Category Archives: Federalist

In the months since Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, we've watched a barrage of efforts to reverse the result President Donald Trump launched rants, recounts, lawsuits, threats and now a violent insurrection at the Capitol aimed at disrupting congressional certification of the results. The denial and the chaos have been shocking. But are they unprecedented?

Not exactly. The very first contested presidential election, in 1800, was also chaotic. It too reflected ferocious partisanship, exposed problems in the electoral process and ended in a raucous congressional session in which the losers tried to flip the results. When it was all over, however, the winners reached for bipartisanship. And they fixed the broken process by bequeathing us the 12th Amendment, which still guides presidential elections right down to the step that turned unexpectedly explosive in 2021: "The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates [transmitted by the states] and the votes shall then be counted." But for all they did right, those early American leaders failed to confront the nation's deepest problem slavery.

In many ways, that election between Federalist President John Adams and Republican Vice President Thomas Jefferson resembled 2020. Seven (out of 16) states fiddled with the voting rules to boost their candidate Pennsylvania was so bitterly divided about its voting procedures that it almost missed the election. Each party thought the other dangerous the two sides believed they were fighting about nothing less than the nation's identity. The Federalists, based in New England, fretted about too much democracy, too many immigrants and seditious speech that could undermine the people's faith in their government. Republicans, based in the South, shot back that their rivals were nothing less than monarchists stifling free speech, repressing the people and endangering slavery by recognizing the Haitian rebels who had thrown off their bondage.

In the end, Jefferson easily won the popular vote and squeaked by in the electoral college. Then, the shenanigans began thanks to the rules governing the electoral college. The Constitution clearly stated that the person with the most votes would be president, the runner-up vice president. But in 1800, the political parties which the men who wrote the Constitution did not see coming and roundly abhorred nominated tickets. Both Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, tallied the same number of votes. The election headed to the House of Representatives which might have simply certified Jefferson as president and Burr as VP. But the defeated Federalists tried to steal a victory by flipping the ticket, rallying around Burr and trying to boost him into the presidency. After all, they reasoned, Burr was an expedient politician who would defect to the party that thrust him into power.

In the House of Representatives each state would cast a single vote a majority (nine states) would secure the presidency. The House voted. And voted. And voted again. Each time, the sitting vice president none other than Jefferson himself tallied the same result: Eight states for Jefferson. Six for Burr. Two abstained (because their delegations were evenly divided between the parties). Jefferson, one agonizing state short of victory, saw "dismay and gloom." Six different state delegations were divided by a single vote and the Federalists could reach a majority by flipping just three strategically-placed Republicans.

To make matters worse, the government had moved in 1800 from the large, cosmopolitan city of Philadelphia to the grim village of Washington, D.C., which amounted to little more than a few rude taverns and boardinghouses. Tree stumps marked the muddy path between the executive building and the half-constructed capitol building. "We want nothing here," wrote New York's Gouverneur Morris sarcastically, "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well-informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles of this kind to make our city perfect." There was nothing to do but drink, gamble and conspire.

Through the process, Alexander Hamilton, the most influential Federalist, broke with his party and scribbled one letter after another denouncing Aaron Burr. The two men knew each other well for they had battled in New York for years. Now Hamilton warned that Burr had no principles at all just a simple lust for power. He would be a despot.

Go inside New York politics.

By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy.

Finally on the 36th ballot, Federalist James Bayard of Maryland, after three letters from Hamilton, cast a blank ballot which broke the state's four-four tie and flipped it into Jefferson's column. Other Federalists followed his lead and Jefferson finally took the office he had won at the polls.

All that rigmarole from long ago broadcasts important lessons to our own time.

After 1800, leaders quickly adjusted the Constitution by adding the 12th Amendment. Electors would now cast separate ballots for president and vice president to prevent a tie and then transmit the results to Washington. Procedural fixes helped prevent the problems that had beset the 1800 election.

But, there was a deeper issue they didn't resolve slavery. The Federalists seized on it as a way to attack the new administration. They groused that Jefferson had won the election only because the Constitution inflated the power of his Southern base through the notorious three-fifths clause that helped allocate electoral votes. Jefferson "rode into the temple of liberty upon the shoulders of slaves," as one Connecticut newspaper put it.

The volcanic issue was only beginning to rumble. Some Federalists denounced slavery, others took the opposite tack and warned that the Republicans imperiled the institution with all their talk about the rights of man. The losers were more focused on resisting Jefferson's political power then in engaging the issue itself. The deepest national problem festered and grew till, less than two decades later, an aging Jefferson thought he heard the passions over slavery tolling the "knell of the union."

Today, a deep partisan division once again spurred an effort to overthrow the presidential election. And like that long ago contested election in 1800, we too risk letting our political differences obscure deep national problems: More than two centuries later, the race line remains raw and marked by injustice. We face an economic inequality that has soared to levels unmatched among wealthy democracies. We confront a ferocious urban/rural rift and a burning planet. A deeply divided Washington reflecting a deeply divided nation has a lot of work to do. The final lesson from 1800: We ignore the big problems at our peril.

Morone is a professor of political science at Brown University and the author of "Republic of Wrath: How American Politics Turned Tribal from George Washington to Donald Trump." This piece was written for The Washington Post.

Read the rest here:

The election that foreshadowed 2020 - Newsday

Big techs abuse of market power has permitted it to not only destroy their competition but also to silence conservatives, according to The Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech

This is obviously a collusive action on the part of these incredibly powerful entities who are seeking to not just destroy their competition, but effectively to silence people who are supporters of the president online, Domenech told Fox News Fox & Friends on Sunday.

Domenech pointed to Amazon, Google, and Apple in removing Parler from their platforms after the storming of the Capitol Building this week.

You wouldnt want to see, in a capitalist system, cutting off customer bases or undermining them, preventing them from accessing your products, Domenech said. But that really doesnt take on as much power as an argument when youve got control of 99% of the market as you do within Apple and Google controlling the dominant portion of the OS market for phones.

I think people are basically saying, Fine, go build your own phone network, go build your own operating system, go build your own app store, which is, of course, a ridiculous thing to argue, he continued. But its also one of the things I think big tech is going to be doing more and more of in the coming months as they crush not just the president himself, but a lot of his supporters and everything that they run to and every app that they go and find as a substitute for this.

This reeks of Chinese Communist Party strategy, he added.

What youre really seeing here is big tech doing what the Constitution prevents the government from doing: an enforcement of a social standard in America, he said.

Its very akin of what you have in terms of a social credit system in China. Its just that over there, the rules are kind of clear. Here they can change the terms of service whenever they want. None of the standards actually are actually serious. They really come down to, If we dont like you, were going to get rid of you and well find a reason for why.'

2021 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Read more:

Federalist Publisher: Big Tech Colluding to Destroy Conservative Speech - WBAP News/Talk

The Capitol Hill riot was an inexcusable, pathetic, and disgraceful display. Its consequences will extend well beyond the bloodshed and property damage inflicted by those who shamefully acceded to the lefts view that force is legitimate means of persuasion exhibited repeatedly via the lefts normalization of political incitement and violence throughout President Trumps term in office.

The riot not only overshadowed the corruption that marked the 2020 election and undermined the MAGA movements people and principles, but set up Americans of all political stripes for an onslaught on their rights and cherished freedoms.The riot was an accelerant for what was already likely planned under Democrat rule in Washington: crushing dissenters from its leftist orthodoxy as part of an effort to achieve total power by disenfranchising the opposition.

President Trump has personified this dissent, but the effort to delegitimize, de-platform, and ultimately destroy him and anyone around him is merely the opening scene of the Godfather-like settling of scores with all who threaten the ruling classs power and privilege.This effort will directly harm not just the thousands of peaceful patriots who had descended on Washington D.C., and their tens of millions of like-minded neighbors across the country, but all Americans.

The coming crackdown on dissenters in the political realm was pre-ordained in the wee hours of Jan. 6, when both Georgia Senate seats flipped to the Democrats. Now, should Senate Democrats successfully blow up the filibuster, they will work to pass an agenda in which any one item, let alone all, could put Democrats in a virtually unshakeable control of the federal government for years to come.

They have made no secret of their agenda, which includes such items as mass amnesty for illegal aliens, statehood for Washington, D.C., statehood for Puerto Rico, and federal enshrinement of mail-in voting through a re-upped H.R. 1. Needless to say, total leftist political control will erode liberty and justice, and be used to target dissenters in cruel and unusual ways.

In the near-term, the Capitol Hill riot has served as a pretext for other corrosive political acts: calls for the 25th Amendment to remove a sitting president, a second impeachment vote; consultations between the speaker of the House and the Pentagon about preventing the president from accessing the nuclear codes and discharging his other duties; and calls by our national security and legal apparatus against conservatives and their speech all under the pretense of combatting domestic terrorism and punishing incitement.

This is not purely an issue of politics, for it will encompass all of civil society. The coming assault on dissenters will play out in arenas that far transcend our increasingly unrepresentative government.

Its adjuncts in big tech, woke capital, corporate media, and beyond have already started participating in the purge, of their own volition, in a continuation of the anti-cultural revolution of summer 2020. It is nothing less than the weaponization of civil society institutions against political dissenters, in conjunction with and often indirectly supported by the state. Americans are now primed to punish their fellow Americans for Wrongthink to a greater extent than we have seen before.

It will go far beyond banning the president of the United States from major social media platforms, purging countless like-minded voices, and stymieing their alternative means of communication. It will go far beyond pulling a U.S. senators publishing deal. It will go far beyond even firing people purportedly acting peacefully at political rallies.Ultimately, it will extend across every aspect of the digital world, and affect real life as well.

Yes, we are headed towards something like Chinas Great Firewall, where, albeit without the power of a government gun, big tech will silence speech that challenges the ruling classs official narratives, disappear the digital profiles of those who run afoul of its ever-changing terms of service, and take down websites where alternative ideas might proliferate.

More chilling is this thought: What is to stop the crackdown from going beyond communications to where and how you can work, bank, travel, eat, shop, obtain health insurance, and send your kids to school?

Think, for a second, about everything you do in daily life. Consider how reliant you are on goods and services controlled by entities in whole or in part run by executives who either hate your political views or think they can survive by currying favor with those who are contemptuous.

The left has already said it is making lists to prevent Trump administration personnel from getting jobs in the private sector. Whats to stop them or their allies in the media and corporate America from doing the same to any of us?

Is there any apparent limiting principle that will keep us from developing a CCP-style social credit system with Western characteristics as my Federalist colleague Sumantra Maitra has put it whereby private enterprises grade us on ideology and determine what we can and cannot do based on how closely we hew to its ideology?

In a world where politics has become all-pervasive, virtue-signaling demands not only disavowing but punishing the 74 million enablers of what the left has been asserting for years is Nazism. As in so many other matters, they have been projecting onto the right what the left itself endorses.

If you accede to the view that anything that challenges the prevailing progressive orthodoxy constitutes violence, then you will take any means necessary to snuff it out. There are an awful lot of true believers, useful idiots, cynics, and cowed people across American life seemingly willing to adhere to such a principle. It will likely push us to ideological segregation, which will only further fuel hostilities, strife, and chaos.

Americas Cold Civil War will only heat up as those with all the power take precisely the wrong lessons from the Capitol Hill riot and, rather than seeking to represent millions of Americans and address their concerns, simply chooses to punish or silence them.

Ben Weingarten is a Federalist senior contributor, senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, and fellow at the Claremont Institute. He was selected as a 2019 Robert Novak Journalism fellow of the Fund for American Studies, under which he is currently working on a book on U.S.-China policy. You can find his work at benweingarten.com, and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.

Follow this link:

Democrats Are Using The Recent Capitol Riot To Consolidate Power - The Federalist

A trio of House Democrats are blaming Republicans for their infection with the novel Wuhan coronavirus this month after testing positive following a brief stay in the Capitol bunker amid last weeks riot.

Today, I am now in strict isolation, worried that I have risked my wifes health and angry at the selfishness and arrogance of the anti-maskers who put their own contempt and disregard for decency ahead of the health of colleagues, Democratic Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois said, admonishing Republican colleagues he charged with not wearing a mask at their secure location.

Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey, 75, also blamed Republicans for her own positive test result in an op-ed in the Washington Post. So too did Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, claiming Republicans created a superspreader event, through their noncompliance to wear masks. Jayapal said this without considering whether she had contracted the virus in the House gallery when she was surrounded by others in close quarters without wearing a mask herself, as shown in the video below:

Theres little evidence, however, to suggest maskless Republicans infected any one of the three positive members, let alone each in the Capitol bunker. Though its unknown whether any Republican members might have been carrying the virus asymptomatically at the time of the Capitol riots, no GOP lawmakers had been confirmed to be infected. One of the few Republican representatives infected amid the chaos was Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady, who confirmed to The Federalist that he was not present at the Capitol, having announced that day, prior to the demonstrations, that he was COVID-19-positive.

The trio of Democrats placing baseless blame on Republicans for their infections also turns a blind eye to Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Gwen Moore having appeared to break the CDC-recommended quarantine period to fly in for the speakership vote re-electing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Moore announced on Dec. 28 that she had tested positive for the coronavirus and then six days later flew to Washington, D.C., for the vote.

While declaring herself medically cleared to travel, the Wisconsin lawmaker did not disclose whether she had undergone a negative COVID-19 test prior to the trip.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stipulate a minimum of 10-day isolation for individuals infected with COVID-19, regardless of whether the person has symptoms. Symptomatic cases should remain isolated until 10 days after the start of their symptoms and are to go 24 hours without having a fever before public re-entry. The CDC says even asymptomatic positive cases should isolate until 10 days after getting their test.

Moore was not one of the three lawmakers, each of whom had tested negative but were still within CDC quarantine windows, who voted with special arrangements for the House speaker.

Moores office released a statement several days after the vote, declaring the representative had tested positive on Dec. 22 and was therefore not violating CDC guidelines. Moores office did not respond to The Federalists repeated inquiries as to whether Moore had ever received a negative test following her positive one, nor did they respond with proof that she had tested positive on Dec. 22, with her statement having been released days after news of her trip sparked controversy.

Could Moore then have caused a congressional coronavirus outbreak because Pelosi needed every vote in for the speakership?

View post:

Dems With COVID Voted For Pelosi, Then Blamed GOP For Infections - The Federalist

Nikki Haley is a social-climbing political opportunist whose most deeply held political belief is Nikki Haley.

This has been true since before she even entered the national consciousness, but she blessed us with a quick refresher course Thursday when she condemned President Donald Trump during a dinner speech to the Republican National Committees annual winter meeting.

Shes not alone in doing so. Corporate media swelled this week with Republicans who, like Haley, spent years working for the president (and were campaigning for him as recently as two months ago) and now are denouncing him with all their might.

Most of those resigning will advertise this as a brave decision. But its tough to pin a medal on spending the remaining two weeks of the presidents term trying out for a job on CNN (or at least a pardon from corporate recruiters), and it only gets tougher when compounded with the honest assessment that the same corporate media (and the Democrats they support) share a great deal of the blame with Trump for the events leading up to Wednesdays shameful and depressing riot.

But wanna-be President Haley isnt focused on such tiny ambitions, nor is this her first time earning quick points condemning Trump. The New York businessman is everything a governor doesnt want in a president, shed told a reporter before South Carolinas 2016 Republican presidential debate. She made sure to glare for the cameras when they came around for the big day.

But circumstances and opportunities change. This is why, two weeks before the 2016 election, Haley told reporters shed be voting for the Republican nominee even though his campaign was embarrassing and had turned [her] stomach upside down. Her decision, she publicly lamented, was not an easy one, despite it being precisely the easiest and safest decision available to a professional Republican who still wanted to be president someday.

Two weeks later, Trump won the election and Haley saw her opportunities shifting yet again. By the end of November, shed said shed accept his nomination to ambassador to the United Nations a job that gave her the foreign policy experience and spotlight she needed to keep her name in the running for future president.

But that wasnt all it got her: After shed left the administration, Haleys experience working for Trump won her $315,000 sitting on Boeings board. It was a step up from her previous hodgepodge of jobs in the private sector, where shed accepted inflated salaries from multiple companies. She was just a state senator back then, but the companies paying her salaries had business before her legislature. Its good to get ahead when youre Nikki Haley.

Those South Carolina paychecks eventually sparked an ethics investigation and a small fine in 2013, although by then she was governor. See, the Tea Party had come along, and sensing opportunity (!), Haley had set herself to reading a few Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman books, and traveled around the state quoting them to wealthy conservative donors.

Impressed with the young woman, they backed her all the way to the governors mansion, where her presidential ambitions began to shine as 1) the first female governor of South Carolina, 2) the youngest governor in the country, and 3) the second Indian governor in American history.

Her Tea Party honeymoon didnt last, however: Her tax breaks to major international companies undercutting local manufacturers didnt sit well with them. By 2016, then-Gov. Haleys much-lauded endorsement of Sen. Marco Rubio landed him 10 points behind Trump in her own state.

That doesnt mean shes down and out by any stretch. Its been a long road to the White House, and shes made all the safe decisions at every turn, with Thursdays speech just the latest detour. Circumstances and opportunities change quickly, after all. And so does Nikki Haley.

Continue reading here:

Your Monthly Reminder That Nikki Haley Is A Social-Climbing Opportunist - The Federalist

Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump on Friday evening, claiming that the various interpretations of his recent tweets could pose a risk of further incitement of violence.

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence, the big tech company statement read.

The big tech company previously threatened to ban the account if any future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies occurred.

Twitter further attempted to justify its censorship by claiming it is dedicated to granting the public access to elected officials and world leaders, but that no longer includes Trump.

Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open, the statement continued. However, we made it clear going back years that these accounts are not above our rules entirely and cannot use Twitter to incite violence, among other things. We will continue to be transparent around our policies and their enforcement.

While the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who glorifies violence on a regular basis, is allowed to stay on the big tech platform, and is even promoted by it, Trump will no longer be allowed an account with Twitter.

The big tech company has a history of censoring the president. In one of its most recent moves, Twitter locked the presidents account Wednesday after the company said his tweets violated its Civic Integrity policy. Shortly before the lock, the social media platform barred users from liking, replying to, or even retweeting the presidents video calling for peace after a mob attacked the Capitol.

The social media platform also made a point to label almost every one of the presidents posts about the election with a flag, disputing his claims about election integrity.

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

More:

Twitter Just Nuked The Account Of The World's Biggest Critic Of Big Tech And China - The Federalist

Amid the fallout from a stunning Republican loss in Georgia that effectively hands control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats, were already seeing commentary and think pieces about how this means the end of Trumpism, that Donald Trump killed the GOP, that Trump sabotaged his own party, and so on.

Not so fast. Yes, President Trump will leave office having served only one term, but consider where he will leave his party relative to his previous two predecessors. When George W. Bush left office, he left behind eight fewer GOP Senate seats and 21 fewer House seats. Democrats comfortably controlled the Congress and the White House, having made substantial gains in two consecutive elections, the 2006 midterms and the 2008 generalsomething no party had done since the 1930s.

By the time Barack Obama left office, his party had been decimated. Sure, Democrats gained two Senate seats and six House seats in 2016, but it wasnt anywhere close enough to make up for historic losses in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. In the latter, Republicans won the largest Senate majority for either party since 1980, while gains in the House gave the GOP its largest majority since 1928. All told, Obama oversaw the net loss of 12 Senate seats and 64 House seats.

On the state level, Obamas tenure was marked by the largest loss of power since Ike Eisenhower. When Obama took office in 2009, Democrats controlled both chambers in 27 states. When he left, it was only 13. Under Obama, Democrats lost 13 governorships and a total of 813 state legislative seats. Between the 2010 and 2014 midterms, Republicans gained control of 33 state legislatures.

By comparison, Trump is leaving his party in good shape. Yes, Democrats control the presidency, the House, and effectively control a split Senate. But Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosis majority is razor-thinand about to get thinner. President-elect Joe Biden has picked three Democratic House members to serve in his administration, which means Pelosi will have only a three-seat majority when the next Congress convenes.

Democrats failed to unseat a single House Republican in 2020 while losing Democratic incumbents nationwide. Democrats failed to gain control of a single state legislature, while Republicans netted about 60 state House seats and more than a dozen state Senate seats across the country. Democrats failed to gain any governorships, and in fact lost one in Montana, the only governorship to change party hands in 2020.

All of the above is of course relative. Trump didnt sabotage his party, but his victory in 2016 did signal the end of the GOP as we knew itnot because Trump was going to kill the Republican Party (as I suspected might happen when he won the partys nomination) but because his election meant the electorate had already changed, and profoundly.

Republican voters, along with millions of Independents and moderate Democrats, were fed up with an entrenched establishment beholden to a donor class whose interests conflicted with those of ordinary people. The chasm between these two groups was (and still is) especially obvious on issues like immigration, free trade, and foreign policy. For too long, Republican leaders paid lip service to what voters wanta secure border, protections for American workers, an end to foreign warswhile doing what the donors wanted.

Trump was in many ways the perfect candidate to channel these frustrations, which he did with aplomb and sincerity, given his long opposition to U.S. elite consensus on these issues. His 2016 victory underscored just how dead the old GOP consensus wasthe Cold War fusionism that kept otherwise disparate elements of the Republican coalition together. Once in office, resistance to his agenda from within the GOP establishment made these divisions even more visible.

What became clear, at least outside the corporate media echo-chamber, was that the old Republican Party was already deadhad been dead since before Trump came along. Trumps election offered the party new life and a new direction.

Instead of being beholden to a wealthy donor class and the exhausted ideas and slogans of the Reagan era, Republicans could embrace populism and become a right-of-center, multiracial, working-class party. Studies of the 2016 electorate indicated GOP voters were more economically liberal and socially conservative than anyone had thought, while Democrats were moving steadily to the left on both counts.

The question was, would Republican elites take up the gauntlet and try to transform their party along these lines? Some did, some didnt. The old guard, people like Sens. Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney, didnt. A certain segment of the GOP establishment was never going to go along with a populist movement on the right, whether Trump was connected to it or not.

Indeed, as the dust settles from Georgia we are likely to hear again and again from establishment types who never supported Trump in the first place. They will say the loss of the Republican majority in the Senate, like the loss of the White House, is all Trumps fault, and that in fact the last four years of a Trumpist (that is, a populist) GOP was all a huge mistake.

But Trumps loss and the loss of the Senate, bad as it might seem for an emergent GOP populism, arent going to bring back the pre-Trump Republican status quo. Simply put, the failure of the Republican establishment was responsible for Trumps rise, and Trumps fall will not undo that decades-long failurenothing will. That party, such as it was, is gone forever.

See the original post here:

Georgia Confirms The Pre-Trump GOP Is Dead And Gone - The Federalist

Listen to conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh break down Federalist Publisher Ben Domenechs article The Consequences Of The Capitol Assault on his Friday show.

What will happen next is obvious, Domenech wrote in the piece published Thursday on Wednesdays riots.

A total crushing, anti-free speech effort that treats Trump-supporting groups like Branch Davidians. An effort to restore the fundamentally unserious neocons as the voice of reason in the room. A hardening of the bounds of the Peoples House to keep people away from politicians. A use of any levers of government power including audits, regulation, and lawfare to harass conservatives now categorized as seditionists and terrorists by the incoming president who falsely claims to want to unite the country. And above all, a doubling down on all the policies and efforts put in place to crush exactly the type of people who showed up at the Capitol yesterday in a foolish, desperate attempt to make themselves heard.

The rioters failed in their effort and ensured their marginalization. But marginalization doesnt mean evaporation. Theyre still here. Theyre still Americans. And theyre not going away. How our politicians handle that will dictate a lot about the next several years. And that shouldnt give people a lot of hope, considering that four years after his election and two weeks before his departure, the only person theyll apparently listen to is still Donald Trump.

Part one:

Part two:

Read the rest here:

Listen To Rush Limbaugh On The Federalist's Capitol Hill Coverage - The Federalist

WASHINGTON D.C. As protesters marched from the presidents speech to the Capitol on Wednesday, making the scenic journey down Constitution Avenue, I met a mild-mannered woman from the same small corner of Wisconsin in which I grew up. Shed never voted before Donald Trump ran for president. She traveled to the capital because she loves the president.

Not long after our conversation, hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. They climbed the walls, pushed past police, and roamed the halls, destroying property and taking selfies. A 14-year Air Force veteran did not leave the building alive. It was a disgraceful sight.

There are those who believe Antifa showed up to incite chaos. Its possible such an attempt was made, but even if it was, there is simply no way around the fact that hundreds of Trump supporters broke into the Capitol.

Thousands more chose not to participate, leaving early or watching from a distance.From my vantage point on the east side of the Capitol, I saw genuine Trump supporters rushing up a staircase by the dozens, until the crowd was too dense to move. I saw a few urinate on trees just outside the building, barely shielded from women in the crowd.

I saw them climbing up the wall. Some chanted Whose house? Our house. Some chanted, Do your job! Antifa may have mixed into the fray, but to accurately diagnose this deep wound, its important to be crystal clear that Trump supporters rioted. Indeed, many were proud to do it. If youd rather not take my word for it, there is incontrovertible video evidence.

Ive been out talking to the protesters who busted into the Capitol, Washington Examiner reporter Susan Ferrechiotweeted. One thing Im hearing: They believed they had a right to be in a public building and did not expect cops to block their access (some were allowed in!) A subset of this group, they said, got out of control.

And so the blame game rages on. Rioting is the fault of rioters. But they had just been told by the president that a landslide election was being stolen from him.

Many people trust Donald Trump. They have been lied to by the media for years. They have been smeared as racists by elites and peers alike. With no other sources to turn to, they turn to the man who seems to hear them. He took advantage of that to lessen the blow of a narrow reelection loss.

Love him or hate him, it turns out Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., was right last week when he argued [t]he president and his allies are playing with fire. No senator believes Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in a landslide. Many do, however, believe (and with good reason) that election irregularities occurred on a wider-than-acceptable scale.

The people I spoke to today, most of whom were at a total loss for who to trust in the media, believe the president. He told them a landslide win was being stolen. That would be a crisis. They acted as such. What did he expect?

For years now, Republicans have been pressed daily to strike a delicate balance, ignoring bad tweets to maintain a working relationship with a president beloved by many of their constituents. They had a reasonable argument for doing that. It pushed them to be more responsive to disenfranchised working-class voters. It gave them a seat at the table. But in the waning days of Trumps tenure, one of the worst-case scenarios of a loose-lipped president came to pass.

Some lawmakers and pundits will use it as an excuse to be more openly critical. Reasonable Conservatives will trip over themselves to prove their reasonableness. Some will continue with their fealty and others will pretend they never did.

This is not vindication for the pundits who warned repeatedly Trumps rhetoric was dangerous. Far from it. First, many conservatives who support his policy agenda abhor his rhetoric and say as much. Some downplay it to avoid making negotiations impossible.

But more than anything, its not vindication because such pundits harbor contempt for many of their decent, patriotic neighbors. They also excuse similar behavior on the left time and again. That, of course, does not vindicate anyone who stormed or cheered the storming of the Capitol either.

Our elites are corrupt. The political establishment is not serving us well. These wounds will not be healed by sanctimonious Instagram posts, cable news monologues, egghead Twitter threads, or lofty speeches on the Senate floor, applauded by Beltway journalists who just pocketed $2,000 bonuses and rarely worry about feeding their families.

In a sense, Wednesday will end in the same way it started, under a president known to be a flawed messenger for a deeply upset constituency.

The woman from Wisconsin who was kind enough to share her thoughts with me as she marched through the city volunteered that even she, a Trump diehard who traveled across the country for a midweek rally, wasnt always happy with everything he said. But like everyone else with whom I spoke, she eagerly insisted she would follow Trump straight into a third party.

It is the fault of the political class that Trumpor Bernie Sandersfeel like the only viable solutions to so many Americans. The Capitol riot will hurt the people who were already hurting most, the decent rally goers at a loss for answers, continually ignored and smeared, saddled with the baggage of violence they did not commit.

As the Capitol devolved into chaos, I overheard a protester walking away from the scene, down the hill on the east side Union Station, mutter about the political establishment to his friend. Its like theyre playing a game, he sighed, and everyone has a role to play but us.

Excerpt from:

The Capitol Riot Will Hurt The People Who Were Already Hurting Most - The Federalist

Facebook announced it would be stripping all photos and videos featuring Wednesdays riots at the U.S. Capitol, claiming such content promoted criminal activity.

At this point, the company wrote, they represent promotion of criminal activity which violates our policies. No such widespread censorship was afforded to the left-wing riots erupting last year, killing at least 30 people while reporters stood in front of burning blazes and characterized the events as peaceful protests.

Facebooks decision comes as Twitter declared a 12-hour suspension of President Donald Trumps account, going on to threaten a permanent ban against the president after removing a video from the White House urging his supporters raiding the capitol building to go home now.

The tech giant also barred users from sharing Trumps plea for peace by prohibiting likes, retweets, or replies. Twitter continued, warning it would be monitoring even statements made off Twitter for possible suspension.

Trumps removal from Twitter had long been a primary policy priority of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, wholaunched a crusade during the Democratic primaries in 2019. A former Harris spokesman is now one of Twitters top communications officers.

The big tech crackdown follows an explosive day of violent riots overwhelming security at the nations Capitol, prompting evacuations as Congress prepared to certify the results of the Electoral College granting former Vice President Joe Biden the presidency.

One woman shot inside the building amid the afternoon riots later died.

The National Guard was deployed Wednesday evening to protect lawmakers resuming business once the building was finally secured.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser implemented a 12-hour curfew to run from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Wednesday night to Thursday morning.

See the original post here:

Facebook Will Ban And Delete All Photos And Videos Of Capitol Riots - The Federalist