Monthly Archives: August 2021

In a sign of the times, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, is circulating a memo aimed at emboldening Republicans to fight a measure that would distribute federal money to nonworking parents, worsening poverty traps by extending the new child allowance through the budget reconciliation bill. Rubios memo also criticizes the media for characterizing Democrats proposal as an expanded child tax credit when the money goes to parents with zero tax liability, or who are simply not working at all.

Rubio and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, intend to introduce an amendment that would create a deficit-neutral fund that expands the child tax credit while maintaining the essential connection between receiving the credit and working, according to the memo.

Their colleagues may be less interested in voicing opposition. Some Republicans are a bit reluctant to criticize the plan, a senior GOP aide told The Federalist on Monday.

In the Aug. 6 memo to Republican Senate staffers,Rubio warns the Biden Administrations new government child benefit is the precursor to a universal basicincome. By extending the newly implemented allowance through 2025 in the reconciliation package, Rubio believes Democrats would all but ensure the program becomes permanent.

Its a fight Republicans may be disinclined to take up on the heels of lockdowns that battered working families, and at a time conservative intellectuals are reconsidering the moral and political value of limited government ideology. But its a fight Rubio is well-positioned to wage.

Rubio and Lee pushed to ensure an expanded child tax credit made it into Republicans 2017 tax bill. Now, Rubios sounding the alarm that Democrats aim to permanently turn the historically popular Child Tax Credit into welfare for nonworking parents, with no connection to sustainable paths out of poverty, such as work or marriage.

Before this law, parents had to have income in order toreceive the Child Tax Credit, reads Rubios memo. Under the year-long expansion of the program, parents whohave no earned income whatsoever will receive up to $3,000 per child and $3,600 per childunder age 6 annually.

Parents dont even have to file taxes to receive the credit and maysimply sign up online and start receiving checks, he added.

Rubio and Lee made a similar argument against a plan introduced by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, in February that would provide $4,200 per year for every child up to the age of 6, as well as $3,000 per year for every child age 6 to 17 via monthly payments, as the Washington Post put it earlier this year. At the time, Rubio and Lee contended an essential part of being pro-family is being pro-work.

In his Friday memo, Rubio used Bidens words against him, citing a 1988 column in which he argued the broken down welfare system only parcels out welfare checks and does nothing to help the poor find productive jobs. The Florida Republican also quoted Bill Clinton pledging in 1996 totransform a broken system that traps too many people in a cycle ofdependence to one that emphasizes work and independence.

According to Rubio, Democrats today have abandoned that consensus. His memo listed four reasons the reconciliation proposal is not pro-family, including the removal of work requirements and marriage incentives, along with a failure to ensure the establishment of child-support orders and to ensure parents with histories of crime and substance abuse are put on a path to recovery.

Democrats have little reason to worry about Republicans opposing measures in the reconciliation bill, which is different from the bipartisan infrastructure package. The party wont need enough votes to compromise on this three-year extension by seriously considering the Rubio-Lee amendment unless internal struggles emerge, which may at least partially explain Republican reluctance to weigh in.

Addressing The Federalists reporting on Monday, Zaid Jilani noted, The Republicans being reluctant to oppose what is effectively a welfare program is a big change from the politics of the 1990s.

If you think the welfare state is cool, he tweeted, thats a positive development (and vice versa).

The Rubio memos walk down memory lane underscores this point about Democrats, including the current president. But the very existence of the memo also suggests Republicans today are significantly less eager to pick battles over welfare and entitlements, wary of crumbling families and a difficult economy, having spent with abandon for four years under President Trump.

Given the cultural and financial magnitude of the proposed allowance, further silence could be very telling about the partys stomach for stemming hefty entitlement growth and fighting the poverty traps conservatives have long decried.

Read more:

Rubio: Dem Child Allowance Is A 'Poverty Trap,' 'Precursor' To UBI - The Federalist

It has been years since I gave thought to the day my soon-to-be husband and I shopped for our wedding rings. But this year our anniversary coincided with an appeal filed with the Colorado Court of Appeals by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of Jack Phillips, the Christian owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop.

His trials began in 2012 after he refused to make a same-sex wedding cake. He would sell the male couple other baked goods, but not a wedding cake. After six years of litigation, Phillips won a 2018 Supreme Court decision on faith-based grounds. Now Phillips is again in court.

This time, he is appealing a June 2021 ruling against him for having refused, in 2017, to design a cake celebrating the transmutation of Charlie Scardina into Autumn Scardina. The requested cake was to be pink on the inside, blue on the outside, and iced with affirming messages.

A transgender male and activist lawyer, Scardina targeted Phillips to correct the errors of his thinking. When his lawyers first brought suit, they threatened to sue Phillips again if the case were dismissed for any reason. The bakers ongoing persecution is a chilling emblem of a legal system disfigured by the elevation of unfettered egoism over civility and the common good.

The decades-old story of my wedding ring illustrates the contrast. Let me explain.

Our wedding date was set. It was time to pick a ring. But where to look for one? How to shop? We were young and broke. It would be some years before we could afford to pay retail. Luckily, my intended was a combative shopper, born tohondel. He did not believe in fixed prices. There were only asking prices begging to be negotiated.

We started in Manhattans diamond district in the west Forties. No diamonds were on our shopping list. But 47thStreet was a place to haggle, draw swords, dicker away until the doomed asking price dropped in exhaustion.

His ring was easy. A plain gold band was all. It was mine that took hunting. I wanted something low-keyed but rich with symbolism. No glitz. It had to be unembellished but eloquent a sort of Grail for my ring finger.

I had no idea what my adjectives might look like in the concrete. So we trooped from stall to stall in the Diamond Exchange scouting for . . . what, exactly?

Then, finally, there it was. In the showcase of an older jeweler, his forearm tattooed with numbers from a concentration camp, were simple gold bands embossed with phrases from the Tanakh. They were cut in the identical ancient block script familiar to Jesus of Nazareth who grew, as the Gospels tell us, in wisdom and study of Torah.

The graphic beauty of the Hebrew characters heightened by our inability to read them seemed a visible link to Him in Whom we would marry. One square letter followed another, spacing calculated to encircle the band with no marked beginning or end.

The indissolubility of marriage seemed imprinted in the very design. Add the romance of indecipherability. This was my ring!

Next came the contest over cost. The groom-to-be went into gladiatorial mode. The seller was good at the game. It was a spirited match. Eventually the two settled on a price.

All that was left was to decide on was the inscription from a sheet of suggested phrases. My heart set on a passage from the Book of Ruth that reads in full:

Ruth said: Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.

Only the central portion (whither thou goest . . .) could fit around the ring, but the entire antiphon is implicit in the fragment. Ruths pledge to Naomi is the purest and most stirring statement of friendship I have ever known. I ached to claim it for myself and wear it for the rest of my life.

Was one of us Jewish? The jeweler wanted to know. Was either of us leaving another religion to become Jewish? No, we were not. Well, then, he was sorry but he would not give us that particular quotation. The point was non-negotiable. Pick a different phrase.

The rebuff was a sore let-down, but we did not press. We deferred to his prohibition because, in some unspoken way, we understood. The story of Ruth is one of conversion that affirms the Jewish nation. It testifies to peoplehood. The intensity of this mans concern to honor the sacred core of the text moved us. Here was a man who had suffered the unspeakable for no other reason than he was part of the people Ruth pledged herself to.

There was grace in his refusal. Had he granted me the words I craved, he would, in conscience, have violated the grandeur of them. Ruths commitment was not simply to another person but to a covenanted community bound together since the call of Abraham. Her words were his inheritance; he was not free to extend them to us.

Disappointed, I settled for words from the Song of Solomon: I found him whom my soul loveth. Over the years, my second choice proved to be the truer one. The ring is dearer to me than anything else I possess. But I did not feel that then.

What innocents we were. It never entered our minds to challenge the denial. We took for granted the mans moral right to refuse us; any legal issue, then, was irrelevant. But by todays lights, we gave in too readily. We could have raised a stink. Demanded our rights as consumers. Bullied the vendor with accusations of anti-Christian bigotry. We did not have to submit to the discomfort of being told we were ineligible for what we desired.

Something there is that does not love a wall, / That wants it down. Pace Robert Frost, not every barrier should be cleared away. Not everything is permeable. A nation cannot survive without borders; no culture endures without limits.

Walls provide a bulwark against chaos and dissolution. That day in the Exchange, we stumbled against the very wall a man had clung to in the camps. It was the same one that had kept Jewry from disappearing centuries before modern nation states existed.

Had we been noisy enough, I might have gotten the thing I wanted at the time. But at what cost to the common good?

How do we discern which walls, like dikes, have to be maintained, and which left to crumble? Aggressive shows of grievance are meant to deflect discernment, not advance it. In the absence of a shared moral code, our courts wrestle to accommodate malcontents who are not satisfied with the freedom to live differently. They demand assent, even obeisance, to their difference.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy enshrined the demand. As he declared three decades ago: At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

In the years between these two stories of thwarted wants, civic culture has positioned Kennedys nihilism as a civil right. And we are all poorer for it.

Read the original:

What Happened When A Man Refused To Sell Me The Ring Of My Dreams - The Federalist

The weeks upon weeks of negotiations leading up to the passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill were just the prelude to the absolute whopper that is the Bernie Sanders budget resolution, which hit the wires Monday morning and will hit the Senate floor Tuesday.

The $3.5 trillion documentis a full-on attempt to remake the American economy, the labor markets, blow off our immigration laws, rewrite the tax code, impose a climate agenda, and profoundly alter the relationship between the government, and those it governs.

Among the bills highlights:

It is important to note that congressional budgets are blueprints. Budget resolutions never become law; they merely provide the umbrella document, or the outline, under which appropriations the actual spending takes place. Much of that process will begin in September when Senate committees put forward their reconciliation bill. Reconciliation also has an associated unlimited amendment process, or vote-a-rama, and passes with a simple majority.

Taken together, this current $1 trillion infrastructure bill, plus the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, which will be accompanied with a reconciliation bill of potentially an even greater amount, is one of the most aggressive efforts from Democrats in the modern era to transform the economy in their image.

At some level, you have to respect the moxie. Democrats are using a Democrats-only reconciliation package to transform the country. Republicans couldnt even muster the votes on their own side to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare.

Rachel Bovard is The Federalist's senior tech columnist and the senior director of policy at the Conservative Partnership Institute.

Excerpt from:

Democrats' $3.5 Trillion Budget Resolution Would Remake The US Economy - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Senior Editor Christopher Bedford and Culture Editor Emily Jashsinky discuss New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos resignation and how the corporate media ignored his wrongdoings, all for the sake of being anti-Trump.

Every single thing about this guy was in broad freaking daylight and they just ignored it because theyre soulless awful, trolls, Bedford said.

When they should have been looking at his record critically, they were very busy talking about how theyre Cuomo-sexual, they were busy lauding him, they were busy praising him, Jashinsky added.

While Bedford and Jashinsky say they were caught off guard by Cuomos announcement, they both expect him to re-enter the scene.

I wouldnt be surprised if he came back to governor, Jashinsky said. I think maybe thats why he actually resigned is because the impeachment, that would be a problem for, you know, running again, whereas, if you can just say he resigned because he was becoming a distraction.

I dont think hes gone, Bedford said.

Listen here:

Visit link:

The Media's Shameless Fawning Over Andrew Cuomo Fuels Institutional Distrust - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Tim Winter, President of the Parents Television and Media Council, joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to explain how entertainment outlets are sexualizing content designed for teens.

We have a lot of years of being an adult. The blessing of childhood and the innocence is something we should preserve as long as we possibly can andunfortunately, there are some folks who really seem not to care about that when it comes to our entertainment, Winter said.

Hollywood and other TV entertainment providers, Winter said, hypocritically promote and produce sexually explicit shows that display harmful content to kids while also demanding reverence for movements such as #MeToo.

If were really going to have a dialogue about the ills of society and how to make them better, we need to stop becoming entertained by them, Winter said.

If Hollywood is trying to fight the sexualization of women, why are they asking us every night to be entertained by sexualizing women? The contradiction is concerning, its appalling and again we go back to what is the ultimate harm on children, on our future, Americans, on our culture, on our society? he asked. When Hollywood does something positive, nobodys better. They can do it in a fascinating way, a brilliant way, in a powerful storytelling way. But, but when they are doing something that is toxic and harmful, sadly, nothing is more powerful.

Listen here:

See original here:

How The Sexualization Of Teen Television Is Ruining Culture - The Federalist

A new study has found that individuals that have previously contracted COVID-19 show a more potent antibody response than those who were solely vaccinated for the respiratory virus.

Conducted by a research team at Rockefeller University in New York, the analysis found that between a first (prime) and second (booster) shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine, the memory B cells of infection-nave individuals produced antibodies that evolved increased neutralizing activity against SARS-CoV-2, but also that no additional increase in the potency or breadth of this activity was observed thereafter.

Meanwhile, researchers determined that not only do recovered COVID-19 patients possess neutralizing antibodies up to a year after infection, but that such infection simultaneously assists in offering protection against developing variants.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection produces B-cell responses that continue to evolve for at least one year, the study read. During that time, memory B cells express increasingly broad and potent antibodies that are resistant to mutations found in variants of concern.

The analysis later goes on to conclude, Memory antibodies selected over time by natural infection have greater potency and breadth than antibodies elicited by vaccination.

Moreover, the results suggest that boosting vaccinated individuals with currently available mRNA vaccines would produce a quantitative increase in plasma neutralizing activity but not the qualitative advantage against variants obtained by vaccinating convalescent individuals.

The studys findings add to further mounting evidence detailing the level of protection natural immunity offers previously infected COVID-19 patients. Last month, Emory University published an extensive investigation describing the efficiency of long-term immunity against the respiratory virus. Similar discoveries have also been identified in research released by the Cleveland Clinic and the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, respectively.

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

More here:

Study Finds Greater Antibody Response In Recovered COVID-19 Patients Than Vaccinated Ones - The Federalist

American Airlines announced it will be partnering with the social media app TikTok to bring the entertainment platform to its roster of inflight entertainment offerings.

According to the companys press release, fliers traveling on Viasat-equipped narrowbody aircraft will be provided with 30 minutes of free access to TikTok, including the ability to search for popular video creators, their favorite topics or even hashtags like #travel, #traveltips, or #traveltheworld to view related video content for travel and adventure enthusiasts. When exploring TikTok, customers will also be able to access a bevy of videos pertaining to travel inspiration, music and dance trends, and comedians and pop culture experts, among others.

Faster Wi-Fi allows us to deliver diverse inflight entertainment options and invest in innovative partnerships with platforms like TikTok, said Clarissa Sebastian, Americans managing director of premium customer experience and onboard products. Customers play the lead role in helping us better understand what content they want during their inflight experience and TikTok is one of the platforms they love on the ground, and were thrilled to work with Viasat to give customers free access to TikTok while theyre in the air as well.

The newly announced partnership, however, raises serious U.S. national security concerns. TikToks parent company ByteDance is a China-based company with a long track record of collaborating with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), including assisting the state in disseminating propaganda and condoning the regimes human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims. Moreover, Zhang Fuping, ByteDances vice president, is the head of the companys Chinese Communist Party committee.

Speaking with The Federalist, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, blasted the new partnership while also describing how TikTok represents a major national security issue for the United States.

The fact that a legacy American carrier with a global flight service is using a Chinese digital information operation as part of its offerings to passengers is really an alarming thing to see, Waller said. There are concerns that it is collecting intelligence on everyone who uses the service. If thats the case, you have a leading American global air carrier that is incorporating Chinese spyware into its passengers entertainment offerings around the world.

Waller went on to warn about potential consequences of the deal, noting that TikTok on American Airline flights could indirectly give the CCP access to highly influential figures throughout the United States.

[American Airlines] caters to businessmen. It caters to diplomats. It caters to intelligence officers, Waller said. It caters really to anyone who has a role in making decisions or influencing policy in the United States and elsewhere around the world, and now American Airlines is providing the Chinese with a means of accessing them while theyre basically held as a captive audience wherever theyre traveling.

Federalist senior contributor Helen Raleigh echoed similar sentiments, saying companies like American Airlines must recognize the malicious intentions of the CCP, take national security seriously, and take actions to protect U.S. customers data.

The biggest concern is data collection and how the CCP will use and put todays youth, who will be our future senators, scientists, and businessmen, in compromising positions because of silly, embarrassing stuff they shared, she told The Federalist. No U.S. companys bottom line is secure if our national security is compromised.

While TikTok has repeatedly denied any connections to the communist government, the CCPs 2017 National Intelligence Lawrequires any Chinese citizen or organization to support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law, and keep the secrets of the national intelligence work known to the public.

When pressed by The Federalist about whether American Airlines was concerned about TikToks connections to the Chinese government, a spokeswoman for the company avoided answering the question but claimed that American Airlines does not share any data with TikTok through this offering, and that the airliner does not have a direct commercial relationship with the company.

Accessing Americans free inflight entertainment content is important to our customers, and American strives to offer options that accommodate a wide range of preferences, she said. Based on customer feedback, connecting with family and friends through personal accounts on social media platforms while in flight is important to them. With that in mind, we work with our Wi-Fi provider to offer customers more of what they want a diverse variety of entertainment options, which currently includes TikTok.

During this promotional period we will be evaluating and learning from customer feedback and engagement to help inform future decision making, she added.

In a letter addressed to Americans CEO Doug Parker, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio urged the company to terminate the so-called innovative partnership, while citing the threat the deal poses to U.S. national security.

By partnering with TikTok, American Airlines is now lending its brand credibility to a company that endangers national security and the data security of tens of millions of Americans, many of them minors, Rubio wrote. I urge you to suspend American Airlines innovative partnership with TikTok while the U.S. Government completes its investigation into the national security risks posed by the Chinese-owned app.

The deal between American and TikTok officially launched on Monday, Aug. 2, with airliners set to incorporate the offering immediately.

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

Continued here:

American Airlines Risks National Security By Partnering With TikTok - The Federalist

Rep. Rashida Tlaib partied without a mask at an indoor wedding reception on Sunday, defying Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for the area.

The party was held in Wayne County, Michigan, on Sunday a CDC-classified substantial risk for community transmission county, in which the CDC recommends masking indoors regardless of vaccination status.

The congresswoman can be seen dancing, holding hands, and hugging other people, none of whom appear to be wearing masks, in video footage uploaded to Instagram by the band that performed at the wedding, Bassam Saleh.

The party occurred the same day that Tlaib attacked Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, for urging Americans to ignore the ever-changing CDC guidelines.

The KY Senator is throwing a tantrum as his state is being swallowed whole by this virus, again. People are getting sick and dying, Tlaib wrote. He needs to put politics aside, and put people first. Start resisting the virus.

Tlaibs masking hypocrisy, whereby the elite ruling class lives by a different set of rules than the ones they create for everyone else, came amid controversy over former President Barack Obamas maskless birthday party, which New York Times correspondent Annie Karni justified because the crowd was sophisticated.

Tlaib has also come under fire in recent months for promoting antisemitic movements and calling for the abolition of police.

Maggie Hroncich is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Hillsdale College.

Continue reading here:

Rashida Tlaib Pulls An Obama, Parties Maskless While Pushing Mandates - The Federalist