Category Archives: Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, podcast host and YouTuber Daniel Idfresne joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss his essay Im 17. And Im Immunized from Woke Politics. As a conservative, first-generation American from Brooklyn, New York, Idfresne explains how his parents, his church, his teachers, and his own personal interests inoculated him against the woke politics of his peers.

Teenagers, their highest value is acceptance is not necessarily the truth Its fine, right? We are teenagers, we are susceptible to our circles and the people around us, Idfresne said, noting the common fear in his generation that someone will be branded as a racist or sexist.

I would say that, for lack of a better term, a spidey sense of somethings wrong here, sort of like alarm is going off in many of my classmates heads but theyre not taking the next step of saying oh, let me research this. Oh, let me say something,' he said.

This generational hesitancy to question the woke politics that are spoonfed to people from all angles, Idfresne said, is exacerbated by social media.

Gen Z is more susceptible to agreeing with certain ideologies is because we are online all the time it almost feels like zero-sum competition and so in this world, it seems like there is no truth but power, he said.

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Can A Generation Swamped With Wokeness Turn To Free Thought? - The Federalist

If the Houses January 6 Committee wasnt already the Liz Cheney show, it is now.

On Friday, the partisan probe drew its latest recruitment with former U.S. Attorney John F. Wood, a close friend of the Cheney family, to serve as the investigations top legal adviser.

Mr. Wood has an impressive track record working inside and outside of government, and his expertise will enhance our efforts to investigate the events surrounding January 6th and understand what led to the attack against the U.S. Capitol that day, wrote Democrat Committee Chair Bennie Thompson of Tennessee with Cheney in a joint statement. Furthermore, his addition to the Committee staff underscores the nonpartisan nature of our work.

It would if the nature of the committee was actually non-partisan. Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney are the only two Republicans who serve on the committee, a far cry from a truly bipartisan investigation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed the pair of NeverTrumpers to sit on the panel after another slate of other Republicans sent by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California which included Ohios Jim Jordan and Indianas Jim Banks were kicked off.

Woods close affiliation with the vindictive NeverTrump caucus marks the probes escalation as a weaponized committee to go after the Democrats political enemies, i.e., former President Donald Trump and Trumps supporters. A former official in the Bush administration, Wood worked under former Attorney General John Ashcroft in the Department of Justice, and was chief of staff for Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

In 2016, Chertoff endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president, and has remained an ardent anti-Trumper ever since with an endorsement for President Joe Biden last fall claiming the GOP had been hijacked. While Wood worked for Chertoff, Cheneys husband, Philip Perry, was general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Through her efforts to escalate a long-running feud with former President Trump and the Republican base, Cheney has championed the polarizing Jan. 6 Commission as a hallmark of her legacy in the lower chamber. She gave the commissions opening remarks at its first show-trial hearing in June.

Congress is obligated to conduct a full investigation of the most serious attack on our Capitol since 1814, Cheney said when presented the gig by Pelosi. Forget about the 1954 raidby Puerto Rican nationalists who shot five congressmen, the 1983 Senate bombing by left-wing militantsgranted clemency by Democrats, the al-Qaeda terrorists who flew a plane into the Pentagon on 9/11, or the summer of rage last year that perpetuated political violence in the nations capital in routine fashion.

In May, the House Republican Conference stripped the third-term representative of her number three role in leadership as she continued to antagonize Republican voters by waging an inner-party civil war that now threatens to kick Cheney out of Congress altogether.

Liz Cheney betrayed Wyoming. She betrayed all of us, including me, said former Cheney-ally turned Trump-endorsed primary challenger Harriet Hageman before a crowd of supporters in the state capital of Cheyenne when declaring her candidacy this month. When she ran for Congress the first time, she asked me to introduce her at the Republican state convention. Had I known what she would do five years later, and side with Nancy Pelosi and the radical left, I would have never answered her first phone call.

Cheneys animosity towards Trump in the state that voted for the president in the widest margin of any in the nation last fall was a key theme in Hagemans kick-off speech, who spoke to a crowd whose disillusionment from their incumbent representative was cast by Cheneys futile crusade to corral Republican support for Trumps January impeachment.

Liz Cheneys agenda is simple, and right now it is to destroy President Trump, Hageman said.

Cheney, who was a lead propagandist for the fake Russian bounties news story last summer, ultimately ended up one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote for Trumps impeachment. Several lawmakers had already announced their intent to vote in favor of Trumps guilt, raising questions about Cheneys real influence. This commission is the congresswomans vehicle to keep digging at the former president and his supporters, further exposed by its membership.

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Cheney Family BFF Tapped As Top Investigator On Cheney's Jan. 6 Probe - The Federalist

If youve watched TV in the last week, youve likely seen a commercial for a novel form of birth control called Phexxi. You could hardly miss it, starting as it does with Welcome to my vagina, and starring actress Annie Murphy from the wildly popular Emmy award-winning Canadian sitcom Schitts Creek. As the bubbly Murphy struts about in a cavernous pink bedroom, she promises that Phexxi is something that women have always wanted: an effective, in the moment, hormone-free method of birth control.

Phexxi was approved by the FDA over a year ago, but only in the past week has its manufacturer, Evofem, begun marketing the product in earnest. With this shiny new campaign, Evofem is betting on the recently heightened search among women for non-hormonal birth control options.

And its a good bet, as many women, like Annie Murphy herself, are waking up to the reality that the synthetic hormones found in most methods of contraception come with side effects and risks that are at best annoying, and at worst, dangerous. In fact, many women are increasingly unhappy with the birth control options available to them, fed up with side effects like headaches, weight gain, and more. And those are just the risks and side effects they know about.

When compared to women who are not on the pill or other forms of hormonal contraception, the population of women on hormonal contraception exhibits increased risk (higher prevalence rates) for the following conditions: breast cancer (19-37 percent higher risk), blood clots and other cardiovascular risks (80 percent), cervical cancer (60-220 percent), bone fracture (7 percent for COCs, and 40 percent for progestin-only), certain autoimmune diseases (Crohns Disease: 44 percent, Ulcerative Colitis: 18 percent, Lupus: 19-130 percent, Interstitial Cystitis: 131 percent), female sexual dysfunction, depression (10 percent for COCs, and 20 percent for progestin-only), and even attempted suicide (97 percent) and completed suicide (208 percent). When compared to women who are not on the Depo-Provera birth control shot, women on Depo exhibit a 40-49 percent higher prevalence for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDs). In other words, the Depo shot appears to increase a womans susceptibility for contracting HIV. (Data supporting all of the relative risks deduced in this paragraph by the lead author of the citizens petition, Dr. William V. Williams, can be found in the complete citizens petition, which is available for download here.)

Furthermore, an estimated 300 to 400 American women die every year from vascular diseases like heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots alone that are exacerbated by hormonal contraceptives. To put that into perspective: Meningitis killed 45 individuals (of all ages) in 2017, and most U.S. states mandate meningitis vaccination for college and university students (and lets not even get into the number of college-aged individuals for whom the COVID-19 vaccine is now required, despite how low their risk of serious illness is).

Now, that litany of risks and side effects doesnt sound quite right, does it? After all, women are constantly assured that birth control is safe and effective, and many are baldly told by their doctors that whatever symptoms they experience while on it are in their heads, or that the pill doesnt do that.

But in 2019, the non-profit womens health organization Natural Womanhood and a group of doctors and researchers put together a 90-plus page citizens petition to the FDA citing the robust, scientific evidence for every single one of the risks I listed above. They submitted this petition to the FDA two years ago, asking for greater transparency and evidence-based warnings about the risks of hormonal birth control in prescribing information and in product informational inserts.

After a cursory request for a few additional pieces of information from the FDA (which was promptly provided to them by the research team), Natural Womanhood has heard nothing in response but crickets. This is despite the petition garnering over 150 public comments, many of them from the families of young women who have died as a direct result of their use of birth control.

Women are, quite literally, dying for better birth control. Hence the perennial search for hormone-free birth control, and why the Phexxi site is emblazoned with Hormone Free in big, bold letters under a confident-looking Murphy. But even hormone-free Phexxi comes with its complications: its a gel that works by altering vaginal pH to make it extra inhospitable to sperm, which is why women who have recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) are discouraged from using Phexxi, and why the most commonly reported side effects are vaginal burning, vaginal itching, vaginal yeast infection, urinary tract infection, vaginal area discomfort, bacterial vaginosis, and vaginal discharge.

Women also reported genital discomfort, pain while urinating, and vaginal pain, continues Phexxis safety information panel. Some male partners reported genital discomfort. But hey, nothing like itchy, burning genitalia to get folks in the mood, right?

Additionally, Phexxi is about 93 percent effective with perfect use and about 86 percent effective with typical use, putting it roughly in the same efficacy range as condoms. (The other popular hormone-free option of birth control the copper IUD is 99 percent effective, but comes with its own significant risks and side effects, including a nasty habit of breaking and migrating in womens bodies).

Its interesting that the FDA has chosen to ignore the petition I mentioned above, yet has continued to approve birth control products like Phexxi in the meantime. Is it because they know, on an as-yet publicly unacknowledged level, that women both want and need safer, non-hormonal options for family planning? Or is it that they just want there to be as many products on the market as possible for preventing pregnancy side effects and risks be damned?

After all, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was at least temporarily yanked from the market after being linked to far fewer cases of blood clots than is typical for hormonal birth control use (yes, even if a woman isnt a smoker or over age 35). Yet birth control seems destined to remain a sacrosanct, permanent fixture of our Pharma landscape, and without transparent acknowledgment from public health officials that it might be a possible source of a myriad of issues, from increasing rates of anxiety and depression in teen girls, to our autoimmune epidemic, to skyrocketing breast cancer rates, just to name a few.

If our public health officials really cared about giving women all of the options and information needed to prevent pregnancy, theyd speak more honestly about fertility awareness methods (FAMs) the only truly side effect-free forms of effective family planning available instead of actively discouraging their use, and wrongfully maligning them as the ineffective, outdated rhythm method. (By the way, many modern FAMs have both perfect and typical use rates that far outpace Phexxis.)

But at the very least, the FDA should better inform women and their doctors about the evidence-based risks and side effects of hormonal contraception. Then physicians might stop gaslighting women into thinking that their negative experiences on birth control are imaginary.

If youd like to help better protect women and be part of the movement to light a fire under the FDA when it comes to the harms of synthetic hormones, I encourage you to sign and share Natural Womanhoods petition today.

Grace Emily Stark is the Editor of Natural Womanhood. Her writing has been featured in multiple outlets, and in 2019, she was awarded a Robert Novak Alumni Fund Journalism Fellowship. Follow Graces writing at GraceEmilyStark.com.

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The Pill Is Killing Women. Why Won't The FDA Talk About It? - The Federalist

Its hard to keep up the illusion that youre the answer to an entire countrys ills when seemingly everything you touch falls apart. President Joe Biden is learning this lesson the hard way, with his endeavors regarding the coronavirus, foreign policy, and national security all wreaking havoc simultaneously.

As the Associated Press documented, in one single hour on Friday afternoon, Biden and his team failed spectacularly on Afghanistan, ate crow on their next attempted COVID-19 milestone, and ticked off the United States longest ally.

For starters, the Pentagon revealed that the Kabul drone strike that Biden authorized in late August after the failed Afghanistan withdrawal not only wasnt successful in taking out terrorists but instead killed 10 innocent civilians, including seven children. This is the airstrike that Gen. Mark Milley, who is under fire for making potentially treasonous phone calls to his communist Chinese counterpart, originally called righteous. Its the drone strike that the administration falsely claimed had killed two high-profile terrorists.

But that wasnt true. The strike was a tragic mistake, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, admitted during a Friday news conference.

Then there was the vote by a panel advising the Food and Drug administration a vote that wasnt even close, by the way not to recommend COVID vaccine booster shots for everyone over age 16. So much for Bidens trust the science vaccine ambitions.

Finally, an angry France, a country thats been a U.S. ally since 1778, announced it was pulling its ambassador to the United States after some submarine deal that Biden struck with Australia and the United Kingdom. According to the French foreign ministry, its never recalled its ambassador to the U.S. until now.

That all happened on the same afternoon. It was an hour President Joe Biden would no doubt like to forget, the AP narrated.

Its an afternoon President Joe Biden no doubt did forget while it was still happening, given his recent track record on mental fortitude. And its an afternoon the corrupt press forgot as soon as it happened too, with a handful of Sunday news shows not even mentioning the report about the tragic mistake of a drone strike, according to Fox News.

But as these life-and-death failures continue to pile up in the Biden administrations L column, the American people should not so soon forget.

This is the man who promised a return to normal but is instead pressuring private establishments to require vaccines and pushing government agencies to roll out boosters, science be damned. This is the president who promised an end to Americas endless wars but instead got 13 U.S. service members killed in his disaster of a withdrawal, green-lighted a drone strike that left little boys and girls dead, and keeps telling the stories of his own personal tragedies to garner sympathy for himself. This is the president who promised America was back at the table and back in the business of leading the world but instead angers Americas allies and does business with our enemies.

With a campaign slogan devoid of meaning, Joe Biden promised he would build back better. Instead, with this commander-in-chief, its one step forward, 10 steps back, plus human casualties and lost liberties all along the way. Joe Bidens hour of mayhem on Friday wasnt a fluke of his administration; it was a feature. And though his team and the media would no doubt like to forget it, wed all do well to remember.

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Only Nine Months In And The Biden Presidency Has Failed Spectacularly - The Federalist

The suspicious disappearance of 22-year-old vlogger Gabby Petito took a tragic turn on Sunday when the FBI announced that human remains found in Teton County, Wyoming, were consistent with her description. Petitos family reported her missing on Sept. 11, after her fianc Brian Laundrie returned to Florida without her on Sept. 1. According to Laundries family, he disappeared on Sept. 14, three full days after Petitos disappearance was reported.

Laundrie is a high-profile person of interest in the case, with an attorney for the Petito family insisting Brian is not missing, he is hiding. Authorities have failed to find Laundrie, admitting on Friday that they dont know where he is.

The lead agency on the case said on Monday that it currently has no plans to conduct a major search of the Carlton Reserve, an over 24,000-acre preserve in Sarasota County, Florida, where state police said they have exhausted all avenues in looking. The FBI also announced the execution of a search warrant at the Laundrie residence on Monday.

Laundrie was the only person with Petito on the couples Wyoming road trip and apparently failed to report her disappearance (or a potential explanation for it) when he returned. Yet the above efforts are taking place six days after Laundrie disappeared, nine days after Petitos family reported her missing, and 19 days after Laundrie returned to Florida without his fiance.

Meanwhile, the FBI spent the weekend worrying about a rally that turned out to be an uneventful, sparse showing of a few hundred people, with law enforcement agents outnumbering attendees. In the past, the FBI has shown its willingness to bring the full force of its investigative power down on cases and individuals where it was laughably unmerited (or worse, sinister).

The FBI should be doing its utmost to solve jurisdictionally appropriate crimes like the Petito case appears to be, not running partisan ops, setups, or sham investigations. The FBI has an annual budget of over $10 billion and employs more than 35,000 people. Its failure to apprehend Laundrie in the days before he disappeared does not stem from a lack of resources but seems to reflect the FBIs dissolution from a serious crimefighting apparatus to a dangerously political machine thats bad at its job.

Why has the FBI let Brian Laundrie run away, while theyve pulled out the stops for far less serious (but more political) investigations? If Laundrie had done any of the things below, he could very well already be in federal custody.

When NASCAR reported a noose found in the garage assigned to race car driver Bubba Wallace, the FBI launched an investigation into what Wallace called a despicable act of racism and hatred. After devoting 15 agents to the situation, however, the FBI admitted that the noose had been there since the year prior, far before anyone knew Wallace would be in that garage.

Furthermore, a NASCAR statement conceded that the FBI had found that the noose was actually a garage door pull rope.

Linda Menk, a 71-year-old grandmother and member of the Coweta County School Board in Georgia, told The Federalist in August that a pair of FBI agents visited her after she attended the ill-fated rally at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Menk reportedly remained on the outskirts of the crowd at Trumps White House speech, standing on the grounds of the Washington Monument to watch the jumbotron from afar, before leaving about 10 minutes before the first rioters broke through the barriers at the Capitol.

But later that month, according to Menk, two agents called on her and at first appeared suspicious with business cards featuring hand-written phone numbers over blotches of white-out. Neither presented a warrant or would tell her their badge numbers, she noted.

In the months that followed, agents in all but one of the FBIs 56 field offices have been drafted to track down participants nationwide from the Jan. 6 events, USA Today noted. Investigators who typically work cases involving the trafficking of drugs, child pornography and sex have taken calls from rioters angry ex-wives and former girlfriends and employers turned tipsters.

After the hubbub of hysteria about an apparent plot to kill Democrat Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has drawn the ire of many residents for strict lockdowns that even she doesnt follow, it turned out that of 14 people indicted, five (or more) were working as informants for the FBI.

The five people who seem to be the FBI informants were also the people who seemed to have all the kidnapping ideas and access to all the equipment needed for a paramilitary assault on Gov. Gretchen Whitmers vacation home, Matthew Braun noted for The Federalist. At one point, the leadership of the conspiracy met, and three of the five people in that discussion were FBI.

These revelations prompted outrage that the FBI may have instigated a plot that, without their leadership, likely would never have moved from thought to action. A defense attorney for one of the accused insisted his client was only engaging in big talk between crackpots and was never going to do anything in what looks like FBI entrapment.

The FBI made hay out of rich parents fraud while ignoring its own fraudulent behavior, irking many who believed a college admissions fiasco should not be the greatest concern of the nations domestic law enforcement agency.

While parents paying under the table for their children to be listed as recruited athletes or for their childrens test scores to be altered is undoubtedly wrong, pigeonholing these behaviors into charges of honest services mail fraud to allow for federal criminal prosecution hardly seems like the way the system was intended to work. Why did the FBI devote such emphasis to this case, rather than letting college authorities fire and expel as needed while the bureau focused on more urgent and jurisdictional matters?

Since Donald Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016, its been revealed that the FBI used a defensive briefing to spy on the Trump campaign, part of the Crossfire Hurricane attempt to meddle in the election and undermine the Trump transition team. Related to that corrupt investigation, the FBI spied on phone calls of the vice president of Fox News.

Gabby Petito and her family deserve the best efforts from law enforcement in bringing the facts of her death to light and, if she was murdered, her killer to justice.We can hope the bureau succeeds in bringing justice to families like Petitos, instead of looking more and more like a political appendage to sic on partisan threats.

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

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If Brian Laundrie Did Any Of These 5 Things, He'd Be In FBI Custody Already - The Federalist

To get a true sense of just how grossly incompetent the COVID experts weve entrusted with our lives really are, look no further than Scott Gottliebs book tour.

Gottlieb is the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and hes doing the rounds on TV, explaining to whoever will listen that we we meaning everyone who isnt him could have done things differently at the start of the pandemic in order to be in a better position than we are now (the apparent tail-end of the second-worst wave of new infections to date).

Political leaders could have stepped up and tried to galvanize the public behind a common set of shared principles, Gottlieb said Monday on MSNBC. Easy stuff like masks. We couldnt even agree on the easy stuff. Things like getting the public vaccinated, thats going to be more difficult. When we cant even get a political consensus around a virtue of wearing masks in public and private as a component of trying to reduce infection and protect our fellow citizens, then were really behind the eight ball.

He went on to fault who else? former President Trump for arriving at the White House back in October and removing his mask on camera. You know, the president ceremoniously took off his mask when he came home from the hospital while he was still infectious with the virus, he said. That clearly sends a signal to the public that, you know, masks are imprudent and its counterproductive to what were trying to do as public health officials.

This is what is known in the public health community as B.S.

The way Gottlieb tells it, you would think Trump had staged a public burning of masks on the White House lawn.

But during the incident that Gottlieb is referring to, the president was seen exiting Marine One on the White House lawn, heading to the residence with his face covered by a surgical mask. He wore it as he walked up the stairs to the Truman Balcony, at which point he took it off and put it in his pocket.

He was outside and he was alone. The guidance from the experts has never been to wear a mask when youre standing by yourself outdoors. That would be stupid. But, hey. I wont pretend to know Gottlieb on a personal level.

Whats more, there was no easy stuff in 2020. It wasnt simply a matter of wearing masks, which we were initially told by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the deity, were a pointless waste of time. How silly that anyone would think a mask could prevent infection of a microscopic germ!

Masks were eventually en vogue, but only after thousands of people were thrown out of work, had their businesses shuttered, and then were told to lock themselves away from friends and family for weeks on end.

Piece of cake, right Gottlieb?

At the same time, every Democrat running for president and every TV news anchor outside of Fox was laying each new COVID case and death at Trumps feet. It was an election year, after all, and in all of that tragedy, they saw an opportunity.

Under those circumstances, masks became a little beside the point for a lot of people and yes, some of them resented the nags who got a rush out of telling people what to do.

If I was told to stand by and watch everything I had worked for quickly slip away, I might not be in the best mood for a confrontation over masks either.

In a separate interview on CBS the day before, Gottlieb admitted that the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for individuals to maintain six feet of distance from one another in public is based on nothing.

Nobody knows where it came from, he said.

And yet were supposed to be listening to these people.

Fauci said just last week that it would be a mistake for the FDA to decline recommendations for booster shots for all adults who have been vaccinated against COVID. After the FDA did just that, he went on CNN Sunday to say never mind, I have no problem at all with their decision.

Theres The Science for ya!

Through it all, Gottlieb still thinks theres something we us, not him could have done differently. With the raging incompetence weve seen, the inability to get consistent and reliable information from all of the experts, Im skeptical.

Not everything Gottlieb has to say is entirely useless, though. In that MSNBC interview, he said, We were never going to be able to stop this pandemic, and that, This virus was going to spread.

Yeah. He at least got that part right.

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Scott Gottlieb Embodies The Sheer Incompetence Of The COVID 'Experts' - The Federalist

As our historic border crisis continues, teeming thousands of migrants are camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, waiting to be processed and transported to various locations throughout the country. It is within this perilous context that a new Texas law signed Friday will help better secure Americas southern border and fill the gap due to the federal governments intentional reduction of immigration law enforcement.

With substantial bipartisan support, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law HB 9,which allocates a hefty $1.8 billion to enable state agencies and border counties to deter illegal crossings, protect private property, and increase prosecution of state crimes committed by unauthorized migrants.

The single largest chunk of the new funding, $750 million, is being dedicated to the construction of up to 730 miles of border wall, a security need previously identified and approved by both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, including the current president, but abruptly and irresponsibly canceled at the outset of his administration. This appropriation is on top of the $250 million in emergency Texas border wall funding already allocated by Abbott.

In testimony before state legislators, Texas National Guard Adjutant General Tracy Norris explained that more than 100 landowners along the states unsecured international border with Mexico have asked for the wall to be built on their land. Initially, temporary fencing will be built by 12 of the Guards engineer teams at a pace expected to exceed more than one mile per day, up from the current few hundred feet per day being built by only one engineer team. Eventually, the temporary fencing will be replaced by a permanent barrier.

During floor debate over the measure, state Sen. Eddie Lucio, a Brownsville Democrat, responded to objections by some fellow Democrats by saying, I have talked to many of my constituents in Cameron and Hidalgo County and I can tell you the vast majority of those people want border security and want the wall, believe it or not. And some of us come up here fighting against it, were actually speaking against what our constituents want.

Lucio was among several Democrat lawmakers who supported the measure, including Sen. Chuy Hinojosa of McAllen, Sen. Royce West from Dallas, and Sen. John Whitmire of Houston.

In addition to the wall funding, the measure allocates several hundred million dollars to enable both the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to place additional boots on the ground. Up to 2,500 Texas National Guardsmen will be deployed to the border region and, in addition to building the border wall, they have been deputized to execute criminal trespassing arrests of unauthorized migrants. Single males who are illegally crossing the border and trespassing are being targeted for these enforcement efforts.

The historic Texas border security effort is rounded out by $170 million in funding for three migrant intake centers, $100 million to reimburse border counties for related expenses, and additional funds for court administration and the Border Prosecution Unit.

None of the legislators or state officials testifying in support of these actions are under any illusion that it is enough to fully compensate for the reduction of effort by the federal government in meeting its obligation to secure the border.

Many of the legislators on both sides of the aisle also lamented that the state has to incur such massive expenditures. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, told legislators that prior to the crisis that erupted this year, he was hoping to see the state be in a position to reduce its border security expenditures.

However, the data is clear that both Texas and the nation are being inundated by a spike in the trafficking of both people and illicit drugs across the border. Current federal leadership shows no signs of being willing or able to fulfill its obligation. Thanks to Abbott and the courageous and creative efforts of state lawmakers, Texas can and will work to fill the gap and take its border back.

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As Federal Government Fails, Texas Steps In To Secure The Border - The Federalist

More than 500 current and former Apple employees have reportedly submitted troubling accounts of verbal abuse, sexual harassment, retaliation, and discrimination in the workplace to an employee-activist group called #AppleToo in the last month.

Apples reputation for privacy and secrecy within the workplace has led to concerns being allegedly dismissed, causing two company employees, Cher Scarlett and Janneke Parrish, to create a website where Apple workers can post their stories of harassment and discrimination online. According to the website, the goal is deprogramming the code of silence at Apple.

Facing increased pressure and unrest, Apple finally addressed employee concerns over pay equity and the companys stance on Texass new pro-life law on Friday. But when Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke in the all-company meeting on Sept. 17, he reportedly took just two questions though there were more from the activist employees.

When we find any gaps at all, which sometimes we do, we close them, Apples Head of HR, Deirdre OBrien, insisted in response to mounting pressure about pay.

Woke employees also wanted to know what Cook and Apple are doing to protect employees from the new pro-life law in Texas that bans abortion after a babys heartbeat can be detected. Cook said the company is looking into whether its possible to jump in the legal fight against the law and assured Texas employees that Apples medical insurance would help cover them if they want to travel to another state for an abortion.

Leftist employees were unsatisfied with Cooks answers, however, in keeping with the trend of activists pushing for corporate wokeness. Parrish, one of those activist employees who runs #AppleToo, told the Times she was unimpressed and that the question she submitted about what concrete steps Apple had taken to ensure that pay gaps were resolved and that more women and people of color were being promoted to leadership roles went unanswered.

We are and have always been deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace, Apple told the Times. But in Silicon Valley, woke corporations can never be woke enough.

Reagan Reese is an intern at The Federalist and a student at Hillsdale College studying rhetoric and public address and journalism. She plays on the varsity softball team and you can follow her on Twitter @reaganreese_.

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Apple Faces Pressure Over Workplace Woes And Insufficient Wokeness - The Federalist

We failed to take several steps required to win an armed conflict: identifying an achievable end-state, defining the resources we are willing to expend, and considering the lengths we are willing to go to.

With the defeat in Afghanistan coming at the end of a long line of self-inflicted catastrophes, America appears to be waking up to the notion that our foreign policy is disconnected from reality. As we watch our allies in the Northern Alliance flee the Panjshir valley and head into the mountains for a last-stand struggle against the Taliban an enemy we spent thousands of lives and trillions of dollars fighting its time for some much needed introspection.

Those of us who served in Americas continuous stream of counterterrorism adventures and nation-building interventions have long been suspect of U.S. foreign policy. While busy with the daily dirty work of warfighting and dying, we could see the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the focus groupdriven rhetoric of the generals and foreign policy establishment back home. It was like there were two worlds. Ours was noisy, bloody, and chaotic, encompassing a very real battle between good and evil. Theirs was diverse, inclusive, and superficially rational composed almost entirely of PowerPoint fantasies reinforced by government stenographers posing as journalists.

What began as a robust response to the deadly terrorist attacks on 9/11 was quickly redirected and emasculated by a ruling elite with their own agendas none of which included the safety, sovereignty, or national security of our beloved America. At some point, the smart people in Washington D.C. decided that our Islamic extremist enemies were actually oppressed BIPOCs suffering under colonizing American commandos, and we were ordered to stop brutalizing them. This epiphany was unanimously recognized by our ruling elites through their lens of magical thinking, as Thaddeus McCotter described our foreign policy establishments disconnected reality in a superb essay.

Yet the war machine could not be stopped. There was too much money to be made, laundered among the donor class of the military-industrial complex and nongovernmental organizations, and subsequently funneled into political donations for the uniparty. The war, the elites decided, just needed to be nicer, more diverse, and less lethal.

Americans now need to ask the key question: How, exactly, did we lose an armed conflict to a 7th-century religious cult?

We failed to take several steps required to win an armed conflict: identifying an achievable end-state, defining the resources we are willing to expend, and considering the lengths we are willing to go to.

First, before committing to armed conflict, a nation must identify an achievable and specific end-state. It must decide what success would look like. This kind of decision-making is done at the national level, by the president and his national security advisor, in consultation with the Cabinet-level national security principals and, in some situations, Congress.

Next, as a nation, we need to establish what type and amount of resources we are willing to expend in pursuit of this end-state. These resources need to be roughly defined in terms of personnel, equipment, money, casualties, political capital, and reputation. If we dont know what our end-state looks like, and if we do not have sufficient resources to achieve that end-state, then embarking on armed conflict is futile.

Additionally, what are we willing to do to achieve our desired end-state? In World War II, we wanted to defeat the Axis powers and destroy their ability to conduct war. To achieve this, we were willing to do things like drop nuclear weapons on the Japanese civilian population and firebomb the German city of Dresden. A more recent example of will, or rather the lack thereof, was the Battle of Mogadishu, which is depicted in the movie Black Hawk Down. The U.S. mission to capture and kill Somali Militia leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid was cancelled by President Clinton after an October 1993 raid resulted in the deaths of 19 American servicemen and 315 Somali militiamen. The Clinton administration was mortified by the casualty counts as well as the optics of wounding an additional 812 people. Clinton decided the United States no longer had the will to capture or kill Aidid.

Will is not just what we are willing to do to our enemy, it is also what we are willing to do to ourselves. As we have seen already in America, our extended war resulted in drastically diminished civil liberties, an increasingly corrupt national security apparatus that has turned inward on ordinary Americans, and a veteran suicide rate of more than 20 men and women per day a heavy price for any republic.

Time is also a factor. For a nation to succeed in armed conflict, it must have the support of its population. Protracted warfare not only increases the financial cost to the nation but also wears down the population and diminishes its support. The longer an armed conflict continues, the more difficult it is to maintain the will to do what is necessary to achieve victory. Thus, Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu stated in the Art of War, There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.

We did not define these above elements in the war in Afghanistan. We failed to identify a realistic end-state. Our will faltered as we vacillated between making Afghanistan a punitive expedition versus a nation-building exercise. Surprisingly, we were willing to commit an almost unlimited amount of resources to the effort, and time only became a consideration as we reached the point of absurdity at 20 years.

Was Afghanistan winnable? Of course it was. Winning is always a choice, but you go to war with the leadership you have, not the leadership you wish you had. Simply put, our leaders decided that winning wasnt their priority.

Instead of defining and holding to an achievable end-state that supported the interests of the American people, someone decided that, following the punitive removal of Mullah Omars Taliban in 2002, Afghanistan could function as a giant ATM. A war-based revenue stream that could provide a continuous flow of money to Washington, D.C.s donor class, which consists of the military-industrial complex, the intelligence community, and the NGO industry.

Sadly, in the end, even though countless ordinary Americans gave their all in Afghanistan, winning and returning home victorious was never in the cards.

Now, after 20 years of war, we have come full circle. We are left with a new and stronger Islamic emirate led by designated terrorists aligned with al-Qaida, the same mortal enemy that attacked us on Sept 11, 2001. Our foreign policy establishment is enraptured in their magical thinking that somehow America will partner with a Taliban government.

Our foreign policy elites think that by dumping truckloads of cash onto their new jihadist partners, they can make diversity and inclusion new Taliban virtues. In their minds, if they can just convince the world to look the other way during the coming genocide, theyll succeed in bringing some murderous savages into the fold of the international diplomatic community.

In southwest Asia, respect and honor are often more important than money. Our bungled departure from Kabul certainly did not win us any respect. We did not have to so willingly bend the knee to our enemies on the way out. We did not have to leave our citizens behind while simultaneously evacuating tens of thousands of unvetted Afghans. We did not need to abandon the National Resistance Front, our former comrades-in-arms, fighting in the mountains of Panjshir, Parwan, and Baghlan. We shouldnt have left that way. It was dishonorable and will come at a cost.

But what to do with Afghanistan next? For now, we are prisoners of the magical group-think of a failed foreign policy establishment, but soon its fantasies will collide with reality. Soon we will have to deal with the jihadist nature of the new Islamic emirate and its benefactors in Pakistan and China. Soon someone will have to figure out a way to contain the Islamic emirate before it becomes a problem again.

It will have to be done without parachuting pallets of taxpayer dollars to shady warlords or committing U.S. forces back into Afghanistan. The corrupt Afghan benefactors of Western cash-based diplomacy have all fled to Dubai with hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

However, not everyone in Afghanistans military and leadership has surrendered. The former vice president, now acting president of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh, and Panjshiri leader Ahmad Massoud (son of the late Panjshiri commander Ahmad Shah Massoud) are still in Afghanistan, fighting for their freedom. With them are whats left of the Afghan special forces, commandos from Afghanistans National Directorate of Security, and Panjshiri fighters. Right now, the Taliban, with the help of the Pakistani intelligence services (ISI), are working hard to hunt down and eliminate the last of this resistance.

The Taliban fears the National Resistance Front because they know that the only credible threat to their consolidation of jihadist power comes from the Panjshir. Here is a pro tip from a greybeard Afghanistan vet: If your enemy fears something, its best to give them as much of that thing as you can muster. Perhaps, instead of allowing the Pakistani ISI to exterminate the only Afghans willing to fight for their freedom, we should find a way to support the NRF as both an ally and a regional counterbalance to a dangerous and rising Islamic caliphate. Perhaps we can learn from our previous mistakes and this time, consider what we are willing to do to reach an end-state that serves the actual security interests of the American people.

Max Morton is a retired USMC lieutenant colonel and former CIA paramilitary operations officer. He is a veteran of multiple armed conflicts, revolutions, and contingency operations.

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How Did We Lose Afghanistan? Our Leaders Were Never Willing To Win - The Federalist

House Democrats are seeking to exploit the reconciliation process with a $3.5 trillion dollar package in pursuit of high priority progressive programs. That wish list includes a litany of items on the left-wing green agenda, with protections against Arctic oil exploration at the top.

Tucked into the massive legislation last week by the House Natural Resources Committee are restored protections to bar drilling within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuges (ANWR) 1002 Area, a nearly 1.6 million-acre patch along Alaskas northern coast opened for oil and gas extraction in 2017.

There isnt a more clear example of congressional confusion than the current move by wildlife-above-human-life extremists to ban oil and gas drilling in ANWRs Coastal Plain, said Rick Whitbeck, the Alaska state director for the energy nonprofit Power the Future. They forget that Congress authorized and encouraged development in that exact area previously, and that banning future development puts the local indigenous people in peril of having to out-migrate from their village to find jobs to sustain their families.

If passed, the package would likely seal the fate of drilling prospects in ANWR until Republicans reclaim both chambers of Congress and the White House to reverse course. The Biden administration, meanwhile, has continued to pull every lever to keep operations offline, from suspending oil and gas leases on federal lands to ordering new environmental reviews reassessing proposed projects.

The 1.6 million-acre stretch opened for exploration in 2017 amounts to less than 10 percent of the total refuge (which is roughly the size of South Carolina) off limits to development in northeast Alaska. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, somewhere between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil remain underneath the surface of the 1002 Area, which would make it one of the most productive oil fields in the country as gas prices reach seven-year highs.

The only tribe living within the proposed boundary for drilling, the Iupiat, have lobbied Congress for decades to allow development projects to move forward. Radical environmentalists seeking to preserve the entire state which constitutes nearly a fifth of the entire nations landmass as an untouched museum theyd maybe like to visit one day, however, have successfully exploited the opposition of a rival tribe hundreds of miles south of the 1002 Area to cloak opposition under the moral righteousness of environmental justice.

The Gwichin Nation, living in Alaska and Canada and 9,000 strong, make their home on or near the migratory route of the Porcupine caribou herd, and have depended on this herd for their subsistence and culture for thousands of years, wrote California Democrat Rep. Jared Huffman as he re-introduced legislation in February to permanently ban the Iupiat from harvesting the resources in their own backyard.

A look into the Gwichin tribes past, however, raises questions about its genuine opposition to drilling in the Arctic Refuge, which remains entirely outside the tribes territory.

In the early 1980s, the Gwichin sought to lease every last inch of its Alaskan Venetie Reserve to oil companies seeking to drill what many thought would be lucrative underground reserves. After exploration turned up short of any prospects for profitable drilling, the Gwichin became vehemently opposed to oil and gas development across the state and partnered with progressive interests in the campaign.

The caribou, meanwhile, remain unbothered by the oil and gas activity on the North Slope 60 miles southwest of the 1002 Area, with populations continuing to rise and decline with their natural cycle.

Matthew Rexford, the tribal administrator for the Iupiat village of Kaktovik within the 1002 Area, labeled his own people refugees on their own lands, prohibited from accessing the lucrative resources under them even though they are located on a flat plain rarely even visited by Alaskans, let alone elites who can afford the high-dollar trip.

We are frustrated that we are not being heard and the Iupiat living in Kaktovik and elsewhere on the North Slope are an inconvenient truth to an administration dead set on shutting down Arctic development, Rexford told The Federalist.

In an August interview, Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy shared the tribes frustrations.

If we were able to do what we wanted to do, wed be one of the richest states by far, Dunleavy told The Federalist.

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Democrats Aim To Choke Off Arctic Drilling In Reconciliation Package - The Federalist