Sir Paul McCartney, Jack White, The Killers, The Eagles, Robert Plant with Alison Krauss, Gary Clark Jr., David Byrne, Buddy Guy, John Prine, Jon Batiste, Van MorrisonI could go on and on. You know, real musicians.

One local DJ who has been in Austin forever noted that it is playing to not just a younger audience, but also the large amount of California transplants who have moved to Austin in the last few years. These are the same California transplants who are driving up housing costs, driving up crime rates, and ruining the Keep Austin Weird culture that has made this city unique for generations.

This is also the year the festival became openly political. Sure, its live music, so its not unheard of for an act to say something or sing something from the stage with a political undertone. Im not saying that hasnt happened before.

This year, though, politics seemed baked into the festival from the start, and thats disappointing. We already get bombarded by politics at every turn in our daily lives. The ACL festival is the place I go to escape the outside world every year, to reset and recharge my batteries. That was almost impossible this year.

Festival organizers brought in former state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat known for her strident pro-abortion stance, and gave her a speaking slot on a small stage at the festival to rail against the new Texas pro-life law. This side stage is a relatively newer addition to ACL, but in the past it tended to have interviews with musicians or local food legends. Now its being used to unnecessarily stir the political pot. Why do we need to inject a debate about a hotly contested political issue into a perfectly good music festival?

The acts on the stage also took plenty of opportunities to rail against anyone who didnt tow the most liberal of political lines, most notably Eilish, who constantly harped upon Texas pro-life protections during her set, saying, When they made that sh-t a law, I almost didnt want to do the show. Because I wanted to punish this fucking place for allowing that to happen here.

She went on to say, You deserve everything in the world. And we need to tell them to shut the f-ck up! My body, my f-cking choice!

Again, is there really a need to divide fans by bringing up controversial political issues in such a vitriolic manner during your set? Cant we just all enjoy some music, or does everything have to be politically charged these days? What used to be a festival about people enjoying great music while munching on great food has become a political rally for the TikTok crowd and San Francisco transplants.

That doesnt even count the COVID theater you had to participate in just to get in the door of the park. The city of Austin has already canceled many other festivals and outdoor happenings in the name of COVID. For ACL to get a permit to use a city park for the festival this year, they had to promise to check peoples COVID status at the gate and enforce masking in tight areas.

To get past the security guards at the front, you had to either show a copy of your vaccine record or a negative COVID test within the last 72 hours. However, the guy who checked my card upon entry barely looked at it. I could have shown him a library card or someone elses record, and Im not sure he would have noticed.

The masking was even more of a joke. Almost none of the security guards, particularly on Friday, were wearing masks. I didnt see many of the festival staff wearing masks either, and if you were a VIP or Platinum Pass holder, forget about it.

Even many of the regular Joes who just had general admission passes ditched their masks as soon as they got past the front gate. I took two, just in case, but despite the theatrical event at the front gate, and the you must wear a mask drumbeat in the press ahead of time, masking by the nearly half a million people who attend ACL is minimal at best.

Again, this begs the question, if we can attend football games crammed shoulder to shoulder with strangers and festivals with tens of thousands of music fans, why is our ability to celebrate Christmas in doubt, Dr. Fauci?

Now, this is supposed to be a column about beer, so let me say a few things about what I drank at the festival this year.

At ACL, you have two options for beer. There are the bars sprinkled throughout the park that serve mostly tallboy cans of Coors, Miller Lite, and the occasional Sol. Then, there is the Craft Beer Hall, a large tent that serves drafts of a more diverse set of beers.

In years past, this has been mostly craft beers from local breweries and more well-known but still small brewers from places like Colorado, Michigan, and California. This year, they pared back the number of actual craft options quite significantly.

There was the award-winning Electric Jellyfish IPA from Austin pizza and beer chain Pinthouse Pizza, McConauhaze IPA (named after a true Austinite, the Oscar-winning actor, and potential gubernatorial candidate Matthew McConaughey) from Twisted X Brewery, Long Gone Blonde, a tasty, easy-drinking blonde ale from Whitestone Brewery in Cedar Park, then a host of beers from Karbach, the formerly independent Houston brewery that is now owned by Anheuser-Busch.

Since it was incredibly hot and muggy this year, I mostly drank water. When I did have a beer, I went for the easier drinking options both of the blondes offered in the beer tent.

Love Street is a Kolsch-style blonde from Karbach. Appropriately enough, it is named after a music venue. This is a golden-colored beer that is effervescent, light on the hops, and not very malty. Its not a beer youre going to sit down, drink, and analyze to death, but on a hot day, when you want to cool down with a decent beer, Love Street will do the trick.

Long Gone Blonde from the fine folks at Whitestone Brewing has more flavor than Love Street does, with interesting hints of vanilla and orange. This beer is refreshing, easy drinking, and enjoyable, even while being baked under a blazing hot, unforgiving sun.

A good local beer like the Long Gone Blonde makes it easier to forget all the noise around you and just enjoy the music. Thats getting harder and harder to do at ACL, though, with its shifting demographic focus and increased politicization.

However, if the folks at C3 can see past the mounds of money they make from the tech bros and TikTok trollers and remember that music is something that is meant to be enjoyed by everyone no matter his class, creed, or political tribe, then maybe, just maybe, they can save Americas best music festival.

Brad Jackson is a writer and radio personality whose work has appeared at ABC, CBS, Fox News, and multiple radio programs. He was the longtime host and producer of Coffee & Markets, an award-winning podcast and radio show with more than 1,500 episodes. Brad covers all things edible and cultural for The Federalist. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at @bradwjackson.

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How The Politicization of Everything Is Ruining Music Festivals - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, David Azerrad, an assistant professor and research fellow at Hillsdale Colleges Van Andel Graduate School of Government, joins Senior Editor Chris Bedford and Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how the post-structuralist left infected American institutions.

Wokeness, CRT, identity politics, I dont know what you want to call it, anti-racism, is the unofficial state religion in America, Azerrad said. It is the central piety of the regime. It rules the American mind. And there are very, very serious consequences in challenging these pieties surrounding primarily race, more specifically, blacks, and secondarily, women.

Azerrad said it would be the most un-American thing to give up on America so conservatives have to be willing to fight for it.

There is a core element of militant lefties who run institutions and that are actively and openly committed to finishing, to destroy the American way of life, Azerrad said. No, its not youre either a friend or an enemy. There are friends, there areenemies, and there are plenty of well-meaningAmericans who dont think about this too much who maybe lean one side, lean to the other and can be persuaded.

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Diagnosing The Disease That Infects America's Institutions - The Federalist

Former President Donald Trump demanded that the Pulitzer Prizes staff immediately revoke the award granted to The New York Times and The Washington Post in 2018 for their Russia hoax reporting, which he said was based on false reporting of a non-existent link between the Kremlin and the Trump Campaign.

In the letter, Trump pushed the Pulitzer Prizes interim administrator Bud Kliment to admit that the corporate medias coverage of Russiagate was no more than a politically motivated farce which attempted to spin a false narrative that my campaign supposedly colluded with Russia despite a complete lack of evidence underpinning this allegation.

Trump noted that the Pulitzer board not only overlooked the falsities and deceptions woven into these stories but praised the sensational headlines that leaned heavily on unsubstantiated anonymous sources.

As a result, the public was deprived of an independent means of assessing their credibility, their potential for political bias, and the source of their knowledge, Trump wrote. For two years, these institutions feverishly pushed one Russia story after another and despite lacking any credible evidence attempted to persuade the public that my campaign had colluded with the Russian government.

Even when conservative media such as The Federalist questioned the legitimacy of these reports, exposing the clear logical fallacies contained in their narratives and pointing to the clear lack of evidence underpinning them, Trump said the public was misled to believe that he colluded with Russians.

Trump noted that not only were these allegations confirmed to be false, but the recent indictment of Hillary Clintons campaign attorney, Michael Sussmann, serves as a damning repudiation of the medias obsession with the collusion story.

The former president maintains that the Pulitzer Prize has been widely recognized as a significant achievement in the field of journalism even though it was awarded to Nikole Hannah-Joness 1619 Project, which The New York Times begrudgingly modified after scholars noted it contained historical inaccuracies.

It has been viewed by many as an honor that is meant to be bestowed upon well-deserving recipients in recognition of their groundbreaking journalistic efforts. This level of reverence carries with it a very important connotation, namely that the reporting itself is inherently deemed credible, well-sourced and trustworthy. Given this powerful presumption, there is a heavy burden to ensure that these works are continuously and closely examined as to the veracity of the information contained therein. When it becomes apparent that a Pulitzer Prize-winning work was based on shoddy, dubious and manifestly false reporting as is the case here the Pulitzer Prize Board must react accordingly, he wrote.

Trump said he hopes corporate media outlets will surrender their Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting but said the organization should take the award back if not.

Without holding the recipients to such a high standard of accountability, the integrity of the Pulitzer Prize namesake stands to be wholly compromised, Trump concluded.

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

Originally posted here:

Trump: Every Pulitzer For Russia Collusion Hoax Should Be Rescinded - The Federalist

Watch the video for the monologue, plus an interview with Washington Free Beacon Senior Editor Billy McMorris on the corruption in our system, and why hes optimistic.

Canada held an election a few weeks ago. Dont worry that you missed it; you wouldnt have heard much of anything in American media. Why not? Because it all went to plan, thats why.

To catch up on the northern contest, the Conservative Party got the most votes, 5.7 million, compared to just 5.5 million for Justin Trudeaus ruling Liberal Party but Trudeaus Party got more seats in the House of Commons. A lot more, in fact: 159 seats to just 119. Why? Canada uses the same system as the United Kingdom, or our own House of Representatives: Its first-past-the-post in 338 single-member districts.

By the way, thats the second time in a row this has happened. The Liberal Party lost the popular vote last time too, and still they got the most seats.

The point here isnt to complain. This is the system Canada uses; every party understands it, and there isnt anything innately unfair about using single-member districts and the regional representation they bring.

But notice something that hasnt happened: Nobody has gone on TV, either in Canada or here in the United States, to moan about Justin Trudeau being a threat to democracy. There arent any left-wing non-profits producing reports about Canada being a flawed democracy or a failing democracy or partly democratic or a democratic dictatorship.

By the way, there are countries they say that about. Countries like this one. Remember all the wailing when Donald Trump won in 2016? People were literally screeching in the streets. Trump isnt the president hes illegitimate!

They kept this lie up for four whole years. They made that lie the focal point of their mission to paralyze actual democratic government, using any means necessary from unelected judges to unelected spies to get their way, and all in the name of democracy.

In 2020, Foreign Policy magazine ran an article with 10 reasons President Trump was becoming a dictator. Reason number 3? Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies. Author Stephen Walts example of Trump doing that was that he held a photo-op in a church that rioters set on fire, and that he appointed William Barr, a former attorney general, as his attorney general.

Reason number 4 was, Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents. His evidence was that Trump wanted to call Antifa a terrorist organization, which might have caused the FBI to monitor them.

Reason 6? Appointing justices to the Supreme Court when there were vacancies.

Now, if you go and check Walts Foreign Policy articles this year, youll notice there havent been any about the looming Biden dictatorship even though hes actually politicizing the military by using it to teach critical race theory and conducting an ideological witch hunt for extremists.

And if its bad for Trump to appoint justices to the Supreme Court for normal vacancies, what does it mean that Democrats are loudly calling to pack the Supreme Court and the Biden administration has openly considered the possibility?

If you want answers to those questions, you wont get them from Professor Walt hes back to writing about U.S. foreign policy debacles. No shortage of material there, professor.

But you know whats really going on here. You know why Professor Walt and so many others were freaking out about democracy last year and every year since 2016, but dont seem to care about it this year, be it in Canada or the United States: Its because they dont care about democracy. At least not the way you might.

To most Americans throughout most of American history, democracy meant a system of government where we hold elections, cast votes, and choose lawmakers and leaders. For the left, however, democracy means something different. To them, democracy just means the Democratic Party.

Remember when Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall attempt back in 2012? The night that happened, a Democratic voter appeared on CNN and said, This is the end of democracy. The end of the U.S. as we know it just happened. This is it. Democracys dead. At the time, he meant it: A Republican was governor of Wisconsin and might do Republican things instead of Democrat things. We all know thats not democracy.

When Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin decide to represent their own constituents and say theyre not happy with a three-and-a-half trillion-dollar spending bill to remake the American social contract, thats not democracy either, because true democracy is just Joe Biden doing whatever he wants when he wants to. To many on the left, democracy simply means neoliberalism. Right now, democracy also means the Deep State so long as the Deep State is on their side; the side of democracy.

In the Arizona Republic, op-ed writer E.J. Montini complained Sinema is going to squander her chance to save democracy. After Democratic activists stalked Sinema into a bathroom to harass her, one climate activist remarked, Not being able to pee in peace is a reasonable consequence for betraying democracy.I suppose it beats tarring and feathering.

Id note, MSNBCs Medhi Hassan bravely tweeted, that democracy continues to hang in the balance while we argue over the rights and wrongs of bathroom protests. So brave, Medhi; so meta.

Or how about this: They call themselves Democrats and they will be the ruination of this nation, The Views Joy Behar declared. Manchin and Sinema must be brought to task; they are the enemies right now of the democracy.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Arizona Democrats unfathomable opposition to progress is a win for her hedge-fund, Big Pharma donors, and a huge loss for democracy.Oh, and she and Manchin are essentially political suicide bombers waging a jihad for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.Not demented at all.

According to someone named John of the Young Turks, the minimum bars for a functioning democracy include 1) not electing Donald Trump, and 2) not electing someone like Kyrsten Sinema. He could have added 3) Doing what John says to do.

Of course, nothing Sinema is doing is betraying democracy in any way whatsoever; what shes doing is betraying the Democratic Partys priorities. But of course thats enough, isnt it?

Sinema and Manchin join a long and distinguished line of enemies of democracy, stretching from President John Adams to Sen. Barry Goldwater, and of course stopping over President George W. Bush (who now opposes Trump so is once again a friend of democracy).

Theyre joined on this list by every single person who ever attended a Tea Party rally, and the 74 million Americans who voted against democracy in the last election. In fact, it might be that a majority of Americans voted against democracy last year, but good luck finding the full truth: Its only OK to question elections when the democracy loses.

But its not just democracy, of course; for the left, its any system. Take schools: Our generation churns out multiple generations of graduates unprepared for work and incapable of functional literacy. So is the system broken? Not at all. That system is only broken if the students come out conservative or religious, or if parents are given any semblance of choice about what their children learn. If any of those things happened, that would be un-American. Probably anti-democratic too.

Democracy means parents dont get a say in what schools teach. Them theres the rules.

Or how about the courts? The courts are great when theyre used to paralyze a White House simply trying to defend its borders and control who enters the country. Those are working courts; very democratic. But what if the courts rule against the left?

What if the Supreme Court says that we have a border? What if they say that affirmative action is illegal racial discrimination? What if the Supreme Court finally notices that, wait a minute, abortion is never mentioned in the Bill of Rights and calling it a constitutional right is absurd? Well, that would mean the system is broken and disgustingly undemocratic. Court-packing is back on the menu, boys!

Lets not forget the Electoral College or its northern kin, Canadas system of parliamentary representation. Prime Minister Trudeau is the result of a beautiful system; a fully functioning democracy. President Donald Trump? Well, then you get into another area.

Know this: Your role in this democracy is not actual opposition, but managed opposition. Most professional D.C. Republicans get that. If the Democrats, for example, want to pass a bill that completely remakes the governments involvement with the citizenry from before birth until death, the GOP just asks them to cut back on the cost a little; make it cheaper. Managed opposition. Know your role, sort of thing.

Ronald Reagan didnt know his place; Trump certainly wouldnt play his part either and they hated them for it. Dont let any historic revisionism ever hide that: They treated Reagan with contempt, and called him a dangerous and psychotic dullard too.

We can go on and on, but you get the point: The system works when it works for the left, and only when it works for the left. You get the point and so do they. Now its just time to stop playing the part youve been assigned.

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The Left Doesn't Care About 'Democracy,' They Just Want Their Way - The Federalist

What follows is adapted from three interviews of President Donald Trump for Mollie Hemingways latest book Rigged: How The Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, out October 12.

I dont like her and I dont like me.

Former President Donald Trump was looking at a photo of the two of us that his assistant had just taken on my phone. It wasnt up to his specifications. Wed just completed the second of three interviews Id have with him for my new book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.

As we walked outside one of the buildings at Mar-a-Lago, his palatial home on 20 acres of Palm Beach Island, Florida, he bragged that he had the only property on the island that faced both the ocean and the lake, thus the name. Thats what Mar-a-Lago means ocean to lake, he translated, more or less.

Given the setting on the beautiful late March date, I asked if I could take a picture of him. Id interviewed him a few times in the Oval Office and once already in Florida, but had never taken his picture. He suggested we take one together.

He didnt like the first photo. I dont like her and I dont like me, he said, suggesting we move to a different location out of the sun. His capable aide Margo Martin took another photo and turned it around to show him. I like me, but I still dont like her, he said.

Trump dropped everything and decided to teach me how to take a picture. Somehow Id reached my 40s without knowing how.

He walked us to an impeccably manicured, grassy area in front of the historic main building, explaining that you should always think about the background of a photo and not just the people in it. A massive flag flying at half-mast, in remembrance of victims of a shooting in Colorado, was behind us. The flag had also been lowered when I was there a month prior, in honor of Palm Beachs Rush Limbaugh, who had then recently died. Trump had bestowed a Presidential Medal of Freedom on the conservative icon the year prior.

He told me to angle my body, put my hand on my hip, and a few other tricks. You can trust me: my wife is a supermodel, he said, as if I were unaware. Margo showed him the resulting picture.

He looked at it, paused briefly, and said, Well there you go, clearly pleased with the result. He was right, it looked much better.

The interview had been all over the place. Trump is a bizarre combination of an open book and difficult to nail down. When my husband listened to tapes of the interviews, he seemed almost shell-shocked at how much Trump hopped around from one topic to the next.

While I like to think Im an excellent listener, Im not a fan of the interview style that requires badgering a source for a preferred outcome. As in the other interviews I had with him, I was just as curious about what he wanted to focus on as what I needed to find out from him.

At one point, he noticed a large bandage on my forearm, which covered a burn I received while cooking dinner for my children. Did you have a tattoo put on? he asked, in the midst of listing off detailed election irregularities in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Mollies going into the tattoo stuff? Whoa, thats a big step.

As we sat down in his second-floor office, the former president was watching Fox News, where Im a contributor. He asked me what I thought of various Fox personalities. When he got to Bret Baier, who hosts Special Report, I complimented him.

Trump went on a riff about what a good golfer Bret is. Hes a bull. Hes strong as hell.Trump had recently played with Bryson DeChambeau, and talked about how he drove the 18th green at his Palm Beach course, which is about a 370-yard carry even longer than Bret could, he said.

President Joe Biden had held his first press conference earlier that day, more than two months after hed been inaugurated. Even with obsequious questions from an adoring press corps, hed struggled to complete answers, getting lost and referring to his notes.

He looks fragile up there. Hes not a long-ball hitter. I can tell you that. He does not hit the long ball, Trump said. Its hard to watch. I mean, to be honest with you, its hard to watch. Youre on pins and needles. Cause you just dont know. When does the blow-up occur? Hes not the sharpest guy.

It was a little bit different with me, he noted dryly.

Trump was much less troubled by the disparate treatment from the press than I was, but he noted how deferential theyd been to Biden a few days prior to our interview when he fell down three times while walking up the stairs to board Air Force One. How come it wasnt covered on the evening news? he asked.

As for the press conference, Theyre almost apologizing for asking even an easy question. Its incredible. You didnt see that too much with me. The apologies, you know, it was a little bit different with me, he noted dryly. Later, he would say of the corporate press, Its just like theyre one amorphous monster. Just horrible. Almost uniformly.

A few weeks after Biden was inaugurated, I told Trump during a phone call that I was going to write a book about the 2020 election. He invited me to come see him.

Thats how I ended up in Florida in late February, for our first interview. The moment you land at the Palm Beach International airport, people joke about having made it to the Free State of Florida, but thats exactly how it feels compared to D.C.

My friend Karol Markowicz, a writer who escaped Brooklyn for an area near Palm Beach just so her children could attend school during the lockdowns, describes the area as The Hamptons, but colorful and risk-taking. Everyone is rich enough that they dont care what anyone else thinks of them.

Everyone is rich enough that they dont care what anyone else thinks of them.

Palm Beach in the winter is just perfect. The town is full of beautiful men and women who seem to have the right balance of work and leisure. With the blissfully temperate climate and the gorgeous and yes, colorful homes and lawns, I began to fantasize about what life-changing events would have to occur for me to be able to make the move also.

For our first meeting, we sat in the 60-foot long Mar-a-Lago central room. Built by Post cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, and meticulously restored and renovated by Donald Trump, the gold-leafed ceiling towers above ornate furnishings and tapestries. A massive window overlooks the expansive lawn in front of the ocean. On the other side, the open doors lead out to the large patio where members of the private club there have dinner each night.

At a later meeting I was told that President Trump preferred a seat with its back to the ocean side, but this day he was in the seat facing the ocean. Behind him, an open door showed a room with video equipment and a large TV, playing Fox News.

Baier was interviewing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. I would later learn it was the interview in which McConnell told Baier hed absolutely support Trump if he ran again. But Trump was still frustrated with McConnell and how hed mismanaged the Trump era, calling him a stupid f-cker.

Before the meeting, personal aides and staff of the club milled about. Many people let me know that Trump was in a great mood, in that way that clearly showed his mood hadnt been great when they first arrived at Mar-a-Lago weeks prior.

I was curious about how he viewed his legacy, but he wasnt interested in talking about anything more than two years out. For a guy known for his self-obsession, he was remarkably knowledgeable and focused on midterm elections and how to strengthen the Republican Party. He took me through what he thought was important in various races to ensure victory, noting arcane rules about primaries, conventions, and how they would affect his involvement.

We discussed what went well in the 2020 campaign and what didnt, along with his view that hed done what was necessary to win in a free and fair fight. It hurts to lose less than to win and have it taken away, he said. He reminisced about his triumphant 2020 State of the Union Address, given just as he had defeated Democrats first impeachment effort, where he could boast of a roaring economy, a secure border, and peace breaking out globally. George Washington, with Abraham Lincoln as his running mate, could not have beaten me. I was up so much.

It hurts to lose less than to win and have it taken away.

He reminded me that his 2016 opponent Hillary Clinton had repeatedly said he was illegitimate, and that the media hadnt criticized her for a second. Instead they worked with her team for three years to push the lie that hed stolen the election by colluding with Russia. Democrats and some Republicans assisted the operation and gave it credence and legitimacy.

The media partisans won Pulitzers for spreading the lie, but moved on when it came out that it was a Democrat setup. Now they were complaining that hed questioned the integrity of the next election. Throughout our interviews, hed note how frustrating it was that he had to simultaneously run the country and survive the establishments onslaughts against him.

He downplayed the importance of Twitter deplatforming him, one of many moves tech oligarchs had made to suppress their political opposition. Again, he was unfazed. Some people said they didnt enjoy the tweets. Sometimes it got to be a bit much, he admitted, adding that he didnt even enjoy the last six months of tweeting.

As I left, an aide asked me how the interview went and what the terms of the discussion were off-the-record or on background, perhaps? It was the only interview we were not speaking with aides present. No terms had been set. She sighed.

As I waited for my Uber to come pick me up at the valet, the club was filling with well-heeled members and guests. A gorgeous Rolls-Royce with suicide doors pulled up. Guests poured out of Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Teslas, and McLarens. Rod Blagojevich stepped inside.

I had come back to Palm Beach in March, still in the midst of my book research. When talking about the 2020 election, Trump liked to talk about fraud, but the truth of what happened was so much worse.

People, including the president, colloquially use the term fraud to refer to any type of election rigging, but technically it only refers to actions that affect the election that are not just illegal but committed knowingly. Its almost impossible to find conclusive evidence of election fraud, particularly after ballots are counted. But that didnt mean the election had been conducted without widespread interference.

In early February, political reporter and Nancy Pelosi biographer Molly Ball published a Time magazine article detailing how, as she put it, a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information had rigged the election to secure a Biden victory.

While she was whitewashing what the cabal had done asserting unconvincingly that it wasnt rigging but fortifying she revealed that these powerful elites, funded by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, had been able to embed left-wing activists into election offices to assist Democrats with their get-out-the-vote efforts and the Democrats push for mail-in balloting.

They spent four years working on rigging the election.

Despite her best efforts to make it seem less nefarious than it was, it confirmed Republicans worst suspicions that things hadnt been free or fair. Likewise, Trump was pleased to be vindicated in his view that, well, a well-funded cabal of powerful people had in fact rigged the election.

The only good article Ive read in Time magazine in a long time that was actually just a piece of the truth because it was much deeper than that about how they stole the election, he said. They just couldnt keep it in. You know what I mean? They just couldnt keep it in. They had to let it out a little bit, he said.

My book explains, among other things, how Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars targeting Democrat counties in ways that significantly drove up Bidens margin, enabling his victory. The funds werent for campaign spending, mind you, but for a targeted private takeover of the government administration of election operations.

We got them by surprise the first time, Trump said, explaining why he was allowed to win in 2016 and not in 2020. And the second time, they spent four years working on rigging the election, he said. They were willing to do anything they could, and it started from the day I took office or before I took office. It started from right after the election with the Russia hoax.

He knew also that the global pandemic had helped Democrats take over the administration of elections. Well, they used COVID to rig the election. There was nothing I could do. They were using COVID and the Republicans have bad leadership with guys like Mitch McConnell. And they allowed them to give these hundred million ballots out, he said, referring to widespread mail-in balloting, with all of its known threats to election security.

Despite his hyperbolic and imprecise rhetoric, and in our meetings it was regularly that, Trump understood the big picture problems with the 2020 election better than many of his critics. He knew that many of the changes that had been forced through states in 2020 were unconstitutional.

The constitution of the United States says you cannot change any of your rules, regulations, or anything else, unless you go through the state legislatures, he said, referring to Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which leaves the power to the state legislature to make the election laws. Pennsylvania had been one of the states that made major changes to election laws, arguably in violation of both the federal and state constitutions.

Trump told me a story about how Sen. Ben Sasse annoyed him right after the 2016 election by being unduly hostile at his initial meeting with the Senate GOP conference. Terrible senator. This started right at the beginning, he said, remembering how much time, in his view, the Nebraska senator had spent sniping in the wrong direction. Hes actually stupid, cause you know the problem with the Republicans is they dont stick together. You dont have Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse in the Democrat Party, he said, while admitting Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., occasionally played a minor version of that role in his party.

The problem with the Republicans is they dont stick together.

A few years later, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz asked Trump to give Sasse another chance. I say, Keep him out. Guys a loser. So they said, No, no, no. He wants to make peace. Sasse was trying to avoid a primary challenge at the time. He was like a little boy. He was so well behaved. He didnt say a word. And they made a case as to why I should let him back into the fold, Trump said.

Combined with Sasses change of behavior to avoid a primary, Trump went on to endorse him. As soon as he won his primary, the old Sasse returned.

And he made stuff up about, he said terrible things. He made stuff up about Christians, about this, about that, about evangelicals. He made it up, Trump said, although really it was the left-wing publication The Atlantic that had created the story, using some of their anonymous sources and creative writing, to allege Trump had said monstrous things about key constituencies.

Later, the Atlantic would invent a story about Trump disparaging World War I dead, despite it being refuted by dozens of on-the-record sources and contemporaneous government evidence. Sasse, who claims he opposes conspiracy theories, has declined to speak against those The Atlantic has published, and regurgitated their claims in a call to donors that he had leaked to a NeverTrump conduit at the Washington Examiner just as tens of millions of Americans were voting by mail in the tight 2020 presidential election:

Republican Sen. Ben Sasse, in a private call with constituents, excoriated President Trump, saying he had mishandled the coronavirus response, kisses dictators butts, sells out our allies, spends like a drunken sailor, mistreats women, and trash-talks evangelicals behind their backs. Trump has flirted with white supremacists, according to Sasse, and his family treated the presidency like a business opportunity.

It was a classic example of how NeverTrumpers gave aid and comfort to Democrats at crunch time, moves that demoralized Republican voters and suppressed votes for Trump.

He was on a phone call to his donors that he essentially leaked to the press. Okay. You know, hes a sleazebag, he said. Trump knew Sasse was reverting to his old ways shortly after the Nebraskan won his primary, when he viciously criticized Trump for a plan to draw down troop size in Germany.

He is a better baseball pitcher than he is predicting what to do with peoples health.

I want to bring troops out of Germany. You know, some of them, because weve got 54,000 troops in Germany costing us billions of dollars. Germany treats us badly on trade and many other things. And so Im going to reduce it by 25,000. And I hear Little Ben Sasse is chipping away saying how we shouldnt do it. You know, he wants to stay in Afghanistan, let soldiers stay there and get their faces blown off, and their arms blown off for another 19 years and die, Trump said.

Then Trump regaled me with detailed stories of how various Nebraska Republicans yelled at him for endorsing Sasse when he was somewhat vulnerable. I said, uh, no kidding, explaining that he made other similar mistakes in an effort to avoid having too many primary battles.

So I end up supporting a guy whos a sleazebag. By the way, you can quote me on all this stuff. A very dishonest guy, because at least go out there and you know, play who you are, Trump said in our interview. Youve got to see him at that meeting. He was like a quiet little boy who just sat there. And they did all the talking on his behalf and you know that he couldnt have been better. He didnt say a bad thing about me for two years.

I peppered Trump about why he had enabled Anthony Fauci, who relished his role in advocating lockdowns and other authoritarian responses to the COVID pandemic. Trump defended him in part, as did so many others I spoke with in the Trump administration.But Trump conceded Fauci had faults.

Well, who knew that he knew so little? Anthony Fauci is a good promoterhes a great promoter. He is a better baseball pitcher than he is predicting what to do with peoples health, Trump said, needling him about the wild first pitch he threw at a Major League Baseball game during his 2020 publicity tour.

I asked Trump at a later interview whether he ever got suspicious about what was by that point acknowledged to be a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Trump had been excoriated by the press for suggesting COVID-19 had leaked from the lab, disagreeing with the cover story from China and the World Health Organization that it had been initially spread via a nearby wet market. A year later, many in corporate media begrudgingly acknowledged his suggestion was accurate.

Wasnt it interesting how devastating the viruss impact was globally compared to how it had affected China, I asked. Did he ever wonder if it was intentional?

No, I never thought China did it on purpose. I thought it was done out of incompetence and I may be wrong because they were the biggest beneficiaries. I felt it came from the lab from day one. I think it was an accident, he said, rejecting any grander conspiracy theory.

I never thought China did it on purpose.

Trump acknowledged his public health messaging about COVID had not been handled well, but he was clearly proud of what he accomplished in the big picture.

One of the things that Im disappointed about is that I think we did a great job with COVID, said Trump. With the vaccine, thats such a game-changer and nobody else would have done that. And I did something else. I went out and bought hundreds of thousands of doses before we knew that we had a vaccine. That was a big risk.

Nobodys ever treated the FDA the way I did, because this was life and death, Trump said. I was really almost bad to them, but I wasnt bad because Im trying to save lives.

I found them to be not incompetent but unbelievably bureaucratic, he said, noting that in meetings Food and Drug Administration officials would talk about how many years it would take to get treatments and medications approved.

He wondered if Biden had a senior moment when he claimed there was no vaccine when he came into office. He got shot, meaning jabbed, on December 21st, apparently. Now, do you think he didnt know where he was? That was a little scary, Trump said.

Trump also expressed concern about Pfizer, the drug company that he said has great power, in my opinion, over the FDA. He worried that Pfizers financial concerns were affecting decisions made at the FDA.

I asked him about reports that the vaccine approval had been inappropriately delayed until after the election. He seemed to agree that it may have happened, but wasnt too concerned. I dont feel badly about that, he said. If they would have done it before election, fake news media would have made it a tiny story, so it wouldnt have had the impact. Because it was after election, the press made it massive. He figured that was better for everyone.

Fred Barnes once commented about how weird it was to interview Trump, because hes far more genteel in person than he is in public. Usually politicians kiss babies and are saccharine sweet in public, but revert to their natural state in less public situations. Trump is something different. Hes the same guy on and off stage, but much kinder in smaller groups.

Hes profane, yes, and full of insults. But he even goes off the record to praise individuals, as he did with several frequent objects of his scorn. And hed go off the record to criticize individuals he praised publicly. He dished excellent gossip, which Im not at liberty to share. He was even an incisive critic of public officials rhetoric, noting Gov. Mario Cuomos overuse of language related to stars and suns.

I could do without, you know, standing up there for an hour and doing what I do.

The only time he really ducked answering was when I asked him if hed had COVID during his first debate, marked by belligerence from everyone on stage: Thats a very interesting statement. Ive had other people say that. That was the area of time, right? Others around the president also ducked the question. Later he would tell me that Regeneron was a cure, as far as he was concerned. Thats the monoclonal antibody treatment he received when he got hit with COVID.

In between my second and third interview, I also ended up getting COVID. Ive had worse flus, but the duration of recovery was long, particularly as I was trying to write a complicated book under an incredibly short deadline. Even though I was no longer contagious, the famously germaphobic president actually scooted away from me when I told him.

Of course, relative to much of the left these days, Trump doesnt seem to be nearly the germaphobe he was criticized for being just years ago. Of his COVID experience, he dryly remarked, That was interesting. Having just gone through it, I understood.

We discussed Kanye Wests idiosyncratic run for president in 2020. Democrats, led by Marc Elias, had successfully kept him off the ballot by hook and by crook. In Wisconsin, he was supposedly 14 seconds too late in filing his paperwork. Trump had kind words for West, but said he had loony tendencies.

Trump thought billionaire former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg would have a stronger run in the Democratic primary, just based on his spending. But he bombed his first debate, when Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she wanted to talk about running against a billionaire who speaks disparagingly of women. Not Trump, she said, but Bloomberg.

One question, he was taken out. Remember the question? And it wasnt Donald Trump. How do you respond? Hes going Holy s! Get me out after the first question. That was Pocahontas. She took him out. Oh wow. You remember that? Trump asked.

The night before our May interview, Id seen Trump address the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List. The next morning, Ted Cruz had given a rousing speech in which he talked frankly about how weird it was that Trump had done so much for the movement. He told a great, self-deprecating story about how he was a young policy advisor on George W. Bushs first presidential campaign and didnt realize that meant he was just supposed to regurgitate talking points from conservative organizations.

There was a tough issue going on related to a regulation that had been enacted by President Bill Clinton on behalf of abortion groups. The campaign pledged to rescind it if elected, but Bush never touched it, not even in his second term. When Cruz opposed Trump in 2016, it was in part because he didnt trust him to enact pro-life regulations. Yet he succeeded beyond anyones expectations. He said courage was the key ingredient missing from many GOP politicians.

Whats that all about? Trump asked, adding he was pretty sure McCarthy isnt gay.

Trump was engaged in front of the crowd of pro-life legislators and supporters the night prior. He seemed like he was having fun. I asked him the next day about his late-in-life conversion to politics.

You know, its very interesting. People think I have a good time. I could do without it. I could do without, you know, standing up there for an hour and doing what I do, but I like getting the word out. I think its important to get the word out because the press doesnt put it out, he said. It was one of several times where he suggested he was engaged in politics because he genuinely cared about the direction of the country.

By our May interview, Trump was still disappointed in McConnell, who he called a disgrace to the Republican Party. Hes gutless. He should have fought for us on the rigged election. Can you imagine Schumer saying We have to declare Trump the winner to get the country going?

The problem with the Republicans is they dont know who to fight, Trump said.

I asked him who he thought might make a better leader for Republicans. He discussed a few names off the record, and said, Leadership is a very funny thing. Oftentimes you dont know whos going to be a good leader until theyre there. Its like you throw the baby into the water and they turn out to be an Olympic champion, or maybe it wont work out so well. Ive watched people that have such capability, and they turn out to be lousy leaders. You never know.

Right before our May interview, Fox News Tucker Carlson had revealed that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy was close friends with Frank Luntz, an advisor to various left-wing groups, who is regularly, if inexplicably, invited to tell Republican officials what their messaging should be. Whats more, they had recently become roommates.

Uh, that Luntz thing is weird, right? Whats that all about? Trump asked, adding he was pretty sure McCarthy isnt gay. I dont think its a romance. I think its just, they know each other or something. I cant imagine. I dont think I mean, if youre thinking it but it is weird. He advised against the living arrangement. You know, were past the age of roommates. You dont do that.

At our May meeting, Biden hadnt yet botched the countrys exit from Afghanistan. Trump said hed really wanted to get out before he left office, but that it took time to secure the safety of Americans and the proper handling of military equipment. If only hed known that Biden and his generals wouldnt feel the need to worry about those things at all.

You know, I think 19 years is enough, he said at the time of Afghanistan. He said that getting the f out of these wars was vitally important. At all three interviews, Trump talked about how much he hated soldiers losing life or limb, particularly in nation-building wars.

I greet those parents when their kids come in, in the coffin at Dover, and youve never seen anything so sad in your life. People standing there with an easel and a picture of this beautiful boy with a crew cut and hes all set, he said, imitating the tight posture of a Marine. And he comes in a coffin, or he goes alive to Walter Reed without arms and legs. And you know, its the saddest thing youve ever seen.

That may have something to do with why he particularly hated The Atlantics story, in which editor Jeff Goldberg claimed without evidence to have anonymous sources saying Trump called war dead suckers and losers and did not believe it important to honor American war dead.

While the story had no basis in fact and was refuted by dozens of on-the-record sources, it was widely accepted by corporate media and was even mentioned in a presidential debate.

That was the one that angered me the most, he said, visibly pained.

Link:

In Exclusive 'Rigged' Interviews, Trump Trashes McConnell, Praises 'Pocahontas,' And Reveals Where COVID-19 Really Came From - The Federalist

Labor force participation in the United States is still declining as Americans sustained by federal cash stop looking for work or quit their jobs.

Only 194,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy in September, making the smallest gain in available work since December 2020, the U.S. Department of Labor reported on Friday. That number is down from the 366,000 jobs reportedly added to the economy in August and the 500,000 jobs the Dow Jones estimated would be added last month.

The unemployment rate fell from 5.2 percent to 4.8 percent, but the drop largely comes from workers leaving the national workforce which, in turn, is causing labor shortages across multiple industries. Labor force participation was down to 61.6 percent, nearly two points below where it was in February 2020 shortly before government-mandated lockdowns ravaged the economy.

And while private payrolls saw increases, government payroll decreased, especially with government educator jobs reportedly falling.

The biggest factor behind last months weak payroll gain was a decline in public-sector jobs, mainly at schools, the Dow Jones Newswire reported. Employment in private-sector industries rose by 317,000 in September, with modest gains across several industries.

The report comes just one day after President Joe Biden blamed the nations economic problems on people who have not received the COVID-19 shot.

The unvaccinated also put our economy at risk because people are reluctant to go out, Biden said at a Clayco construction site in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, overlooking his role in pushing a massive spending bill that would cost trillions of dollars.

Eveninplaceswherethereisnorestrictionongoingtorestaurantsandgymsandmovietheaters,peoplearenotgoing inanywherenearthe numbers becausetheyreworriedtheyregoingtogetsick, he added.

Not only did Biden ignore the fact that his administration spent months lining Americans pockets with cash, but he also overlooked the role government-mandated lockdowns and extended unemployment benefits play in pushing key workers to stay home.

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

Read more from the original source:

Labor Participation Drops As Fed-Subsidized Americans Give Up On Work - The Federalist

Merriam-Webster expanded the definition of the word anti-vaxxer to encompass people who do not believe government bureaucrats have the authority to force shot mandates on individuals.

According to Merriam-Websters online dictionary, the definition for the popular abbreviation of anti-vaccine not only describes a person who opposes the use of vaccines but also anyone who opposes regulations mandating vaccination.

He said, while he will not get the COVID-19 vaccine, he is not an anti-vaxxer against all vaccinations, one of the examples listed in the online definition stated.

Another example claims that some self-identifiedanti-vaxxers are vehemently against all vaccines while some are skeptical of specific vaccines.

The term, the dictionary site explained, especially applies to a parent who opposes having his or her child vaccinated.

Previous versions of the anti-vaxxer webpage suggest that the word used to be defined as a person who opposesvaccination or laws that mandate vaccination. (emphasis added). It wasnt until sometime on Oct. 4, the same day that U.S. officials outlined specific instructions for all federal employees to comply with President Joe Bidens COVID-19 vaccine mandate for government workers, that Merriam-Webster swapped the word laws for regulations.

Merriam-Webster did not immediately respond to The Federalists request for comment.

The quiet switch also comes on the heels of Bidens basically unenforceable and nonexistent vaccine mandate for private businesses that employ 100 or more employees. As The Federalists Joy Pullmann noted:

The White House, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Labor havent released any official guidance for the alleged mandate. There is no executive order. Theres nothing but press statements.

Despite what you may have been falsely led to believe by the media fantasy projection machine, press statements have exactly zero legal authority.

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

Read more here:

Merriam-Webster Thought Police Just Changed The Definition Of 'Anti-Vaxxer' To Attack Opponents Of Government Mandates - The Federalist