How To Win The Debate On Abortion In 12 Clear Counterpoints – The Federalist

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The Supreme Court has overturned its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and now the issue of abortion will be part of our national debate as much as ever. Here are some of the many reasons the usual 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 his or her own rights. A child 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. Yet 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.

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 he 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.

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 sex without using some form of birth prevention in the past three months, not including 8 percent who have such 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 prevent conception, 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 because of 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 very low.

Pro-Abortion Claim: It would be better for abnormal fetuses to be aborted than to 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. 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 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 make plans for accepting the consequences if that fails.

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 was so strongly resisted because it was a deeply flawed decision.

The legal arguments are lengthy, but the short answer is that the constitutional right to liberty simply does not grant the right to kill another person, and an unborn child is a person.

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

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How To Win The Debate On Abortion In 12 Clear Counterpoints - The Federalist

Clarence Thomas: Expanding The Administrative State Comes At The Expense Of The Constitution – The Federalist

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During his tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas has questioned the constitutional basis with respect to the growth of the administrative state, whereby a federal agency amasses legislative, executive, and judicial de facto powers. He has raised concerns that this development is contrary to the Founders intentional design in the Constitution to separate the powers of those three branches, and this amassing of power is a threat to our liberty.

After three decades of service on the court, few know Thomas beyond his contentious confirmation and the surrounding media firestorm. The following interview is an excerpt from Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, where Thomas unpacks his views on the administrative state and much more.

Michael Pack: Let me ask you about another set of issues that have come up. Youve been a leader in the administrative state cases. What is at stake there? It seems to be a question of liberty again.

Clarence Thomas: The very people who say they dont want the government in their lives want this sort of expansive administrative state, which is in their lives, and then every aspect of their lives. And a lot of it comes at the expense of the very structure of the Constitution that is intended to prevent the government from coming in. The separation of powers, the enumerated powers, federalism. The whole point was to keep the government in this box. Justice Scalia and I often talked about that, that the structure was the main way to protect your liberty. The danger in the administrative state is seeing those powers all coalesce again in various agencies. If you think about your life today, theres very little major legislation that comes from the legislature. The legislation comes in the form of regulations from agencies. They tend to have all three powers. They have the executive power, the enforcement power, they have administrative judges to adjudicate, so they have all three. And the question for us is, where do they fit in the constitutional structure?

When a private right is somehow intruded upon by one of these agencies, what is the role of the federal courts? If we simply defer to the agencies, which is what we do now, in many cases, arent we doing precisely what happened when it came to the royal courts of the pre-Revolutionary era? How does that make us any different? Youve got this creation that sits over here outside the Constitution, or beyond the Constitution. How does it fit within our constitutional structure? Hows it limited and what is the risk that it will actually vitiate the constitutional protections that we have?

We have a form of government where weve limited the national government in what it can do. Weve separated the powers. Youve got enumerated powers. One of the ways that weve limited the national government is to divide the power. You said, Heres the legislative power, heres the judicial power, heres the executive power. That structure was very important to keeping the national government at bay. You also had federalism, in other words, that the states had most of the authority, and certainly the local authority, beyond what was in the Constitution and the rest remained with the individuals.

MP: I think it was James Madison who said that if you combine the executive, legislative, and judicial in one person, or branch, its the very definition of tyranny.

CT: Thats wonderful rhetoric, and it plays out that way when people look at agencies, and they think, Of course I have no way to defend myself against an agency. And what we have simply been trying to do is to raise the question of what are the limits of that. There are different views about it. But at least when you look back at guys like [Frank] Goodnow or Woodrow Wilson or the Progressives at the close of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, at least you have the advantage of them being candid. To some extent, they meant progressto progress beyond the Constitution. And how that is consistent with the Constitution is something I think is worth discussing.

MP: They were clear, too, that they believed in experts and agencies rather than in traditional legislating by elected members of Congress.

CT: I think to some extent they thought that the quaint ideas that the Framers had were anachronistic, at best, and that you could have someone who understood how a government should operate or how a policy should operate. Once you lose the notion of self-governing, that of self-governance, then where are we? And I think the stark choices are between government by consent and being ruled. And perhaps some people think that we can have a little of both. But good luck! I think the tendency throughout history is that once people get authority to rule, they tend to rule more, not less.

MP: When people use the expression, the administrative state, what does that mean?

CT: I think thats their way of saying were being governed by administrative agencies. And its like affirmative action, who knows? You get a sense of what theyre talking about, but I think we have to be more precise in defining the relationship between, say, a specific agency and the constitutional protections. I think most people dont follow administrative cases and they dont think about the role of these financial boards or the environmental boards. People like a particular policy. Then theyll argue about the policy and not think about how you got to that policy. And I think how you got there, and by what authority, is the more important question for us, not the policy itself.

MP: The phrase the administrative state, itself, implies that each of these little agencies has some particular role, but when you accumulate all of them together, it looks like almost a fourth branch of government.

CT: I dont know which agencies are little anymore. I ran EEOC and it was small. But look at the reach and the effect that you could have. I ran that little Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education, look at the reach and the things that it could affect. So the reach is nationwide.

Mark Paoletta and Michael Pack are co-editors of the forthcoming book "Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words," taken from more than 25 hours of interviews with Justice Thomas conducted for the documentary of the same name. Pack produced and directed that film as well as over 15 other nationally broadcast documentaries. Paoletta is an attorney and worked on Justice Thomas confirmation.

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America Won’t Survive If Only The Left Is Playing To Win – The Federalist

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It didnt take long after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas for Americas neo-Marxist left to reignite their full-fledged assault on the Second Amendment.

Before the victims families could even lay their loved ones to rest, calls were being made by some of the countrys most notable Democrats to bar and confiscate certain types of firearms from the American public. Look no further than President Joe Biden, who, in addition to advocating for a ban on rifles like the AR-15, has repeatedly stated that the constitutional rights of Americans are not absolute.

They said a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body, he said last month. So, the idea of these high-caliber weapons is, uh, theres simply no rational basis for it in terms of self-protection, hunting Remember, the Constitution was never absolute.

Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey took his remarks a step further, arguing that his party should pack the Supreme Court in order to ensure that when [Democrats] put gun safety laws on the books they are not overrid[den].

Despite the glaringly obvious intentions to disarm the American citizenry through any means necessary, Senate Republican leadership was more than happy to jump in bed with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his merry band of dystopian Democrats to negotiate a compromise on gun control legislation. Released on Tuesday, the bill provides increased funding to state mental health resources, as well as funding for states to implement red flag laws.

As previously noted by Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi, red flag laws are ripe for abuse, with authorities in states like California and Maryland able to confiscate weapons merely on the strength of an uncorroborated allegation by family members, coworkers, law enforcement officers, or others without any kind of genuine due process.

Senate Republicans have since faced well-deserved backlash from conservative voters since the frameworks release, with Texas Sen. John Cornynwho spearheaded the negotiations with Democratsgetting booed off the stage at the Texas GOP convention on Friday. In an attack on his own base, Cornyn proceeded to retweet a journalist that quoted the Texas senator as having referred to the upset crowd (many of whom likely voted for him in 2020) as a mob.

Youd think that with recent special election victories and polls indicating a red tsunami in the midterm elections, Republicans would be politically savvy enough to outright reject Democrats assault on Americans constitutional liberties. Such commonsense thinking, however, has always been absent from GOP leadership, who have routinely caved to the left on nearly every major policy issue and worked to stab their base in the back.

Take, for instance, the subject of immigration. In March of last year, when illegal immigration along the U.S. southern border was beginning to skyrocket, a group of congressional Republicans led by South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham and Florida Rep. Maria Salazar proposed legislation that wouldve provided a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens living in the country. As reported by Breitbart News, the plan would have provided green cards to illegal aliens enrolled and eligible for former President Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and gives work visas to the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the U.S.

Specifically, the amnesty dubbed the Dignity Proposal would give legal resident status to anywhere from 1.5 to 3.5 million illegal aliens who are enrolled and eligible for DACA. Eventually, these illegal aliens can apply for green cards and obtain American citizenship, the Breitbart report reads.

Immigration is hardly the only issue where Republicans have ceded ground to Democrats. In recent years, the GOP has been complicit in helping Democrats raise the debt ceiling, fund the moronic Covid-19 lockdowns, and confirm Bidens radical, left-wing judicial nominees to the federal bench at a rate not seen since the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Rather than put up a fight for their voters, many congressional Republicans have instead fallen in line with Democrats, thus helping the latter advance their neo-Marxist agenda and bid to exert greater control over the American populace.

Whether its our politics or our culture, many conservatives often wonder how America couldve reached the point where multi-trillion spending packages and choosing your sex have become normalized. What ever happened to that shining city on the hill that Reagan talked about? How has the left taken so much ground in such a short period of time?

The simple fact is that when only one side is playing to advance their values and ideology using the current framework, society tends to devolve pretty quickly. As a result of weak-kneed Republicans who have refused to fight for the ideals that have defined our country for generations, America has declined into the vapid and increasingly Godless state we find her in today.

Unlike President Bill Clinton, who declared that the era of big government is over after his party experienced tremendous losses in the 1994 midterms, dont expect todays Democrat Party to recant or move to the center on any major political or cultural issue when they get annihilated at the ballot box this November. For the left, election losses are seen as mere temporary setbacks. Democrats know that at the end of the day, the likelihood that Republicans will utilize any congressional majorities to advance or promote a pro-freedom agenda and reverse actions taken by their party is slim to none.

If conservatives wish to reverse this trend, it is incumbent upon voters to either consistently pressure elected Republicans into advancing our principles or throw them out of office if they dont. Any form of complacency will only continue this vicious cycle, wherein Democrats slowly destroy the country while Republicans just sit and watch.

Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Pro-Aborts Spread Arson, Vandalism, And Insurrection After Dobbs – The Federalist

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Left-wing violence predictably erupted over the weekend after the Supreme Court ruled 5-3-1 on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. While pro-life advocates celebrated at the Supreme Court building, the weekend opened with a series of attacks, protests, and arson from pro-abortion radicals. Abortionists attacked state capitol buildings, burned pro-life pregnancy clinics, and even stopped freeway traffic, accosting cars that kept driving with sticks all on the heels of weeks of attacks on pro-life pregnancy clinics, intimidation campaigns outside justices houses, and even an assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaughs life.

The decision, though it eliminates Roes concocted right to abortion, does not make abortion illegal as the abortionist narrative spins. However, its enabled state legislators to outlaw abortion if they see fit. Any laws restricting abortion on the books are now enforceable, and Utah, Alabama, South Dakota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kentucky outlawed abortion the day of the decision. Six other states are due to follow with standing abortion bans that have a month to go into effect.

Losing the bulwark of control theyve had since 1973 is proving a stroke too far for the baby-killing movement, and it didnt take long for abortionists to make the jump to anarchists. The night of the decision, thousands of abortion supporters attempted to breach the Arizona capitol building, beating the doors and windows. The police deployed tear gas into the crowd and no one breached the building, AZ Central reported. Four were arrested on Saturday but released on Sunday.

While the Department of Homeland Security highlighted concerns over potential targeting of state and federal officials, according to a memo obtained by NBC News, pro-abortion radicals are using a map created by two University of Georgia professors to target pro-life pregnancy clinics. The Crisis Pregnancy Center Map gives the very street address of pro-life pregnancy clinics throughout the country, Fox News reported. An anarchist group in Washington state posted a link to the map, encouraging viewers to find your nearest fake abortion clinic on the Crisis Pregnancy Map.

In Longmont, Colo., a Christian pregnancy clinic was torched on Saturday morning. Officers arrived on scene around 3:20 a.m. to flames and graffiti messages. If abortions arent safe neither are you, one message threatened, with an anarchy symbol next to it.

Early Saturday morning in Lynchburg, Va., a pro-life pregnancy center was vandalized and its windows smashed. Four people were visible damaging the building on the security camera.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Younkin condemned the crime in a tweet Saturday evening, saying, There is no room for this in Virginia, breaking the law is unacceptable. This is not how we find common ground. Virginia State Police stands ready to support local law enforcement as they investigate.

In Portland, Ore., on Saturday, the night after the ruling, a black-garbed crowd of 100 or more set out on the street at 10 p.m., vandalizing and destroying what lay in their path. A flier announcing the march read, If abortions arent safe then you arent either, OregonLive reported. A pregnancy clinic was vandalized and several businesses had their windows smashed in until the demonstrations subsided around 10:45 p.m.

The night of the decision in downtown Los Angeles, a pro-abortion supporter reportedly threw a flame thrower at a police officer during a protest. The officer, one of four to be injured that night, was treated for burns, and his assailant is being charged with attempted murder.

Also in Los Angeles, a group of pro-abortion demonstrators shut down the highway on Friday, stopping cars and beating those that didnt stop with sticks.

In Washington D.C., protesters burned the American flag.

Despite growing violence, President Bidens Department of Justice has shown little interest in prosecuting the perpetrators.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.

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Pro-Aborts Spread Arson, Vandalism, And Insurrection After Dobbs - The Federalist

Never Forget How Vicious Was The Left’s Anti-Court Campaign – The Federalist

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WASHINGTON, D.C. This is not normal.

That was a phrase bandied about with some frequency during the Donald Trump years. You can still see it from time to time on the bumpers of cars, next to the fading Im With Her sticker.

The left has weaponized the word normal to the point of farce. A secure border, fair trade, and fair defense deals were abnormal, we were told. Meanwhile, the administration that campaigned for normalcy instead ushered inflation into our economy, kicked nicotine out of cigarettes, and invited transvestite strippers into elementary school classrooms.

It becomes difficult to sort reality when words lose their meaning, which is why its easy to miss just how insane the unsuccessful campaign against the Supreme Court truly was.

While sure, a sitting chief executive lashing out at any and all critics on social media is a real departure from the modern presidency, the campaign of judicial espionage, targeted terror attacks and planned street violence all either ignored or tacitly sanctioned by the leaders of the House, Senate and executive was so far outside of normalcy that we havent seen it since the eve of the Civil War. The problem is that in politics, words now mean so little we sometimes struggle to categorize how abnormal our situation is.

It began inside the Supreme Court a formal yet somehow collegial institution, where ideologically opposed justices clash on paper in an atmosphere of mutual respect and even friendship, and where ambitious clerks work tirelessly and professionally. For these very reasons, the courthas become the last major American institution that commands broad respect among the people. That gravitas was tarnished when a draft abortion decision by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked to Politico.

Despite the promise of an intensive investigation, we still dont know if the leaker was a justice, a clerk, or maybe even a clerk acting on behalf of a justice. But we do know this: The leak more than six weeks before the final decision went public was intended not simply to publicize the decision, but to alter it.

Worse yet, theres evidence this plan could have worked. Indeed, its amazing it didnt. Because while the Supreme Court of the United States has managed to maintain an honorable image (while even such vaunted and historically apolitical institutions as the U.S. military have become mired), that doesnt mean its immune to outside pressure on even the weightiest of cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, infamously reversed his opinion on the Affordable Care Act after an intense political and media pressure campaign. But while feelings ran high during the Obamacare debate, there was never any honest expectation of violence.

On a question as intrinsically violent as abortion, however? Well, thats another matter entirely.Left-wing street violence has been steadily building for years (all while This Isnt Normal bumper stickers flew off the shelves and onto leftist cars, mind you), including a convenientlyforgotten pipe bomb planted at the Republican National Committees headquarters on Jan 6. So to be clear: Left-wing violence following the leak wasnt just possible, it was virtually assured. The spy leaked it anyways or more than anyways, because of.

The violence that followed the leak wasnt minor. Instead, it was reminiscent of the backlash against civil rights. Its included 18 Christian crisis pregnancy centers firebombed or otherwise vandalized, written and recorded threats directed at volunteers, and the attempted assassination of a presumed anti-abortion justice in his own home.

In the days following the leak, the streets and neighborhood surrounding the Supreme Court were shut down by unruly mobs. Weeks later, police responded in force to a publicly planned attack that fought to blockade the entrances and exits to the court. While the building itself remains heavily guarded and deputies patrol outside justices homes the terrorist group Janes Revenge put up posters around D.C. expressly calling for a violent riot if the court dared to send abortion back to the states.

None of this violence happened in a political vacuum, either. From Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumerspromise on theSupreme Courts steps that justices have released the whirlwind and will pay the price, to Sen. Elizabeth Warrens hoarse and bug-eyed curbside tantrum, the top Democratic brass loudly cheered on the mobs.

Over weeks of attacks, President Joe Biden repeatedly declined to condemn the terrorism against Christians and his political opponents, instead sending his press secretary out to condemn all violence.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi delayed a bill for weeks that further protected the justices and their families. That bill passed the Senate unanimously yet sat in the House, but at the White House,the former spokeswoman said, We certainly continue to encourage [peaceful protests] outside justices homes.

When asked why she delayed the bill the morning after the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the speaker said the justices werent under any immediate threat. She couldnt say the truth: that the pro-abortion campaign of violence and intimidation against the court was just heating up. It was just as the politicians of Northern Virginia couldnt adequately explain why they werent enforcing the law against protesting outside of judges homes.

To admit the truthmight be a step too far, even in an American political environment where words have been so thoroughly debased.

The professional left has long understood that if you debase words, you debase truth; and that very type of environment allows you to control truth: to decide what is riot and what is protest, what is mostly peaceful and what is violent, what is direct action and what is insurrection.

What is life, and what is choice.

What is normal, and what is not.

What is truth, and what is fiction.

Despite the howls, the lies and the violence, they failed; but it wont stop them. The Supreme Court persevered, and conservatives witnessed their most important victory since the defeat of the Soviet Union. We had to fight hard to get here, and we cant forget the hell they put us through to stop it.

The fight goes back to our people now, where it belongs. For America, that means the fight is just beginning.

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Never Forget How Vicious Was The Left's Anti-Court Campaign - The Federalist

The Red Wave Is Not Just Inevitable, It’s Also Conservative – The Federalist

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A political tsunami is coming for Democrats. The resounding victory of Republican newcomer Mayra Flores in the special election for Texas 34th congressional district signals what most political pundits and election prognosticators already know: a red tidal wave will soon sweep away a Democrat Party in thrall to far-left radicals and progressive extremists.

However, as impressive as Flores seven-point victory was in the nations second-most heavily Hispanic congressional district a district which Joe Biden carried by four points the real impact will be felt in state legislatures.

What the red tsunami portends is not merely a coming Republican majority in Congress and state capitols, but a realignment that propels conservatives into power. All across the nation in one primary after another, conservative state legislative candidates are defeating milquetoast establishment and moderate candidates.

This is encouraging as it is in our home states where our freedoms and way of life will either be won or lost. The renewed focus on states from conservatives is a game-changing development. Indeed, the State Freedom Caucus Network was launched in December 2021 with this specific mission in mind: to create a bulwark outside Washington D.C. that will protect as many Americans as possible from both the neo-Marxist policies coming out of the modern Democrat Party and the fecklessness that is a hallmark of establishment elites in the Republican Party.

The strategy appears to be working.

For example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds supported a slew of conservative challengers against liberal Republican incumbents beholden to teachers unions and antagonistic toward school choice. Six establishment incumbents in the Iowa State House lost to pro-parent conservative challengers with all but one of Reynolds endorsed candidates defeating their entrenched opponents.

This stands in stark contrast to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a darling of the Washington elite, who conversely supported eleven moderate candidates. Incredibly, Noem even backed Democrats who recently switched parties against budding South Dakota Freedom Caucus members. Only four of her preferred legislators won their primaries.

For a sitting governor with a national profile, these results illustrate two realities: that Noem is fundamentally out of touch with her own electorate and that voters are backing candidates who will actually fight to preserve freedom.

In Georgia, members of the Georgia Freedom Caucus were targeted by establishment GOP forces seeking to rid themselves of meddlesome legislators with actual principles. David Ralston, the liberal Republican Speaker of the House, redrew district lines to punish conservative state legislators like Rep. Philip Singleton. While Singleton was forced to retire, Ralstons overall efforts largely backfired as voters propelled every other member of the Freedom Caucus to victory. They even tossed out Rep. Bonnie Rich, the loyal lieutenant who redrew district lines for Ralston to punish conservatives.

In South Carolina, thirteen out of the fourteen members of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus won their primaries while four establishment incumbents lost to freedom-minded conservative challengers. In Nevada, Freedom Caucus incumbents won all their races with only one that remains undecided.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Borgum spent over $1 million to back moderate or left-leaning Republican candidates. He suffered similar results as Noem with conservatives crushing their opponents in primaries across the state.

The undercurrents of the red wave are clear: voters are in full revolt against the cultural and economic progressivism that is ravaging families and threatening our ability to live free. Voters are equally tired of the Republicans who enable and empower radicalized Democrats to trample our rights with woke nonsense.

It is for this very moment that the State Freedom Caucus Network exists. The Network stands ready to support liberty-minded state lawmakers with the resources, policy knowledge, and procedural strategies they need to ensure the rights of their citizens are protected and the progressive policies crushing American households are dismantled.

Establishment Republicans push the oft-repeated talking points that only weak-kneed, or as they call them, moderate, GOP candidates are electable. This is, like most conventional wisdom, only conventional and not actually wise.

On the other hand, voters understand that the hour is late. Unchecked progressivism, which has fully captured Americas cultural and political institutions after a decades-long march, now threatens the very freedom that undergirds our republic. Conservative warriors are being summoned by citizens ready to fight for the things that they love.

The red conservative wave is indeed upon us and candidates who do not stand with the American people will be washed out to sea.

Andy Roth is the President of the State Freedom Caucus Network.

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The Red Wave Is Not Just Inevitable, It's Also Conservative - The Federalist

Here’s What Your Child’s School Should Be Teaching About US History – The Federalist

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The United Statess education institutions were almost entirely formed for the major purposes of developing good citizens and, usually, faithful Christians. It is no secret that today most of Americas education institutions do the opposite. The result is an existential threat to the nation as its enemies work to destroy the most prosperous, most equal, and most free civilization in world history.

In a refreshingly positive, intellectually sound, and action-minded response to this national crisis, a group of top-notch scholars releases today a recommended curriculum blueprint for the K-12 study of American history and government. American Birthright is at once a redress of curricular grievances and a plan of action for the millions of American patriots who see the moral and intellectual injuries most American schools inflict on the rising generation and therefore the nation as a whole.

As the documents introduction notes, Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of Americas history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country. This course of study seeks to address these major problems that result partly from a lack of accurate and patriotic American history instruction.

The document offers a set of academically robust guidelines for K-12 social studies curriculum that parents can ask their local and state school boards to adopt in the place of what now is largely anti-American curriculum standards. This is not just a K-12 curriculum outline, it is a bold American educational philosophy. The recommendations are a product of the Civics Alliance, coordinated by the apolitical and highly respected National Association of Scholars.

The alliance is a truly bipartisan coalition that includes highly respected scholars such as Glenn Loury of Brown University; Sandra Stotsky of the University of Arkansas; Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Harvey Mansfield of Harvard University; and Paul Rahe and Wilfred McClay of Hillsdale College (I am a more humble coalition supporter). You can also become a signatory here.

Whats inside this document? American Birthright provides the content knowledge in history, geography, civics, and economics that American citizens need to know so that they can preserve their liberty, the introduction states. The standards give recommended primary source documents, as well as biographies, American folk songs, literature, and other materials.

For example, the document recommends that fifth graders learn how town meetings and the common law affected the early development of American colonial governments. It recommends second graders learn the national anthem and other patriotic songs such as America, the Beautiful, as well as learning about the lives of significant Americans such as Whittaker Chambers, Rosa Parks, Sacagawea, Clarence Thomas, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

American Birthright would have eighth-graders trace the development of Western Civilization back to the days of Hammurabi, to ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, and ancient Greece. It would have ninth graders read William Blackstone, the Rule of Saint Benedict, the Magna Carta, and Martin Luthers 95 Theses. Indeed, this curriculum blueprint aims at excellence, not just box-checking, and its recommended primary sources could be profitably studied by Americans of all ages and stations in life as an exercise in civic fidelity and growth.

I have read thousands of pages of what are called curriculum standards since the days of Common Core, and reading this set was a refreshing surprise. Its learning goals and plan for achieving those goals are clear and comprehensible to any literate person, which is in fact one aim of the enterprise.

Usually what pass for curriculum standards is essentially subliterate so full of meaning-lite education jargon as to be almost incomprehensible. Go read your own states so-called curriculum standards to see this yourself. Jargon is one way the education bureaucracy resists accountability to parents and voters. If principals, parents, and the like cant understand what teachers are supposed to do, they cant hold them accountable for it.

American Birthright, on the other hand, is readable, clear, and informative. Any parent could use the document to plan out his or her own course of after-school or homeschool study, as could any teacher or school district. And if a parent or school did so, they would graduate students far more civically minded and responsible than almost all American schools do today.

Thats why parents need to approach their schools, legislatures, and state boards of education and ask that start using American Birthright as their guide to U.S. history and government curricula immediately. It is also a useful document to use to measure the quality of civics and other instruction in a given school district.

Many school districts are considered to be good when they in fact add very little, if anything, to childrens natural gifts received from productive and intact homes. They coast on reputations that others work and virtues have earned. Measuring their curriculum and reading materials against this high-quality benchmark will give parents an accurate assessment of the actual quality of their childrens schools or potential schools.

Many will likely find that their schools do not measure up. Then its time to work to improve that situation, either by internal advocacy or leaving to find a truly good school, or both.

State lawmakers have zero legitimate excuses for failing to require this level of American history education in government-run schools immediately. Those who do not are failing to uphold their oaths to the U.S. Constitution and the people of their states by presiding over rampant anti-American instruction in American schools. These scholars have done a public service by carrying out all the substantive work needed; all policymakers need to do now is just say yes, thank you.

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Here's What Your Child's School Should Be Teaching About US History - The Federalist

Dobbs Isn’t The End. It’s The Beginning Of A Ballot Measure Battle To Save Preborn Lives In Every State – The Federalist

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The U.S. Supreme Courts Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization ruling is not the end of the fight for unborn lives. Its the beginning of a long, drawn-out battle to save unborn lives in all 50 states which are no longer under the curse of Roe v. Wade.

Despite the moaning, groaning, and gnashing of teeth from the pro-abortion left and their cronies in the corrupt corporate media that the end of womens health is near, the Supreme Courts decision to overturn the infamous ruling from 1973 will give states the authority to create their own protections for life inside the womb.

Voters and legislators in several states such as Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana, are attempting through petitions and bills to incorporate laws or constitutional amendments affirming an unborn or born alive babys right to live on their respective 2022 midterm ballots. Their quest to explicitly defend and protect unborn children, as stated in the Iowa legislatures proposal, would strengthen the states abilities to restrict and even ban abortion.

Many of these measures are strongly opposed by pro-abortion groups and politicians who arent happy to see Roe go. In Kansas, Democrat Gov.Laura Kelly wrote off her states proposed life-saving amendment as an economic development issue.

There are a number of CEOs who really look to see what kind of inclusive policies we have in place that make it easier for them to recruit and retain a talented work force. It will be an economic development issue for us, Kelly said.

A Dobbs victory is worth celebrating because it means that pro-lifers who have benefitted from years of the cultural swing towards preserving life have an even better chance at protecting the unborn. But beware because it also opens the door for radically pro-baby-killing states to double down on their abortion agendas.

While pro-life voters and legislatures are actively fighting to amend constitutions to include protections for preborn babies, pro-abortion groups are plotting to take advantage of the festering Dobbs panic on the left and in the corporate media to rally their troops to put killing infants back on the books. Many blue states are trying to radically codify the unmitigated slaughter of unborn infants. If they are successful, hundreds of thousands of preborn babies will continue to die in states, predominantly Democrat-controlled ones, each and every year.

In Arizona, the pro-abortion group Arizonans for Reproductive Freedom is racing against the clock to gather enough signatures on a petition that would put killing unborn babies up for a vote in November. If certified by the secretary of state at the July 7 deadline and then approved by enough voters in the fall, the Grand Canyon States constitution would be amended to endorse abortions up to the point in a pregnancy at which there is a reasonable likelihood of sustained fetal survival outside the uterus with or without artificial support.

At the behest of Planned Parenthood and Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, leftist legislators in California are already well on their way to codifying abortion. Just this week, the state senate passed a constitutional amendment that would bar the Golden State from banning abortion. If two-thirds of the California state assembly votes to pass the amendment by June 30, it will appear on voters ballots in November.

In Michigan, the pro-abortion group Reproductive Freedom For All has teamed up with Planned Parenthood, ACLU of Michigan, and progressive organization Michigan Voices, to garner public support for a constitutional amendment that would solidify abortion as an unregulated practice in the state.

If the measure is added to the ballot and subsequently passed by voters, something Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has expressed support for, it would not only keep abortions around in Michigan but would likely make them more accessible by neutering laws banning baby killing after viability and permitting minors to get abortions without parental consent.

This poorly-worded amendment would repeal dozens of state laws, including our states ban on tax-funded abortions, the partial-birth abortion ban, and fundamentally alter the parent-child relationship by preventing parents from having input on their childrens health, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children said in a statement rejecting the attempt to codify abortion.

Perhaps the most radical example of this push to codify abortion is in Vermont. Abortion in Vermont already became codified in 2019, but pro-abortion politicians and organizations in the state, including GOP Gov. Phil Scott, Democrat Lt. Gov. Molly Gray, the ACLU of Vermont, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, are pushing for voters to take it one step further and amend the state constitution in favor of killing unborn babies and mutilating children.

Come November, Vermonters will choose whether to approve or reject the measure which claims abortion is a right that shall not be infringed and that the fatal practice is central to the liberty and dignity to determine ones own life course. If the measure passes, Vermonts constitution likely be endorsing taxpayer-funded irreversible sex experiments on children.

Dobbs is not the end-all solution because theres still plenty of pro-life work left to be done in states, especially those like Vermont where leftists are dreaming up new ways to hurt children. Conservatives and pro-lifers need to act now while the wind from possibly the largest Supreme Court decision in history is behind their backs.

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

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Dobbs Isn't The End. It's The Beginning Of A Ballot Measure Battle To Save Preborn Lives In Every State - The Federalist

By Catering To Rick Warren, Baptists Subvert The Bible To Social Fads – The Federalist

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For seven years, scandals and public rifts have rocked the declining Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The spectacle of division and embarrassment continued at the just-concluded annual meeting of Baptists in Anaheim.

Now, for the first time, the establishment class of the largest and ostensibly conservative protestant denomination in America is visibly divided against itself. Albert Mohler, the president of the denominations flagship seminary, has publicly broken ranks with SBC elites who have rushed to defend megachurch pastor Rick Warren. Warren is accused of violating the denominations doctrinal standards.

Warrens Saddleback church boasts some 20,000 in attendance, making it the largest congregation in the SBC. His 2002 publication, The Purpose Driven Life, with more than 30 million copies sold, is one of the bestselling nonfiction books in history.

Warrens openness to the political left is evidenced by giving the invocation at Barack Obamas inauguration in 2009 and attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In Davos, Warren met and befriended National Institutes of Health head Francis Collins, a pro-abortion bureaucrat who joined with former SBC chief ethicist Russell Moore to criticize Donald Trump voters.

On May 6, 2021, Warrens Saddleback Church ordained three women as pastors, in defiance of both the clear teaching of the Bible and Article VI of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 (BFM 2000). The latter states, While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture. Rather than reprimand Saddleback, SBC Credentials committee chair Linda Cooper asked the convention to appoint a committee to study the meaning of the word pastor and report back to the convention next year.

In a surprise appearance, Warren addressed the convention: Welcome to Orange County, with 149 Southern Baptist churches, 90 of them started by Saddleback . . . it is customary for a guy who is about to be hung to let him say his dying words. Then this: I have no intention of defending myself . . . I am most like Christ when I refuse to defend myself.

Warren then read a prepared love letter to Southern Baptists. He said hes planted thousands of churches around the world. Ive had the privilege for 43 years of training 1.1 million pastors. Sorry friends. Thats more than all the seminaries put together.

By my calculation, that comes to 71 pastors trained per day for 43 straight years! One wonders if the churches planted and pastors trained, whatever the actual numbers, have also adopted a pick-and-choose posture toward the Bible and BFM 2000 articles, as modeled by Warren and Saddleback.

Warren then chided messengers who frown upon the liberties Saddleback has taken with clear scriptural teaching: Are we going to keep bickering over secondary things or are we going to keep the main thing the main thing? Warren did not specify the main thing referenced.

Mohler responded, I served on the committee that brought the BFM in 2000 that was overwhelmingly adopted by this convention. . . If we eventually have to form a study committee over every word in our confession of faith then were doomed, were no longer a confessional people. . . the words mean what Southern Baptists said in the year 2000 [that] pastor is the most easily understood word among Southern Baptists for pastoral teaching and leadership.

Cooper, answered, I know what pastor means but to some of our Southern Baptist churches pastor means a spiritual gift that is given to many people. Coopers response exposes the core cause of theological compromise of the wider evangelical industrial complex that phalanx of luminaries and institutions associated with Presbyterian Pastor Timothy Keller.

It encompasses not only the SBC but also the Presbyterian church in America, many non-denominational congregations, and every major evangelical publishing house, including the venerable and once-stalwart Eerdmans, which joined in this years homosexual Pride festivities. The touchstone of doctrine for Cooper is not the Bible, the BFM 2000, the Christian tradition, nor anything boasting ancient roots, but the committees current reading of what some of our Southern Baptist churches believe and practice.

We are witnessing the step-by-step genuflection of the last major conservative Christian institutions in America before the same insidious force leftists have succumbed to for 200 years. Thats what Southern Baptist theologian Timothy George called the imperialism of the present.

On both sides of the ocean, from the heady days when the father of Protestant Liberalism Friedrich Schleiermacher (d. 1834) held forth at Trinity Church in Berlin to Brooklyn Heightss national sensation, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) to that sometime Presbyterian, sometime Baptist preacher at Riverside Church in Manhattan, Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969), to todays Joel Osteen, progressive preachers have made the satisfaction of contemporary sensibilities, not the Bible or doctrine, priority number one. Why do they do it? Because, in business terms, measured in bodies, buildings, and bucks, at least for a time, it works.

The fawning protection of Warren by SBC establishment elites in Anaheim is just the tip of the iceberg. For more than a decade, Keller and SBC entity heads have sought, found, and employed winsome ways to reach contemporaries deemed capable of keeping evangelicals on the right side of history, namely the blue communities of college-educated, Democrat-voting denizens of the nations cities and blue enclaves scattered across the fruited plain.

That population has drunk deeply from the well of second-wave feminism that lacks patience with ancient Biblical distinctions between the proper roles of men and women in the church. The businesspersons hyper-alertness to the satisfaction of contemporary customers, and preservation and expansion of market share, best account for why Cooper cited the committees reading of contemporary views about the word pastor rather than either the Bible or Article VI of her own denominations confession in defense of Saddleback.

Christians anchored to the Bible and the confessions of faith crafted to protect and preserve the teaching of the Bible, have always, eventually, come to recognize such progressive catering to culture as sub-Christian lapses from the faith once delivered to the saints. If history is any guide, the SBCs current iteration of this old pattern shall meet with a similar fate.

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By Catering To Rick Warren, Baptists Subvert The Bible To Social Fads - The Federalist

Our Fixation With Marilyn Monroe Reveals Our Desire For 1950s Morality – The Federalist

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Marilyn Monroe made history again in March of this year when her portrait sold for $195 million, more than any other work by a 20th-century artist at auction. Sixty years after her death at the age of 36, Monroe is still one of societys foremost icons and is often imitated by todays most influential celebrities.

Take Billie Eilish for one. Eilish rocked the Met Gala last year with a deviation from her usual street style to a Marilyn Monroe-inspired ballgown, only to be topped at the 2022 Met Gala by Kim Kardashian wearing (and reportedly ruining) Marilyn Monroes iconic dress that she wore when she sang Happy Birthday to President John F. Kennedy.

2021 brought us a new documentary of Monroe, and this spring Netflix aired another documentary featuring interviews with Monroes inner circle. Now, Netflix is releasing yet another film about Monroe, Blonde, starring Ana de Armas in September.

To sum it up: we love Marilyn Monroe.

Monroe had all the factors by which to make her a lasting star a rumored scandal with JFK, early status as a sex symbol, and an early death. But there is one more component that forever fixed Monroes position as the north star in todays record of fallen lights: She lived in the 1950s.

Our cultures fixation with Marilyn Monroe flows largely from the dichotomy between her image and her era. Monroe was a sex symbol in a Hollywood wholly unknown to the modern viewer one that condemned actors filming in the same bed, onscreen kisses of more than three seconds, foul or sexual language, etc. Studios didnt drop the strict production code until 1968.

Hollywood of the 50s marketed desire, not sex. And theres something about this forbearance to a modern age with no modesty that attracts us. Theres something alluring about not baring all. Marilyn Monroe is a sex symbol, but only because we never watch her have sex.

Modern sex symbols are harder to find. Women like Megan Fox, Rihanna, and Kim Kardashian are our modern equivalents but they blend in. They fade into a culture of sexual license and become known for their talents or wealth. Promiscuity is too general now to establish one in the hall of fame. They dont compare with Marilyn Monroe, and everyone knows it.

What truly makes Monroe a sex symbol is the society of the 50s.

As such, Monroe is the emblem of a community we secretly admire but dont actually want. The one that looked down on divorce and sleeping around and drugs and had never heard of trans. We think weve liberated ourselves from this eras moral limits, and yet when we look at many of our popular films and TV shows, we find ourselves going back to what we left.

Downton Abbey: A New Era was just released last month. The second season of Bridgerton dropped this year. Persuasion is coming in July to add to the film and TV adaptions of Jane Austens works that have been making bank for the last twenty years. WandaVision in 2021 was a shorter reach back in time but one just as well-loved with the audience.

Though we deny it, we find a community set of values appealing. It brings together instead of dividing like your truth, my truth, and it rewards patience, commitment, and hard work unlike the modern staples of social media, porn, and video games.

Community standards are appealing to us, yes, but not worth the work. We might want the effects of the 50s community standards and of the rigid moral code of Jane Austens world and the purpose, respect, and chivalry of its inhabitants, but we also want overt sexualization. And desire trumps sex is a hard sell.

So, we take replicate the community of conservative eras, and we think itll be better if we put some sex in it. We take the career of Marilyn Monroe, sprinkle in a lot of smut, and we get Blonde, the first original Netflix film to gain an NC-17 rating. We take the societal norms of Regency England, throw in obscene amounts of nudity and we get Bridgerton.

We think these hybrids will make us happy. And they do entertain Bridgerton is the #1 most-watched English-speaking show on Netflix. And yet we betray ourselves with every nod to Marilyn Monroe. Somethings wrong, we feel it. We believe a house with no walls is no house, but we ditch the only thing that separates a man from an animal his morals and think well be satisfied.

Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.

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Our Fixation With Marilyn Monroe Reveals Our Desire For 1950s Morality - The Federalist

The Tide Is Finally Turning Towards Fairness In Women’s Sports – The Federalist

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MORGANTOWN, W. V. When I moved to this college town in the summer of 1975 as a 10-year-old Muslim immigrant girl from India, I found my stride doing something very simple: tackling the rolling hills outside our home on Cottonwood Street.

Each day, I logged my mile running the same route, down Cottonwood, down Headlee, up Pineview, up Cottonwood as religiously as I did my prayers. I subscribed to Runners World magazine and Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers became my hero. Every morning, Id meditate upon the image of then-Bruce Jenner to put a kick in my step. Running 10ks and competing in cross country and girls track in middle school and high school made me a lifelong athlete.

In recent years, girls and women in sports have come under attack as a result of an aggressive, well-funded campaign to allow boys and men who identify as girls and women to compete in female sports, in the name of transgender rights. University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a male who competed in mens swimming then last year started swimming on the womens team after identifying as female, has most notoriously dominated womens swimming after the NAACP allowed Thomas to compete in womens swimming.

Too often, athletes, parents, and sports organizations who disagree with males in womens sports have cowered or stayed silent in the face of this controversy because shaming naysayers as transphobic is a tactic of activists on this issue, just as racist and Islamophobic are weaponized to silence people on issues of race and religion.

But that is now finally changing. Earlier this week, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) voted to approve a new policy restricting most transgender athletes from competing in elite womens aquatic competitions. Then on Wednesday, the International Rugby League ruled that transgender athletes cannot compete in womens sports,

A mother in Australia, Katherine Deves, expressed relief, writing on Twitter: I am relieved and delighted my daughters sport is now safe and fair at [the] elite level.

On Thursday, the 50th anniversary of signing Title IX into law, a diverse team of athletes stood under the banner, Our Bodies, Our Sports, at Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks from the White House, to stand together for protecting girls and womens sports for guess what girls and women. The rally was supported by the Independent Womens Network, where Im a senior fellow in the practice of journalism and a parent advocate.

After much reflection, as a classic liberal and feminist, I am proud to have stood with the athletes and advocates speaking up for girls and women in sports. This is not just an issue any longer of conservatives.

Included among the advocates were lesbian rights activist Lauren Levey and womens rights advocate Amanda Houdeschell, a leader at the Womens Liberation Front, known as WoLF. Ive created a Whos Who on my Substack. These athletes are champions in their sports and now they are trailblazers in public policy. They include:

Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an original sponsor of the Protect Womens Sports Act, says protecting girls and womens sports is a feminist issue that should be supported by anyone of either party who wants to increase opportunities for women and girls.

Activists and politicians have just gone too far in laying claim to womens and girls sports. I say this as someone who has faced death threats advocating for the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender people in Muslim countries, where in too many nations a person having anything but heterosexual sex within a marriage can be a crime punishable by death.

Long before I was a journalist or senior anything anywhere, I was just a girl running the Coliseum track in Morgantown. Athletics specifically girls athletics empowered me as a Muslim girl in West Virginia.

I still remember, as if it were yesterday, the call I got from a classmate named Jane, inviting me to join a relay team for our track meet at Suncrest Junior High School. As I passed the baton to Lynda McCroskey, I felt strong and empowered.

A cousin came one day and saw me running in shorts, and he told my father, That is haram for her to show her legs. Haram is the Arabic word for illegal.

Indeed, too often, girls in my religiously conservative Muslim communities arent allowed to bicycle or run as we near puberty for fear of breaking our hymen, or maidenheads, and losing our virginity. Whats more, our movement, the sun on our bare arms, or the wind in our hair can be deemed haram. In Pakistan, women have defied threats to run a road race.

My father, a firm believer in girls and womens rights, ignored my cousins complaint. I continued running and competing against girls my age.

At Morgantown High School, I had to run against boys in cross country because it was 1978 when I was a high school freshman. My classmate, Kaye, and I didnt have enough girls to make a girls team. I still remember a boy hobbling as if his knee was in pain right before I was about to pass him.

As hard as we trained, Kaye and I were only fast enough to qualify for the boys junior varsity team. It would take us four years on junior varsity to qualify to letter and get the much-coveted lettermans jacket as a Morgantown High Mohican.

The cartilage in my right knee wore thin by my junior year when Big Al, the trainer, had me popping daily ibuprofen for the pain. I couldnt run cross-country my senior year, alas, and never got my varsity letter. What I did get was a priceless, lifelong devotion to athletics.

Its with much meditation that I now say we have to keep girls and womens sports for those born female. As parent advocate Harry Jackson, a lacrosse and football referee and former Olympic-level athlete, suggests: sports federations can create open categories in which athletes born male and self-identifying as a female can compete. Or sports authorities can find some other solution. But having males compete with girls and women isnt the answer.

My younger self is an empowered woman today because of what running the Coliseum track with girls as Jane and Kaye allowed me. As we find solutions to support transgender athletes, we should allow the same destiny for all young girls.

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The Tide Is Finally Turning Towards Fairness In Women's Sports - The Federalist

What’s Wrong With Abortion Federalism? – Reason

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In this week's Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Damon Root unpack the long-awaited SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973).

1:31: Discussion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

39:06: "Lightning round" on SCOTUS decisions concerning guns and school choice

51:32: Weekly Listener Question: More than most political ideologies, many of the prominent libertarian thinkers were womenAyn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, etc. I think it's safe to say that the movement wouldn't exist without them. But libertarianism today, fairly or not, is stereotyped as being almost all men, often men who are, shall we say, not the most socially adept. Why has that stereotype developed? And how do we, in practice, change both the impression and the actual amount of women in the movement? Bonus question: Katherinewhich Roundtabler is like which Buffy the Vampire Slayer character? And why is Nick Cordelia Chase (or Faith, though mostly because of the leather jacket aesthetic)?

This week's links:

"Alito's Abortion Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to the 9th Amendment," by Damon Root

"Here Is a State-by-State Rundown of What Will Happen Now That SCOTUS Has Freed Lawmakers To Restrict Abortion," by Jacob Sullum

"Clarence Thomas Calls To 'Reconsider' Gay Marriage, Sodomy Rulings," by Scott Shackford

"Outside the Supreme Court, Our First Glimpse of Post-Roe Politics," by Christian Britschgi

"Get Ready for the Post-Roe Sex Police!" by Nick Gillespie

"In Defense of Roe," by Nick Gillespie and Regan Taylor

"Alito's Leaked Abortion Opinion Misunderstands Unenumerated Rights," by Damon Root

"In Landmark 2nd Amendment Ruling, SCOTUS Affirms Right 'To Carry a Handgun for Self-Defense Outside the Home'," by Damon Root

"School Choice and Religious Liberty Advocates Just Won Big at the Supreme Court," by Damon Root

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsors:

Audio production by Ian KeyserAssistant production by Hunt BeatyMusic: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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What's Wrong With Abortion Federalism? - Reason

The myth of American conservatism – UnHerd

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Laura Ingalls Wilder was an American farmer and small-town farm journalist who rarely got involved in 20th-Century politics. She was not an activist for the vote and only entered in politics in old age, when she ran for a paid local office and lost.

And yet for decades, conservative Americans have held up her series, the Little Housebooks, which includesLittle House on the Prairie, as a Bible of libertarianism: true examples of American self-reliance and independent spirit. The nine childrens books about a hard-working pioneer family warned about the encroaching power of the state, and heralded the rise of the modern Republican party. They are fiction, of course, but based on Wilders real childhood.

Published in the throes of the Great Depression, the Little House books were powerful allegories opposing President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal programmes, which provided unprecedented financial support to struggling Americans. They also illustrated a major shift in Republican ideology that took place in the Thirties, as the party sought to widen its appeal. It shed its reputation as the party of elite business owners, and instead began to emphasise the power of the individual.

In one of the scenes in The Long Winter, a storekeeper is overcharging starving residents of De Smet, South Dakota, who want to buy the last grain in town. A riot seems imminent until the hero of the books, Charles Pa Ingalls, speaks up. This is a free country, and every mans got a right to do as he pleases with his own property, he tells the storekeeper. Dont forget that every one of us is free and independent, Loftus. This winter wont last forever, and maybe you want to go on doing business after its over.

This impromptu speech is anachronistic: arguing about unregulated markets was a debate rooted in the Thirties, when this book was written, rather than the 1880s, when it was set. It hints at the secret lying at the heart of the Little House books: it was Wilders daughter and secret co-author, Rose Wilder Lane, who imbued the books with their political message.

Lane was one of the intellectual architects of the libertarian political movement in America: she was an influential free-market activist, writer, and acquaintance of the philosopher Ayn Rand. Her projection of her radical political views onto her mothers pioneering childhood means that the series should be read as a double history: folk stories about the 1870s and 1880s woven through the vantage point of the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Pulsing through the books, meanwhile, are principles rooted in the Declaration of Independence. Thanks often to Lanes revisions, characters occasionally quote that document, noting that they want to be free and independent. In Little Town on the Prairie, Pa takes Laura and her sister to the Fourth of July celebration in town. In Lanes revision, Laura is transfixed by the reading of the Declaration of Independence and the singing of My Country Tis of Thee:

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the Song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is Americas king. She thought: Americans wont obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences.

This is why the books are so beloved by conservatives today: these libertarian views formed the basis of the modern Republican Party.

Yet the books purposefully understate the difficulty of the American pioneer experience. It was in fact a brutally hard life of crop failures, isolation, and disease. Although the Little House books preserved in accurate and lyrical detail many of the skills that small farmers practiced in the 19th century, Lane recast many scenes as optimistic takes on tragedy that did not reflect how the family actually responded. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Pa announced during a horrible plague of the Rocky Mountain locust that ate crops for two years: We wont let a pesky crop of grasshoppers stop us. The locusts did, in fact, lead to their financial ruin. Two years later, according to Little Town on the Prairie, the family resorted to eating the blackbirds that had destroyed their first corn crop in Dakota Territory. The family sings Sing a Song of Sixpence at the table. And why not show some upbeat pluck in a childrens book?

But Wilder cautioned her daughter that the family was not an optimistic group. The quality they relied on was stoicism, putting up with the bad that came. Thats very different from hope. I wish I could explain to you about the stoicism of the people, she wrote to Lane in 1938, when they were halfway through writing the series. You know a person cannot live at a high pitch of emotion. The feelings become dulled by a natural, unconscious effort at self-preservation. Wilder insisted that the Ingalls family had never reacted to anything emotionally.

The divergence between Wilders real-life story and the Little House narrative was also apparent from what they left out: crime and tragedy. Gone from the books were stories Laura had written in early drafts: the death of a baby brother, a mournful episode running a tavern that ended with the family fleeing late at night to avoid paying its debts. The hardships that did stay in the books shored up tenaciousness as a value, such as sister Mary Ingalls going blind as a teenager. Laura then had to step in to help her and support the family by teaching at several schools.

The books also downplayed the various ways the government helped the family, spinning a myth of self-reliance. Like many pioneer settlers, they were given a free homestead through the federal Homestead Act, which granted tracts the government had taken from American Indians. Then there was sister Marys state-paid college for the blind in Iowa. The stories only talk of Laura having to teach to pay for Marys college expenses perhaps her clothes.

The stories continue to exert a kind of power on the American psyche. The books have sold more than 60 million copies and were taught in classrooms for many decades; the series remains part of homeschooling curricula. Laura Ingalls Wilder is the quintessential American pioneer, says Wilder expert William Anderson in the PBS American Masters documentary Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page.

And Lanes legacy can still be felt in the Republican party. Lane only wrote political articles after publishing the Little House books and her libertarian treatise The Discovery of Freedom. But she campaigned for limited government in the last years of her life. In the Sixties, she took under her ideological wing a young man in Connecticut; he was Roger Lea MacBride, who became a champion of libertarian thought and ran for president for the new Libertarian Party in 1976. Later, MacBride took the libertarian ideas with him as he migrated back to the Republican partys Liberty Caucus.

Lane also donated funds to help businessman Robert LeFevre launch an institution for adults in Colorado called the Freedom School, which named a building after Lane. Two of the early students who studied free markets and limited government there were Charles and David Koch, who went on to become members of the Libertarian Party in the Seventies and Eighties. Later, they returned to the conservative branches of the Republican Party and became hugely influential by donating money to Republicans promising to support free-market concerns, including such notions as refuting the science of climate change.

The myth of the pioneers, embodied by Laura Ingalls Wilder, inspired many conservative American values today. They were seen as the kind of independent, self-reliant Americans that the Second Amendment was designed to protect. But even they would have struggled with some aspects of modern Republican policy gun control in particular.

Certainly, the Ingalls family owned and used guns. In one scene in Little House in the Big Woods, Pa Ingalls trudges with his rifle through the snow of northern Wisconsin, checking animal traps. Rounding a large pine tree, he meets a black bear, standing on its hind legs clutching a dead pig. Pa aims his gun, kills the bear, and immediately runs home for the horses and sled to take the meat home. There, it resides in frozen form in a shed. Pa hacks off pieces with an axe at mealtimes.

Even the mythical Pa Ingalls would not have thought todays Americans needed guns in most situations, especially the range of weapons available today. He preached to his daughters the necessity of restraint. You wouldnt shoot a little baby deer, would you, Pa? says Laura. No, never! he answered. Nor its Ma, nor its Pa. No more hunting, now, till all the little wild animals have grown up. Well just have to do without fresh meat till fall.

When baby animals were roaming the forest, it was time to put the rifle away.

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The myth of American conservatism - UnHerd

State Auditor Cindy Byrd wins reelection; other state offices head to runoff – Oklahoman.com

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State Auditor and InspectorCindy Byrd weathereddark money-fueled opposition in winningreelection Tuesday, beating a challenger who was backed by the founders of a virtual charter school she accused in an audit of stealing millions in tax dollars.

"I've had such a groundswell of support across the state once everyone realized what was going on with this election," said Byrd, who beat Steven McQuillen with more than double thevote total.

With no other candidate on the general election ballot, Byrd essentially won reelection to another four-year term.

In 2020, Byrd drew attention after releasinga scathing audit of Epic Charter School, which her office accused of numerous questionable expenses.

Ben Harris and David Chaney, the founders of Epic who were arrested this month onembezzlement charges,donated $744,500to Prosperity AllianceInc.from January 2020 to March 2021, which supported Byrd's opponent with mailers.

Primary election results: Kevin Stitt, Joy Hofmeister to face off in Oklahoma governor's race come November

Byrd said the arrests backed up her audit's claims, and her election victory showed voters had faith in her office.

"Its been very disheartening that there were some who did not believe the audit report that the state auditors office put out," Byrd said Tuesday evening. "But last week was more evidence that the state auditors office is putting out the information taxpayers need to know to be informed in order to know where their money is going."

Several other statewide primary races are headed for a runoff, including the commissioner of labor, where incumbent Leslie Osborn received 48% of the vote, just shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. State Rep. Sean Roberts, who received 38%, will face Osborn in an Aug.23 election. The winner will face Democratic Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty in November.

The Republican primary for state treasurer is also headed for a runoff to compete for the open seat, where current state treasurer Randy McDaniel decided not to seek reelection.

State Rep. Todd Russ received 49% of the voteand Oklahoma Tax Commission Chairman Clark Jolley received 34%.

David Hooten, who recently resigned as Oklahoma County clerk amid sexual harassment allegations, received 18%, missing the runoff.

The winner between Russ and Jolley will face Libertarian Gregory Sadler and Democrat Charles de Coune.

The four-candidate Republican primary for an openseat on the corporation commission is also headed for a runoff, as state Sen. Kim David, who received 41% of the vote, will face former state Rep. Todd Thomsen, who received 26%.

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State Auditor Cindy Byrd wins reelection; other state offices head to runoff - Oklahoman.com

CHAMPLAIN IS TREASURER: Whitewater to face Sterling in November; Brecheen, Frix head for D2 Congress runoff – Tahlequah Daily Press

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JoAnna Champlain claimed victory as Cherokee County treasurer in Tuesdays primary election, receiving an unofficial 57.84 percent of the votes in 29 precincts.

Champlain defeated Noel Hunter, who received 42.16 percent of the vote. Champlain and Hunter, both Democrats, didnt have a Republican opponent to challenge them in the November general election.

I would like to thank everyone in Cherokee County who supported and voted for me, Champlain said. I am very excited to begin this new journey as treasurer, and serve all of the residents of Cherokee County to the best of my ability. I look forward to the next four years with great anticipation, knowing I will continue to learn and grow, making our office the best it can be.

Hunter said she accepts the results as is, but wished the outcome was different. She addressed Champlain and wished her the best as she takes on her new position.

Current Treasurer Patsy Stafford declined to seek reelection.

Bobby Cub Whitewater, Democrat, will face off against Republican Mitch Sterling in November for the District 1 commissioner seat. Whitewater received 58.16 percent of the votes, while Randy Jones took 41.84 percent.

Jones thanked his supporters and all who helped during his campaign.

it was amazing, and I congratulate Bobby Whitewater on his win in this primary. I wish him well in November in the general election, said Jones.

Current Commissioner Doug Hubbard didnt run again.

In statewide and federal races, between 97 and 99 percent of precincts had reported as of 11 p.m.

Among Cherokee County voters, Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin obtained 62.64 percent of the vote for U.S. Senate. However, he faces a runoff against former Speaker of the House T.W. Shannon. The winner will meet up in the November general election with Democrat Kendra Horn, a former member of Congress, along with Ray Woods, an independent, and Libertarian Robert Murphy. Competing against him in the Republican primary on Tuesday were: T.W. Shannon, Alex Gray, Nathan Dahm, Luke Holland, Adam Holley, Jessica Jean Garrison, Laura Moreno, Michael Coibion, Scott Pruitt, Paul Royse, John F. Tompkins, and Randy J. Grellner.

Both in Cherokee County and statewide, voters chose to keep Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford, with 67.80 percent. He turned back challengers Jackson Lahmeyer, 26.42 percent, and Joan Farr, 5.78 percent, as of 10 p.m., Tuesday. Democrat Madison Horn won 36.92 percent of the vote against Jason Bollinger, 16.82 percent; Arya Azma, 7.02 percent; Brandon Wade, 12.29 percent; Dennis L. Baker, 13.88 percent; and Jo Glenn, 13.06 percent. Libertarian Kenneth D. Blevins and Michael L. Delaney, an independent, also will be on the November ballot.

Cherokee County resident Republican Wes Nofire scored 6.32 percent of the votes on his home turf for the congressional seat vacated by Mullin in District 2, but that wasn't enough to advance him to the primary runoff. Avery Frix and Josh Brecheen will meet up in that election on Aug. 23, having tallied 14.74 to 13.75 percent respectively.

Cherokee County resident Clint Johnson got 1.46 percent of votes in that race. He thanked his supporters for their trust and confidence they instilled in him.

There are a lot of good people in this race, and I wish them the best of luck. We will keep them to their campaign promises, said Johnson.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, Republican, defeated Mark Sherwood, Joel Kintsel, and Moira McCabe with 68.58 percent of the votes. Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister will challenge Stitt and Ervin Stone Yen, an independent, and Libertarian Natalie Bruno during the general election, as she received 64.16 percent of the votes against Connie Johnson, 35.84 percent.

Republican Todd Russ, 48.50 percent, and Clark Jolley, 33.87 percent, will meet in the runoff for state treasurer after defeating David B. Hooten, 17.62 percent. Gregory J. Sadler, Libertarian, and Democrat Charles De Coune will go head-to-head in Novembers election with either Jolley or Russ. Current Treasurer Randy McDaniel didnt seek reelection.

Current Attorney General John M. OConnor got 49.12 percent of the vote, apparently indicating he was ousted by fellow Republican Gentner F. Drummond, with 50.88 percent.

John Cox, April Grace, Ryan Walters, and William E. Crozier, all Republicans, sought the seat of superintendent of public instruction, with incumbent Hofmeister switching parties and running for governor. Cox, who is Peggs School superintendent, was able to get 24.15 percent of the votes. However, Walters took 41.46 percent, and the two are projected for a runoff. Grace got 30.63 percent, and Crozier, 3.76 percent. The runoff winner will be joined by Democrat Jena Nelson in the general election.

District 18 Sen. Kim David, Republican, snagged the most votes for corporation commissioner, 41.08 percent. She was joined by Justin Hornback, 20.35 percent; Harold D. Spradling, 12.59 percent; and Todd Thomsen, 25.99 percent. Democrat Margaret Warigia Bowman, and Don Underwood, independent, will challenge David in November.

Republican Cindy Byrd will remain seated as State Auditor and Inspector after beating Steven W. McQuillen, 29 percent.

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CHAMPLAIN IS TREASURER: Whitewater to face Sterling in November; Brecheen, Frix head for D2 Congress runoff - Tahlequah Daily Press

Dont Believe the Obits for Bitcoin – The Wall Street Journal

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Reports of cryptocurrencys death have been exaggerated. For those whove followed bitcoin since the beginning, the fall from $64,000 to $20,000 is simply another of bitcoins many deaths (one website has tracked 455 obituaries). Those who bought at the top are asking why bitcoin is only $20,000. This question would have been unfathomable a few years ago. We should ask the opposite question: Why is this internet-created money, started by an unknown programmer on an obscure web forum, trading so high?

With millions of dollars in speculation in nonfungible tokens, initial coin offerings and obvious get-rich-quick schemes, its easy to forget that bitcoin wasnt created by people looking to get rich. It was designed by a pseudonymous programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto, who wanted a money not controlled by government-run central banks. Like gold, the bitcoin network is outside the control of any political entity. There is a predictable rate of money creation, and the number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million.

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Dont Believe the Obits for Bitcoin - The Wall Street Journal

In the 1980s, My Friends In Texas Said I Was ‘Overreacting’ – Medium

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Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell at the Baptist Fundamentalism 84 conference. (AP/Ira Schwartz)

I know my personal experience about this topic is not unique. It cant be.

There were a few others concerned about the long-term fate of secular society in wake of the 1980s fusion of Reagan, Republicans, and evangelical religion the theocratic philosophy now in power on the U.S. Supreme Court. In my case, I was routinely dismissed by friends as overreacting or down right paranoid. Others were probably told the same thing across America. Thats why I am sharing my personal experience from evangelical-creationist ground zero: my home state of Texas!

Now I am not going to pretend I had it all figured out in the mid-1980s. But, given many conversations with conservatives and creationists, it became apparentover timethat the fusion was a toxic mix and trouble was coming. That trouble exploded in 2016 with another theological-political fusion: Trump, MAGA, GOP, and evangelical religion.

In 1984, I was a grad student at the University of Texas at Austin. George Orwells masterpiece 1984 was being widely read. Of course, most thought the USSR was the real 1984, not Team USA. When Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984, few, if any, saw the Orwellian danger of personal computers. I sure didnt.

Lots of cool New Wave bands were passing through Austin, playing at dives like the Continental Club, Liberty Lunch, and various other clubs. New wave fashions were the rage for some. Yep, I had a pair of parachute pants, which I wore a few times to concerts. But, I was much more likely to wear pointy-toed boots with Levis 501s button fly only! Still do.

All the while, the winds of fascism and theocracy were beginning to blow over the big Texas horizons. I saw the theocracy sooner than I saw the fascism.

My loose network of friends included a random mix of liberals, libertarians, quasi-conservatives, artsy fashionistas, philosophy theorists, and an odd assortment of alienated cigarette smokers, espresso junkies, and margarita lovers. In 1984, you could drink at 18 in Texas and smoke inside cafes and coffeehouses. The legendary Les Amis (the cafe featured in Richard Linklaters Slacker) was particularly smoky, but you could always get good coffee and good conversations.

The same was true for Captain Quackenbushs Intergalactic Espresso Cafe, located a few blocks away. Real intellectual conversations were had because most everyone was reading philosophy, history, and literary books with their coffee and Euro cigarettes.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan swept to a landslide second term in a grand fusion of movie star glitz, fervent evangelicalism, quasi-libertarian economics, and sheer patriotic frenzy fueled by conservative Cold War propaganda. Reagans famous TV ad said it was now Morning in America. Astrology was regularly consulted in the White House. And flags, flags, flags!

On election night in 1984, I recall protestors running through campus buildings holding signs proclaiming they were Young Anarchists for Mondale. LOL. Crazy, but no less true!

Walter Mondale and the Democratic platform were far removed from anything anarchist. Mondale and the Young Anarchists never had a chance against Reagan and the conservative frat boys (like the Bushes). Thats because Reagan and Bush were going to save the soul of America! After all, God and old money were on their side.

Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell (head of the so-called Moral Majority) led the fusion of the Republican Party with fundamentalists and evangelicals, the faithful who did not believe in evolution and other science concepts. Instead, they believed the universe was 6,000 years old, the Bible trumped the Constitution (or the Constitution was based on the Bible, which is absolutely not true), a clump of cells had more rights than the womans body that contained the cells, guns would prevent (secular) government tyranny, and America was chosen by God to be the promised land that would prevail over the evil commies in the Cold War.

In a foreshadowing of the subsequent decades, President Reagan said the following during a speech at a 1984 campaign rally in Austin:

And finally, last night I asked the House to pass the equal-access bill. It would permit religious student groups the same freedom that other student groups now have to meet in public high schools in their vacant rooms during off-hours. I believe the God who blessed this land of ours never deserved to be expelled from our schools in the first place.

The Equal Access Act of 1984 was passed and became law. Of course, as Orwell would have predicted, the goal was never about mere equal access. The long-term goal was breaking down the wall between church and state, bit by bit, across the decades. That is exactly the intent of the Moral Majority, faith-based government initiatives, the anti-abortion movement, and Justice Samuel Alitos recent Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Its a theocracy in America.

Sound too alarmist? What about the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Carson v. Makin, in which they ruled that if the government funds any private schools, then it must fund private religious schools the very schools that most likely teach creationism, anti-science, anti-abortion, and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ communities and people of color, including those crossing the southern border. This ruling is a total violation of the First Amendments wall between church and state. Equal Access is achieving its long-term goal: imposing a theocracy in America.

In the days after Reagan was reelected in 1984, my liberal and libertarian friends said almost the exact same thing: Reagan was about big business, deregulation, free markets, and unfettered capitalism. Of course, the liberals feared Reagan, while the libertarians cheered Reagan.

For my liberal friends, Reagans economics were the big concern, almost the only concern, which is in keeping with the Marxist and socialist influence in their worldview. Libertarian fans of Ayn Rand were sometimes atheist, but they were far more focused on defeating communism and spreading capitalism far and wide in the name of individualism and rational self-interest.

I get the fear of Big Brother or big government, but I was more concerned about what happens when Big Brother is a creationist and theocrat. Every time I suggested that we should be more concerned about religious political power, almost all of my friends said I was overreacting and being paranoid. They said something to this effect:

Cmon Vacker, dont overreact. Youre sounding paranoid! Just because youre an atheist and existentialist, it doesnt mean religion is going to take over. Religious freedom is in the First Amendment.

Ive heard some variation of those lines dozens of times across the decades. Every time I raised the problem of growing theological political power, I was repeatedly told by libertarians, liberals, and coffeehouse philosophers it was capitalism and big corporations that were the big issue, good or bad.

By the year 1984, I had read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and other dystopian literature (or seen the film versions). From 1984, I could see that the American fusion of religion, propaganda, and political power was a totalitarian mix, especially because of the control of sexuality (which Orwell warned us about with the Anti-Sex League in 1984).

Fahrenheit 451 showed how book burning could reappear in a society dumbed down by television and entertainment. Thats ever more true today. Brave New World showed how people could be seduced and programmed to accept the dominant ideologies, precisely as they think they are free individualists seizing the future or returning us to the past! (Today, thats the cults of Elon Musk or MAGA.)

The University of Texas set aside a free speech area on campus near the Student Union Building, home to the student government offices, a large cafeteria, movie theater, and the legendary Cactus Caf, where famed Austin musicians were known to drop in. In the free speech area, dozens upon dozens of student groups handed out brochures, pamphlets, and Xerox copies of their beliefs and manifestos.

I recall the Young Conservatives group selling Margaret Thatcher posters. For real! When Prince Charles toured the campus in 1986, the frats and sororities turned out in huge crowds, always yearning to be royality, to be among the elite rulers.

Lively (and largely civil) conservations could be heard and had almost any school day. Not meme wars, but actual dialogue. In my many conversations with conservative and evangelical students, it was clear to me that the end result of their beliefs would be, ultimately and necessarily, a theocracy in America. Though many would deny it, a theocracy was always the inevitable end goal, with a paradoxical mix of state-supported capitalism.

The conservative and evangelical activists conflated religious freedom, protected under the First Amendment, with the idea that all America must be ruled under a religion, specifically the religion of the Bible. They ignored the first right in the First Amendment the right to not believe in any religion and not have the government impose any religion.

Additionally, the evangelicals would never seriously consider any evidence, any facts, or any logic that challenged their faith in sacred texts or the existence of God. Nothing. Nada, Nope. Doublethink!

The Bible was the final word. The one thing they all believed with absolute conviction: God exists and is on their side, the Bible is truth, and they want to Make America Moral Again! That means we must go backwards a few decades or, more likely, a few centuries.

By 1986, Hollywood gave us Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in Top Gun that mind-meld of GQ machismo, jet fighter-fetishism, and Team USA war propaganda. Its no wonder the Soviet Union soon collapsed. The Kremlin and commies knew they had no chance against Maverick, Viper, and Ice. Not a chance!

In the wake of the Cold War, super conservative George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and President of the United States in 2000. My friends (now including profs) said the same thing: Bush is all about corporations and capitalism. Cmon Vacker, didnt you see Bushs Brain (2004 documentary)? Bush is the puppet for Karl Rove and greedy capitalists, the puppet for Dick Cheney and the Pentagon. The Bible has little to do with his policies. Again, I was overreacting. Yet, the very same Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The same Bush that approved of torture regimes in the Terror War.

Nothing much changed in the 2000s2020s. Is it right to be concerned about privacy, exploitation, free speech, human rights, the environment, and so on? Yes, of course! Concerned about a theocracy. Nah, thats too far.

Even though the American theocracy will smash the wall between church and state, deny basic human rights to disfavored groups (women, people of color, and LBTQIA+ communities), and destroy the environment in the name of economic growth and a biblically ordained dominion over the Earth. Just wait until the current Supreme Court guts environmental protections. Its coming, sooner or later.

Of course, President Trump appointed three more high priests of medievalism and here we are. Its 2022 and America is fast becoming a fascist theocracy. Theres no denying it. Its unfolding right before our eyes.

Its obvious patriarchal and biblical domination are being forced upon women all across America. The evangelical fanatics and Supreme Court medievalists are telling women they have no right to control their bodies, no reproductive rights, and no rights to determine their healthcare. If women have no autonomy for their bodies, then they have no real rights at all. Alitos opinion represents a full-on assault on the universal human rights possessed by all women.

Thats why the Courts goal is not about morality or saving fetuses. The real goal is to inflict pain, cruelty, and domination upon women and anyone else not favored by the theocrats. Misogynous and morally bankrupt fanatics are hurtling women and society backward by centuries in a merger of church and state.

Ultimately, the theocrats on the Supreme Court are attacking the Establishment Clause, the principle atop the First Amendment which says Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting the Establishment of Religion Alito and crew are destroying the wall between church and state.

There is no end in sight, as the fanatics are coming after all reproductive rights and contraception. And theyll come after numerous other rights and freedoms held by the people and groups they do not like. There is no end, there is no bottom.

After all, what are all those AR-15s are for? To prevent tyranny? Or to impose tyranny? Are we supposed to believe the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and Oath Keepers are going to be peaceful and do nothing? If they get in power, theyll be aiming their AR-15s at Americans who are not down with fascism and theocracy.

Unless defeated, somehow, this theocracy will be like all the others from the past. A complete horror show. A real life Handmaids Tale, a real life Idiocracy, and real life Planet of the Apes.

But, yeah, I and others were overreacting and paranoid in 1984.

_____________

High taxes forced the closure of Les Amis Cafe. The building was bulldozed to make way for a Starbucks. Liberty Lunch closed in 1999 to make way for downtown hipster development. The Continental Club still rocks (as a copy of itself). Keep Austin Weird no longer applies.

I wonder what became of the Young Anarchists for Mondale.

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In the 1980s, My Friends In Texas Said I Was 'Overreacting' - Medium

Kansas GOP governor candidate arrested on felony charge plunges ahead with campaign – Kansas Reflector

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TOPEKA Republican gubernatorial candidate Arlyn Briggs recorded a campaign commercial outlining his vision of conservative government in Kansas only to find out a prominent Christian radio network had no intention of airing the advertisement.

He said an employee at Bott Radio Network in Overland Park explained the campaign spot couldnt be used on the network after learning of Briggs arrest on a charge of criminal threat against a law enforcement officer. The arrest in Allen County was a misunderstanding that ought to be resolved in his favor, Briggs said, but the radio networks rebuff was a setback in his primary campaign against GOP frontrunner Derek Schmidt, who is the states attorney general.

Im a strong Christian, Briggs said. My job is to be a strong reflection of Jesus Christ.

Briggs, 64, of rural Kincaid, said the legal trouble stemmed from allowing a man being sought by law enforcement for an alleged stalking offense to stay with him in early June. Briggs noticed a sheriffs department vehicle driving slowly past his home, so he called the department to remind authorities of the castle doctrine, the stand-your-ground right of individuals in Kansas to take reasonable action, including deadly force, in defense of a home.

He warned law enforcement officers not to try anything, he said, and pointedly added I may shoot you. He said he wouldnt have actually fired on deputies, and nothing happened. But officers later served an Anderson County warrant on him for criminal threat. He was released June 15 from Allen County Jail.

If successful in the Aug. 2 primary against Schmidt, Briggs would likely face Democratic frontrunner Gov. Laura Kelly as well as independent candidate Dennis Pyle and Libertarian Seth Cordell in November. If victorious in the general election, Briggs said he would donate his state government salary to charity.

I feel the primary is where the contest is this year. Kelly is so liberal, Briggs said. I say vote for the person. Not what they said, but what they do.

Briggs said he was disappointed with Schmidt as a political leader, and asserted the attorney general was too focused on getting on U.S. Sen. Jerry Morans good list in anticipation of eventually running for Morans seat in the U.S. Senate. Briggs said hed challenged Schmidt to five debates, but hadnt received a response.

I think theres growing concern among conservatives across the United States and Kansas with whats happening with government and our leaders, Briggs said.

On social media last year, Briggs was critical of state legislators who he claimed talked about the value of local government control and then passed bills stripping local elected officials of influence. He said they all should be taught a lesson by being voted out of office.

Briggs ran for the Kansas House in 2012 and 2020, but lost both contests. He was soundly defeated in the most recent campaign, falling to state Rep. Trevor Jacobs, with Jacobs securing 83% of the vote in a GOP primary.

He said he lived in Johnson County for about 30 years. He worked for a Kansas City bank and at Hallmark and has been employed as a trucker and farmer. He performed mission work in more than a dozen countries, he said.

Briggs lieutenant governor running mate is Abilene resident Lance Berland, who Briggs said recently performed community service in Colorado to deal with his own legal challenges.

On social media, Berland said we the people were engaged in a fight against Republican and Democrat warmongers, the most bloated, wasteful bureaucracy in human history and corrupt crony capitalists. He claimed businessman George Soros, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett were involved in demise of U.S. freedom.

We have been played, and Americans killed, by our own government and the ultra-wealthy non-citizens who dominate our nation from Davos, Geneva, and Brussels, he said. These people have perpetuated and delivered the world only racism, eugenics, war, toxicity, disease and unnecessary deaths by the hundreds of millions. These people serve only themselves and the devil.

He also expressed disappointment Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden were convinced by the global health mafia to recommend Americans be vaccinated against COVID-19.

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Kansas GOP governor candidate arrested on felony charge plunges ahead with campaign - Kansas Reflector

Alt Right: A Primer on the New White Supremacy

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The Alt Right

Origins of the term

White supremacistRichard Spencer, who is President and Creative Director at the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist organization, coined the term alternative right in August 2008 in an article in Takis Magazine, a far-right publication.

At the time, Spencer was using alternative right to refer to people on the right who distinguished themselves from traditional conservatives by opposing, among other things, egalitarianism, multiculturalism and open immigration. That same year, Paul Gottfried, a Jewish paleo-conservative, employed the term alternative right when he gave a speech entitled, The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, at the H.L. Mencken Clubs Annual Meeting in November 2008. For this reason, some sources credit Gottfried with originating the term.

Spencer further popularized the term when he chose Alternative Right as the name for an online publication that debuted in 2010. Spencer shut the website down in 2013, but it was soon re-launched by Colin Liddell and Andy Nowicki, former writers forAlternative Right. Spencer went on to found another journal,Radix. BothAlternative Right (rebranded as Affirmative Right)andRadixare forums for racists, antisemites and others who identify with the alt right.

What is the ideology of the alt right?

Alt right adherents identify with a range of different ideologies, all of which center on white identity. Many claim to be Identitarians, a term that originated in France with the founding of theBloc Identitairemovement and its youth counterpart,Generation Identitaire. Identitarians espouse racism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their respective counties. American Identitarians, including Richard Spencer, claim to want to preserve European-American (i.e., white) culture in the U.S.

As Michael McGregor, a writer and editor forRadix,wrote in February 2015, Identitarians want the preservation of our identity--the cultural and genetic heritage that makes us who we are. Identitarians reject multiculturalism or pluralism in any form.

Others in the alt right identify as so-called radical traditionalists, people who want to preserve what they claim are traditional Christian values but from a uniquely white supremacist perspective. Some inthe alt right identify as white nationalists who want to preserve the white majority in the U.S., claiming that whites losing their majority status is equivalent to white genocide. They issue mendacious propaganda on subjects like immigration and black crime as evidence of whites imperiled status.

Another segment of the alt right refers to themselves as neo-reactionaries (those who reject liberal democracy and ideas associated with the Enlightenment. Some neo-reactionaries refer to their theories as the Dark Enlightenment.) Others call themselves race realists or alternately HBD advocates, a reference to human biodiversity (a belief that ones race governs traits such as behavior and intelligencewith non-whites being inferior to whites). However they define themselves, alt righters reject egalitarianism, democracy, universalism and multiculturalism.

Many alt righters are also blatantly antisemitic and blame Jews for allegedly promoting anti-white policies such as immigration and diversity.

In 2015, alt righters began disparaging members of the conservative movement with the derogatory termcuckservative, a combination of conservative and cuckold, that is used by white supremacists to describe a white conservative who putatively promotes the interests of Jews and non-whites over those of whites. The alt right also refers disparagingly to the mainstream conservative movement as Conservatism, Inc. or Conservative, Inc., in an effort to highlight its associations with wealthy donors (whom the white supremacists dismiss as pro-immigration globalists whose policies undermine white nationalism in America).

Who makes up the alt right?

The alt right is an extremely loose movement, made up of different strands of people connected to white supremacy. One body of adherents is the ostensibly intellectual racists who create many of the doctrines and principles of the white supremacist movement. They seek to attract young educated whites to the movement by highlighting the achievements and alleged intellectual and cultural superiority of whites. They run a number of small white supremacist enterprises, including organizations, online publications and publishing houses. These includeNational Policy Institute, run by Richard Spencer; Counter Currents Publishing, run by Greg Johnson; American Renaissance, run byJared Taylor; and The Right Stuff, a website that features numerous podcasts with a number of contributors.

Alt righters use terms like culture as substitutes for more divisive terms such as race, and promote Western Civilization as a code word for white culture or identity. They tend to avoid explicit white supremacist references like the14 words,a slogan used by neo-Nazis and other hardcore white supremacists. While alt righters share the sentiment behind the 14 words theyre more inclined to talk about preserving European-American identity.

The Groypers are the latest alt right group to grab media attention. This loose network of alt right figures want to normalize their racist and antisemitic views, and are undertaking an organized effort to publicly lambast mainstream conservative organizations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) for failing to promote an America First agenda and for not being adequately pro white.

The subculture of the alt right

The alt right also has its own subculture and language and both tend to attract young, white men. Many of these young men are active in the Chan world, including 4Chan, 8Chan (now defunct) and Reddit. These message boards, where most people post anonymously, are a key source of internet memes and trolling efforts, which often target women and minorities. For example, it is common to find memes that belittle the Holocaust and depict well-known Jewish figures, among others, being gassed. The memes creators hold that bigoted humor and irony help attract new followers to the alt right.

Another aspect of the alt right subculture is its connection to the online world of misogyny known broadly as the manosphere. Men in this movement believe they are being stripped of power by women and pro-feminist social structures. They also are hostile to women on a personal level, with some believing that women are objects to be possessed and used for sexual gratification, while others resent women for their own inability to attract them or to form meaningful relationships with them.

One incident that preceded the advent of the alt right but anticipated its misogyny was Gamergate. In 2014, males in the gaming community expressed hostility and resentment toward certain female gamers and attacked and threatened them online. This pushed a number of women to leave that community. Gamergate showed alt right adherents the effectiveness of online harassment campaigns against their perceived enemies.

Alt right vs. alt lite

In 2015 and 2016, a number of people who considered themselves part of the alt right were not white supremacists, but held certain views that aligned with white supremacist ideology: they were anti-immigrant, anti-globalism, anti-feminism and believed that the left and/or liberals are actively working to destroy American culture.

These people became known as the alt lite. In late 2016, the alt right and alt lite definitively split when people associated with the alt lite, including Mike Cernovich and Lucien Wintrich, began to distance themselves from the negative publicity surrounding the alt rights white supremacist views. The split became very clear after Richard Spencer and some of his followers were caught on video giving Nazi salutes during a National Policy Institute conference shortly after the 2016 election.

The Charlottesville Backlash

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was a peak moment for the alt right. The event brought together between 500 and 600 white supremacists, including Klan members, neo-Nazis and racist skinheads. A torchlit rally the night before the event was attended largely by alt right adherents, and the next days gathering was the largest public white supremacist event in decades.

The alt rights moment of triumph was cut short, however, when a white supremacist named James Fields used his car to murder counter-protester Heather Heyer, and wound many others.

The repercussions were immediate for the alt right, and for the larger white supremacist community. Scores of them were doxxedtheir real identities exposed and as a result, some were fired from their jobs, had to leave their universities, or were rejected by their families or romantic partners. Many white supremacists social media accounts and websites were taken off line and some were kicked off popular crowdfunding websites, eliminating a key income source.

More than two years after Charlottesville, efforts to deplatform white supremacists continue, even as many have migrated to newer, less-scrutinized platforms like Discord and Telegram.

Alt right groups have also turned away from large rallies and have focused on distributing white supremacist propaganda, particularly on college campuses, and holding small flash demonstrations and private events.

In addition to criminal cases, Unite the Right organizers, including alt right leaders, have been dogged by civil lawsuits at both the state and federal levels, and are accused of conspiring to plan the rally and promote violence in Charlottesville.

Lawsuits are not the only irritant affecting white supremacists since Unite the Right. In July 2018, Richard Spencer was refused entry into Europe while en route to Sweden to speak at an alt right conference. Jared Taylor was banned from Europe in March 2019 and Greg Johnson was deported from Norway in May 2019.

Meanwhile, alt right leader Spencer, who helped spearhead the events in Charlottesville, has become increasingly unpopular in the alt right due in part to the perception that he failed to capitalize on the energy generated by Unite the Right.

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Alt Right: A Primer on the New White Supremacy

Will Tehama Sheriff Candidates Ties to Alt-Right Extremists Alarm …

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On June 7, Tehama County voters will decide whether Dave Kain or Chad Parker is their next county sheriff.

Kain is currently employed as a Captain by the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. He has won numerous awards.Parker formerly worked for the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but left his position in 2018 to take up a job as an investigator with the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Both men have had long careers as Tehama County law enforcement officials.

On his campaign webpage, Kain proposes to expand the Tehama County Jail, implement new technology to enhance criminal investigations, create alternative custody programs, and designate a special deputy for rural areas. If elected, Parker also plans to combat rural crime with the creation of Rural Crime Deputies.

Dave Kain and Chad Parker.

Parkers campaign slogan is Moving Forward With Trusted Local Leadership and he claims on his campaign webpage to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. However, his close ties to Red Bluffs alt-right community may alarm Tehama County voters, even in a heavily Republican county where around 65% of the population voted for Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.

If elected, Parker proposes to name Dave Greer, a retired sheriffs deputy, the leader of his management team. Greer has 35 years of experience working in Tehama County law enforcement. He is a founding member of the nonprofit group Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

On its Facebook group page, the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County claims its mission is to recognize Jesus Christ as their leader and that the written guidelines in the Bible shall be subject to and secondary to the laws of California. The mission statement also says it is important for law enforcement officials to seek out people who are lost and help them with the message of Jesus Christ.

The administrator for the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County page is Rob Brinton. Brinton graduated from West Valley High School in the early 1980s and is an Air Force veteran. He worked for 28 years as a law enforcement official in Tehama County for several agencies before retiring. In 2018, he made an unsuccessful run for Tehama County Sheriff.

Brinton is currently employed as a real estate agent in Cottonwood. He is also the Northern California ambassador for the Code 9 Project, a national organization dedicated to educating, training and advocating for the prevention of PTSD and suicide for all first responders and their families.

Brinton has publicly shared a variety of extremist far-right content on his Facebook page, all of which appeared after he retired from the Tehama County Sheriffs Office. In April of 2021, Briton called U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) a Fucktard for supporting the defunding of the police in St. Louis. He subscribes to a selective far-right version of Christianity as a member of the Christian Peace Officers of Tehama County.

After Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in May of 2020, Brinton took to Facebook to share his unhappiness regarding the protests for justice sweeping across the country. He tagged Chad Parker, as well as former Shasta County Sheriff Eric Magrini, and other North State law enforcement officials in the Facebook post.

I stand behind my brothers and sisters. NO ONE STANDS ALONE. Im retired but not dead ill bring the fight to you and stand beside you until my last breath or drop of blood you are my family I love you and I WILL STAND BESIDE YOU. LETS BRING THE FIGHT TO THEM YOU FUCK WITH ONE OF US . YOU FUCK WITH ALL OF US..

Rob Brinton Facebook post about Black Lives Matter protests

Parker, and numerous others, liked Brintons Facebook post. One individual who commented under the Facebook post said protesters would explode like a tube of toothpaste if they decided to play frogger with motorists.

Rob Brinton Facebook post on U.S. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO).

Brinton, like Parker, is friends on Facebook with Woody Clendenen. Clendenen lives in Tehama County, is a well-known member of the Cottonwood Militia, and owns a barber shop in Cottonwood which occasionally flies a Confederate flag

Clendenen also participates in Red, White and Blueprint podcasts and docuseries episodes, along with two of the co-owners of the alt-right propaganda media company, Jon Knight and Carlos Zapata.

Top: Recent profile pictures used by Woody Clendenen on Facebook; Bottom: Screenshot from a short documentary about the Cottonwood Militia.

The Confederate flag flying outside of Woody Clendenens barbershop in Cottonwood.

Red, White and Blueprint advertisement featuring Jon Knight (black shirt with yellow logo) and Woody Clendenen (gray shirt with red logo.

Screenshots from a Red, White and Blueprint Facebook story which shows the company filming scenes for the next docuseries episode at Clendenens property. Carlos Zapata stands in the middle of the group while looking toward the camera in the image on the right side.

Since the Feb. 1 recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, journalists working for national media outlets have lined up to get a glimpse of Clendenen in his barbershop environment which doubles as an alt-right man cave for him and his clientele.

Chalk the relationship between Clendenen, Parker, and Brinton up as yet another connection between the Tehama County Sheriffs Office and the North States alt-right community. As I reported in an A News Caf piece last August, Clendenen is also friends with Bill Derbonne. Derbonne is a former Tehama County Sheriffs deputy who is working as an investigator for the Tehama County District Attorney.

Derbonne is alleged to have illegally sold guns and gun supplies out of the back of his patrol car and on city property when he was employed as the chief of police in Asotin, Wash., before accepting a position with the Tehama County Sheriffs Office.

On May 10, Dave Greer, the retired law enforcement official Parker plans to put in charge of his team if elected as the sheriff of Tehama County, posted a statement on his Facebook page complaining about being told at a local candidates event in Red Bluff the he does not act like a Christian. Greer said the attendee told him this because of Greers political positions and who he supports.

Our Country, State and local government are in need of one person, Jesus, wrote Greer. I have come to a point in my life that I take time to seek His guidance in most big decisions I make in my life.

I think as Christians, we need to pray before we vote, continued Greer. I am in no way telling anyone who to vote for, but I am saying, lets take time to bend a knee before we select a name on the ballot. Seek His guidance and personally see where the candidates stand with respect to Jesus.

Dave Greers Facebook post regarding the claim that he does not act like a Christian.

Greer ended his Facebook post by writing that county residents should vote for candidates who will be bold in their faith and stand for Christian values. Greg Phelps, the youth pastor at the Cavalry Chapel in Red Bluff, liked Greers Facebook post and supports the election of Parker as county sheriff. Content shared on Phelps Facebook page shows he is against COVID-19 mandates and the vaccine, and does not believe President Biden won the 2020 election. Phelps has also shared homophobic and anti-transgender content on his Facebook page.

Screenshots from Greg Phelps Facebook page, including his profile picture.

Dave Greers wife, Shawn Greer, is Parkers campaign aid. According to Parker, she is a wealth of knowledge for me. Shawn Greer is the leader of an alt-right activist group named Tehama County Citizens for Freedom, and she has published an extensive collection of material filled with misinformation and far-right commentary on the groups webpage. Greer also runs a group known as Tehama County Citizens for Trump, and manages pages for that group, and for Tehama County Citizens for Freedom on Facebook and Telegram. She goes by Shawn Marie on Facebook.

Chad Parker stating on his Telegram page that Shawn Greer is a wealth of knowledge for me.

Left: Shawn Greers profile picture on Facebook (shes standing with Dave Greer); Top Right: One of Shawn Greers social media profile pages; Bottom Right: Dave Greers Facebook profile picture.

When Berrendos Middle School teacher Stacy Pearce went viral for wearing a yellow Star of David to compare COVID-19 vaccine mandates to the Jewish Holocaust in a brazen display of anti-Semitism at a protest in Red Bluff, Dave and Shawn Greer came to her defense. They, along with Parker and Calvary Chapel pastor Greg Phelps, signed the petition supporting Pearce on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

In addition to signing the petition to support Pearce, Shawn Greer also doubled-down in her support for the sentiments displayed by the teacher on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage by repeating and defending the toxic false equivalence between the Jewish Holocaust and COVID-19 mandates in Californias public schools.

Shawn Greer believes COVID-19 is a hoax and that President Bidens election in 2020 was not legitimate. Greer and other members of Tehama County Citizens for Freedom have shared several pieces of content on various social media platforms that supports Red, White and Blueprint, and the broader alt-right community in Shasta County.

Facebook post on Tehama County Citizens for Freedom Facebook page made by Shawn Greer which celebrated the recall of Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty in February. The post included a picture of Jon Knight, Carlos Zapata, and Lani Bangay of Red, White and Blueprint.

Greer has helped organize several anti-COVID-19 mandate medical freedom anti-Covid-19 rallies, including the School Walkout in October and the recent convoy rallies that took place on Red Bluffs 1-5 Adobe overpass.

At the convoy rallies, Greer and fellow activists wave the Gadsden Flag with the famous saying, Dont Tread on Me and homemade signs that exclaim statements such as Trump Won. At the most recent overpass protests, an old Chevy truck pulled up to display several signs. The largest one read A (Hole) C And the Squad, followed by Pathetic and God Bless America. At a convoy rally last summer, one attendee wore a T-shirt with a large Q superimposed over the United States flag signifying his support for the QAnon movement.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Photographs of recent far-right protests in Red Bluff shared on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom webpage.

Elissa McEuen, one of the leaders of the movement to recall Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Leonard Moty, attending a medical freedom rally in downtown Red Bluff last summer.

In addition to organizing far-right protests in Red Bluff, Shawn Greer is also a QAnon believer. The QAnon movement emerged in far-right circles during the Trump presidency. It pushes a variety of false claims which include the belief that a cabal of cannibalistic sexual abusers of children, who worship Satan and operate a worldwide child sex trafficking ring, are conspiring against Donald Trump.

QAnon beliefs are rooted in anti-Semitism, and followers of the movement, which many call a cult, claim that Democratic politicians, Hollywood actors, and others, are part of the so-called cabal. QAnon followers participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington D.C.

Greer does not openly support QAnon on Facebook, but she has posted a significant amount of pro-QAnon material on the Tehama County Citizens for Trump Telegram page. Perhaps Greer does not want to share her believe in QAnon conspiracy theories on Facebook because it is a more popular platform, unlike Telegram, which is mostly used by people who follow far-right conspiracies and extremist movements.

A considerable amount of debate surrounds the identity of Q, the leader of the QAnon movement. Greer has gone as far as to post on Telegram that President Trump is actually Q. On May 2, Greer published a statement on Telegram claiming President Trump gave an AirQ to a live crowd at an event said he makes them during every rally speech.

Content posted by Shawn Greer on Telegram which shows her belief in the QAnon movement.

Over the course of the last few days, Greer has spent her time publishing material on the Tehama County Citizens for Freedom social media pages and webpage that tells voters to not vote early and to take their time and pray about how God wants you to vote. Greer has also been actively pushing disinformation about how mail-in voting is not safe, and that in 2020 mail-in ballots in Tehama County were unable to be scanned by the tabulator so the elections office duplicated every single one.

Carlos Zapatas comments on Facebook about the Proud Boys who attended his arraignment.

July 2021 Proud Boys photo by Doni Chamberlain.

In addition to the activism in the Red Bluff area, Greer also communicated with a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys who claimed he attended Carlos Zapatas July 2021 arraignment at the Shasta County Court House for his role in the May 4 assault of Nathan Pinkney. Zapata shared on Facebook at the time that he supported the Proud Boys. Allan Stellar of the Daily News newspaper claimed the members of the Proud Boys allegedly visited his Palomino Room bar and restaurant in the city.In a conversation with someone who identified as Tristan, Greer shared the trial court date and said that Zapata needed to be supported because he was becoming quite the political leader in Shasta County. Zapata was later found guilty of disturbing the peace while fighting. Zapatas two friends who joined him, Christopher Meagher and Elizabeth Bailey faced the same conviction as Zapata in addition to battery.

Unlike the arraignment, members of the Proud Boys did not show up at Zapata, Meagher, and Baileys trial.

Shawn Greers conversation with a self-proclaimed Proud Boy about Carlos Zapata.

Chad Parkers ties to the alt-right extremist community should alarm voters in staunchly Republican Tehama County. Parker claims to want to restore public trust in the Tehama County Sheriffs Office, but his campaign aid and the spouse of the man he would like to put in charge of his management team, if elected, is a far-right activist who believes a wide variety of conspiracy theories and supports the Proud Boys. On top of this, Parker is part of a network of Christian nationalists and county sheriff deputies who maintain ties to the Cottonwood Militia.

Tehama County has an important decision to make this summer. Will voters go the way of far-right Christian nationalists, QAnon believers, Carlos Zapata and the Proud Boys, or will they meet in the middle and cast their vote for Kain?

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Will Tehama Sheriff Candidates Ties to Alt-Right Extremists Alarm ...