Monthly Archives: May 2022

Despite promises of transparency, the Biden administration is hiding its plans to undermine state control over election laws. Last spring, the White House issued Executive Order (EO) 14019, Promoting Access to Voting. The EO required every federal agency to submit a plan to register voters and encourage voter participation. It also required agencies to form strategies to invite non-governmental third parties to register voters.

To date, few details have been releasedand naturally, there are questions. What will these plans involve? To what degree and why will federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Land Management, and others be involved in get-out-the-vote drives? Who will determine that third parties selected to register voters are appropriately non-partisan?

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) responded to rising concerns about the ambiguity and radio silence on the details of this EO by submitting a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in July 2021. We wanted answers to completely reasonable questions about the EO, but the administration ignored our FOIA request.

To date, no federal agency has responded with the records we requested. What is the administration trying to hide?

Weve got an answer: Their silence is an attempt to get America to look the other way while they illegally involve themselves in state elections, which is far, far beyond the constitutional purview of the executive branch.

Its not difficult to see the motive behind this executive order. In the 2020 election, Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg funneled more than $350 millionZuckbucksto the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which was then sent to election officials across the country. While supposedly intended as assistance to operate elections during Covid-19, most jurisdictions used it for get-out-the-vote efforts. The funds were also targeted to predominantly Democrat districts and had the effect of boosting voter turnout in left-leaning areas.

Zuckbucks happened because no laws prevented it from happening. Once the extent of Zuckbucks was brought to light, states took action banning third-party funding in future elections. Several states also closed other loopholes and increased protections to stop any potential interference in local elections.

Attempts to block states efforts failed in Congress, so this EO became the administrations only option as a backdoor into state elections.

Despite state legislatures taking the security of their elections into their hands, as they are expressly elected to do, the Biden administration is strong-arming the executive branch and trespassing in state elections, where it does not belong and is not constitutionally permitted. This violates the separation of power embodied in our Constitution and is clearly at odds with both the Elections and Electors Clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The president lacks the legal authority required for the executive branch to intervene in elections the way EO 14019 directs. This means those federal agencies that comply with this order will surely exceed the scope of their authority, providing grounds for either Congress to intervene, or states to sue.

FGA is taking the next logical step in obtaining the transparency that the administration so emphatically promised. On April 20, we filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration in Middle District of Florida to compel them to provide us answers to pressing questions about the plans and strategies involved in this EO.

The clock is tickingmidterm elections are less than six months away. Yet when asked about an EO that essentially turns the daily business of federal government agencies into voter registration and mobilization drives, the American people are met with silence from the White House.

Americans should be wondering what the administration is trying to hide by their evasiveness. And every American voter should be demanding answers and the transparency that was originally promised by this administration.

Chase Martin is the legal affairs director for the Foundation for Government Accountability.

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Why Won't Biden Explain Why Federal Agencies Will Meddle In Elections? - The Federalist

What is conservative? columnist Bret Stephens asked in Tuesdays New York Times.

It is, he posits, above all, the conviction that abrupt and profound changes to established laws and common expectations are utterly destructive to respect for the law and the institutions established to uphold it especially when those changes are instigated from above, with neither democratic consent nor broad consensus.

Stephens was responding to the broad conservative and Christian excitement that Americas extreme abortion regime might finally be struck down by the Supreme Court; but Stephens might as well have been writing about J.D. Vances hard-fought Tuesday night victory in Ohios Republican primary. Or Blake Masters primary race to represent Arizona. Or Tucker Carlsons intellectual ascendancy. Or the rise of a young and invigorated American New Right.

Stephens is wrong, of course. Conservatism isnt remotely about process: Its about traditional wisdom and values; its about conserving things of generational, transcendent value.

It means understanding that man is fallen, and society must protect families, workers, traditions, and, yes, the unborn from being wiped aside; oppressed from above.

It means conserving the truth the truth about men and women,the truth about the unborn, the truth about humanequality, and the necessary limits on government power.

Thats not to say there isnt still an important place for process: In a civilization governed by prudent and benevolent institutions that buttress and strengthen traditional wisdom and values, process protects those cherished things from rapid change.

In a world governed by imprudent and vindictive institutions, however, that claw, gnash, and tear at traditional wisdom that usurp traditional values the process merely fools us into believing that what these institutions are doing is normal, when in reality it is profoundly abnormal.

In the September 1961 issue of Young Americans for Freedoms New Guard magazine, a young M. Stanton Evans asked, Can a conservative be a radical? Yes, he concluded: Confronted with an established revolution, the conservative must seek to change the status quo; he has no other means of affirming his tradition.

Vance understands this. That is why, Axioss Jonathan Swan and Lachlan Markay report, The Republican establishment privately regards [him] with the same disgust many felt toward Donald Trump when he entered the White House on Jan. 20, 2017.

Its why Senate Minority Whip John Thune looked forward to reading the coverage of Vances loss.

Its why one senior Republican aide told The Hill 70 percent of Senate Republicans share that sentiment.

The reality is, they should all fear Vance. Hes a man who doesnt care if Google is a private company, because they have too much power; and if you want to have a country where people can live their lives freely, you have to be concerned about power whether its concentrated in the government or concentrated in big corporations.

He thinks our corporate overlords would happily satiate us with whirling gizmos and gadgets while capturing our culture and selling us out to China. This places him directly at odds with tired, established Republicanism, which would prefer to slander the ghost of Ronald Reagan while they simp for corporations that work to undermine our national economy, our traditions, our families, and even our childrens sexuality.

Vance is also a man who doesnt really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another, and thinks its ridiculous that we are focused on their border over our own.

Far more than Ukraine, he cares about the fact that in [his] community right now, the leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl. This places him directly at odds with all of established Washington, where $5 billion for our countrys border security is too much to ask, but politicians crow about sending six times that amount to defend the sacred territorial integrity of anothers.

Vance is a man who thinks, If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.

So much of what we want to accomplish, he recognizes, is fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions, specifically the universities, which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country.

This once again places him directly at odds with Washington, which every years sends billions in federal aid to colleges and universities, with nary a whimper of a fight.

More broadly, Vance, Harpers editor James Pogue writes, believes that a well-educated and culturally liberal American elite has greatly benefited from globalization, the financialization of our economy, and the growing power of big tech.

This, he continues, has led an Ivy League intellectual and management class to adopt a set of economic and cultural interests that directly oppose those of people in places like Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.

In other words, Vance knows what time it is.

Hes joined in this understanding by Blake Masters, another New Right candidate for Senate who Republican leadership would rather see lose his primary.

Theyre joined by Tucker Carlson, whose influence over the New Right was enough to trigger The New York Times into putting 10,000 words, 1,150 hours of television-watching, nine reporters, and three pieces toward taking him out.

Theyre joined by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose fights with teachers and corporate America have earned him the ire of process-loving conservatives.

Theyre joined by the broader American New Right rising across the country.

And there are signs that together, were beginning to earn wins: that the rock of the permanent, institutional left-wing-revolution is showing cracks. In the past month alone, weve seen a bellwether American state choose an outspent New Right candidate to run for Senate, adding a young face and new voice to conservative leadership.

Weve seen elected politicians in Florida stand up and say, no, you wont get corporate carve-outs and perks, and use those to attack the parents and children of our state without consequence.

Weve seen the worlds richest man, Elon Musk, pick a fight with the entire ruling class, causing them to get so angry they exposed how anti-free speech they really were and then winning the fight to control Twitter.

Weve seen The New York Times full-body blow on a New Right cable host land as impotently as a limp-wristed pat.

Weve seen CNN Plus put down, with Chris Wallace finally (if only temporarily) off TV; his lasting legacy reduced to the Republican Party withdrawing from the liberal-dominated Commission on Presidential Debates.

Weve seen a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court imply that finally after a half century of political dodging and hiding the Supreme Court might strike down Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood.

And weve seen Senate leaders sit silently, or chuckle along with reporters, as they anticipate the New Rights failings. Weve seen columnists like Stephens complain that curtailing one of the worlds most barbarous abortion regimes would be a radical, not conservative, choice.

Thats not surprising, though. These men arent actually conservatives: theyre simple institutionalists. And in an age where Americas institutions her colleges and universities, corporate media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, hospitals and medical associations, Pentagon, Hollywood, childrens entertainment are dominated by the left, their acquiescing makes them what M. Stanton Evans derisively called silent partners in the work of destruction; silent partners in the lefts permanent revolution.

In this moment, we dont need silent partners: We need rebels willing to break the institutions of the left; to battle their champions in their own halls of power. We need men and women willing to fight for traditional wisdom and values; men and women who understand mankind is fallen, and that our elected leaders must protect families, workers, traditions and the unborn.

In an age where our institutions have become so used to living in the dark that they hate the light, we need men and women who are willing to fight for the truth.

In America today, we need radicals.

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JD Vance And The New Right Are Racking Up Wins Amid Backstabbing - The Federalist

Conservative candidates won a bunch of closely watched school board elections in Texas on Saturday.

One of the higher-profile losses was suffered by Jim Rice, a member of the Fort Bend Independent School District (ISD) since 2010. He is also the immediate past president of the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) where he has served on the board since 2012. TASB is a state affiliate of the National School Boards Association (NSBA)the same group that crafted the infamous letter to the Biden administration that accused parents who showed up to school board meetings of domestic terrorism. At least 22 states have severed ties with the NSBA, but not Texas yet.

Rice was beaten by Rick Garcia, a small-business owner who was a seventh-grade Texas history teacher in the district. Garcia will be joined on the board by David Hamilton, who ran for an open seat. Both winners were backed by the Republican Party. Fort Bend ISD serves around 80,000 students with more than 10,000 staff, just southwest of Houston.

There are 1,204 public school districts in Texas, with about 5.4 million students and 424,699 instructional staffthe most school districts and staff in the nation and second only to California in student enrollment. The May 7 election covered at least 47 major school districts with a combined enrollment of 1.4 million students (about 26 percent of Texas public school students), plus hundreds of other smaller districts in rural Texas.

This past Saturday, there were a number of outstanding victories for parents across Texas. This election was a referendum on the radical policies and indoctrination that have taken place in classrooms across the state. Parents are taking back control and getting schools back to basics, said Christopher Zook, Jr., who runs FFOT PAC. The PAC focuses on electing freedom-minded candidates to school boards of all sizes across Texas.

In Tarrant County, school board candidates backed by three conservative PACs were doing very well, with one group spending $500,000 to support candidates in four school districts in Fort Worth suburbs. With campaigns focused on critical race theory and pornographic books in libraries, 10 of 11 conservative candidates in the four districts won election, with the eleventh making the runoff scheduled for June 18. Only two of the 11 were incumbents.

In Hays County, a suburb of Austin that tipped to Joe Biden in 2020, two conservatives, Olivia Barnard and Tricia Quintero, won election to the Dripping Springs ISD, ousting a liberal incumbent and winning an open seat. Quintero said, This election cycle, conservative school board candidates swept into office statewide, proving that voters want parental rights and family values defended. The results leave no doubt that Texans do not want CRT in the classroom, cannot afford soaring tax bills, and will not stand for the politicization of the classroom. She added, Its time for us, as a state, to move toward a better, brighter future.

The election results caught the attention of Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who tweeted: Conservatives won school board elections across Texas. Parents are more involved and active in school elections and school policies than ever before. No one cares more about children than their parents. The power of parents will continue to expand in Texas.

Campaigning for reelection, Abbott called for a Parents Bill of Rights in January along with expanding families access to course material, preventing the collection of personal information unless required, and cracking down on educators who provide minors with access to explicit material. These issues largely powered Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkins upset victory last November.

Abbott will face former Democratic U.S. Rep. Beto ORourke in November. ORourke lost a close election to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 and subsequently performed poorly in the Democratic presidential nomination contest in 2020. At a recent campaign stop, ORourke called for more spending on education, including $8,000 a year more for teachers. He also called for canceling the states STAAR standardized tests.

ORourkes allies in the teachers unions more bluntly criticized Abbott. Andrea Chevalier, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educatorseffectively, a teachers unionsaid that Abbotts remarks pit educators against parents and creating this narrative thats really harmful for public schools (making) it seem that parents need to take these bold actions.

This heightened effort by conservatives and concerned parents will have to be sustained for future success. As a right-to-work state with no collective bargaining for government employees, Texas technically doesnt have teachers unions. But many teachers have a fear of being sued for classroom actions and the teachers associations offer legal protection against that for some $500 a year in feesa portion of which goes into politics.

Further, national unions will have a significant interest in beating back a conservative surge in the second-most-populous state. School boards serve as important benches to develop talent for higher political officeone thats been largely unpopulated by conservatives in recent decades.

These election results were not happenstance, Zook said. They were the culmination of years of sunlight that has been shone on the radical ideologies being taught in classrooms across Texas. Parents spoke up with one loud voice and said they do not want radical indoctrination in our schools.

Chuck DeVore is vice president of national initiatives at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a former California legislator, special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army (retired) Reserve. He's the author of two books, "The Texas Model: Prosperity in the Lone Star State and Lessons for America," and "China Attacks," a novel.

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Conservatives Who Promise To Stop Racism Win Texas School Boards - The Federalist

While the deal is not yet final, Elon Musk is buying Twitter and hes promising to make changes to the platform, most notably by lessening the censorship that goes on behind the scenes.

While those of us who doomscroll the hellscape that is the bird app have seen some signs of life in response to Musks pledge long-banned accounts being reinstated, dormant users returning, people on the right finally getting their blue checks it increasingly seems like those still in charge want to leave as much of a mess for the next owner to clean up as possible.

An example of such began showing itself last week when podcaster Eliza Bleu sent her first op-ed to a friend and asked her to share it. When the friend opened the message, she was greeted with a warning stating Message hidden due to suspicious content.

So much for being a place to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve and do not detract from a free and global conversation.

Bleus inaugural op-ed was about Twitter, but that doesnt seem to be what triggered the algorithm, or person masquerading as an algorithm, as the article was more specifically about how Musks changes could help lessen child predators ability to use the app to share media showing sexual abuse. It was not a broadside against Twitters current modus operandi. It was not a call for digital anarchy. It wasnt even that pro-Musk. Nonetheless, whatever algorithmic changes that have been rolled out in recent days caught her message.

And shes not alone. This also happened to me when I attempted to share a link to an article I wrote in 2014 about becoming pro-life. Granted, I was knowingly engaging in thoughtcrime given the leak of Justice Alitos draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson, and Twitter would love nothing more than to silence opposition and cow any wavering justices into submission. Regardless, this is what my friends saw:

While my friends, as well as Bleus, were able to view the message, this development is reminiscent of Twitters reaction to The New York Posts reporting on Hunter Bidens laptop. At the time, users could not only not tweet a link to the piece, they couldnt even direct message it, content warning or otherwise. Jack Dorsey may have called that decision a mistake, but some of the coders behind the scenes evidently do not share that opinion, even today.

When announcing his acquisition of the company, Musk wrote, Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. Today, with these subtle changes, Twitter is now still trying to not only limit debate but prevent friends from sharing their work with one another.

Look, were all free not to use Twitter. Honestly, the world would be a better place if none of us did, but Musks observation that its become the digital town square is accurate. And while physical town squares also feature content moderation in the form of various local laws, theres no way to totally silence us as Twitter does. If one were to go old school and write a message on a piece of posterboard with a Sharpie, it would take some time for the police to remove us from our chosen corner of the square, assuming wed actually broken a law.

When it comes to social media, there are no such laws, or even norms, which are supposedly all the rage these days. Instead, its totally dependent on the whims of the Wizards of Oz, pulling strings behind the curtain. And Twitters wizards are obviously pulling as many strings as possible ahead of the sale, hoping to create a Byzantine mess so large that its impossible to clean up. Elon, though, can fix it.

If he were feeling truly philanthropic, hed immediately delete Twitter in its entirety upon completion of the sale. Thats unlikely to happen given that his goal is to not only free up the platform, but also make it profitable. Musk may be after more conversation, and hes obviously not trying to destroy it.

But since the rot is still deep within the company, seeking to control which conversations get to happen even now, Musk must channel one such banned user, roll in on day one, and tell a whole lot of employees, Youre fired. If he truly wants a digital town square, its the only way to remove the chains that a bunch of lefty nerds are trying to keep us in.

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Even As The Elon Musk Sale Closes, Twitter Is Still Ramping Up Efforts To Suppress Content - The Federalist

President Joe Biden announced a pair of hiring moves Thursday as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki heads for the exit on May 13.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will step into Psakis role as press secretary and Anita Dunn, an adviser from the campaign who also co-chaired the transition team, will return to the White House as senior adviser and assistant to the president. Dunn, who was a White House senior adviser in the early days of the administration through August, also led strategy for disgraced ex-Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

Psaki has set the standard for returning decency, respect and decorum to the White House Briefing Room, Biden said in a statement. I thank Jen her service to the country, and wish her the very best as she moves forward.

Psaki will be taking a job at MSNBC following her White House departure. That leaves the White House comms shop to Jean-Pierre and Dunn.

According to BuzzFeed in 2017, Dunn was not paid for her work on behalf of Weinstein, who was convicted of rape in 2020, but helped the celebrity producer navigate the public relations crisis from the sex scandals. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison at 67 years old after six women testified against him.

In the first year of the Obama administration, where Dunn also served as White House communications director with an open vengeance for Fox News, the Wall Street Journal reported on Dunns admiration for former Chinese dictator Mao Tse Tung as a favorite political philosopher.

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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Biden Hires Harvey Weinstein Apologist As White House Adviser - The Federalist

Many people on the right are seeking ways to escape the dumpster fire of Twitter. Since its Screen-Free Week, this seems a good time to ponder strategies for reducing our consumption of the propaganda and biased garbage proliferated by leftist corporate media and disseminated on social media.

While I still read publications like the Washington Post regularly, I really do try to limit my consumption of such outlets for my mental and emotional health. Actually, my personal rule applies to all digital media, regardless of political affiliation.

Thats for good reason, given the ever-growing evidence of how digital media affects us and even reshapes our brains. Its for this reason that I take time every day often in the evenings when Im trying to wind down to consume good, intellectually stimulating print media. Below are some of my favorite print magazines that are well worth the price of an annual subscription.

At a recent small gathering of prominent conservatives, a friend I trust and admire declared the Claremont Review of Books to be the best magazine in print today. Its increasingly difficult to argue otherwise. The quarterly review of politics and statesmanship has been around in its current form for more than 20 years, under the helm of conservative academic Charles R. Kesler.

Recent editions certainly can claim their fair share of big names on the intellectual right: Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Anton, Christopher Caldwell, Nathan Pinkoski, Helen Andrews, Sohrab Ahmari, Kyle Smith, Amy Wax, Charles Murray, Hadley Arkes. And thats just in the most recent issue! Perhaps more than any other publication, the CRB in recent years has provided intellectual ballast to conservative repudiations of the activist lefts obsession with racial, gender, and sexual identity politics, while providing a plethora of interesting and sometimes surprising book reviews.

Worth mentioning, it published one of the most important pieces of opinion journalism in the last ten years: Antons 2016 The Flight 93 Election, which made a compelling case for Americans to elect Trump that year.

I have been a faithful subscriber to First Things longer than any other print magazine 20 years now, since my grandfather first ordered me a student subscription while I was a first-year at the University of Virginia. Then, as now, it has continued to offer some of the most insightful religious-based commentary on the public square. Indeed, as a religious studies minor, I found First Things to often provide me with the intellectual ammunition to debate my leftist, a-religious fellow students, and even professors, in the classroom.

First Things also features some of the most important voices in conservatism, including R.R. Reno, Mark Bauerlein, Darel Paul, Carl Trueman, Gary Saul Morson, Theodore Dalrymple, Glenn C. Arbery, Matthew Rose, and Algis Valiunas, among many others. Some of the best critiques of critical race theory and the 1619 Project have appeared in its pages, as well as some of the most thoughtful and spiritually uplifting theological commentary. As an ecumenical journal, it has something for everyone, including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, and Jews.

Im also an old supporter of The American Conservative, beginning my subscription while still at the University of Virginia. At the time, I was a confused and frustrated conservative, a wayfarer looking for an intellectual home among friends who were all supportive of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, conflicts I detested (although, little did I know, I would in a few years serve in the former one, more than once). A fellow student suggested I try TAC. I was in love from the first issue.

TAC promotes what it calls Main Street Conservatism, by which it means a conservatism that is focused on the values of communities, families, and faith. Always opposed to benighted foreign interventionism (something that made it an ostracized outsider in conservatism for many years), it was also years ahead of its time in arguing for economic policies that would protect American workers and their families.

Indeed, one of its founders, Patrick Buchanan, ran for president (unsuccessfully) on that agenda twice in the 1990s. TACs content in the print edition is not only engaging, but intellectually provocative, daringly willing to put ideas over ideology.

Think of The New Criterion, published out of New York, as the more stolid, artistically knowledgeable counterpart to CRB. It features many of the same writers, but its content is much heavier on the arts: not only poetry, but theater, sculpture, art exhibits, music, etc.

Nevertheless, the New Criterion always has something for everyone the monthly review by Roger Kimball and James Bowmans reflections on the media are alone worth the price of admission. So too are Kyle Smiths witty and often hilarious reviews of the theater scene in New York (lets just say theres not much in contemporary drama to recommend itself!).

I wouldnt be a very good contributing editor if I didnt put in a plug for the place where Im a contributing editor: New Oxford Review. Of all the magazines Ive mentioned, its the oldest, founded in 1977.

Although a conservative Catholic monthly, it has featured the work of a wide variety of intellectuals, writers, and even politicians, including Walker Percy, Sheldon Vanauken, Bobby Jindal, Stanley L. Jaki, Peter Kreeft, Avery Dulles, James V. Schall, John Lukacs, Robert N. Bellah, L. Brent Bozell Jr., Christopher Lasch, and Robert P. George. It has also been willing to feature diverse content with sometimes opposing viewpoints something I believe to be a sign not only of intellectual health but moral courage.

For the sake of intellectual honesty and journalistic professionalism, it is willing to take the risk of offending even its most loyal readers. Not many journals can claim to do that in 2022!

These magazines, and a few others (e.g. The Spectator, The Lamp), provide me the intellectual and spiritual stimulation and comfort to help guide me through the confusion and anger-inducing emotions of the daily battles in the digital realm. All are worth paying their very affordable subscription fees, which are all well under $100 per year.

All should be read with a hearty cup of tea or coffee, or, in the evenings, a good beer or whiskey. For those looking for a break from or perhaps a counter to the grind of our digital age, consider one of the above excellent print magazines. You wont be disappointed. Happy reading!

Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelors in history and masters in teaching from the University of Virginia and a masters in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.

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5 Print Magazines That Will Make You More Informed - The Federalist

According to evidence presented in court, actress Amber Heard lied within the first moment she stepped onto the witness stand last week, saying: I am here because my ex-husband is suing me for an op-ed I wrote.

The Washington Post op-ed at the heart of the defamation lawsuit from actor Johnny Depp carried the byline, By Amber Heard, and Heard should be held responsible for putting her name on its contents, but the op-ed was anything but written by Heard.

In fact, in a disturbing breach of journalistic and nonprofit ethics, testimony in the tragic trial of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard reveals Depp should put two other defendants on trial: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Washington Post. The two organizations raise millions of dollars on brand reputations that hinge on values of transparency, honesty, and ethics that they violated in writing and publishing the allegedly defamatory op-ed.

In a carefully orchestrated operation, extensive documentation of which Ive detailed on Substack, we now know from testimony and email evidence that the communications, development, artist engagement, and legal teams of the ACLU crafted, wrote, lawyered, and placed the salacious 765-word Washington Post op-ed that implied Depp was a wife-beater with a 26-word assertion: two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our cultures wrath for women who speak out.

The ACLU was a co-conspirator with Ms. Heard, Depps attorney, Ben Chew, said during his arguments on Tuesday. Of course, Mr. Depp chose not to sue them, responded Heards lawyer, Benjamin Rottenborn. Heards and Depps PR firms didnt comment further. The ACLU and Washington Post didnt return several requests for comment.

Two slips-of-the-tongue during the recorded deposition of ACLU Chief Operating Officer Terence Dougherty shared in court reveal exactly how the ACLU and the Washington Post were complicit in a hit job against Depp.

In the first Freudian slip, 14:30:51 into his deposition, Dougherty explained that emails in Exhibit 41 documented ACLU staffers from its fundraising development department discussing the placement of Ambers ad

He quickly tried to correct himself: Not ad. Sorry. I mean op-ed.

No, he said it: the placement of Ambers ad.

Thats what the op-ed was: earned media, as they call it in the media industry, for the ACLU, Heard, and the release of the Warner Bros. film, Aquaman.

Then, in the second slip, at 14:40:35 in his deposition, Dougherty explained how Stacy Sullivan, deputy director of editorial and strategic communications at the ACLU from September 2014 through October 2019, according to her LinkedIn account, emailed Michael Larabee, the Posts op-ed editor and top boss in the opinions section, then Larabees colleagues Michael Duffy and Mark Lasswell when she got an automatic out-of-office reply from Larabee.

In the second slip, Dougherty said about Sullivan: She reached out to him first about placing the ad from Heard. This time, he didnt even correct himself.

Everyone involved in this situation used Depps cachet for private gain. The ACLU used Heards relationship with Depp to win earned media, which is much more lucrative and trustworthy than a paid advertisement. The Washington Post sold newspapers and got clicks. The ACLU got a donation. Heard earned status as a womens rights activist.

In my 35 years of professional journalism, the last 20 of them writing op-eds, I have never before witnessed a more explicit example of deception. Some years ago, I taught a course on writing the reported op-ed at Georgetown University, and if any of my students had tried to pull off what Heard and the ACLU did, I would have had to fail them for the serious ethical violation of passing off somebodys work as their own.

Publishing an op-ed that someone else has written for you is no different than going online and buying a term paper. I get it, not everyone is a writer. We all benefit from editors. Ive used editors and wordsmiths to help me with drafts, but as authors we have an ethical duty to be the ones to first put words down in writing.

But, in the fall of 2018, Heards op-ed was the brainchild of communications staffers at the ACLU. The ACLU had published a blog post in August 2016, following Heards divorce from Depp, with this positive headline: Actress Amber Heard Donates Millions to Support the ACLU and Its Work Fighting Violence Against Women. The page featured a banner image, Speak Freely. The tags on the post were Violence Against Women and Womens Rights.

In the hallmarks of a pay-to-play operation, Heard had donated $350,000 to the ACLU in August 2016, pledging $3.5 million. Of that, Dougherty testified he believes only $1.3 million was paid, with Depp paying $100,000 and billionaire Elon Musk, who dated Heard after her divorce, attributed to a June 2017 payment of $500,000 and a December 2018 payment of $350,000.

On Nov. 6, 2018, at 2:22 p.m., Gerry Johnson, who according to his LinkedIn was then an ACLU staffer in communications strategy, sent an email to Heards publicist at the time, Jodi Gottlieb. It said, Id like your and Ambers thoughts on doing an op-ed in which she discusses the ways in which survivors of gender-based violence have been made less safe under the Trump administration and how people can take action.

Johnson even framed the piece as depicting Heard as a gender-based violence, or GBV, survivor, writing: If she feels comfortable, she can interweave her personal story, saying how painful it is as a GBV survivor to witness these setbacks.

After her colleague, Johnson, planted this idea, Robin Schulman, a communications strategist at the ACLU, took on the task of writing the first draft of the op-ed, according to Doughertys testimony and ACLU emails used as exhibits in court.

Over the next 23 days, through Nov. 29, 2018, the ACLUs communications, legal, and development teams went back and forth with Heards PR team and lawyers on the details that would be shared about her relationship with Depp in the op-ed.

That day, Nov. 29, 2018, at 1:12 p.m., Jessica Weitz, director of artist engagement at the ACLU, sent an email to Heard, identified as A H, with an attachment, marked as the eighth version of the op-ed, and the subject line, amber op-ed viii.docx. She noted the op-ed had to pass through quite a few lawyers [sic] first.

Two hours later, at 3:20 p.m., Schulman sent a new draft of the op-ed to Weitz to forward to Heard with the note: I tried to gather your fire and rage and really interesting analysis and shape that into op-ed form. Incredibly, in this game of deception, she said, I hope it sounds true to you.

She added, Your lawyers should review this for the way I skirted around talking about your marriage. Again, Heard did not even write her own draft.

From the office of communications strategy at the ACLU, Johnson offered some media outlets to pitch the piece: the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, and Teen Vogue, which has become a go-to for hard-left content.

On Dec. 11, 2018, another 12 days after the first draft was shared and just more than one month since the ACLU first planted the idea of an op-ed, according to a reading of the email in court, it was Weitz who pitched the timing of the op-eds placement. In an email, Weitz wrote to the ACLU team: The goal is to get this out this week to capitalize on the tremendous campaign for Aquaman. (The emails havent been filed yet as court records, but are read on the deposition videos.)

According to court testimony, Weitz also said in an email that Heard wanted to get her temporary restraining order into the op-ed. Is there an artful way to do that? Weitz asked.

It was left to the ACLUs Sullivan to pitch the op-ed. According to Doughertys deposition, she emailed the pitch toLarabee and others at the Washington Post.

Starting off with casual familiarity, she punctuated her pitch with a juicy parenthetical phrase: Hey Michael, wondering if we might interest you in a piece by Amber Heard (who as you may recall, was beaten up during her brief marriage to Johnny Depp), on what the incoming Congress can do to help protect women in similar situations. She just slipped in that serious allegation about Depp.

When Sullivan got an out-of-office reply, she forwarded the pitch to Duffy and Lasswell at the Post. After the Post accepted the op-ed, according to court testimony Weitz celebrated, writing in an email: Its going to the Washington Post!!!

Then on Dec. 17, 2018, in an email with the subject line, Re: Language TIME SENSITIVE, the ACLUs Shulman continued to massage the op-ed with Heards attorney, Eric George. A H was just on the CC line, copied in the messages.

The next day, Dec. 18, 2018, the Washington Post published an op-ed in its Opinions section with the headline: Amber Heard: I spoke up against sexual violence and faced our cultures wrath. That has to change. It included the words crafted artfully and deliberately by the team at the ACLU: I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our cultures wrath for women who speak out.

Larabee, Duffy, and Lasswell should have all known better. Getting a pitch from the deputy director of editorial and strategic communications at the ACLU is a huge red flag that they wrote the piece. Did the Washington Post editors even ask?

It was reckless, irresponsible, and defamatory to imply without a conviction that Depp had been a domestic violence abuser. Thats journalism 101. And Heard, the ACLU, and the Washington Post are responsible for the headline that ran, alleging sexual violence.

No matter the verdict of the case, they need to fix their misconduct. To right their wrongs, they should do three things: apologize to Depp for publishing the fake op-ed that wasnt even written by Heard, retract the op-ed, and donate to charities that actually fight domestic violence.

In 2011, the UKs Guardian published an op-ed headlined, The ghostwritten op-ed: an unacceptable deception. Author Dan Gillmor asked: If Id fail a journalism student for a paper written by another, why does the media give a pass to the rich and powerful?

Its that same breach of trust the ACLU and Washington Post are silent about today. We dont need closing arguments in the case against Heard to issue a verdict on the unethical breach of the public trust by these two institutions of power. Guilty.

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How The WaPo And ACLU Helped Amber Heard Attack Johnny Depp - The Federalist

In the lefts furor over a leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court that would, if finalized, overturn Roe v. Wade and send abortion law back to states jurisdiction, its impossible not to notice how many men really, really dont want to let abortion go.

I have sympathy for a nave woman whos been fed the lie that shes trapped and abortion is the only way out. Shes wrong, of course, and still responsible for her act. But shes often the victim of pressure and exploitation if not from people around her, then certainly from the abortion industrial complex that profits from murdering children and carelessly scarring would-be mothers.

But I harbor no such sympathy for men who melt into panic at the idea that they could no longer pressure their girlfriends, wives, or daughters into killing their babies. There is no more blatant act of cowardice, nothing that flies so directly in the face of the most basic obligations of manhood, than a man who wants to have his way with a woman and then force her to shoulder all of the consequences.

This selfish attitude is part of why we as a society find rape so heinous. Only the cruelest of cowards would force his appetites on a woman, then slink away to leave her with the physical, emotional, and psychological burden of their actions. A man who impregnates a woman and then tries to force her to kill their child is, in some sense, doing the same thing hes leaving her with the physical consequences, the emotional trauma, and the psychological guilt of taking an innocent life, for his own convenience.

Abortion allows a man to shirk the basic responsibility of taking care of and providing for his child and the mother of his child. In some cases, a man may see it as his ticket out of being obligated to marry the woman with whom hes conceived a life. It allows him to continue his behavior without fear of biological consequences.

Thats why its so infuriating and telling to see men rushing to keep women on the abortionists table and babies in the medical wastebasket.

CNN brought on an expert in such cowardly coercion to help lead its coverage after the courts draft decision leaked. While Jeffrey Toobin earned infamy for playing with himself on camera, in 2009 he had a child with Casey Greenfield, his former colleagues daughter. Toobin, who is married to a different woman, pressured Greenfield to abort the child and reportedly even offer[ed] money to terminate the pregnancy.

So of course Toobin was panicked at the idea that his ability to pressure his sexual partners into aborting his offspring might be eroded. This is a constitutional earthquake if it stands, he fretted, and American life, not just American law, will be very different if this is the law of the land.

But even men who, as far as we know, dont have such intimate experience with such matters have been just as adamant about keeping state legislators from limiting or banning abortion.

ABC News senior national correspondent Terry Moran had an unhinged meltdown directed at a tactful and collected Mallory Carroll of the Susan B. Anthony List on Tuesday.

Do you believe, if abortion is murder, women should be punished as criminals? he asked just before his freakout.

When Carroll explained that abortion is an exploitation of women and a way for men to cover up crimes of rape and infidelity and other sexual behavior, Moran interrupted her with a nonsensical rant noting Charlie Mansons dad beat him before accusing her of infantilizing women who are pressured into abortions.

Carroll highlighted that abortionists are the ones taking the childs life, subjecting the mother to guilt and trauma, and profiting from it, but Moran continued his minutes-long breakdown by condescendingly claiming The poor women cant make up their own minds like adults, and should be coddled, but thats, I guess thats your position. The whole exchange is worth watching its even more awful and cringe-inducing than it sounds.

Its really something to watch Moran browbeat a woman with disingenuous assumptions and patronizing interruptions, all supposedly in the name of womens rights. He cant stand an intelligent woman challenging his paradigm that women should shut up and kill their babies so men like him wont be inconvenienced.

Instead, he willfully distorts her argument, snaps at her, talks down to her, and then has the audacity to present himself as being on the side of women. Its a dead giveaway of his panic about men losing power to exploit women if not exploiting them on a personal level, then at least exploiting their fears about the abortion debate for political gain.

Toobin and Moran arent the only ones making cowardly fools of themselves this week, either.

California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell went into full conspiracy mode to preserve mens ability to pressure women into abortions. The Republicans wont stop with banning abortion. They want to ban interracial marriage. Do you want to save that? he asked on Twitter, ignoring the fact that conservative Justice Clarence Thomas is in just such a marriage, and potentially violating ethics laws with the tweet.

President Joe Biden, who claims to be a devout Catholic, is also fighting hard to keep women subjugated by the horrors of abortion, even pledging to use his administration to fight a potential Supreme Court reversal of Roe (though even he couldnt help a verbal slip admitting that abortion takes the life of a child).

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the potential court decisions abominable in a joint statement with fellow Democrat and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, adding that it would inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years not just on women but on all Americans.

The list of examples from Bill Gates to Barstools Dave Portnoy goes on. Why are all these men so obsessed with having women kill their babies and subjecting those women to a lifetime of trauma and guilt? We hardly have to wonder why Toobin wants to ensconce abortion. But why so many others, if not for similar reasons?

Responsibility for others is an intrinsic part of masculinity as God designed it. Forcing a woman to abort a child not only takes one life and ruins another, it rebels against the very essence of what a man is supposed to be.

Its one of the most cowardly, evil, petulant, selfish, abusive, smarmy things a man could do and defending a mans license to do such a thing isnt much better.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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Why Are So Many Men Desperate To Kill Babies And Traumatize Women? - The Federalist

The Biden administrations efforts to impose transgender ideology on the nations children and schools are going into overdrive, and leading the charge is Dr. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health.

Levine, a man who became a physician and raised a family before transitioning, has been celebrated by leftists and the corporate media as the first female four-star admiral in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service and a Woman of the Year. But the debate about this has gone beyond such absurdities or the willingness of Big Tech censors to punish those who mocked or denied Levines pretensions to being one of Americas most prominent females.

Levine has gone on the offensive against states that seek to enforce parental rights over the willingness of schools to push transgender ideology on children or to ban treatments for minors that amount to life-altering decisions or mutilations. These laws, passed by Texas and Florida, amount to a retaking of the public square for sanity and traditional norms about the way the medical profession deals with children. But Levine refers to them as insidious actions that are politically motivated and really harm the children involved.

Unlike leftist ideologues and media companies like Disney that have sought to normalize the indoctrination of transgender ideology on students as young as kindergarteners, Levine isnt just advocating for dangerous policies. As a fawning interview with NPR made clear, the full force of the federal government is now behind the threats issued by the pediatrician-turned-admiral to go after anyone or any state that seeks to protect children from such dangerous policies.

Characterizing efforts by states to prohibit life-altering surgeries on minors as political attacks against trans young people, Levine said that we encourage trans and gender-diverse youth and their families [who] are feeling they are being discriminated against in Texas or any other state [to] contact our office.

In the NPR article, Levine doesnt just falsely claim that no qualified or respected doctor disagrees with the idea of pushing hormone treatments that will render children sterile or surgery that will mutilate them. There is no argument among medical professionals, he said, thereby dismissing the justified concerns of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and the studies he has cited that point to serious problems with allowing children to choose sterilizations and mutilations with no chance of reversal.

Levine also threatens that anyone who opposes such practices may also be investigated by the federal governments Health and Human Services Departments Office of Civil Rights.

Going even further and without a trace of irony, Levine suggests that the U.S. Department of Education would also regard efforts to stop transgender indoctrination as somehow a violation of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. This is despite the fact that fealty to transgender myths has made a mockery of the law that paved the way for more women to take part in sports by allowing biological males to compete and dominate in competitions solely intended for females. Instead of using Title IX to protect women as it was originally intended, Levine says, it will be employed for sexual and gender minorities.

Levine makes much of the anguish experienced by youths who believe they ought to be a different sex and says that the power of the state should be employed to help them transition. Gender dysphoria is real, but as authors like Abigail Shrier have pointed out and as Dr. Ladapo argues, many if not most of those who experience these feelings find that their dysphoria subsides either before or after they become adults. Ladapo says that 80 percent of young people who claim to be transgender give up such desires because they either are homosexual or come to accept their sex.

Levine suggests those who disagree with authorizing schools and physicians to proceed with medical and surgical services that cannot be reversed are ignorant, insensitive, or bigoted. But this dispute goes beyond efforts to compel people to call those who assert that they are transgender by their preferred pronouns. Nor does it have anything to do with the right of adults to make choices about their lives or to call themselves whatever they like.

Levine isnt merely endorsing education curricula that facilitate the efforts of the transgender lobby to introduce children to concepts about their options for choosing a different sex than their own.

The federal governments guidelines that Biden has promulgated and the threat of civil rights lawsuits and prosecutions seek to intimidate states, school boards, educators, and parents. Claims by minors of being transgender are not merely to be encouraged. Local authorities and doctors must, according to Levine, comply with the demands of suffering children going through years that are difficult for everyone to prevent them from, as Levine puts it, going through the wrong puberty.

The idea that children can order up life-altering surgeries or treatments is unheard of as a matter of law in civilized societies. Or at least it was in the United States until Levine and the transgender lobby gained the sort of power that puts the federal government behind their agenda. That is why Florida and Texas were right to ban such treatments for minor children.

Yet what is equally disturbing about this controversy is the ability of ideologues like Levine, supported by woke corporate media outlets, to silence debate about the issue by treating all dissent from their positions as bigotry. That is why social media companies enforcement of diktats from the transgender lobby is so pernicious.

Its not just the injustice of shutting up journalists and publications that wont bend their knees to the new woke catechism. Their goal is to silence all dissent and forestall any debate about the impact on children of dangerous treatments put forward by fashionable gender affirming quacks, in spite of the massive pushback from outraged parents who are rising up against such toxic policies.

This makes the willingness of states to resist the federal guidelines all the more important. It also is one more piece of evidence that shows that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis decision to take on the Walt Disney Company in favor of parental rights and against transgender indoctrination isnt just good politics, but also absolutely necessary if children are to be protected against the damage that Levines guidelines are inflicting on them.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.

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Trans-Crazed Quacks Want Your Kids And Will Win If You Don't Fight Back - The Federalist

A KGB term of tradecraft is now part of U.S. Department of Homeland Security governance.

The new Biden administration Disinformation Governance Board, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN, is a small working group to address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence without infringing on free speech and while protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right to privacy. The board has no operational authority of its own, Mayorkas said.

Mayorkas denied that the board will cause American citizens to be monitored, saying, we, the Department of Homeland Security, dont monitor American citizens.

That might be true. But Mayorkas went on to say the Disinformation Governance Board is mandated to provide best practices and communicate those best practices to the operators in agencies that do have operational authority.

Never before has disinformation governance been part of the official U.S. government terminology for defending the internal security of the country.

Disinformation is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya. It is a KGB form of tradecraft from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB First Chief Directorate, otherwise known as the KGB foreign spy academy.

Disinformation is definition 159 in the KGBs Lexicon of KGB Terms, published internally by the Soviet foreign intelligence service before 1984. Here it is: Misleading by means of false information; A form of intelligence work in the Active Measures field, which consists of the secret channeling towards an adversary of false information, especially prepared materials and fabricated documents designed to mislead him and prompt him to take decisions and measures which fit with the plans and intentions of the Intelligence Service.

Active measures is another KGB term of tradecraft. The KGB lexicon defines active measures as Agent operational measures aimed at exerting useful influence on aspects of the political life of a target country which are of interest, its foreign policy, the solution of international problems, misleading the adversary, undermining and weakening its positions, the disruption of his hostile plans, and the achievement of other aims.

Disinformation is a component of active measures. Foreign agent operational measures make the defense against disinformation and active measures a counterintelligence function, not a homeland security one. DHS has no statutory counterintelligence authority. That authority, as well as the authority to combat foreign disinformation and propaganda, rests by law with the FBI.

Whether the FBI remains fit for this role is another matter. The point is that combating foreign disinformation domestically is counterintelligence, which by law is not a DHS responsibility.

Even if the Disinformation Governance Board did have such a legitimate purpose, it would rest in the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Instead, this disinformation board is housed in the very political DHS Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans, and therefore is a potential domestic political instrument.

Thus the board, as Mayorkas explained it, will not spy on American citizens free speech per se, but will provide the best practices and policy guidance to those who do.

Disinformation did not enter into widespread use in English until the 1980s, when the Reagan administration, with bipartisan support in Congress, launched a State Department-led Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation to combat Soviet political warfare worldwide, without impinging on the free speech of American citizens. (References to that office have been practically wiped from online search engines.) The State Department retains a small office to monitor foreign disinformation.

KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn, Czechoslovakian intelligence officer Ladislav Bittman, KGB Major Ladislav Levchenko, and others shed more light on disinformation after they fled to the United States between 1961 and 1979 during the Cold War. All agreed that disinformation was a purely KGB term of tradecraft. All wrote books on the subject.

The origin of disinformation as an operational word is rooted in Joseph Stalins NKVD secret police, with some references to the earliest days of World War II. The Oxford English Dictionary has no definition of the word prior to 1947, when the Cold War began. Merriam-Webster traces disinformation to hearings on Communist subversion in 1953, and to Nazi and Soviet techniques as early as 1940. Occasional usage of the word appeared in the 19th century as an infrequent, contrived, non-standard synonym of misinformation.

Misinformation, of course, isnt the same as disinformation. It is a mis-statement, or the inadvertent or careless spreading of inaccuracies or untruths, without malign intent. Yet Mayorkas and others have used the two terms interchangeably. So have many public experts.

Under the Trump administration, DHS created a Countering Foreign Influence Task Force within the departments Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Biden administration morphed it into the Mis- Dis- and Malinformation (MDM) team whose stated job is to build national resilience to MDM and foreign influence activities.

Note the modification: keeping the old countering foreign influence function and adding what MDM calls false or misleading information in general. MDM thus became a federal government influence operational entity of its own. The Disinformation Governance Board is an interagency add-on within the DHS policy shop.

While it does explain the distinctions between misinformation and disinformation, the DHS MDM Team has sanitized the origins of disinformation as a KGB term of tradecraft. Indeed, it erased the distinction between disinformation as a foreign active measures technique and the simple use or abuse of words in domestic American political discourse.

Last year, DHS re-defined disinformation as follows: Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.

So DHS re-defined disinformation, sanitized the term of its KGB roots, and expanded the definition by removing the foreign element and applying the label to First Amendment-protected political discourse. DHS then officially adopted the KGB word as its own to create a political board for governance of disinformation whatever that is to guide agencies to monitor American citizens free speech.

J. Michael Waller is senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy. His areas of concentration are propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion. He is a former professor at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC. A former instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School, he is an instructor/lecturer at the John F Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.

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Biden's 'Disinformation' Board Is A Tool Straight From Soviet Russia's KGB - The Federalist