Monthly Archives: February 2022

As Virginia rounds the corner in its first session of 2022, legislation passed in the states pro-life House faces major challenges in the Senate. Although Virginia ushered in a pro-life governor this January, the Senate is still controlled by pro-abortion Democrats.

Last Tuesdays crossover day marked a turning point in the 60-day session, as bills passed in the House and Senate moved down the hall for further votes. The Republican-controlled Virginia House passed HB 304, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, sponsored by Del. Nick Freitas, R-Culpeper. The bill requires an abortionist to provide life-saving treatment for a child born alive after a failed abortion. It passed 52-48 along party lines.

Del. Dave LaRock, R-Loudoun, filed a mirror bill, HB 1349, and said he expects Senate Democrats to recognize the necessity of the basic human rights measure following public fallout from former Gov. Ralph Northams radical abortion interview in 2019. Northam spoke in favor of infant death without any attempt at medical intervention if an abortion failed.

That comment by then-governor Northam shocked the world by revealing that Northam was among the most radically pro-abortion advocates who would allow a living, breathing baby to be denied proper care, treated as medical waste, and left to die, LaRock said. I am hopeful there will be enough Democrats who see infanticide as going too far. If that happens, the law will go to [Republican] Gov. [Glenn] Youngkin and I am confident that, given the opportunity, he will sign it.

Currently, 35 states have passed similar legislation. Its one of two main life issues before the Virginia legislature this session, along with the parameters for informed consent before women obtain an abortion.

Once a baby is born aliveevery possible medical care should be provided. Why isnt that obvious to everyone? said John Seeds, an OB-GYN and former department chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Virginia Commonwealth University. At birth, they become a legal citizen and appropriate care should be required.

The Republican-majority House also passed the Informed Consent/Womens Right to Know bill Tuesday, introduced by Del. Karen Greenhalgh, R-Virginia Beach, to restore requirements removed by pro-abortion legislators in 2020. The bill would require abortion providers to present women with fully accurate, written information regarding the abortion procedure, available pregnancy support resources, and their rights prior to an abortion.

Any woman contemplating abortion should be provided all information about the procedure including short- and long-term complications and the nature of the infant being aborted, Seeds commented. Otherwise, she is making a decision without all the needed information.

The first pro-life bill to make it to the House docket in three years, HB 212 requires basic informed consent previously in place in Virginia.

Helping mothers and fathers make informed decisions, which could include adoption for unwanted infants, will likely result in a win-win situation, said LaRock, sponsor of several pro-life bills this session. Mothers are going to avoid the guilt that may come with the irreversible decision to abort her baby. Babies find loving homes.

Yet the Democrat-controlled Senate has proven a tough battleground for pro-lifers, with losses and wins in the sessions first 30 days. Sen. Amanda Chase, R-Chesterfield, described Senate Republicans and Democrats as sitting on either side of a chasm on major issues.

You might get a couple of bills I call do nothing bills that are going to pass, but significant legislation thats going to have meaningful impactits going to be hard to come by this session, she said.

Chase introduced legislation to restrict abortions to 20 weeks of gestation in Virginia, based on medical evidence that an unborn child experiences immense pain by that point. The pain capable bill would allow for terminating a pregnancy if the mothers life or health were at risk, with the intent of giving the unborn child the best chance to survive.

Sen. Siobahn Dunnavant, R-Henrico, a licensed OB-GYN in the state, provided strong testimony in favor of SB 710, which was also supported by Youngkin, Chase said. The bill was defeated in the Senate Education and Health Committee late last week.

This bill was really a bill that showed compassion on the unborn, Chase said. Its a humanity bill. Its recognizing a baby can feel pain and that we as a society need to be humane to those babiesAn unborn child has less legal protection from feeling pain than commercial livestock.

Surrogacy law in the Commonwealth currently allows a couple contracting with a surrogate to require an abortion of a disabled unborn child or to abort multiples. Sen. Mark J. Peake, R-Lynchburg, sponsored SB 163 to prohibit the practice.

This fixes a very bad problem in Virginia, to get [the state] out of the business of abortion under our surrogacy laws, said Olivia Gans-Turner, president of the Virginia Society for Human Life. The law is so old most legislators didnt know it was there until 2020, when a bill prohibiting it died in committee under a Democrat-majority House. The Senate voted unanimously in favor of the bill this session.

An assisted suicide legalization bill introduced by Democrats in the House and Senate failed to pass the Senate on a tie vote. Budgetary items, to include a Hyde Amendment bill limiting taxpayer funding of abortions in the state, will be considered later in the session.

Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute and blogger for Ascension Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. Ashley is a board member at a Catholic homeschool cooperative in Virginia. She homeschools her four incredible children along with her brilliant engineer/scientist husband.e who lives in Virginia.

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Virginia Democrats Vote For Allowing Babies Who Survive Abortions To Die - The Federalist

West Virginia Republican Treasurer Riley Moore axed his states relationship with BlackRock last month over the $10 trillion investment firms dual loyalty to Chinese interests and woke capitalism.

As the states chief financial officer and chairman of the Board of Treasury Investments, I have a duty to ensure that taxpayer dollars are managed in a responsible, financially sound fashion which reflects the best interests of our state and country, and I believe doing business with BlackRock runs contrary to that duty, Moore said in a press release at the time.

Now the colossal Wall Street firm is void of oversight for the states investment fund, a liquid account worth approximately $1.5 billion. While it might not be much money to BlackRock, Moore tells The Federalist, its a hell of a lot for the people of West Virginia, and far too much to park with an investment firm infected by corporate wokeism working to defraud the states more than 1.7 million residents.

Despite holding $85 billion in coal assets as of January last year, BlackRock has emphasized its commitment to reaching net-zero carbon emissions, a near-term pledge incompatible with a flourishing energy industry reliant on instantaneous power provided by fossil fuels. The commitment while fostering Chinese investment has prompted well-founded skepticism about whether BlackRock has the best interests of its clients at stake.

Last week, the educational nonprofit Consumers Research unveiled a multi-million-dollar campaign to expose BlackRocks close ties with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The watchdog published a new website on BlackRocks CEO, WhoIsLarryFink.com, and debuted new ads for TV and radio complemented by mobile billboards in New York City, where the firm is headquartered.

Larry Fink and BlackRock are really delivering a one-two punch to the American economy, Consumers Research Executive Director Will Hild told The Federalist. One the right hand theyre using the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scam to hamper American companies and make it harder to serve American consumers, on the left hand theyre funneling billions of dollars to the Chinese communist owned business to help them build the Chinese economy.

The campaign comes on the heels of a letter Hild sent in December to 10 governors, including West Virginia, warning both consumers and governments about BlackRocks relationship with China, where the leading investment firm has made cultivating Chinese assets a priority. Fink admitted that much in his 2020 letter to shareholders at the onset of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.

I continue to firmly believe China will be one of the biggest opportunities for BlackRock over the long term, both for asset managers and investors, despite the uncertainty and decoupling of global systems were seeing today, Fink wrote in a passage now deleted from the letter currently on the companys website. By August of the same year, BlackRock was awarded the first entirely foreign-owned mutual fund operating in China.

BlackRocks funneling of billions in U.S. capital to China carries with it risks not present in other markets, risks that threaten the large wagers the company is putting on steep returns from the Middle Kingdom, Hild warned governors late last year. Chinese firms are not held to the same transparency standards as their western counterparts, so foreign investors are often hard pressed to appreciate the true risk profile of what theyre investing in.

More than $75 billion in pension funds among the states reporting such data, meanwhile, remain in BlackRocks hands, according to Consumers Research.

Some conservative policymakers have begun to heed Hilds warning, motivated also by Wall Streets growing ideological hostility to fossil fuels. Beyond Moores efforts in West Virginia, lawmakers in Texas and Florida have also made moves to counteract BlackRocks undue influence.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently moved to strip proxy vote power over state finances from companies that foster investment in China while managing taxpayer dollars. That would include BlackRock, which oversees billions from Floridas pensions and investment funds. According to Bloomberg, BlackRock held $227 million in a fund focused on Chinese markets in late June.

The state pension plan has also invested in separate private equity and investment funds with exposure to China in particular, Bloomberg reported.

Further west in Texas, the company hired a team of lobbyists in Austin to protect its more than $20 billion handled as legislators prepare to follow Moores lead in withdrawing state business from the New York firm. After years of railing against fossil fuels in the name of politically correct investment practices, corporate executives are now engaged in double-speak to protect its access to public funds.

In January, Alex Epstein, the founder of Industrial Progress and author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, reported company leaders sent a memo reassuring lawmakers who govern the top oil producer in the country of BlackRocks commitment to back the industry.

We will continue to invest in and support fossil fuel companies, including Texas fossil fuel companies, read the memo sent at the start of the year. Weeks later, Fink wrote again of the CEOs desire for BlackRock to play a prominent role in achieving net-zero emissions.

Its not just BlackRock beginning to feel the heat from proactive lawmakers moving to protect their constituents tax dollars from being used against them. All banks that spurn fossil fuels run the risk of alienating their relationships with state governments. In November, Moore led a coalition of 15 states pledging to park $600 billion in taxpayer assets in other institutions than those that bar investment in the industry.

Just as each state represented in this letter is unique in its governing laws and economy, our actions will take different forms, they wrote. However, the overarching objective of our actions will be the same to protect our states economies, jobs, and energy independence from these unwarranted attacks on our critical industries.

While Moores $1.5 billion pulled from BlackRock last month might not be a sizeable figure for a $10 trillion-dollar firm, $600 billion remains nothing to blink at.

Other Republicans leading major oil-producing states, such as state treasurers in Ohio and Oklahoma, have remained apathetic as the movement grows to deter Wall Street financial firms from weaponizing taxpayer dollars against American taxpayers.

Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

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Lawmakers Are Waking Up To BlackRock's Dual Loyalty, And Taking Action - The Federalist

The only way to understand the actions of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the past two weeks is that he wants the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which so far have been entirely peaceful, to descend into a violent confrontation between protesters and police.

Everything Trudeau has done, from his initial dismissive remarks about the protesters being a small, fringe minority with unacceptable views, to his ongoing refusal to meet with them, to the unprecedented invocation of the Emergencies Act this week, has served to escalate the situation in Ottawa and increase the likelihood that it ends in some kind of violence.

Consider the draconian measures Trudeaus government is now pursuing. The protests, while certainly inconvenient and even onerous to the residents of Ottawa, are obviously not an existential threat to Canada. They are not even a national emergency according to the Emergencies Acts own definition: an urgent and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it.

No reasonable person thinks thats what the protests in Ottawa are. The Canadian Civil Liberties Associationhas saidthe federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act, and that invoking it threatens our democracy and our civil liberties. According to some recent polls, a not insignificant number of Canadians agree.

Yet Trudeau is bringing down the full force of the federal government to quash the Freedom Convoy. Under the Emergencies Act, protesters can have their bank accounts frozen, and so can people who simply donate to protesters. Crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers must cease all services to anyone they suspect might be participating in illegal blockades, and report it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Truckers can have their commercial and private drivers licenses revoked, and can lose their insurance and their vehicles.

Even more ominously, Canadian government officials are now warning parents who bring their children to illegal assemblies, or even provide food or fuel to protesters, that they could not only face jail time and steep fines, they could lose custody of their children. On Wednesday, the Childrens Aid Society of Ottawaput out a statementurging parents at the demonstrations to make alternate care arrangements, should they become unable to care for their children following potential police action.

The threat here is obvious: if you protest, well arrest you and take your children away. Trudeau has effectively weaponized Canadas version of child protective services to suppress legitimate political dissent. What do you think is going to happen when the police start trying to remove children from their parents? If it were your child, what would you do?

All of this could come to a head in the coming days. Police in Ottawa have begun handing out notices to protesters that they must leave the area now or face arrest. According tosome reports, if police want to clear the streets of Ottawa, theyre going to have to get it done in the next 48 hours, because thousands more protesters are expected to arrive in the Canadian capital this coming weekend in what could be the largest demonstration yet.

But its unclear how exactly the authorities are going to clear the trucks. Towing these semi-trailers is going to take heavy equipment, and so far local towing companies have refused government requests to tow the Freedom Convoy trucks. The military would be able to move them, and Trudeaus invocation of the Emergencies Act enables the use of the military for such an operation. But that would create a disturbing spectacle at the least, and at worst provoke a confrontation that could turn violent.

If that happens,Trudeau will bear the blame. He has set up a situation where violence, or at least some kind of forcible crackdown by Canadian law enforcement against protesters, is becoming inevitable. Indeed, how else are we to understand Trudeaus statement earlier this week that the protests, which have so far been totally peaceful, are in his judgment no longer non-violent?

At no point, even after drawing widespread criticism for his mishandling of the situation, has Trudeau shown any sign of compromise, or done anything to give the protesters an off-ramp. Even as provincial governments have eased or rescinded Covid mandates and restrictions in the face of sharply declining case numbers and hospitalizations, Trudeau is holding fast. As Eric Kaufmannoted this week in the Telegraph, Trudeaus hypocrisy in these matters is blatant:

Contrast his combative posture towards the truckers with his gentle approach to protesters who would seem to share his philosophy. When Left-wing arsonists burned some 30 Catholic churches over a false claim that mass graves had been discovered near a former residential school for indigenous Canadians, Trudeau called the violence understandable. When indigenous protesters and their allies blocked rail lines and pipelines over a longer period than the trucker convoy, Trudeau patiently called for dialogue and mutual respect.

The Canadian prime ministers reactions to these events tell us that he condones actual political violence and disruptive blockades, as long he agrees with the people who are doing it. The truckers, though, have gotten neither dialogue nor respect from Trudeau and his administration. After all, to Trudeau theyre just a bunch of racists and misogynists with unacceptable views.

On Wednesday, he doubled down on the name-calling, responding to a conservative Jewish MP that Conservative Party members stand with people who wave swastikas, and stand with people who wave the Confederate flag (For that quip, Trudeau earned a rebuke from the speaker of the House of Commons, who reminded him to use words that are not inflammatory.)

At this point, if youre a protester in Canada, or someone who supports the protests, or even someone who thinks the protesters are wrong but the government has gone too far, the message from Trudeau is clear: We will not listen to you, we will not compromise with you, and if you dont comply with our orders, we will ruin you.

That is a recipe for violence, and Trudeau knows it. He wants to make an example out of these truckers because deep down he is an illiberal man with an intolerant worldview.

These protesters have the wrong views, so they dont deserve the dialogue and mutual respect afforded to left-wing protesters. For all his virtue-signaling about diversity, Trudeau doesnt really believe in Canada as a pluralistic society where people of different views and ways of life can live together in peace. He believes in a society where the little people, the people with the wrong views, do as theyre told.

The thing is, most of these protesters have done just that. The vast majority of the truckers are vaccinated. They have complied with some of the most severe Covid mandates and restrictions in the western world for two years now. They did all that was asked of them, and when they finally got fed up with it they organized a peaceful protest.

And for that, Trudeau is trying to crush them.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Texas Monthly, The Guardian, First Things, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Trudeau Doesn't Want To End The Protests Peacefully. He Wants Violence - The Federalist

As Republicans consider who ought to be tasked with responding to President Bidens State of the Union address on March 1, they have the luxury of an obvious, unobjectionable choice whose message speaks to the moment, and to their priorities in 2022: Virginias Lieutenant Governor, Winsome Sears.

The San Francisco school board recalls are just the latest sign that American voters are fed up with the state of things in almost every arena, but particularly when it comes to school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and the racial politicization of education.

They are tired of a White House and Democratic leadership in Washington which has spent the past year squabbling with its own flanks, left and center, and pretending despite all evidence that it is intolerant intransigent insurgency-minded Republicans who are the problem not inflation.

The White Houses massive miscalculations over the past year are obvious. Instead of taking the win with Operation Warp Speeds vaccines and using their wide availability as a path to get life, schools, and government policy back to normal as soon as possible, they doubled down on performative emergencies as a justification for insane policy packages no one understood. They doubled down on the Sunday show musings of Anthony Fauci, the arbitrary guidance of Rochelle Walensky, and the whiplash recommendations of their supposed experts at an alphabet soup of agencies. They doubled down on bureaucratic mandates and pressure campaigns that ran into the harsh reality of the Constitution.

No one of prominence to this point has been fired, not Fauci, not Walensky, not even the political hack they have running the Department of Health and Human Services. Even as retirements mount and the internal polling indicates Democrats have dramatically undermined their hopes for November, the Ron Klain White House just keeps on chugging toward that iceberg. They cant walk it back, you see theyre too invested in the permanent pandemic now.

The thing about the political sunk cost fallacy is that eventually, it sinks.

And thats exactly what is happening, most prominently in the Commonwealth of Virginia, where Glenn Youngkin, Winsome Sears, and Jason Miyares were swept into office as Terry McAuliffe danced onstage with Randi Weingarten. Republicans won on the basis of all of the above but particularly, they won by prioritizing what the Democrats and their collaborators in teachers unions, school administrators, and corrupt media did and continue to do to Americas children as an issue. It was a multiethnic slate elected by a multiethnic electorate, with a particular outpouring of support from Asian and immigrant communities who reject the lefts woke agenda and want to get their kids learning again.

Sears is an exceptional voice on these issues. She also is a model for a movement, not just confined to Republican circles, that will stand up directly against false accusations of racism and bigotry in American life. Instead of cowering and begging forgiveness, we ought to reject the false premise of racism, and have the courage to stand up against it, even when it is relentlessly repeated by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post.

(Theyll even do it with progressives in San Francisco just look at those evil Asian immigrants who dont care about racial injustice!)

In advancing this argument courageously, despite all the additional viciousness of the attacks one must face as a woman who is strongly conservative, Sears serves as a model of fortitude others should follow. Plus, she does it with style.

Responses to the State of the Union address are typically forgettable, and occasionally only remembered for infamous reasons. But one exception is that of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2010. He spoke to the chamber of the Virginia House of Delegates, benefitting from an active audience and a clear contrast to President Obamas agenda, representing a precursor to the Tea Party wave that came to Washington in 2010.

Theres one more reason that this years response should be Sears: it would serve as an implicit acknowledgment that Republicans arent going to take their eye off the ball for the 2022 midterms by getting sucked into 2024 too early. Much as Ron DeSantis is the belle of the ball at the moment, there are more of State of the Unions (probably from Joe Biden) that hell have the opportunity to respond to in due course.

The Democrat-complicit media acknowledges his existence, and works on a daily basis to tear him down. But when it comes to Winsome Sears? Theyd rather pretend she, and Americans like her, dont exist at all.

Dont let them.

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GOP Should Ask Winsome Sears To Respond To The State Of The Union - The Federalist