Category Archives: 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.

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

Gun control advocates have become so dependent on emotional arguments they often seem incapable of offering rational ones. So, I was eager to read a new Bloomberg column (via The Washington Post) headlined, The Second Amendment Allows a Ban on the AR-15.

The piece doesnt get off to a promising start, as author Noah Feldman props up a familiar straw man:

If we each have the right to bear arms, is there a constitutional right to a military-style semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15? What about a rocket-propelled grenade launcher? A small tank?

Notice how he jumps from the oxymoronic military-style semiautomatic rifle not a real thing to a small tank. Anyway, the proposition is that we should not have access to military-grade armaments. (Feldman is unaware that owning a small tank is legal.) But well get back to that in a moment.

Throughout the piece, Feldman treats the Second Amendment as some kind of courtesy extend[ed] by the state, rather than an inalienable right that can only be limited in extraordinary circumstances. The best way to avoid this confusion is to plug the words First Amendment whenever you see Second Amendment and the words newspapers every time you see guns. Though perhaps these days that wont help either.

The main problem in the piece, however, is that Feldman misunderstands the Supreme Courts 1939 United States v. Miller decision, which he contends is background to the current doctrine that makes it permissible to ban a semiautomatic rifle.

Miller revolved around a small-time bank robber and alleged murderer named Jackson Jack Miller and a sidekick, who in 1938 were caught in possession of an unregistered short-barreled shotgun while making preparation for armed robbery, according to the police. The two were charged with violating the relatively new National Firearms Act.

If it were up to the two criminals, the case would have ended right there, because both pled guilty. But the judge, Hiram Ragon, a New Dealer and NFA booster, refused to accept the pleas, assigning a court-appointed lawyer to the case. Instead of fighting the charges, the two crooks went on the lam. (Within a few months, Millers bullet-ridden body was found in an Oklahoma creek.)

Still, the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court, which is probably what Ragon had intended all along. The ruling was something of a sham. Millers lawyers didnt even bother filing a brief or showing up to make any oral arguments. And because anyone could buy any gun they wanted whenever they wanted, there were no Second Amendment advocacy groups in existence to take up the cause.

The Supreme Court issued a muddled opinion affirming the constitutionality of the NFA, finding that the Second Amendment didnt guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun shorter than 18 inches, which was a weapon commonly used by criminals rather than law-abiding citizens. In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, the court found, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. (The justices were wrong, by the way. The military did use 14-inch barrel shotguns at the time, though there was no lawyer there to inform them of this fact.)

Feldman tries to argue that even Justice James McReynolds, a crazy libertarian, was a reasonable voice on guns 84 years ago. But the truth is the NFA didnt ban any kind of mechanism or any class of weapon. In 1939, a person could walk into a drug store and buy a tommy gun if they pleased, after paying a tax.

Miller quite literally undercuts Feldmans set-up. An unregistered sawed-off shotgun brought across state lines was illegal because such guns werent used by the military for the common defense. If it had been, it would have been legal. Meaning, not only an AR-15, but an M16 a true military-grade weapon would be legal.

Feldman dismisses this finding in the case as a practical disadvantage. Just ignore it, then, I guess. Instead, like many others before him, he pivots to claim that the Miller decision bolsters the revisionist case for a collective theory of gun rights. The left would have you believe they support gun rights, but only if you join a militia. Sure.

The problem is the court didnt offer any broad ruling regarding the meaning of the Second Amendment. Miller stands only for the proposition that the Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends only to certain types of weapons, Antonin Scalia wrote nearly 70 years later in D.C. v. Heller. It is particularly wrongheaded to read Miller for more than what it said, because the case did not even purport to be a thorough examination of the Second Amendment.

To counter this claim, Feldman throws in this well-worn contention about the Heller decision:

That opinion featured the astonishing act (astonishing for an originalist, at least) of reinterpreting the original meaning of the Second Amendment. This took some jurisprudential jiu-jitsu. Scalia discounted the introductory clause that explains the purpose of amendment as ensuring a well-regulated militia. He shifted the meaning of the right to bear arms to personal self-defense.

The above paragraph is a completely concocted fantasy. Heller did not reinterpret anything. The well-regulated in the Bill of Rights refers to an orderly civilian military force, rather than a rabble of men. It always has. It does not mean regulation in its contemporary understanding of the state micromanaging your actions from the top down with a bunch of rules, which would have been alien to that generation.

And the regulated militia mentioned in the prefatory clause of the Second Amendment doesnt erase the operative clause of the amendment, which protects the individuals right to bear arms a right that virtually every notable figure from the founding era is on the record defending. There is nothing astonishing about it. Anyone whos spent five minutes reading about Madison and the Second Amendment understands why he wrote it the way he did. Many states codified the individuals right to bear arms in their own constitutions before the Bill of Rights was even written, most of them in much more explicit terms. No SCOTUS case has ever treated the Second Amendment as anything but an individual right. No Founding Father ever argued otherwise. The collective right is an invention of the 1990s.

You have a right to own an AR-15 because it is a gun in common use among ordinary citizens. There is nothing unusual about it. The most popular rifle in America isnt even close to being the deadliest weapon in the country.

The AR-15 has never been a military weapon. It was sold to civilians before it was modified. But even if we accepted the lefts contentions that ARs were some kind of military super gun a talking point that might well contribute to its popularity with homicidal nuts Miller still doesnt allow for a ban.

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AR-15 Bans Are (Still) Unconstitutional - The Federalist

Title 42, a pandemic emergency measure enacted by the Trump administration to deter illegal immigration, is set to expire on May 11, and the Biden administration expects rising crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. American businesses may embrace this influx of immigrant labor with open arms because they often cite a persistent labor shortage as their top concern and insist they need immigrants to do the jobs Americans wont do.

In a recentpiece, Oren Cass at American Compass argues that American workers would do any job if the wages were high enough. He accuses greedy businesses and the availability of low-wage immigrant workers of causingdecades of wage stagnationfor American workers. Thus, he advocates for skill-based immigration reform to help American workers secure good-paying jobs. While some of his ideas make sense, others deserve scrutiny.

In Jobs Americans Would Do, Cass wrote, From 1972 to 2022, real corporate profits per capita rose 185%. GDP per capita rose 141%. Productivity rose 135%. The average hourly wage for production and nonsupervisory workers rose 1%.A similar assertion has been repeated before by The New York Times, CNBC, the Economic Policy Institute, and many others.

But such a claim is highly debatable. Allison Schrager, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute,called the wage stagnation claims misleading because they rely on the CPI-U (Consumer Price Index of Urban Consumers) measure of inflation the CPI-U assumes larger inflation than the average household experiences [and] makes stagnation seem worse than it is.

Many studies about wage stagnation also fail to capture increasing workplace benefits, such as paid leave and health insurance. Schrager deemed that on an individual level, most people did experience wage growth over their working years, and college-educated workers tended to experience a much faster wage increase.

Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute concurred. His analysis shows American workers wages were not stagnant: Using July 1990 as the base period, average real wages using the CPI grew by 21 percent over the three-decade period ending in February 2022. Real wages grew by 39 percent using the PCE [personal consumption expenditure price index].

Although the claim of wage stagnation is questionable, Cass is correct to state that immigration is a form of population growth and Americas current immigration policy has flooded the low end of the domestic labor market with foreign workers. Its Economics 101: An increase in supply (labor) drives down the price (wages).

Analysisfrom Harvard labor economist George Borjas demonstrates that immigrants (both legal and illegal) from 1990 to 2010 reduced the average annual earnings of American workers by $1,396 in the short run. He concluded that a 10-percent increase in the size of an education/age group due to the entry of immigrants (both legal and illegal) reduces the wages of native-born men in that group by 3.7 percent and the wage of all native-born workers by 2.5 percent. His analysis also confirms that the less-educated and least-skilled Americans suffer the most negative effects on their wages in the short term when competing against immigrants for low-paying, least-skilled occupations.

However, Borjas study found that the downward pressure on wages caused by new immigrants became negligible in the long run. Thats confirmed by other research: Giovanni Peri, an economics professor at the University of California-Davis, found little evidence of a wage-depressing effect of immigration because immigrants are absorbed into the receiving economy through a series of adjustments by firms and other workers. Once these adjustments are accounted for, the wages of native workers, even workers with skills similar to those of immigrants, do not change much in response to immigration.

Cass doesnt differentiate immigrants long-term and short-term wage effects on American workers. He argues that if America reduces labor supply by reducing immigration, American employers will be compelled to raise wages high enough that all jobs will become attractive employment opportunities for American workers.

For example, Cass estimates that if the guest worker program for farming were eliminated, companies might be forced to quadruple farm wages for American workers. But these companies could easily pass on the higher labor costs to consumers by raising food prices by as much as 40 percent. He believes American consumers wouldnt mind that a $3.00 quart of strawberries might cost $4.50, and a $1.70 head of lettuce might cost $2.50.

Casss argument is flawed because he ignores that American businesses are constrained by how much cost they can pass on to consumers without driving them away. American consumers are more price-sensitive than Cass asserts. For instance, after inflation rates hit a 40-year high last year, about 90 percentof Americans expressed concern about rising food prices. Manyreportedly changed their shopping behaviors, especially at the grocery stores.

Cass also failed to recognize other factors that have nothing to do with immigrants but have affected American workers employment.

First, America has experienced a cultural shift, and labor-intensive jobs such as picking fruit, slaughtering chickens, and housekeeping are undesirable to even some of the poorest Americans. In the summer of 2015,The Wall Street Journalreported a persistent farm labor shortage due to fewer illegal immigrants. Despite farmers raising some wages by more than 20 percent and the youth unemployment rate being 12.2 percent in July 2015, few Americans filled the farming vacancies.

Mike Rowe, host of the popular TV show Dirty Jobs, criticized America for declaring war on work as a society. Rowe believes the real challenge for American workers is cultural, and we must change the conversation about the importance and dignity of blue-collar work. There are many well-paid labor-intensive jobs in the U.S.

Second, Cass fails to recognize that our nations generous welfare system and its relative ease of accessibility have created an unofficial minimum wage and an incentive for some American workers not to work. A Cato Institutestudyshows that in many states, welfare pays more than a $20-an-hour job. The U.S. government has sweetened unemployment benefits further since its Covid-19 lockdowns. A 2021 survey found that more than 1.8 million unemployed Americans have turned down job offers since March 2020 because of generous unemployment insurance benefits.

Lastly, our education system hasfailedto produce a sufficiently educated workforce. Unfortunately, extended school closures and ineffective remote learning during the pandemic have only increased our nations poor learning outcomes. Theres an indisputablemismatchbetween what students learn in school and the skills businesses need.

Given all these factors, blaming immigrants for depressing American workers wages and employment opportunities is neither fair nor accurate.

Cass does recognize that America has skilled labor shortages in some sectors. He proposes establishing a skills-based immigration policy and enforcing E-Verify, a system that validates workers legal status.

Skills-based immigration with the assistance of mandating that employers use E-Verify would create awin-win situation: It would be good for the U.S. economy, American workers, and legal immigrants but also an essential first step to reduce incentives for illegal immigration, since most illegal immigrants are economic migrants who seek employment opportunities in the United States.

However, Cass is incorrect to argue that wages should determine immigration priority and that we should favor highly skilled newcomers who are likely to compete in the labor markets high-wage segments. An actual skills-based immigration policy should give preference to immigrants who possess the skills our economy needs the most, regardless of their potential wages. Canada and Australia, two nations that operate the most successful skills-based immigration in the world, rely on national occupation databases to track skills gaps in their economies, and both have benefited by welcoming low-wage and high-wage immigrants. The United States should do the same.

Our ongoing southern border crisis is a reminder that the time for immigration reform is now, and doing nothing is not an option. Immigration needs more debate on a national level and in the chambers of the U.S. Congress.

Originally posted here:

It's Past Time To Prioritize Skills-Based Immigration - The Federalist

Wins keep pouring in for school choice in red states. Currently, seven states have enacted universal or near-universal school choice into law: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Utah, and West Virginia.

Arizona became the front-runner in 2022 by passing the legislation under Gov. Doug Ducey, which made all students eligible in the first year. Some of the other states universal school choice laws include multi-year rollout phases.

The momentum is continuing in 2023 with historical achievements advancing school choice in several other red states.

Indiana passed a budget this session that will expand eligibility for the states Choice Scholarship program. The program was initially created by former Gov. Mitch Daniels in 2011 and was the first school voucher program in the country. The 2023 budget bill increased eligibility from 300 percent of the federal income requirement for free and reduced lunch to 400 percent, which in hard numbers is approximately $220,000 for a family of four.

Other additional prior requirements were also removed. While not quite universal, only about 3.5 percent of Indiana families wont be eligible under the newly expanded income allowance. The bill also included an expansion of the existing tax-credit scholarship by removing the income eligibility limit completely.

But Indianas school choice efforts didnt stop there. The budget bill additionally supports charter schools by allowing them to receive increased funding from local taxes in certain counties. In addition, it created the Career Scholarship Account, providing students with apprenticeships or similar work-learning programs, with $5,000 to allocate toward their schooling.

Gov. Henry McMaster signed a school choice bill into law on May 4. South Carolinas Education Scholarship Trust Fund program will provide low- and middle-income families with $6,000 to allocate toward the education avenue of their choice for each of their children. That can include private school tuition, online schools, standardized tests, tutoring, and textbooks.

While the program is capped at 5,000 students the first year and to household incomes that do not exceed 200 percent of the states poverty threshold, by year three it will reach 15,000 students. At that point, the eligibility jumps to 400 percent of the poverty line.

McMasters is excited about what this new legislation will do for the families of the Palmetto State. Upon signing the bill, he remarked, Everything in this new law works and will work well work extremely well for the people of South Carolina. This goes right to the heart of that educational strength. Recognizing the broader effects of the legislation, he noted that among the benefits are not just preparing our people to live happy, strong, healthy, meaningful lives the impact on our economic growth will be enormous.

Montanas new education savings account (ESA) bill focuses on students with special needs. The Special Needs Equal Opportunity Act will provide families of students with special needs $5,000-$8,000 annually for educational expenses. Gov. Greg Gianforte is expected to sign the bill, and he commented, Every parent knows each child is unique. Lets ensure each childs education best meets his or her individual needs.

Gianforte signaled in his second State of the State Address earlier this year that more far-reaching school choice reforms may be coming in the Treasure State:

Too often throughout our country, weve seen education bureaucrats fighting to keep parents out of their kids education. Lets be clear government should never stand between parents and their kids education. Montana parents should choose whats best for their family and their kids.

North Carolina will become the first state without a Republican trifecta to pass a massive school bill. With Republicans holding a veto-proof majority in both chambers, Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper wont be able to stop the bill from becoming law as he wishes.

Once passed, the states Opportunity Scholarship program, which began in 2014, will see its biggest expansion. Starting next year, there will be no income level eligibility cap so any student in North Carolina can apply to participate. A sliding scale will determine the amount awarded based on family income. Thus, lower-income families will receive a higher level of funding than others. The private school voucher amount will range from $3,246 to $7,213 per student for the year, then adjust annually based on state spending per public school student.

Gov. Kevin Stitt has been working to advance education freedom for families in the Sooner State. As outlined in his 2023 State of the State Address, Stitt explained: Every child deserves a quality education that fits their unique needs, regardless of economic status or background. Lets fund students, not systems.

On May 2, Stitt celebrated the House of Representatives passing the Senates version of the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Act on a 61-31 vote. But House Speaker Charles McCall opted instead to capture it while the legislature seeks to get an agreement on a public education funding plan.

If and when the bill makes it to Stitt, it would provide families in households earning under $75,000 annually with $7,500 per student for parents who choose to send their child to a private or charter school outside of their zip code-assigned public school. The amount incrementally decreases based on household income, with households earning over $250,000 annually eligible for $5,000 per student per year.

Dont count other red states out in the future. Strong efforts are underway in multiple states including Nebraska and New Hampshire.

While Texas school choice took a blow on May 4 when the House voted 86-52 to amend the budget to ban state funding for school vouchers or similar programs, the Lone Star State should not be counted out. Despite the vote count not looking close, the 86 votes were less than for other amendments (e.g., a similar amendment to the House budget earned 115 votes). The vote count reflects the solid progress Texas has made this session toward winning on the issue in the future.

One thing is certain. Gov. Greg Abbott isnt about to give up when it comes to granting educational freedom to Texas families. On a hopeful note, the same day the House passed the school voucher ban, the Senate approved an ESA bill that would give parents up to $8,000 per student each year for educational expenses.

The tide is turning. Universal school choice is now a reality in several U.S. states, and more are on the way. Lets keep this juggernaut rolling to grant more American families the ability to escape from public schools that are failing their children.

Dr. Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute, Director of the American Center for Transforming Education, and a Visiting Fellow at Independent Womens Forum.

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School Choice Takes States By Storm In 2023 Legislative Sessions - The Federalist

Senate Republicans are demanding President Joe Biden hand over documents related to his March 2021 executive order directing federal agencies to interfere in state and local elections.

On Wednesday, 13 Senate Republicans sent a letter to Biden requesting his administration forfeit documents related to Executive Order 14019, which required hundreds of federal agencies tointerferein the electoral process by using taxpayer money to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. As The Federalist previouslyreported, voter registration efforts are almost always a partisan venture and often involve left-wing groups that abuse their nonprofit status to target likely-Democrat voters.

First, while we all agree that increased voter participation is a good thing, the job of federal agencies is to perform their defined missions in a nonpartisan way, not use their taxpayer funds for clandestine voter mobilization and election-turnout operations, the senators wrote. Second, it seems doubtful that Congress approved all federal agencies to use appropriated funds for the purpose of voter mobilization.

Under Executive Order 14019, the heads of each agency were required to draft a strategic plan explaining how his or her department intends to fulfill Bidens directive. Despite attempts by good government groups to acquire these plans, the Biden administration has routinely stonewalled such efforts by slow-walking its response to federal court orders andheavily redactingany related documents it has released.

In their letter, Senate Republicans are demanding the White House provide them with copies of these strategic plans, as well as a full accounting of all federal funding used to-date to comply with the order, by May 23.

Therefore, reviewing the agency plans is critical to understanding the degree to which implementation of this order has resulted in improper uses of federal resources, the senators wrote.

Signatories of the letter include Republican Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Ted Budd of North Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Lee of Utah, Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Katie Britt of Alabama.

Most recently, Budd, along with New York GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney, introduced the Promoting Free and Fair Elections Act, which, in addition to requiring federal agencies to disclose their strategic plans to Congress, would prohibit federal agencies from using federal funds to solicit or enter into an agreement with a nongovernmental organization to conduct voter registration or voter mobilization activities.

The bill would furthermore amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to bar public universities from usingtaxpayer-fundedFederal Work Study programs to pay college students to engage in voter registration campaigns. In April 2022, the Biden administrationtoldcolleges they could use work-study funds to partake in such activities. Having taxpayers fund get-out-the-vote efforts in this way had previously not been allowed.

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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Senate GOP Want Answers On Biden's Election Interference - The Federalist

This fall in Ohio, conservatives are at risk of losing a significant battle in the culture war. Unfortunately, very few on the right outside the state seem to sense the danger.

You can hardly blame most people for not noticing. By all appearances, the woke left has been on the retreat as of late. Poll after poll has shown that the GOPs new focus on parental rights and protecting children from gender ideology is extraordinarily popular. Dozens of states have taken action to roll back the transgender agenda, protecting womens sports and prohibiting transgender surgeries for kids. And the entire right from Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis to Kevin McCarthy to The Heritage Foundation has committed itself to this cause.

But even as these surface-level victories have piled up, the left has been busy scheming a way to overturn it all in one fell swoop. Instead of openly engaging in public argument, as conservatives are now doing, they aim instead to enshrine a vague provision into state constitutions that would allow judges to strike down any law opposing their gender insanity.

This November, their plan will get its most important test yet as Ohio is expected to vote on a new state constitutional amendment creating a virtually unlimited right to make and carry out reproductive decisions. Last year, amid the clamorous midterm campaign, a very similar amendment quietly passed in Michigan, as did like measures in deep-blue California and Vermont. Ostensibly, these efforts are about abortion. As written, the Ohio provision would make even the most minor restrictions on abortion completely unenforceable. But the consequences would be far more extensive than that.

If the amendments leftist authors had simply wanted to allow abortions, they could have written it that way. Instead, the amendment explicitly states that while the phrase reproductive decisions includes abortion, contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage, pregnancy, and the like, it is not limited to just that.

Conservatives shouldnt fool themselves. This is also about trans medical interventions (or, as the left euphemistically calls them, gender-affirming care).

How will a judge interpret reproductive decisions? Transgender medical interventions inevitably involve the alteration of male and female reproductive biology. Children undergoing what the left calls gender transition are given chemical-castration drugs, injected with the opposite sexs reproductive hormones, and ultimately put on a path toward genital surgery. Its not difficult to imagine an activist judge deciding that this process counts as one of the unspecified reproductive decisions the law contemplates. Laws curbing such medical interventions for minors have already been enjoined on far shakier grounds than that.

The amendment would prohibit any law that would directly or indirectly burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against the ability of any individual to exercise this new right. Bans on transgender procedures for minors would potentially be wiped out in an instant. But even beyond that, parental notification or consent requirements, or even just basic health and safety standards, would also be in clear danger of getting tossed.

The text also prohibits any interference with, or burden on, any person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right. Could a judge possibly rule that a prohibition on radical gender indoctrination in the classroom unduly interferes with an organization assisting an individual in mak[ing] reproductive decisions? Conservatives surely should not want to find out.

Youd think Republicans would be taking to the ramparts and pouring millions of dollars into educating voters about this referendum. A huge portion of the GOPs governing agenda will be at risk if this, and other ballot measures like it, are allowed to skate by unopposed. But so far, the national partys response has been muted. Republican elites are skittish about discussing abortion, and they dont seem to see the other dangers this amendment poses.

The left, tellingly, is happy to keep it that way. When the obvious sex implications of the vote are brought up, theyll downplay or even outright deny them. Vague abortion rhetoric and invocations of reproductive freedom are just about the only social-issue arguments they feel confident about, and theyre more than happy to use a referendum purportedly about abortion as the Trojan horse to smuggle through the rest of their agenda.

The rest of the party needs to wake up. If this strategy works in Ohio, a state that has lately leaned Republican, the left will use the momentum to replicate it everywhere. For conservatives to cement the progress weve made in fighting the pernicious consequences of gender ideology and continue to move forward in protecting kids and families, we must ensure this amendment, and all others like it, go down to defeat.

Terry Schilling is the president of American Principles Project. Frank Cannon is the founding president of American Principles Project.

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The Left Is Scheming To Trans Kids Through Abortion Laws - The Federalist

Headlines recently proclaimed that eight of Trumps fake electors accepted immunity deals. Of course, in reporting the news, the corporate outlets all missed the real story that the electors testimony failed to incriminate anyone, including Trump, and that the county prosecutors engaged in massive misconduct. Equally appalling, however, was the corrupt medias continued peddling of the fake electors narrative.

There were no fake electors. There were contingent Republican electors named consistent with legal precedent to preserve the still ongoing legal challenges to the validity of Georgias certified vote.

Nor was appointing an alternative slate of electors some cockamamie plan devised by Trump lawyers. On the contrary, Trumps election lawyers and the contingent electors followed the precise approach Democrats successfully used when the date Congress established for certifying an election came before the legal challenges John F. Kennedy had brought in Hawaii were decided. And that approach allowed Kennedy to be certified the winner of Hawaiis three electoral votes on Jan. 6, 1961, even though the Aloha State had originally certified Richard Nixon the victor.

The Hawaii scenario in 1960 mirrors in every material respect the facts on the ground in Georgia on Dec. 14, 2020 the date both the Democrat and Republican presidential electors met and cast their 16 electoral votes for Joe Biden and Donald Trump respectively.

Election day in 1960 fell on Nov. 8 and pitted Kennedy, a Democrat, against Republican Richard Nixon. The outcome remained unknown for some time, with a total of 93 electoral votes from eight different states undecided in the days following the election. Hawaii was one of those states.

By Dec. 9 of that year, Kennedy had accumulated enough electoral votes to win the White House, but Hawaiis winner was still in question. While the presidency did not depend on Hawaiis three electoral votes, Democrats there had challenged the initial returns that gave Nixon a 141-vote edge, or 0.08 percent margin of victory.

Based on the original count in favor of Nixon, the acting governor of Hawaii, Republican James Kealoha, certified the Republican electors on Nov. 28, 1960. On Dec. 13, over the objections of the state attorney general, state circuit court Judge Ronald Jamieson ordered a recount. Then, on Dec. 19, both the Nixon and Kennedy electors met, cast their votes for President and Vice President, and certified their own meeting and votes.

In casting their electoral ballots for Kennedy, the three Hawaiian Democrats certified they were the duly and legally qualified and appointed electors for president and vice president for the state of Hawaii and that they had been certified (as such) by the Executive. The Hawaii electors further attested: We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for President, and of all the votes given for Vice President, are contained herein.

Two of the three Democrat electors were retired federal judges, William Heen and Delbert Metzger, and Heen personally mailed the Democrat electoral votes to Congress on Dec. 20. In fact, the envelope containing the certificates, further attested: We hereby certify that the lists of all the votes of the state of Hawaii given for president are contained herein.

Ten days later, on Dec. 30, 1960, Judge Jamieson held that Kennedy had won the election. In so holding, Jamieson stressed the importance of the Democrat electors having met on Dec. 19, as prescribed by the Electoral Count Act, to cast their ballots in favor of Kennedy. That step allowed the Hawaii governor to then certify Kennedy as the winner of Hawaiis three electoral votes and, in turn, Congress to count Hawaiis electoral votes in favor of Kennedy.

The Georgia situation in 2020 mirrored the events of 60 years ago in Hawaii.

Election day in 2020 fell on Nov. 3, although by then many ballots had already been cast, given the adoption of mass mail-in and early voting. Trump held a lead in Georgia until the morning of Friday, Nov. 6, when Biden overtook the incumbent. With the margin remaining tight, on Nov. 11, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffenspergerannounced a statewide audit.

Following the audit, Biden remained in the lead by approximately 12,000 votes, leading Raffensperger to certify the election results on Friday, Nov. 20, 2020. Republic Gov. Brian Kemp signed the certification the same day. Then on Nov. 21, Trump requested a recount, as allowed under Georgia law given the closeness of the count.

On Dec. 4, 2020, then-President Trump and Republican elector David Shafer filed suit in a Fulton County state court against Raffensperger, arguing tens of thousands of votes counted in the presidential election had been cast in violation of Georgia law. While Trumps lawsuit was still pending, on Dec. 7, 2020, based on the recount, Raffensperger recertified Biden as the winner of Georgias 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779.

Trump and Shafers Fulton County lawsuit contesting the election results remained pending on Dec. 14, 2020, the date the presidential electors were required by federal law to meet. Thus, while the Democrat electors met and cast their ballots for Joe Biden, the Republican electors met separately and cast their 16 votes for Trump.

At that time, Shafer made clear the Trump electors had met and cast their votes to ensure Trumps legal battle in court remained viable. Nonetheless, following Bidens election, Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis targeted the Republican electors as part of her criminal special purpose grand jury investigation.

While the grand jury has since issued a report and been disbanded, Willis agreed to grant immunity to eight of the electors, likely to push them to implicate the other electors. However, their lawyer confirmed in a court filing that none of the electors implicated anyone in criminal activity.

Since then, Shafers attorneys, Holly Pierson and Craig Gillen, wrote Willis a detailed letter reviewing the Hawaii precedent. The attorneys noted they had made three prior written requests to meet to discuss the factual and legal issues relevant to Shafers role as a contingent Trump elector but had not yet received any response to those requests.

The 11-page, single-spaced letter then proceeded to detail both the Hawaii precedent for Shafers actions following the 2020 election and the legal advice the Republican elector received that he and the other contingent presidential electors should meet at the state capitol building on December 14, 2020, and perform the duties of a presidential elector to preserve potential remedies in the event Trump et al. v. Raffensperger, et al. was successful.

In addition to detailing the Hawaii precedent from 1960, Shafers lawyers highlighted the fact that in contesting the 2000 election, lawyers for then-Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore cited that very precedent to support his position that two elector slates could be appointed. In fact, Democrat Rep. Patsy Mink of Hawaii suggested the 2000 Florida electoral dispute be resolved based on that Hawaii precedent too. And three Supreme Court justices in Bush v. Gore cited the Hawaii precedent as a basis for allowing the Florida recount to proceed.

As the letter and Hawaii precedent make clear, Shafer and the other Trump electors not only did nothing wrong, but they acted prudentially to ensure that if the state court lawsuit resolved in the presidents favor, Georgias electoral votes would be properly counted on Jan. 6, 2020.

Here we see one of the only differences between Trumps legal challenge and Kennedys: The Hawaii state court promptly resolved the merits of Kennedys legal challenge, while in violation of the Georgia Election Code that requires lawsuits contesting elections to be heard within 20 days, the Fulton County court delayed assigning a judge to hear Trumps election dispute and then delayed the first scheduled hearing until Jan. 8, 2021 two days after Congress certified Biden the winner of the 2020 election.

Now you know the rest of the story. There were no fake electors. The question now is whether Willis will charge Shafer and others with fake crimes.

Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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The Left's 2020 'Fake Electors' Narrative Is Fake News - The Federalist

Consider the following scenario.

You meet up with your friend from college. While you went on to make a career for yourself in HR, she married right after graduation and started her family. You are disturbed by how she has changed over the last 10 years. She has doubts about the 2020 presidential election and Covid vaccines, speaks highly of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, and refuses to drink Bud Light. She has also become quite religious, attending potlucks and Bible studies, and laments how immoral and unsafe the world has become. You later discover she expresses her dangerous views to a sizable crowd of followers on social media.

You have a few choices on how to respond:

(1) You cut off all communication with her and report her to federal authorities for spreading misinformation.

(2) You confront her about the falsehoods and try to correct her in a kind yet firm manner.

(3) You try to investigate by talking to her husband and children as well as some of her friends.

According to documents obtained by the America First Legal Foundation, agents at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were in the process of producing short videos for these kinds of scenarios for bystander training. Other videos involved a white teenage male who hurls racial epithets and flashes a gun at his girlfriend and a young environmental activist. Apparently, the leaders of the DHS believe these are the types most at risk of committing acts of terror not jihadists, radical Marxists, or demented incels who are almost always the main perpetrators of such violence.

Speaking to The Daily Wire, Mike Benz, the executive director of Foundation For Online Freedom and former deputy assistant for internal communications and information policy for the U.S. State Department, said that DHS officials planned on creating the videos to encourage citizens to police one anothers personal beliefs and report family members spreading so-called disinformation about COVID or expressing skepticism toward the U.S. government on social media. Thus, in addition to using other agencies to monitor, harass, and occasionally imprison Americans exercising their first amendment rights, the DHS wanted to mobilize American civilians to help expand their persecution campaign.

In many ways, this revelation encapsulates the Biden presidency in a nutshell. Like most ideas of the Biden administration, using cheesy training videos to teach Americans to see their neighbors as criminals is equal parts lazy, stupid, and sinister.

Seeing that there are untold numbers of agencies and departments in the executive branch of the federal government, and that all of them are already equipped to the hilt to surveil and monitor potential terrorists, its beyond ridiculous to ask average Americans to do any of this work for them. This is like a security guard asking customers to keep an eye out for suspicious individuals who might shoplift.

Moreover, how exactly is a video featuring pro-life soccer moms and casual conspiracy theorists going to help anyone properly identify and report truly dangerous people? This is perhaps even dumber than the Puritans trusting in the testimony of children to root out witches in their village. Every leftist with an axe to grind would report their conservative friends, coworkers, and family members at every opportunity. And just as the Twitter Files effectively smothered online dissent on major issues, commissioning American citizens to rat out other American citizens would do the same in the physical world.

And who except maybe deranged leftists, mindless Democrat hacks, and Joe Biden who sinks ever deeper into senility would seriously fall for the narrative that these are the people who pose a danger to society? With all thats going on in modern society, its quite clear that targeting these groups is nothing but purposely provocative and politically motivated. The people in question are far from radical although becoming victims of tyranny may very well radicalize them and their friends, which seems to be the point. Meanwhile, Americas actual enemies enjoy free rein to burn down cities, bomb pregnancy centers, beat up politicians, vandalize churches, threaten Supreme Court justices, and shoot down innocent children.

If this is what the DHS had in mind for civilians, its reasonable to assume that they and other agencies are already training their agents with this devious propaganda. That could explain why SWAT teams raided an innocent pro-lifers house, CIA officials lied and offered cover for Joe Bidens presidential campaign, a Capitol police officer downed an unarmed woman, or FBI agents investigated angry parents who complained at school board meetings. Theyve been made to believe they are taking down the enemy. They dont realize that they themselves are the enemy.

Naturally, this narrative is amplified many times over by shameless corporate media that aim to demonize and marginalize the deplorables who voted for Trump. Consequently, conservatives are conditioned to hide their views from polite society, expect to be censored, and refrain from calling out Bidens incompetence while leftists are emboldened to attack people who refuse to conform to the party line.

Although pitting Americans against one another helps the ruling class to divide and conquer the populace, a house divided will not stand. In order to successfully cope with the major challenges facing the nation, Americans need to look beyond the propaganda. Its not true, it poisons civic discourse, and it prevents people from developing constructive solutions.

Nevertheless, this has always been the agenda of Dark Brandon, and this is exactly what he intends to run on for the 2024 election. Complacent Democratic voters may continue to support this, but the only way this nightmare ends is for people who still care about their country to find the courage to reject this and speak out while time remains.

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DHS Vids Show How Far Biden Admin Will Go To Remove Dissent - The Federalist

A political action committee supporting Daniel Cameron, Kentuckys Republican attorney general who is running to be the states next governor, received millions of dollars from a right-wing dark money group with ties to Leonard Leo, a major power broker in conservative politics.

According to campaign finance documents, Bluegrass Freedom Action, a new PAC that registered with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance in March 2023 to support Cameron, has raised more than $2.7 million thus far. Campaign finance records reveal that a bulk of the money the group has raised more than $2.2 million has come from a single source: a nonprofit group called The Concord Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for and supports conservative policies and legislation and limited government.

The Concord Fund is closely tied to Leo, the former vice president and current co-chair of the board of directors of conservative legal think tank the Federalist Society. In his role as vice president of the group, Leo was a confidant of former President Donald Trump, according to the Washington Post, and allegedly advised him on his Supreme Court and other judicial nominees. Leo curated a list of potential nominees all of whom were conservative justices with ties to the Federalist Society for Trump for whenever a vacancy opened on the Supreme Court, according to NPR, that was part of a plan to change its partisan makeup.

In September 2020, just days before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, Trump released a list of 20 potential Supreme Court nominees. Among the names on the list was Camerons, according to the Associated Press.

Though his name is nowhere to be found in the groups tax filings, Leo is associated with the Concord Fund through several for-profit groups of which he is a full or partial owner, according to the New York Times. Two of those groups, CRC Advisors and the BH Group, have been paid tens of millions of dollars in consulting fees by the Concord Fund, also known as the Judicial Crisis Network, since 2016. The Concord Fund is run by Carrie Severino, who is a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and whom the Daily Beast described in 2018 as Leos protg.

Through his ties to the Concord Fund, Leo has had a major influence on shaping courts at the state level. As the American Independent Foundation recently reported, the Concord Fund and other organizations with which Leo is connected have spent more than $30 million since 2010 on state-level judicial elections across the country.

More recently, Leo has been involved in the unfolding conflict-of-interest scandals involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni Thomas. In January 2012, Leo arranged to have the Polling Company, a firm formerly led by former Trump senior adviser Kellyane Conway, bill the Judicial Education Project, a nonprofit that Leo advises, and give that money to Ginni Thomas for consulting work, according to the Washington Post. Thomas was paid $25,000 from the Judicial Education Project the same year that the group filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder, a landmark case in which the court in its ruling gutted key portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the past, Leo defended the practice of using dark money to fuel elections and political causes. Lets remember that in this country, the abolitionist movement, the womens suffrage movement, the American Revolution, the early labor movement, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s were all very much fueled by very wealthy people and oftentimes wealthy people who chose to be anonymous, he told the Washington Post for a 2019 documentary. I think thats not a bad thing. I think thats a good thing.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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Pro-Daniel Cameron PAC has received millions from right-wing dark ... - The American Independent

LANSE Baraga County Board passed a constitutional county resolution backing the Second Amendment at its monthly meeting Monday night.

The resolution passed unanimously without discussion from the board. In contrast to other local counties, where other resolutions prompted lengthy public comment, no residents spoke for or against it Monday.

It defines the county as a place of refuge for the law-abiding citizen in regards to constitutional rights, including the Second Amendment. In the resolution, the board encourages the sheriff and prosecutor to use utmost discretion in enforcing anything that might violate state or federal constitutional rights.

The resolution also states the board will not authorize new funds, employees or other resources specifically to enforce measures they determine restrict the rights in the Second Amendment or the corresponding article of the Michigan Constitution.

Other Michigan counties, such as Livingston County and Alger County, have approved similar bills in response to gun-control legislation being enacted in Michigan.

The board removed two other related resolutions from Mondays agenda at the start of the meeting.

One was similar to resolutions passed recently by Houghton and Ontonagon counties, affirming support of constitutional rights and calling for the adequate funding of mental health services. Another called for instructing representatives to oppose all gun control legislation.

Clerk Wendy Goodreau said the other resolutions had been withdrawn partly for being outdated. In the case of the second resolution, the legislature already approved the bills mentioned.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed bills requiring safe storage and universal background checks. Another bill enacting red flag laws that would allow authorities to temporarily confiscate guns has been approved by the legislature and is awaiting Whitmers signature.

In other action, the board:

Approved a 42-cent-per-month surcharge for services users to defray the cost of operating 911 services in the county.

Appointed Lance Heikkinen to the county veterans board, representing Post 444 in Baraga.

Approved a resolution urging the repair of the Cornwall Creek Flooding Dam in Cheboygan County. Rep. Greg Markkanen and 16 other state legislators sent a letter to the Department of Natural Resources supporting the repair, which they said was necessary to maintain the established ecosystem, which includes mussel populations and wetland habitats. Repair costs of the dam were estimated at $1.3 million, the resolution said.

Approved a resolution in support of House Bill 4284, which would revise the state school code to ensure Michigan students to learn about the American Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam War and civil rights movement. It would also require teaching of founding documents of the U.S., including the constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Federalist Papers. The current Michigan K-12 social studies standards include most already; some, like the Federalist Papers, are mentioned as optional parts of required units.

State Rep. Gina Johnsen, R-Lake Odessa, introduced the bill. It was referred to the House committee on government operations in March.

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