Category Archives: Federalist

Federalist Senior Editor Christopher Bedford said the Democrats are scrambling to adjust their platform as a way to bring up their polling numbers.

If you look at this, going down to the border and tackling the surge in violence are two things that not only were not at all on the Democratic agenda, were not talked about on the debate stage, but they actually run counter to a lot of the policies that theyve been trying to do, which are defund the police, open up the border, and basically drop law enforcement in both those places, Bedford said. Its a very inconvenient place for them to be forced.

One example of this scramble is Vice President Kamala Harriss sudden announcement that she will be visiting the border after a more than 90-day delay.

She recognized that based on what the Democratic agenda was, what the administration was trying to do, fixing the chaos at the border would be pretty much impossible, which is why she came up with, Why dont we fix the economies in Central America and make them so booming so that no one ever wants to leave Central America again, Bedford said.

Harris did not want the responsibility of the border, Bedford noted, which is why she spent so much time away from it.

Shes been trying to avoid this from the start here, Bedford said. She doesnt want the optics of it. She doesnt want to be politically handicapped. She intends to be president someday and she was angry at the president for assigning this. She had been dragged kicking and screaming down there.

The Biden administrations push for gun control amid a surge in crime, Bedford said, is another example of how the Democrats have had to adapt their messaging and policies to fix their polling.

Unless there has been the greatest spike in the 21st century in gun store owners illegally selling weapons since defund the police, its got nothing to do with them. Bullets dont rain from the sky, Bedford said. This is a serious problem, and the Democrats realize it. They are looking at their internal polling theyre looking at the New York mayors race and theyre saying, Holy smokes, our voters care about crime too.

This new focus by the White House, Bedford said, is a temporary one and will not provide long-term solutions necessary to sustain the country.

Thats why none of these policies are going to be able to work because unless they actually reverse course on their policies, Bedford said, theyre headed exactly straight for reality. The reality thats going down at the border is completely ignored and lied to by a lot of reporters. Its a massive criminal human smuggling operation run by cartels and enabled by the Biden administrations lax policies. They cant fix Central America yet, so all they can do is try to enforce the law across the country and protect the innocent, protect Americans.

Read Bedfords article The White House Know Its Police And Border Policies Are About To Crash, But Can They Stop It? here.

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

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Bedford: White House Border And Gun Scramble Is Attempt To Improve Polling - The Federalist

Updated June 25, 2021

Just over 100 days into his time in the White House and the end to President Joe Bidens lies is nowhere in sight. Here is part two of The Federalists rigorous coverage keeping the Biden administration accountable with substantive fact-checking throughout the presidents tenure.

You can find part one of The Full List Of Every Lie Joe Biden Has Told As President here.

While speaking at a North Carolina event on COVID-19 vaccination efforts, President Joe Biden falsely claimed that vaccine hesitancy among black Americans stemmed from past experimentation by the U.S. government on the Tuskegee Airman.

The reason why its been harder to get African Americans, initially, to get vaccinated because they are used to being experimented on the Tuskegee Airmen and others, Biden said.

The Tuskegee Airman were the first group of African-American fighter pilots that served in the Army Air Corps throughout World War II. The Airmen were not connected to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, wherein over 600 black men were experimented on by the U.S. government to observe the progression of a number of diseases, particularly syphilis, untreated in black males. Biden also made the same false claim in May 2021 during an interview with YouTuber Jackie Aina.

During her trip to the border in El Paso, TX after delaying a visit for more than 90 days, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed that it was always the plan to address the effects as well as the root causes of Bidens border crisis.

I said back in March that I was gonna come to the border so this is not a new plan, Bidens border lead told reporters.

Despite her claims, Harris was not always set on visiting the border. Not only did her own spokesperson say in March that there were no plans for the VP to make a trip to the border in the near future, but Harris also laughed off or became defensive when reporters asked her any questions about whether she planned to address the influx of illegal aliens and less-than poor conditions in detention centers for migrant children.

Harris also repeated the lie that its not her first trip to the border during this administration. The last times the vice president visited the border was before she was elected in October when she campaigned in McAllen, TX and in 2018 when, as a Senator, Harris protested the Trump administrations immigration policies in San Diego.

During his remarks on the rise in violent crime, Biden claimed that areas of the US with the strictest gun laws dont have the highest violent crime rates.

The gun lobby wants you to believe that cities that have the toughest gun laws still have the highest rates of gun violence dont believe it, the president claimed without evidence.

Data, however, shows that even those states that leftist gun control groups have ranked as stricter on firearms experience high levels of the firearm death rate. Even though states such as California, New York, Illinois, and Maryland pride themselves on having more restrictions on firearms than most places in the country, they still experience high levels of gun violence and deaths.

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Here's The Full List Of Every Lie Joe Biden Has Told As President- Part Two - The Federalist

The Chinese Communist Party and pro-Beijing Hong Kong authorities forced Apple Daily, the last pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong, to cease operation this week. The death of Apple Daily marks the end of a free press in Hong Kong, once one of the freest places on the planet.

The newspaper was founded 26 years ago by outspoken Hong Kong tycoon Jimmy Lai. Born in mainland China, Lai was one of 2 million refugees who wentto Hong Kong to escape communism. He worked his way up from being a laborer at a textile factory to founding a successful clothing company called Giordano, named after a New York pizza parlor.

As The Federalist noted previously: After watching Beijings brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, Lai became an advocate for democracy and an outspoken critic of Beijing. When Giordano came out with pro-demonstrator T-shirts, the Chines government pulled its business license in mainland China.

Lai had to sell his Giordano stake, and used the money to started a new media empire, Next Media (later changed to Next Digital). Under the corporate umbrella of Next Media, Lai founded Apple Daily in 1995.

Modeled after USA Today, Apple Daily attracted readers with big and colorful photos, populist opinions, and scandalous gossip about the rich and powerful, as well as a subscription price of two Hong Kong dollars (25 cents), The Federalist noted earlier. Apple Daily quickly became one of the most popular newspapers in Hong Kong, and its success helped Lai become a billionaire in 2008.

Before authorities shut it down, Apple Daily was one of the strongest pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong. It offered the most favorable coverage of the citys pro-democracy movements, from the 2014 Umbrella Movements demand for universal suffrage to anti-extradition protests in 2019. The newspaper also stood out for sharply criticizing the Chinese Communist Partys human rights violations, corruption, and suppression of dissent.

The papers tone and coverage on these sensitive political issues reflected Lais political convictions. Lai was often present at the citys many pro-democracy protests.

Beijing was so enraged it tried both overt and covert intimidation tactics to silence Lai and his newspaper. In addition to banning all of Next Medias publications in mainland China, the CCP pushed Hong Kong businesses to pull advertising from Apple Daily. Between plunging advertising revenue and general gravitation toward digital media, Apple Daily struggled. Next Digital reported five straight years of net losses.

Besides suffering financial losses, Lai survived attacks on his life, including from assailants tossing Molotov cocktails at Lais home and Next Medias headquarters. Despite the increasing danger to his safety and his financial abillity to live anywhere in the world, Lai refused to leave Hong Kong. He explained his resolve to stay in an interview: If we dont fight when you lose freedom, you lose everything.

Last June, Beijing imposed a new National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong, criminalizing any act of what Beijing decides is secession, subversion, terrorism, or collusion with a foreign country or external elements. Violating the law invokes a maximum penalty of life in prison.

Each supposed crime and even what constitutes national security have been so vaguely defined, however, that a tweet supporting Hong Kong protests could land someone in jail. Beijing and Hong Kong authorities have weaponized the NSL to crack down on Hong Kongs pro-democracy activists.

Last August, authorities arrested Lai along with his two sons and several Next Media employees for foreign collusion under the new security law. Additionally, Hong Kong police raided and stole materials from Apple Dailys newsroom. Lai, his sons, and the employees were later released on bail.

But on April 16, alongside other long-time activists (including 82-year-old Martin Lee), the 73-year-old Lai was sentenced to 14 months in prison on a trumped-up charge of participating in an unauthorized assembly. It was reported that Lai is still facing six other charges, including two under the NSL that could carry a life sentence.

The day after Lais sentencing, Apple Daily published Lais handwritten letter from the prison, which said: It is our responsibility as journalists to seek justice. As long as we are not blinded by unjust temptations, as long as we do not let evil get its way through us, we are fulfilling our responsibility.

Unfortunately, the authorities have quickly worked to dismantle Apple Daily. Last week, Hong Kong police arrested five top executives of the newspaper including Editor-in-Chief Ryan Law and Chief Executive Cheung Kim-hung and raided their homes.

These executives were accused of publishing more than 30 articles calling for foreign sanctions against the governments of Hong Kong and Beijing. The NSL considers this colluding with foreign forces, even though the law is not supposed to be retroactive. Still, these executives were denied bail and could face life sentences.

Police also raided the newsroom with a blanket warrant to seize any journalistic materials from computers to lists of contacts and sources which means anyone who was interviewed by the newspaper or provided sensitive information is now in danger too. In addition, Hong Kong authorities froze all the newspapers accounts and assets, evaporating the funds for continuing to pay payroll and overhead. Consequently, the newspaper and its online edition ceased operations on Wednesday, and most of its employees have resigned.

Apple Daily was the last newspaper in Hong Kong to support the citys pro-democracy movement, provide a forum for dissenting voices, and call out aggressions committed by the citys pro-Beijing authorities and their CCP masters. Its shutdown marks the death of press freedom in Hong Kong. All the papers left are propaganda machines of the party, and they will never hold the citys authorities nor Beijing accountable.

Without a free press, Hong Kong is just another authoritarian state ruled by the CCP, with no free speech and no one to hold the government accountable. No wonder dictators treat the free press as the first enemy of dictatorship, in the words of Fidel Castro.

As we witness Hong Kongs descent, we must learn a painful lesson. The lack of western outrage over Hong Kongs return to CCP control was based on a naive and delusional assumption that the citys freedom and prosperity and the wests economic engagement with communist China would influence the CCP to gradually embrace liberal values.

The west must finally wake up to the true nature of the CCP, a party that is deeply hostile to democratic values and will crack down on any attempt to promote such values in China. Under the CCPs rule, China will never become one of us. The CCP has taken advantage of the past 30 years of economic engagement to become the most powerful authoritarian state on the dime of the wests economic decline.

The CCP promised to maintain Hong Kongs freedom for 50 years, a promise it never intended to keep. Only 24 years after Hong Kong was officially returned to its control, the CCP discarded its treaty like a piece of useless paper.

Any western government that still works with the CCP must ask: Given the CCPs record on Hong Kong, why should we trust the party to fulfill any commitment it makes? And is it really wise for our own prosperity and security to continue empowering a political party bent on destroying the values we cherish?

This byline marks several different individuals, granted anonymity in cases where publishing an article on The Federalist would credibly threaten close personal relationships, their safety, or their jobs. We verify the identities of those who publish anonymously with The Federalist.

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Shutdown Of Hong Kong's Free Press Is An Indictment Of Western Fools - The Federalist

Vice President Kamala Harris will finally visit the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday, making a stop in El Paso, Texas, along with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Politico reported Wednesday.

While the vice president is there, she might want to visit the vast, tent-like detention center for migrant youth at Fort Bliss, which is housing some 2,000 migrant teens in deplorable, nightmarish conditions. If she goes, shell be able to see first-hand the grave consequences of the Biden administrations border policies. Thats why she probably wont go.

But if Harris does go to Fort Bliss, she should be careful. According to a recent investigation by the BBC, theres an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak at the shelter, where hundreds of children have tested positive for Covid, according to one employee. The migrant kids there have dubbed a cluster of quarantine tents Covid City.

There have also been outbreaks of strep throat and the flu, as well as persistent lice infestations. One tent of about 800 girls was locked down last month because of lice. The government contractor that runs the facility apparently hasnt been able to procure enough lice kits to deal with the problem.

The vice presidents handlers will probably also want to keep her away from the food at the shelter, which is reportedly undercooked and often inedible, according to BBC interviews with migrant teens recently discharged from there. Sometimes the chicken had blood, the meat very red, one boy said. We couldnt stand our hunger and we ate it, but we got sick from it.

Disease and inadequate food arent the only problems at the overcrowded, unlicensed shelter, which is run by government contractors. Children report that there are too few showers and bathrooms and laundry facilities, so they often go weeks without bathing or changing their clothes. There have also been disturbing reports of staff sexually abusing migrant children, including one report of rape.

The BBC investigation is just one account of the neglect and filthy conditions at the Biden administrations emergency migrant shelters, which were hastily set up to deal with an historic surge of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing the border this spring. An article in Border Report this week outlined similar conditions at other shelters, as recorded in interviews with migrant children that were included in federal court filings Monday.

In their accounts, the children who are not named in the court filings describe waiting for weeks or more than a month in facilities with little to do, minimal education and no knowledge of when they will be allowed to leave, according to the report.

One 13-year-old girl from Honduras, who was on suicide watch, said she couldnt sleep at night because the lights were always on, and that she was eating only popsicles and juice because the food was foul and inedible. At the time of her interview with court-appointed advocates, she had been in the facility for nearly 60 days.

The Biden administration, which earlier this year was criticized for housing migrant kids for weeks on end in crude border facilities run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, has boasted of moving kids out of those facilities into these emergency shelters. The idea was to quickly get them out of government custody and release them to a parent, relative, or other sponsor inside the United States.

But according to the governments June report to a federal court in Los Angeles, more than 2,100 children were housed at these emergency shelters for more than 40 days, and more than 2,600 were housed at the shelters between 20 and 40 days.

Based on the few accounts we do have news media have not been allowed into these facilities after the administration imposed a media blackout earlier this year these emergency shelters are no place for children to stay long. At a Houston shelter that has since closed, one 17-year-old girl from El Salvador said she couldnt shower for eight days and was told to wear her underwear inside out because there was no laundry. We spent most of the day in our beds at Houston because there was nothing else to do, she said. I felt very desperate.

Make no mistake, this is the Biden administrations doing. Upon taking office, Biden signed a series of executive orders that reversed key Trump-era border policies that had helped to reduce illegal immigration. By rescinding those policies, Biden broadcast to the world that if unaccompanied children cross the border illegally, they will be allowed to stay.

The entirely predictable result was that record numbers of children were trafficked across the border, overwhelming federal authorities and dangerously crowding border facilities during the pandemic.

Now, the administration is preparing to open the border up even more, admitting families and possibly even single adults who, under President Donald Trump, had been quickly expelled as a pandemic precaution. According to Axios, the Biden administration could end all such expulsion for families as soon as July 31.

As of this writing, details of Harriss upcoming trip are scant, but news of the visit comes amid a fusillade of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats at the vice presidents refusal thus far to visit the border amid a worsening crisis. It also comes about a week after Trump announced that he would be visiting the border. A large group of House Republicans said Wednesday they would join Trump. Faced with the prospect of being one-upped by Trump, Harris has finally, begrudgingly assented to a border visit.

This visit, though, will be unlike her last visit to the border. During the Trump administration, Democrats, including Harris, routinely went to the border for photo ops, lambasting Trump for keeping kids in cages and, in the case of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, famously weeping for the cameras outside youth migrant shelters. In 2018, Harris visited a migrant youth detention center in San Diego and said Trumps immigration policies amount to a human rights abuse.

As record numbers of migrant kids now languish in conditions that by many accounts are worse than anything that obtained under Trump, one has to wonder what Harris thinks the Biden administrations policies amount to. Well likely never know, because theres almost no chance Harris will visit the miserable tent-camp at Fort Bliss.

From her perspective, why would she? It would just confirm what everyone already knows: Biden and Harris have created a humanitarian disaster at the border, and they have no plan to fix it.

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There's No Way Kamala Visits This Child Detention Camp At The Border - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Stanford professor and former Chairman of JetBlue Airways Joel Peterson joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his recent article, My road to cancellation.

I started my first business when I was 11. I worked a minimum wage job and I put myself through state colleges. I worked from four in the morning for 20 years and so white privilege or male privilege or whatever, it doesnt feel like its part of my past, Peterson said. I think all Americans are privileged at a certain level. Weve all been blessed by certain things.

While there are still dissenting voices ready to push back on wokeism, Peterson said cancel culture is stifling them.

The fear level is still very high on what these mobs can do. Its a little bit of a French Revolution-style, destroy it all. I think its troubling, Peterson said.

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Stanford Professor Reveals His 'Road To Cancellation' - The Federalist

According to newly released video footage, University of Oklahoma instructors want to punish students who defy campus orthodoxy. Their plan is to avoid a rhetoric of dysfunctional silence that closes ears to marginalized voices, by you guessed it silencing marginalized voices.

On Tuesday, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit focused on protecting campus free speech, publicized video footage of an April 14 workshop on Anti-Racist Rhetoric & Pedagogies at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The workshops leaders presented slides about systemic racism, white privilege, and subverting white institutional defensiveness. In an attempt to teach so-called antiracism, the workshops leaders also promoted censorship and indoctrination.

The event was one of nine professional development workshops for instructors and grad students at OU. During the workshop, three faculty members taught their colleagues how to foster an anti-racist environment in their classrooms, brainstorming tactics for dissuading, censoring, and penalizing problematic speech.

One of the workshops spokeswomen, Kelli Pyron Alvarez, said she prohibits white supremacist ideas or sources as well as derogatory remarks, critiques, and hate speech from her classroom unless, of course, students use them to be antiracist crusaders against racism. Pyron Alvarez failed to explicitly define the ideas and sources she forbids, but she plans to reprimand those who deviate from her script.

If [students] use any of those things, if any of those come through in their writing or in their comments, I will call them out on it, she explained. And if a student errs in front of her a second time, she wants him to be formally reported. In the classroom, free speech does not apply, she said.

Unsurprisingly, Pyron Alvarez noted that her students didnt challenge her method of teaching last semester. She successfully chilled all dissenting speech.

Imagine being an OU student who is reported, presumably to the administration, simply for your choice of text to analyze or what sources you include in a bibliography, FIRE wrote in response, highlighting the absurdity of promoting such an intolerant snitch culture. According to FIRE,OUs workshop raises alarm bells about the state of free expression and freedom of conscience at Oklahomas flagship university.

The workshop in question trains instructors on how to eliminate disfavored but constitutionally protected expression from the classroom and guide assignments and discussion into preferred areas all for unambiguously ideological and viewpoint-based reasons, FIRE emphasized.

For example, students in Principles of English Composition must choose independent research projects, but FIRE explained that the faculty conducting the training show the participants how they might lead students not only to topics the instructors find appropriate, but also to the side of the argument that the instructors prefer.

OU instructors exist in an academic climate that seemingly emboldens them to continue dictating student speech. Pyron Alvarez confidently celebrated the power she thinks she and her colleagues exert over those they teach. One of the fears is that were going to get in trouble for this, right? Like we cant tell students that they cant say something in class. But we can! And let me tell you how, she bragged.

Her colleague and fellow workshop spokeswoman Kasey Woody, who is confident she and her colleagues wont suffer consequences for promoting student censorship, elaborated: I, in this case, usually look for my students who might be, like, entertaining the idea of listening to a problematic argument. Then I say, We dont have to listen to that.

Thats right, FIRE wrote, even thinking about listening to a disfavored argument is apparently to be discouraged. Students cant write about unacceptable topics, such as whether refusing to use preferred pronouns is hate speech or whether Black Lives Matter should engage in property destruction.

Meanwhile, Pyron Alvarez wrongly thinks the Supreme Court emboldens her to silence disfavored speech. The Supreme Court has actually upheld that hate speech, derogatory speech,any of the -isms do not apply in the classroom because they do not foster aproductive learning environment, she claimed. And so, as instructors, we can tell our students: No, you do not have the right to say that. Stop talking right now, right?

FIRE disagrees. Professors cannot abuse their power to require students to personally adhere to a particular viewpoint or ideology, the organization said.

Of course, FIRE spends a significant amount of its own time and resources defending the academic freedoms of university faculty. Such individuals possess wide latitude to manage the atmosphere and tone of the classroom, something FIRE often describes in great detail.

FIRE, however, makes a distinction. As the AAUP has written, instructors have academic freedom of instruction, not indoctrination. Furthermore, theres no question that a significant amount of this workshop teaches participants how to indoctrinate instead of how to instruct. The workshop leaders mistakenly conflate disagreement with disruption to such an extent that they call it a valid reason for reporting students for discipline.

This isnt the first time FIRE has criticized OU for to use the workshop leaders own terminology problematic initiatives, and the organization says the universitys [s]tudents deserve better. To demand change, FIRE is collecting submission forms to let leaders in Oklahoma know that this type of indoctrination is not acceptable.

Readers can view the full video of the workshop here.

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OU Training Tells Faculty: 'In The Classroom, Free Speech Does Not Apply' - The Federalist

A new study from the Rand Corporation and the University of Southern California titled The Impact Of The Covid-19 Pandemic And Policy Responses On Excess Mortality, found that the lockdowns that were mandated in response to the Wuhan virus outbreak didnt save lives, and even worse, they may have actually resulted in more deaths than would have occurred if shelter-in-place policies had not been mandated.

The paper, out this month, found that following the implementation of shelter-in-place policies, excess mortality increases, noting that The increase in excess mortality is statistically significant in the immediate weeks following [shelter-in-place] implementation.

We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented [shelter-in-place] policies earlier, and in which [shelter-in-place] policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries-slash-U.S. states that were slower to implement [shelter-in-place] policies, the researchers reported. We also failed to observe differences in excess death trends before and after the implementation of [shelter-in-place] policies based on pre-[shelter-in-place] COVID-19 death rates.

Though conservative leaders such as Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump were vocal opponents of the lockdowns, with the then-president supporting anti-lockdown protests, corporate media outlets derided their resistance, dubbing it opposition to science and calling the case against lockdowns half-baked. Democratic leaders did the same, with Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington complaining that Trump was putting millions in danger of contracting Covid-19, and referring to the presidents remarks as unhinged rantings.

It turns out conservatives werent flippantly opposing the science when they resisted lockdowns. In fact, the study also found that shelter-in-place policies likely had several unintended consequences, such as causing an increase in stress and anxiety, increases in child abuse and domestic violence, and worst of all, an increase in substance abuse and suicides.

The science suggests that the lockdown orders that ravaged small businesses, the economy, and American social life may have been more deadly than allowing our economy and society to remain open.

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Study: Lockdowns Didn't Save Lives And May Have Actually Killed People - The Federalist

Shootings broke out across the country during the Juneteenth weekend celebrations, following President Joe Biden declaring it a national holiday.

Biden on Thursday signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, which commemorates the freeing of Texas slaves on June 19, 1865. The president has not yet commented on the Juneteenth violence but said after he signed the bill that he hope[s] this is the beginning of a change in the way we deal with one another. The way people dealt with one another at the festivities, however, was with violence.

In Clover, South Carolina, three people were shot around 11:30 p.m. Saturday at a Juneteenth celebration, according toABC News. One victim was a 17-year-old who was seriously injured and airlifted to a hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. Authorities said several cars were also struck during the shooting. No arrests have been made, and the motive is under investigation.

During a Juneteenth celebration in Oakland, California, at least one person was left dead and several others wounded,Fox Newsreported. Bullets struck six victims between the ages of 16 and 27, the Oakland Police said in a statement. Thedepartment also confirmedthat a 22-year-old victim died at the hospital.

Police said two men, allegedly armed with guns, were arrested after running from the scene of the shooting. Tonight, a joyous occasion at our Lake Merritt was marred by a senseless act of gun violence, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaafsaidin a statement.

InAurora, Colorado, an all-night Juneteenth party at a strip mall came to an end at 4 a.m. Sunday when multiple gunmen unleashed up to 114 rounds, leaving one man dead and four other people wounded, according to police. Law enforcement said no arrests were made.

UPDATE: The gathering in the parking lot where the shooting broke out was related to a Juneteenth celebration at a unit in this strip mall. Suspect(s) are at-large. Anyone who witnessed this incident or has information is asked to contact @CrimeStoppersCO.

— Aurora Police Dept ?? (@AuroraPD) June 20, 2021

An emergency responder was shot while working at a Juneteenth rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. The responder was answering a call for a child who was in need of medical assistance, according tolocal news station WRAL.

The first responder was walking back to the ambulance after helping the child when shots were fired. WRAL reported that the responder is in good condition and is expected to make a full recovery. The shooter and motives are unknown.

An officer was working at a Juneteenth parade traffic point in Flint, Michigan, when a car pulled up and open-fired, according to The Detroit News. The officer returned fire, striking the suspect, a 19-year-old female. The woman succumbed to her injuries while at the hospital, police said. The incident is under investigation.

Evita Duffy is an intern at The Federalist and a junior at the University of Chicago, where she studies American History. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, & her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1

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Juneteenth 'Celebrations' Repeatedly Turned Violent With Shootings - The Federalist

The Catholic Church benefited enormously from the JFK presidency, pollster Larry Sabato wrote Monday morning. Prejudice against Catholics declined and millions were exposed to church rituals. Church leaders welcomed the JFK effect.'

Now at last there is a second Catholic [president], he continued, and what do some in the hierarchy do? They ruin it.

A little more than 60 years [after President John F. Kennedys speech on accepting Catholics in American politics], a second Catholic president sits in the White House, Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty wrote Sunday, and the churchs American bishops appear to have forgotten what it took for one of their own to get there.

Its a common take; I remember hearing it from my history teacher in high school. Often compared with then-Sen. Barack Obamas 2007 speech on race relations in America, the basic Kennedy story says that his campaign speech on religious tolerance was a great step for Catholics in America, a death knell for the anti-Catholic bigotry then rampant in the country, and marked a new age for Catholic politicians in national politics. Its a very nice story; too bad it isnt true.

The problems with this civics fairy tale are it is completely ignorant of the real contents of the speech, is built on an elite view of Catholicism in politics, and is bankrupt of any serious religious-minded analysis. In short, as with so many things in American political education, it is a great secular myth.

In the speech, delivered to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association in front of hundreds of Protestant ministers, many of whom were deeply suspicious or openly hostile to a Papist in the White House, the young Massachusetts senator made a series of serious promises that would appease, or at least defuse, the anti-Catholics at the great cost of crippling the moral authority of the Catholic Church in America for decades to come.

First, Kennedy promised that no man of God would advise or even to seek to advise his presidency, saying he believes in an America where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source.

I believe in an America where separation of church and state, he declared, is absolute.

The power of the office, he insisted, must not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation. Americas politicians, he loudly decreed, have nothing more to learn of sin and morality.

Second, he promised to continue his stands against American outreach to the Catholic Church and against Catholic education, calling federal aid to Catholic schools unconstitutional and asking the audience to, judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in Congress on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial [religious] schools, and against any boycott of the public schools.

Third, Kennedy promised to disregard his Catholic faith on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, declaring that no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.Thats no paraphrasing: on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling orany other subject and no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

On Friday, California Rep. Ted Lieu publicly challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, writing to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that he is a Catholic politician who supports contraception, abortion, reproductive technologies, divorce, and gay marriage.

Next time I go to church, he threatened, I dare you to deny me Communion.

Catholic and non-Catholic observers alike gasped at Lieus open heresy. Few remembered that 61 years earlier, the man who would become Americas first Catholic president had taken virtually the same oath against his religion.

Kennedys speech was a major speech in American civic history and can absolutely be credited with going a long way toward ingratiating American Catholics into elite society. But as in the wake of Vatican II, when empowered modernist priests sought American affirmation by looting the gifts of the poor and stripping their churches of the architectural features and artistic treasures that made them uniquely Catholic, in exchange for political authority Kennedy stripped the Catholic Church of its moral authority.

Today, with the Catholic President Joe Biden and Catholic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in power and using their power to attack the Hyde Amendment against federal funding of abortion, as well as the Mexico City policy against federal money for foreign abortion, that weakness is on full display.

Kennedys example also stands in harsh contrast with those American Catholic heroes who made great sacrifices for their country, and in doing so earned the admiration of their fellows, making great strides for the acceptance of the Catholic faith and faithful alike.

Men like Charles Carroll of Carrolton, known as the first citizen, who in addition to being the wealthiest and highest-educated man to sign the Declaration of Independence, was the only Catholic to do so at a time his religion banned him from holding office in his home state of Maryland.

Men like Carrolls cousin, John, who became a Jesuit at 18 and was ordained a priest 14 years later, who answered the call of the Continental Congress to try to enlist Catholic Quebec in the American Revolution, and later became the bishop of Baltimore, establishing both the first basilica of the United States and Georgetown University.

Men like Johns older brother, Daniel, who with Thomas Fitzsimmons are the only two Catholics to sign the U.S. Constitution.

Or men like Fr. William Corby, second founder of Notre Dame University, who in his Irish Brigade memoirs of the Civil War writes of the Protestant chaplains amazement at the daily religious observance and devotion of the Catholic soldiers.

When on the second day of Gettysburg the orders were given to prepare for imminent battle, Fr. Corby stood on a rock before the men and lifted his hand to grant the the rite of general absolution, earning the admiration and respect of all those present.Maj. Gen. St. Clair Mulholland wrote, As he closed his address, every man, Catholic and non-Catholic, fell on his knees with his bowed down.

The scene was more than impressive; it was awe-inspiring. Near by stood the brilliant throng of officers who had gathered to witness this very unusual occurrence, and while there was a profound silence in the ranks of the Second Corps, yet over the left, out by the peach orchard and Little Round Top, where [Brigadier Gens. Stephen] Weed and [Strong] Vincent and [1st Lt. Charles] Hazlitt were dying, the roar of the battle rose and swelled and re-echoed through the woods, making music more sublime than ever sounded through cathedral aisle. This act seemed to be in harmony with the surroundings. I do not think there was a man in the brigade who did not offer up a heart-felt prayer. For some, it was their last; they knelt there in their grave clothes. In less than half an hour many of them were numbered with the dead of July 2.

Or men like those who knelt in the brigade, who later erected a statue of Corby at the spot of the absolution and whose Catholic faith girded their storied bravery in battle and won the hard-earned respect of even their most vicious detractors.

Far from the examples of these great Americans, Kennedy earned the acceptance of the American political establishment not by celebrating his faith and proudly wearing it in his role as the countrys first Catholic president, but by shedding it and promising all who would listen that neither the faith nor its bishops would have any bearing on his presidency.

In his 1960 speech, Kennedy dreamed of an America where there is no Catholic vote, and with the help of the bishops he helped achieve this. Thereafter there would be no sizeable Catholic vote. It splintered after the public endorsement of his secularism by most of the bishops.

A little more than 60 years later, a second Catholic president sits in the White House, Tumulty wrote in the Post, and the churchs American bishops appear to have forgotten what it took for one of their own to get there.

Or maybe they didnt forget what it took to get there. And maybe as they consider the long-declining influence of God and morality in American public life, and the rising anti-Catholicism that has come with it, theyll discard the secular myth of Kennedys speech and instead address their predecessors terrible mistake head on. Fortunately, they appear poised to do just that.

It wouldnt be the first time. The church has been grievously wounded from both inside the church and from without it over and again in history, but by Gods grace, the gates of Hell will not overpower it.

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The Great Lie About JFK, The Bishops, And The Catholic Church - The Federalist

All 50 Republican senators barely managed to block Democrats election overhaul bill on Tuesday night that would have ended voter ID requirements supported by 80 percent of Americans, allowed voting up to two weeks after election day, legalize ballot harvesting, and more.

In the nearly 900-page For The People Act of 2021, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and fellow Democrats would have barred states from protecting themselves against loose voting structures that permeated the 2020 election such as mass vote-by-mail, lax voter ID, and widely inaccurate voting rolls. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris also supported the election bill, which Democrats made their No. 1 priority for their full control of Congress and the presidency this year.

We cant sit idly by while democracy is in peril here, in America. We need to protect the sacred right to vote and ensure We the People choose our leaders, the very foundation on which our democracy rests. We urgently need the For The People Act. Send it to my desk, Biden wrote Tuesday afternoon.

After all of the GOP legislators filibustered the legislation, however, the 60 votes necessary for the bill to pass a procedural vote were not there. Democrats have repeatedly threatened to end this slim protection for minority interests in the Senate, and its existence appears to rest entirely on the good graces of West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin since Republicans lost the Senate through runoff elections in Georgia earlier this year.

Our democracy is stronger when everyone participatesand it is weaker when people are denied meaningful access to participation. Today, as Senate Democrats united around the For The People Act, Senate Republicans voted against advancing it, Harris wrote in a statement.

Whichever label Democrats slap on their bill, the substance remains the same, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said. Its always been a plan to rewrite the ground rules of American politics. Today, the Senates going to fulfill our founding purpose, stop this partisan power grab, and reject S. 1.

Both leftist legislators and the corporate media originally claimed, against all evidence, that the unconstitutional bill would protect Americans voting rights, but Republicans were quick to call the proposal what it was: a political ploy to give Democrats ultimate supervisory power over federal elections. That didnt stop the left from trotting out their usual racist smears of Republicans and making evidence-free claims Republicans want to restrict voter access.

Not only would the bill have let the federal government micromanage state elections, a possibly unconstitutional offense, but one report suggests it would open the floodgates for partisan activity within the IRS and the Federal Elections Commission, hijack federal courts away from election criticisms, and violate the First Amendment with respect to a vast range of legal activity.

The attorneys general of 20 states also agreedthat HR 1 would invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.

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

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GOP Senators Barely Block Democrats' Bid To End Honest Elections - The Federalist