Category Archives: Federalist

Democrats pursued the most recent Republican president with impeachment three times over allegations he had partnered with a foreign government to influence U.S. government policies. If equal standards were applied to the Biden family, Joe Biden would be impeached both in the press and in Congress for treasonous collusion with foreign governments.

Democrats claimed Donald Trump committed treason because his son had met with a Democrat-planted Russian lobbyist. In exchange for Russian assistance with election-influencing social media memes, the allegations went, Trumps campaign promised a more Russia-friendly U.S. foreign policy.

Joe Bidens familys use of his high-level U.S. government positions to rake in millions from product-free business deals has been documented since before the Obama administration, perhaps most extensively by journalist Peter Schweizer. Last week, Republicans in Congress added more evidence to the accruing pile indicating the Biden family has been selling influence with the American government to foreign bidders for decades.

House Republicans called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate evidence at least nine Biden family members functioned as cutouts for some $10 million in foreign payments to the big guy. The nest of foreign payments to Biden family members under nearly two dozen shell companies looks like a mafia ledger.

Corporate outlets largely ignored the new evidence that would have led to another impeachment push if Trump were president. The same day Republicans called on the Department of Justice to investigate the Bidens millions in payments, DOJ arrested their Republican colleague over trumped-up tax charges concerning an allegedly errant couple hundred bucks. Democrats play for keeps, while Republicans for some reason still cant figure out what year it is.

Its been eight years since Democrats openly used their political power to upend every norm in the playbook. They filed impeachment charges on the first day of Trumps presidency. They spent years contesting presidential elections. They are sweeping elections with low-quality absentee ballots. Their cronies are turning domestic disagreement into domestic terrorism, targeting Christian pro-life moms as extremists who warrant surveillance and curtailment of online speech.

If Republicans cant figure out what era were in and how to stop the lefts destruction of self-government, our country is toast. Republican voters figured this out good and hard when the Russiagate hoax was unraveled. Why cant their representatives? Its long past time for Republicans to start using Democrats standards against Democrats until they agree to play fair.

When Democrats were pushing for impeaching Trump, the source of the fabricated dossier used as a pretext both for the Obama administration spying on the Republican presidential nominees campaign and later for impeaching Trump told Congress that Don Trump Jr. merely talking to a Russian lawyer indicated treason.

Fusion GPS head Glenn Simpson testified: [T]he issue with the Trump Tower meeting, as I understand it, is that the Trump people were eager to accept intelligence from a foreign government about their political rivals and that is, you know, I would say, a form of interference. If youre getting help from a foreign government and your help is intelligence, then the foreign governments interfering.

Again, apply this to the Biden familys business deals, and Joe Biden should have been impeached as a traitor the day he took office. According to Schweizer, many of the Chinese officials who paid Biden family members were connected with high-level Chinese government intelligence.

[T]he Biden family received some $31 million from Chinese businessmen with very close ties to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence during and after Joe Bidens tenure as vice president, Schweizer documented in his 2022 book, Red-Handed.

Is the same true about Ukrainian payments to Hunter Biden? A 2020 U.S. Senate committee report said those illustrate serious counterintelligence and extortion concerns relating to Hunter Biden and his family.

Although the suggestion will surely prompt howls from the uniparty, its an entirely fair question whether and how any of these payments have affected Bidens foreign policy that includes proxy war with a nuclear power. What do Ukrainian officials know about the Biden familys years of financial dealings in their famously corrupt country that the U.S. president might not want American voters to know? Isnt it election interference to withhold that information from the public?

The Biden administration has committed an amazing amount of American funds and materiel to Ukraines war with Russia. That extensive backing may be damaging U.S. readiness for other looming conflicts, such as with China over Taiwan.

Americans need to know what the Biden family did and may still be doing for Ukrainian officials in exchange for Hunter Bidens well-documented Ukranian sinecure. How many of those American war billions for Ukraine that we cant trace are going to oligarchs who made payments to Biden family members?

The Biden administration is also ignoring South American drug cartels highly profitable war on the U.S. border. That war is boosted by the same Chinese government whose officials also reportedly bought Biden family influence. Funny how foreign payouts seem to manifest everywhere the United States is bleeding out.

Its farcical for Republicans to demand that the Biden-corrupted Department of Justice investigate the president of the party on whose behalf theyve been repeatedly ignoring congressional oversight, protecting corrupt politicians, raiding opposition party leaders homes, leaving opposition court justices homes surrounded, and endlessly leaking lies to media outlets. Its the height of political wankery to complain for TV about rogue federal agencies Republicans ridiculously keep pretending have any legitimacy and agreeing to fund.

Its long past time for elected Republicans to take their opponents seriously and metaphorically, feds return political fire with loaded guns. All Im asking is for Republicans to apply to the Bidens the same alleged standards Democrats cynically brandished against Trump.

Its not that complicated. Here are a few ideas in the right direction that could be refined by congressional lawyers: Tell Democrats no votes for any federal judicial nominees until the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal law against the agitators menacing the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices. Defunding every department, grant, and personnel member involved in suppressing Americans speech as misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation is now a non-negotiable precondition for voting on any federal spending bill.

The Biden administration will enforce federal law and deport border-crossers immediately, or Republican governors will send their National Guards to do it. Agencies that dont respond in the legally required timeframe to congressional inquiries and subpoenas will lose a tenth of their funding for every infraction. The FBI will be broken up into its useful departments, such as child trafficking and drug cartel dismantling, and those departments headquartered in red states like Utah, Florida, and Texas.

Red-state police will be instructed to refuse to cooperate with the FBI on any cases that arent of an obvious criminal nature, such as child sex crimes and kidnapping. Republicans will vote nothing else for the war in Ukraine until the Biden familys business dealings there are fully investigated and published.

Refuse to work with these people or their corrupted institutions in any way until they start manifestly obeying the U.S. Constitutions guarantee of equal protection of the laws. No one is above the law, right? Including the Bidens.

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By The Standards Democrats Applied To Trump, Biden Is A Traitor - The Federalist

Whatever your view of immigration, there can be no doubt that the Biden administrations border policies have been an abject failure. This is especially true of Title 42, the pandemic-era public health order that for the last three years, under both the Trump and Biden administrations, allowed border officials to expel illegal immigrants quickly back to Mexico.

Title 42 came to an end on Thursday when the Covid public health emergency officially ended, and its ending has coincided with what can only be described as absolute chaos along the U.S.-Mexico border this past week.

Border Patrol agents are now arresting more than 10,000 illegal immigrants every day. If you have no context for that figure, consider that in March 2019, at the onset of the last border crisis, Border Patrol was arresting 4,000 illegal immigrants a day. At the time, President Obamas Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnsonsaid, I know that 1,000 [apprehensions] overwhelms the system and I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like.

What 10,000 a day looks like is a humanitarian catastrophe. Put bluntly, Border Patrol has nowhere to put these people. If it keeps up for much longer, well see a string of what amount to massive migrant camps appear across south Texas think of the encampment of 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, in September 2021, multiplied many times over all up and down the border.

What 10,000 a day means is that our southwest border is collapsing. The Texas cities of Laredo, El Paso, and Brownsville have issued emergency declarations, as has New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who still refuses to order state law enforcement and military units to arrest and deport illegal immigrants caught crossing the Rio Grande, has deployed a new National Guard unit, the Texas Tactical Border Force, to try to deter illegal crossings.

Its unclear what this will entail, but video circulating on Twitter this week taken by Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies showed Texas DPS troopers blocking a group of migrants along the north bank of the Rio Grande.

Thats a step in the right direction, but as a long-term strategy, rolling out razor wire along stretches of the Rio Grande isnt going to cut it. Neither is the Biden administrations plan to send hundreds more U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) personnel to the border as part of a just-finalized new policy to process migrants within days of their arrival and deport them if they fail an initial screening. The USCIS agents will be joined in this effort by some 1,500 military troops not to enforce the border butto do data entry, mostly.

But the new Biden policy amounts to little more than a slap-dash propaganda campaign to make it look like the administration is doing something about the crisis. It might result in fewer illegal immigrants ultimately being granted asylum, but it does nothing to reduce the use of catch-and-release as Americasde factoborder policy, because it allows anyone who is denied a credible fear claim toappeal to an immigration judge a process that takes years to complete thanks to the growing backlog of asylum cases in the system.

And since Bidens new rule does nothing to speed up the adjudication process, it just means this backlog will grow faster than it was before, providing an even greater incentive for illegal immigrants to cross the border and file bogus asylum claims, knowing they will be released with work authorizations as their cases wind their way through the system. On some level, even Biden knows this, which is perhaps why he said this week that the border was going to be chaotic for a while.

What all of this reveals is that our entire corpus of immigration law is woefully defective and has been for many years. Its this defective underlying body of law that made bureaucratic expedients like Title 42 necessaryto control the border. If we dont fix the law, though, well never be able to fix the border no matter how many Title 42-like policies a future GOP president might institute.

Recall that Title 42 was invoked during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic as a tactic to slow the spread of the disease. In that context, it made sense. The last thing you want in a pandemic is uncontrolled mass illegal immigration.

But it soon became clear that ending Title 42 would risk unleashing complete chaos at the border. For as much as the Biden admin denounced Trumps border policies, he kept Title 42 in place for years as a way to manage the flow of illegal immigration long after the pandemic justification for it was obsolete.

Now that Title 42 is finally ending, we see the federal governments immigration bureaucracy grinding into action once again to manage a situation our defective laws cannot handle. Whatever the outcome of Bidens plan, it amounts to government by administrative fiat, demonstrating the ongoing corruption of the rule of law in America and the triumph of the administrativestate.

In the end, the only thing that will end the ongoing border crisis is to fix our asylum and immigration laws so they cant be exploited by illegal immigrants making bogus asylum claims. Programs like Title 42, or even the Trump administrations Remain in Mexico policy, are stop-gaps at best. To secure the border, were going to need laws that mandate a secure border, which means closing the asylum loopholes, immediately deporting those who cross illegally, and building a really high wall.

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

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Title 42 Was Never Going To Fix Illegal Immigration - The Federalist

Following the lead of other Republican-led states, Virginia announced on Thursday it would be withdrawing from the leftist-controlled voter roll management group known as ERIC.

In a letter obtained by The Virginia Mercury, Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals informed the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, that the commonwealth will no longer be a participant in the program, citing concerns about the confidentiality of voter information and controversy surrounding the historical sharing of data with outside organizations leveraged for political purposes.

As The Federalist previously reported, ERIC is a widely used voter-roll management organization founded by Democrat activistDavid Beckerthat was sold to states as a quick and easy way to update their voter rolls. In actuality, ERICinflates voter rollsby requiring member states to contact eligible but unregistered residents to register to vote.

In short, ERICs mandate has expanded beyond that of its initial intent to improve the accuracy of voter rolls, Beals reportedly wrote. We will pursue other information arrangements with our neighboring states and look to other opportunities to partner with states in an apolitical fashion.

Notably, Virginia was one of the seven states to found ERIC in 2012.

In addition to founding ERIC, Becker is also the founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), which, along with the Center for Tech and Civic Life, received hundreds of millions of dollars from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg leading up to the 2020 election. These grants were poured into local election offices throughout the country to push sloppy Democrat-backed voting policies, such as mass mail-in voting and the widespread use of ballot drop boxes.

Analyseshave shown these Zuckbucks were heavily skewed toward Democrat municipalities, especially in swing states, effectively making it a giant Democrat get-out-the-vote operation.

CEIRs interference in the electoral process isnt exclusive to the 2020 election, however. As The Federalist previouslyreported, CEIR enjoys an active relationship with ERIC, which transmits the voter-roll data it receives from states to CEIR. Upon receiving the data, CEIR then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach. In other words, CEIR a highly partisan nonprofit with a history of left-wing activism is creating lists of potential (and likely Democrat) voters for states to register in the lead-up to major elections.

Virginia is just the latest in a string of Republican-led states to depart from ERIC in recent months. West Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Ohio, and Iowa all announced they were leaving ERIC in March. Alabama and Louisiana announced their respective departures last year.

Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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Virginia To Exit Leftist-Controlled Voter Roll Group ERIC - The Federalist

Dianne Feinstein is back at her Senate perch and ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. At least thats what her colleague Chuck Schumer says. [I]ts clear shes back where she wants to be and ready to deliver.

Feinstein doesnt appear to have gotten that memo. After her months-long absence from Congress with shingles, shes back ish. Im still experiencing some side effects, Feinstein said in a statement accompanying her return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, adding that shell have to work a lighter schedule.

That seems like an understatement. Photos of the senator, who will be 90 years old next month, are quite grotesque, as if Getty Images asked AI to generate a photo of Sen. Dianne Feinstein starring in The Toxic Avenger.

I mean no disrespect to the senator, who cant do anything about contracting a nasty virus and aging just like everybody else. Her countenance is certainly as sad as it is startling. But since she refuses to appease her fellow Judiciary Committee members with a letter of resignation, and leftist lawmakers are champing at the bit to ram as many norm-shattering judges as possible through Senate confirmation, theyve got her propped up in a wheelchair Weekend at Bernies-style. All Democrats need is a body and an aye, and the party can go on as usual.

But this is no goofy 80s film, and the comedy factor runs out when you realize Feinstein isnt the only Bernie at this soire. Since before he was even elected in 2022, Sen. John Fetterman has been surrounded by an entourage of heartless staffers and his succubus wife who have been doing their darnedest to make him appear as lively as possible despite severe side effects of a stroke. These handicaps have included obvious mental deficiencies, incoherence, and ultimately clinical depression that took him out of the Senate and into the hospital shortly after he assumed office.

His body and his hoodies are back as of mid-April, but hes still not all there. Heres Fetterman chairing a subcommittee hearing.

Its hard to watch. But its par for the course for todays Democrats and the Washington establishment in general which are motivated far more by ideological fidelity than by competent and decisive governance. And nobodys more faithful to the party script than those who are too mentally unfit ever to be unscripted. Heres a post-hearing Fetterman, sticking with his staffer and apparently reading lines for a casual conversation from a teleprompting iPad.

Unfortunately, the worst offender is also the one with the nuclear codes and a family owned by Americas biggest adversaries. On the rare chance President Joe Biden takes questions from the press, the queries and answers are written down ahead of time with handy mugshots of the reporters who will be asking them so the bumbling commander-in-chief can appear as though he has command of the conversation. When his team takes a break from their regular lid-calling to let him give a speech, he either shouts incomprehensible nonwords, whispers zany nonsense, makes up stories, calls for regime change in Russia, or reads cues off his teleprompter: End of quote. Repeat the line.

And even though polling shows a strong majority of voters dont think Biden is mentally sharp or physically healthy enough to be an effective president 63 percent and 62 percent, respectively the 80-year-old is running for the office again. If hes successful, that will make him 86 by the completion of his second term, assuming his bucket remains unkicked.

But just like Weekend at Bernies, the real story about Feinstein or Fetterman or Biden isnt about the corpse so much as about the dudes propping it up; in the Washington version, none of the people orchestrating the ruse are accountable to voters. Like the administrative state, where Congress delegates its rule-making to ideologically motivated career bureaucrats with nothing to lose, similar power-wielding by staffers and spouses is a disaster. Whos really in charge? You never can tell.

Though Feinstein is about to join the nonagenarian club and many of her fellow lawmakers are soon behind her Washingtons mental and physical handicaps arent just an age thing. The faltering Fetterman is only a Gen Xer. On the flip side, Trump, who will be 78 by the next election and has faced scrutiny over his age too, just mopped the floor with 31-year-old CNN hotshot Kaitlan Collins during a town hall this week.

The truth is, the incapacitation Democrats have got going on in Washington right now isnt a mistake. Its part of the plan. Sure, the whole Feinstein bit didnt work out quite so well when Republicans shockingly didnt cave to Democrats demands to replace her seat on the Judiciary Committee, and their legal aspirations were thwarted. But otherwise, its important to understand: Democrats dont need good leaders in Congress or the Oval Office, they just need good Democrats and a good Democrat is any Democrat thats a vehicle for the lefts extreme agenda.

While establishment Republicans consistently screw over their own partys voters with petty attacks of candidate quality and hubris, Democrats know the best allies are any in power. Even if theyre horrible or incoherent or almost dead, theyll do just fine for holding majorities, passing legislation, installing judges, and keeping the lefts agenda du jour alive.

Just slap on some glasses and a Walkman and get them in a conga line.

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D.C. Democrats Have Gone Full 'Weekend At Bernie's' - The Federalist

Netflixs new docudrama series Queen Cleopatra has come under fire from a wide variety of publications, this one included, for its ahistorical depiction of the famed Egyptian monarch as dark-skinned. These sorts of race-blind castings are all the rage in Hollywood these days, from Bridgerton to Hamilton. Where Queen Cleopatra differs, however, is in its claims to historical truth. The series is presented as a docudrama, with interviews from purported scholars and historians who promote the idea that the last monarch of ancient Egypt was indeed black.

One such classicist Netflix relied on is Shelley Haley, a professor at Hamilton College who specializes in viewing classics through the lens of black feminism and critical race theory. She also leads the preeminent organization in the field, the Society for Classical Studies (SCS). The SCS has been at the forefront of the history wars the leftist quest to revise history in line with the mandates of equity. It promotes antiracist education and Queering the Past, while foregrounding noxious DEI ideology in its mission statement and blog. This leftist program is meant to reforge the past to appease the woke in the present, the opposite of doing history.

Haleys approach to defining Cleopatra as black slots into this broader agenda and was the subject of a New York Times piece titled Fear of a Black Cleopatra. Her anti-historical ideas are given favorable treatment by the authors, who defend not just Netflixs casting choice, but the claim that Cleopatra was herself black, if not ethnically then culturally.

The piece lays out the crux of Haleys claims about Cleopatra: the idea of so-called cultural Blackness. This concept is explained as follows: When we say, in general, that the ancient Egyptians were Black and, more specifically, that Cleopatra was Black, Dr. Haley wrote, we claim them as part of a culture and history that has known oppression and triumph, exploitation, and survival.

Her point is that we are not limited to considering only representations of what Cleopatra looked like or descriptions of her ancestry. We can also use what we know of her life, reign, and resistance to understand her race as a shared cultural identity.

The idea that cultural Blackness is defined as the knowledge of oppression and triumph, exploitation and survival is not only deeply reductive, but it is also so broadly defined as to be useless in historical analysis. Blackness as oppression and exploitation ignores the wild successes of African history, including Mansa Musa, arguably the richest monarch in world history. This myopic focus on the negative defines blackness as perpetual victimhood, removing agency from black figures in the past and the present. It demeans or avoids the history of black achievement and culture, ignoring impressive accomplishments in favor of a simplistic view of race and enslavement. This does black history and black people a profound disservice.

The idea of cultural Blackness defined as overcoming oppression is so broad as to encompass nearly every culture on Earth. The Russians overcame oppression when they threw off the Mongol Yoke in the 1400s; the Germans did so when they ejected the Napoleonic interlopers from their fragmented lands in 1814; Americans overturned a repressive imperial government with the victory at Yorktown in 1781; the Chinese escaped from oppression when Imperial Japan was ejected from its territory at the end of World War II; Jews have overcome the challenges of hatred and intolerance more times than can be counted. Does that mean that all of these groups are now culturally Black? Can African-Americans claim the suffering of Jews in Tsarist Russia as their own? How about the infamous Rape of Nanking? Is that going to be retconned as an anti-black hate crime? And why does this not work both ways?

The authors address that last concern, of course, saying:

To recognize Cleopatra as culturally Black is not to pretend that skin color is meaningless now in the manner of recent figures like Rachel Dolezal and Jessica Krug, who claimed a cultural identity that was not theirs. In our society, race and racism are deeply entwined with skin color and other inherited physical traits. We cannot understand modern forms of oppression without understanding how phenotypical difference contributes to them, and we cannot legitimately claim a racial history without having lived it.

Cleopatra lived it. And its that experience, not her physical attributes, that should determine how we imagine her life.

But did Cleopatra actually live that racialized experience? Was she, using Haleys rubric, culturally Black? If one is serious about the history, the answer is a resounding no.

Indeed, Cleopatra was a product of conditions almost exactly the opposite of those defined as culturally Black. The last Egyptian queen was no stranger to exploitation, but she was the oppressor, not the oppressed. Despite her knowledge of the local language, Cleopatra was no ordinary Egyptian. She was an absolute monarch in a line that began with forcible conquest. Sovereigns in ancient Egypt were almost comically powerful in comparison to modern political figures; although the cult of personality around current American politics is worrisome, U.S. presidents dont present themselves as the literal embodiment of God. Cleopatra did, depicting herself as the goddess Isis, a fact somehow spun by the Times as part of a narrative of oppression instead of megalomaniacal narcissism. She owned thousands of slaves and could command the obedience of any Egyptian citizen. Repressed, she was not.

The authors use negative depictions of Hellenized Egyptian culture by the Roman writer Propertius to claim that the scion of the Ptolemaic dynasty was scorned and debased by the dominant culture. A brief look at other passages from ancient writers puts the lie to this cherry-picked sourcing. Egypt was the jewel of the ancient Mediterranean world, rich in natural resources, population, and movable wealth, hence the reason why the Macedonians conquered it in the 300s B.C. and why the Romans in Cleopatras day were so invested in annexing it.

Cleopatra, as the queen of Egypt, was the ultimate owner of those riches, and she didnt exactly use them to uplift her subjects. Instead, she used them to woo Roman generals in an attempt to sell out her country while retaining her own power and prestige. The well-regarded Roman writer Plutarch describes these immense riches in his book Lives, specifically during his Life of Antony:

[Cleopatra] came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture. The next day, Antony invited her to supper, and was very desirous to outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was altogether beaten in both.

This passage details how absurdly wealthy and elite Cleopatra was, so much so that she embarrassed one of the preeminent Roman leaders of the time with his relative poverty and lack of sophistication. She used these riches to promote her own power and attempt to ensure the survival of her dynasty over that of Egypt itself. This approach backfired, ending with her suicide by poison after Antonys loss at the Battles of Actium and Alexandria in 31 and 30 B.C., respectively. But this loss and her self-inflicted demise do not make Cleopatra into an icon of the oppressed; in fact, subsequent Roman rule of the province was less arbitrary and capricious than was her own.

Not only does Haleys idea of cultural Blackness and the Times piece that parrots this contention fail dramatically in the case of Cleopatra, it fails as an overall historical theory. It reduces an entire ethnicity and culture to the experience of oppression, both narrowing the understanding of black history and appropriating the history of others.

In this way, it serves two leftist goals: expanding blackness to encompass whatever fits a presentist narrative and privileging black scholars in discussing these topics. In some ways, this follows the model of #ownvoices in young-adult literature, where authors must only create stories centering on the authors personal identity factors. In history, and thus classics, this would privilege white, Western scholars, especially given the paramount importance of European civilization in those fields. By creating an expansive definition of cultural Blackness which, if it includes Cleopatra, covers almost anything this problem is reversed. Under this new rubric, black scholars would be the true experts and others would be marginalized.

In short, it is part and parcel of the broader equity movement, and it should be treated as such. The academics who espouse this claptrap should be defenestrated, their universities razed, and the ground salted. Or, to put it in words even Cleopatra would comprehend: woke history delenda est.

Mike Cot is a writer and podcaster focusing on history, Great Power rivalry, and geopolitics. He has also written for National Review and The National Interest, blogs at rationalpolicy.com, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

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NYT Warps History To Support Cleopatra's 'Cultural Blackness' - The Federalist

Democrats cant stop shooting themselves in the foot on gun control. Their mistake is that they refuse to connect their push for more firearm restrictions with, well, everything else they are doing.

The Democratic approach to guns is to wait until there is a mass shooting and then demand more gun control. But the narrow logic of their argument that we should ban, or at least further restrict, the weapons used to commit the latest mass murder is undermined by what Democrats do the rest of the time.

Except for those who are already ideologically committed to it, gun control is a high-trust proposal. People keep and bear arms to defend themselves, and so persuading citizens to limit or even give up their guns requires persuading them that they do not need them for protection. But voters do not view Democrats as prioritizing a country with low crime and high social trust. Rather, Democrats are seen as the soft-on-crime party, with a left flank that is committed to insane defund-the-police policies.

When Democratic prosecutors refuse to prosecute, when Democratic politicians enact revolving-door bail policies for violent criminals, when Democratic mouthpieces insist that violent and threatening lunatics on public transit should be accepted as a normal part of life, they are telling people they are on their own. And many Americans have gotten the message; the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots sold a lot of guns, many of them to new gun owners.

If Democrats want to convince Americans of the benefits of gun control, they should start by showing they are willing and able to control crime. But they often do not even bother to enforce existing gun laws against violent criminals. The more Democratic leaders and activists tolerate crime and disorder, the more they sabotage their demands for more gun control.

Similarly, Democrats are also hampered by the mistrust and animosity they stoke. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie got the causality backward when he wrote that an armed society is a world of fear and alienation, where people live in a state of heightened awareness, even anxiety. It is not a world of trust or hope or solidarity or any of the values we need to make democracy work as a way of life, much less a system of government.

But it is not guns that have created social alienation. Americans have always been well-armed for a while last century, it was possible to mail-order machine guns. Rather, it is the culture that has changed, along with the nature of American violence we have tended to be a violent nation, but regular mass shootings are a relatively recent development.

Americans are increasingly alienated, with a massive deficit of social trust. Trust in everything from the government to churches is down dramatically, and Americans are increasingly lonely. No wonder people are arming up, including many of those who still have strong families and communities they can tell what time it is, and they have others to protect as well as themselves.

Democratic leaders and their apologists at The New York Times and elsewhere may claim to want trust, hope, and solidarity, but these cannot be established by government edicts and programs though they can be destroyed by them. A little more gun control, or even a lot more gun control, wont do the trick. Nor will Bouie writing a column or two a week calling conservatives racist change anything for the better, or even advance his goals (other than his getting paid, which is a goal every writer should respect).

The ways of life that actually build trust, hope, and solidarity are not mysterious: Get married and stay married, have kids and raise them well, go to church, and get involved in your community. These patterns of life used to be normal for everyone, but now it is mostly conservatives advocating for them. And a nation with strong families and communities, united by shared values and high social trust, would probably have far fewer mass shootings, regardless of its gun laws.

It is not guns, but the lefts hostility toward traditional values and ways of life that is driving much of the alienation in our country. And while it is most destructive for those caught up in it (fatherless children being a leading example) it is also threatening for everyone else. Part of why it is so easy for many American gun owners to envision a tyrannical government that might need to be forcefully resisted is because they can see the cultural revolution the left is waging against them.

If Bouie and the rest want some more trust, hope, and solidarity, they could start by calling off the culture war, or at least admit to waging it one of the more surreal aspects of our political discourse is watching leftists proclaim their intention to radically remake American culture with every tool at their disposal, which they press to even the pettiest of points, and then turn around and pretend they are not the culture war aggressors.

The left can, for example, try to empower every schoolteacher in America to transition children without parental knowledge or consent, or it can try to increase trust, hope, and solidarity. It cannot do both. Likewise, the left can make the case for gun control, or it can demand that we defund the police. It cannot do both.

If leftists want our guns, they should stop trying to take our children.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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How Democrats Shoot Themselves In The Foot On Gun Control - The Federalist

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to lock up public land without hearing from those barred from critical grazing grounds.

On Monday, Wyoming lawmakers sent a letter to BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning demanding agency leadership recalibrate its schedule for a tour of western states to present a sweeping proposal for conservation leasing. The proposed framework threatens to undermine the agencys multiple use mandate by elevating conservation above grazing, recreation, and development, threatening ranchers access to public lands.

Every public-lands state in the West will be gravely impacted if this proposed rule is finalized, wrote Wyomings three-member congressional delegation. Yet it was announced without consulting many of the most important stakeholders; families, farmers and ranchers, tribes, and others throughout Wyoming and the Western states whose lives and livelihood are intertwined with these lands.

Congress required the BLM to abide by the long-standing multiple-use doctrine with the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). The law stipulates public lands must be available to best meet the present and future needs of the people, which means allowing lands to be used for a variety of purposes, from livestock grazing to resource development. Conservation leases outlined by the BLMs new Public Lands Rule would strip access to public lands locked off from multiple uses.

Republican representatives from Wyoming including Harriet Hageman and Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso, condemned the BLM effort to side-step Congress to re-define BLMs multiple-use mandate.

It would empower radical environmentalist groups to restrict public-access to the opportunities and resources Congress has ensured these public-lands provide, they wrote.

Wyoming lawmakers also took issue with the BLMs public meeting schedule, with a mere five two-hour hearings on the calendar, two of which are virtual. The other three are planned to be held in urban city centers such as Denver, Reno, and Albuquerque. No state with a single Republican senator is slotted to host BLM officials over the proposed framework.

[READ:In Tour Promoting New Rule, Bureau Of Land Management Ignores GOP Mountain States It Would Hurt Most]

Our rural and tribal communities in the West are sparsely populated, spanning thousands of miles, and often lacking the broadband infrastructure to participate in virtual meetings, lawmakers wrote.

BLM manages 245 million acres of federal property, more than 90 percent of which lies in western states. Nearly half the state of Wyoming is federally managed.

A resident of Anderson, MT on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, where broadband access is sparse, would have to travel 699 miles through Montana and Wyoming to attend the nearest scheduled meeting in Denver, Hageman, Lummis, and Barrasso wrote. Someone from Powell, WY, where BLM land surrounds the community in every direction, would travel 511 miles to the same meeting.

The letter from Wyoming lawmakers comes a week after the four-member Idaho congressional delegation sent a letter to the BLM with similar criticism.

As the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) considers a major shift in the longstanding and well understood multiple-use approach of federal land management, we are discouraged to see Idaho was not listed as one of the sites for in-person public meetings, Idaho Republicans wrote. Further, we were disappointed to see not only was Idaho not included, but the in-person locations are geographically concentrated away from many of BLMs constituents.

On Wednesday, a coalition of 16 Republican senators representing western states sent their own letter to the bureau demanding the agency withdraw the new rules altogether.

Its clear that anti-grazing and anti-development organizations would abuse this tool to attempt to halt ranching and block access to our nations abundant energy reserves located on public lands, they wrote.

Barrasso, the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, proposed legislation with nine other Republicans in the upper chamber, including Lummis, to block the BLM rule.

The BLMs proposed framework appears to come straight from BLM Director Stone-Mannings graduate playbook. While the controversy surrounding the BLM directors nomination proceedings two years ago primarily focused on her past history as an ecoterrorist, her 1992 graduate thesis included proposals for population control and criticism of public grazing.

The framework is also likely to face a court challenge if successfully implemented. The Supreme Court narrowed the scope of authority for federal agencies to circumvent Congress with broad-range proposals in West Virginia v. EPA last summer.

Read the letter from Wyoming lawmakers to the BLM here:

05.16.2023 Letter to Tracy by The Federalist

See the article here:

Wyoming Lawmakers Demand BLM Hear From Constituents - The Federalist

The Republican National Committee (RNC) is gearing up for next years presidential race with the launch of a new department dedicated solely to election integrity.

The new internal infrastructure will bring on year-round staff operating new technology designed to facilitate recruitment and litigation, according to a 35-page report shared exclusively with The Federalist.

The RNC built a historic election integrity program in 2022: we put 80,000 volunteers on the ground, secured key legal victories, and learned how we can grow even stronger in the future, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told The Federalist. As we prepare for 2024, the RNC will establish a full-time permanent Election Integrity Department that will combine our existing tools to build on our unprecedented progress.

The report sent to RNC members Thursday details the partys plans to transform the GOPs election integrity efforts from pop-up operations into year-round initiatives that remain ongoing immediately after each election. Prior to 2021, the national Republican Party was restricted from engaging in electoral oversight, such as hiring poll watchers over a 1981 consent decree. That meant any initiatives designed to maintain integrity in American elections were patchwork efforts coordinated by independent campaigns with the support of the GOP congressional campaign committees. The decades-long order was lifted in 2018 after more than three decades, and the party officially resumed efforts on poll watching and voter fraud in the 2021-2022 election cycle.

The need for the RNC to be the permanent and year-round home for the Republican [Election Integrity Operations] is glaringly obvious, and the party is fortunate that we now have that, the report reads. For the past two years, the RNC has worked tirelessly as a bridge among those groups with unprecedented cooperation.

The RNC is now preparing to hire an army to the tune of tens of thousands of attorneys and poll watchers with an aggressive litigation strategy to ensure a free and fair election next year.

Beginning with the successful 2021 operations in Virginia and New Jersey, the RNC established a multifaceted [Election Integrity Operations] program in partnership with the NRSC and NRCC that resulted in dozens of lawsuits, wrote Ashley MacLeay and Art Wittich, who chaired the RNC committee behind the report.

The fallout from the 2020 election, wherein Democrats exploited lockdown-era protocols to radically expand unsupervised access to the ballot box, has led the GOP to prioritize election integrity as a pillar of the RNCs 2024 campaign strategy.

Three years ago, Democrat operatives through Facebooks Center for Tech and Civic Life took over the administration of elections and erected ballot boxes in liberal strongholds to gin up turnout. Mark Zuckerbergs project gave more than $400 million to the effort, with only a small fraction of the Zuckbucks spent in areas won by President Donald Trump.

[READ: The 2020 Election Wasnt Stolen, It Was Bought By Mark Zuckerberg]

Other efforts by Democrats to rig the 2020 contest included turning election day into election season, with voters able to cast ballots weeks before November, absent of the typical safeguards that protect against fraud. All happened while Big Tech conspired with the corporate press and even federal intelligence agencies to manipulate public opinion throughout the process.

While Republicans are limited with what they can do to confront the corporate collusion, the new RNC department marks an effort to master the mechanics of modern elections. The GOP is also planning to jump in the ballot harvesting game in states with loose restrictions. The party largely refrained from participating in the mass collection of ballots three years ago to the detriment of Republican candidates who faced Democrat opponents eager to exploit relaxed protocols.

Last fall, the RNC took a two-pronged approach to ballot harvesting: GOP attorneys fought to ban the practice in states such as Arizona, where attorneys were successful, while party workers took advantage of harvesting in states where efforts failed to rein in the rules.

[RELATED: Conservatives, Get Busy Ballot Harvesting Or Get Busy Losing]

The RNC ballot harvested where the law allowed it in 2022, helping to secure key congressional wins that flipped the House, McDaniel told The Federalist. We will build on and expand those efforts in 2024 where legal while still holding Democrats accountable for bad laws that undermine election integrity.

See the original post:

Exclusive: RNC Launches New Year-Round Election Integrity ... - The Federalist

What this weeks CNN town hall proved is that right now, this is not a Republican presidential primary. Its a Donald Trump vs. Enemy of the People Media melee.

Even during the program, which was curiously cut off 20 minutes early, journalists and Democrats were stewing. Apparently it was supposed to go a certain way, and it didnt. Contrary to media expectations, Trump didnt collapse under relentless pestering from the moderator, and the attendees invited by CNN werent impressed by it, either.

The live audience was, weirdly enough, made up of Republicans who dont spend every waking moment in a spitting rage, forever with hate for Trump at the forefront of their minds. Unlike every journalist in Washington, they actually seemed to enjoy themselves, getting to view the former president up close and watching him perform in a dynamic environment. I use the word dynamic to generously describe the constant yapping from CNN chihuahua Kaitlan Collins, who facilitated audience questions, but, at the instruction of her bosses and peers, had to insert a patronizing, No, Mr. President! You are WRONG! at the end of every one of Trumps answers.

Whether I think Trump performed poorly or well tells you nothing. That the media were so disappointed with the entire event says everything.

The New York Times described the affair as tough sledding for Collins, who had to battle the crowd and the candidate simultaneously.

Politico similarly wrote that CNN had put Collins in a no-win situation.

The Washington Posts Erik Wemple, a man in his upper 50s who somehow finds fulfillment in writing daily about petty media drama, fretted that CNN hasnt figured this thing out.

It all raises the question: What would a win have looked like for Collins and CNN? And why was it her job to battle either the candidate or the audience?

Obvious answer: Because they no longer see elections as choices for voters. They see them as existential fights in which the media must preserve its high place in the ossified power structure of Washington (made up of Democrat bureaucrats, Democrat intelligence officials, and Democrat military contractors). For seven years, Trump and, more importantly, his supporters, have threatened it. A second term for him will further erode it.

But the self-generated problem for the media is that on the one hand, theyre open about their interests and position in the upcoming election they will actively oppose Trumps candidacy (or, ultimately, whoever wins the GOP nomination, which is likely Trump). On the other, they continue to insist that theyre simply purveyors of information, dispassionately documenting current affairs.

Both cant be true. Its either one or the other. We know which one it is. We know which one theyre truly committed to.

Kaitlan Collins is a nag but she wasnt the problem. CNN is trash but that it hosted a town hall with a former president running for office again also wasnt the problem.

The problem is that the media, including CNN, along with its chihuahua, have made their own jobs impossible. The moaning and complaining over every live Trump event will only grow more hysterical. Thats assuming the media will even dare to host them anymore.

Go here to see the original:

Media Brought That Amazing Trump Town Hall Upon Themselves - The Federalist

The federal government should not have warrantless, backdoor access to private communication systems like Twitter.

The federal government unfortunately already hasthe capability to access everything stored byBig Tech companies, according torecent revelations from Twitter CEO Elon Musk that federal agencies had full access to private messages on Twitter.

There has been an ongoing struggle between the federal government and privacy-minded organizations when it comes to allowing back doors into users messages and data through sometimes questionable legal avenues. It is unprecedented that certain federal agencies havefull access to everything in Big Tech systems.

The close partnership between Big Tech and the federal government deteriorates the privacy rights of Americans. This relationship highlights the importance of encryption for protectingFourth Amendment privacy rights.

The Twitter Files revealed that federal agencies had infiltrated Twitters decision-making process prior to Musks takeover. Musk must clarify not only which federal agencies had full access to Twitter direct messages but also what full access means. Was the FBI able to read the direct messages of any Twitter user for any reason? How often did they abuse this power, and when did it end?

Elon Musk tweeted on May 10 that Twitter plans to rollout an end-to-end encryption feature for direct messages that will make federal snooping far more difficult. The update would make it soonly the individuals receivingdirect messages could locally decrypt them on their device, meaning not even Twitter or embedded federal agents could read them.

It is not clear, however, that end-to-end encryption apps are safe from big brothers illegal inspection.

Tucker Carlson, who was interviewing Musk when he made thefull access comment, spoke ona podcast about a harrowing story involving the encrypted messaging app Signal. According to Carlson, the NSA broke into [his] Signal account as he was working to secure an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The National Security Agency denied it had targeted Carlson specifically but stopped short of denying it had collected his communications. This raises concerns as Signal is encrypted end-to-end, and such an intrusion illustrates that keeping messages private may be impossible.

WhatsApp and iMessage, two very popular messaging apps that are considered secure, have been shown to be less than impervious. While actual message content is safe from view, an FBI document reveals the extent to which the federal government can obtain data about users and their messages through warrants and subpoenas.

Leaked documents have also shown the FBI has attempted to insert back doors into encryption algorithms, which would allow them to decrypt the actual message contents if the compromised algorithms were used. They may be looking to do the same in the future when it comes to quantum-resistant cryptography.

Lawmakers have also considered undermining the strength of encryption algorithms. A Senate bill introduced in 2020 would have made it possible for law enforcement to gain access to encrypted devices by requiring manufacturers and service providers to assist with accessing encrypted data.

Such a law would force technology companies to create ubiquitous back doors for thegovernment. It would also fundamentally undermine encryption algorithms and pave the way for compromise by nefarious actors. There are ways for law enforcement to get around encryption without totally rendering the algorithms defunct for everyone else.

Big Tech has been all too eager to share its users information. A New York Times investigation details how often authorities request user data and how infrequently companies like Apple and Microsoft challenge these requests.

If Musks revelation is true and Twitter allowed federal agencies to have unfettered access to private user-to-user messages, then it seems Big Tech is enabling this invasive behavior. Is it possible these same federal agencies have similar access to other Big Tech communication services such as Googles Gmail or Facebooks Messenger?

There should be no wide-open back door to Big Techs systems for the federal government to freely waltz into, and there should be investigations to uncover how pervasive this access may be.

Until then, we should striveto empower users and protect their rights, not law enforcement and Big Tech. Undermining encryption and the privacy it enables would take away a necessary tool in preventing Big Tech and the federal governmentfrom abusing their power.

Caleb Larson is a cybersecurity researcher, policy analyst with the Internet Accountability Project, Heritage Foundation alum, and contributor at The Daily Caller, where he writes about cybersecurity-related issues facing the United States.

See more here:

Strong Encryption Is A Must To Stop Feds From Spying - The Federalist