Category Archives: Federalist

CHEYENNE, Wyo Wyoming Republican congresswoman and NeverTrump Resistance leader Liz Cheney drew a new primary challenger Thursday who came with a big endorsement.Harriet Hageman, a prominent GOP attorney and former Cheney ally, formally threw her hat into the ring with the coveted support from former President Donald Trump.

Wyoming is entitled to a representative in Congress who remembers who sent her there and remembers what their wishes are, Hageman told a small gathering of supporters crammed in a hotel conference room. Liz Cheney is doing neither, I will do both.

At the heart of Hagemans 15-minute remarks was painting a clear contrast between herself as a native of Wyoming with a ranchers upbringing and Cheney as a beltway creature of the swamp apparently more focused on a potential gig at CNN through a vendetta with Trump than service to constituents. Contempt for the very Republican voters Cheney serves is a product of this misdirected attention.

Liz Cheney has burned all of her bridges with Republicans, Hageman said, noting the practicality of GOP allies in order to pass effective legislation. But instead, a lonely congresswoman kicked from House leadership has spent the past year on nothing less than a vengeance tour.

Cheney appeared unfazed by the new, and likely most competitive contender in the race.

Bring it, she wrote as a sound bite after the former president called her the Democrats best producer.

Behind the scenes, however, the three-term congresswoman ought to be more concerned.

Cheney captured the Republican nomination for her first House race in a crowded 2016 field with less than 40 percent of the vote. Since then, shes enjoyed the power of incumbency facing futile efforts to dethrone the daughter of a former vice president. But this year is different.

Out of three surveys conducted since Cheneys feudal escalation with Trump in the elections aftermath, Cheney never landed more than 25 percent support among likely primary voters. One poll found Cheney the most unpopular Republican in the country, with net-negative approval ratings of 43 percent. Her block of support, however, has raised the importance for opponents to narrow the primary to a two-way race denying her a win through plurality. Trumps endorsement will likely be the game-changer to do just that.

Brett Neyer, a Wyoming rancher who drove 100 miles to cheer Hagemans announcement, said Cheneys call for Trumps impeachment was a major inflection point in Cheneys popularity and for him, the final straw.

It was a very defining moment. One day shes not bad, the next day shes bad, Neyer told The Federalist. [Cheney] really went off the rails with all this insurrection stuff and the way she went after Trump.

As Republican conference chair in the lower chamber, Cheney triggered backlash among House colleagues and voters at home in January when she launched a crusade to corral Republican support for Trumps indictment over the Capitol riot. Only nine House Republicans ultimately joined her to convict, several of whom had already announced their intent to do so before her charge, calling into question Cheneys real influence.

Following the vote, Cheney was censured by her own party at home and provoked her first primary challenger. Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz flew to the capital at Cheyenne to rally support for a competitive primary ahead of a House vote to strip her of conference chairmanship in a preview of the GOP civil war Cheney has sought.

While she comfortably survived a referendum on her leadership post in February, another referendum in May ultimately stripped her of the title. First battle lost.

Moments before Hageman took the stage, Neyer said to ask nearly anybody in attendance about their final breaking point with Cheney, and theyd surely cite the same vote. So I did. Neyer was right. It was the same story over and over again: that Cheneys feud with Trump, pursued for nine months straight, antagonized her constituents. And it all started with her vote to impeach an outgoing president for a riot that had already begun before Trump finished speaking on the day in question.

[Its] because of January 6th, said Diane Morrison, on why she couldnt bring herself to cast another ballot for the congresswoman she supported four years straight in three election cycles, albeit hesitantly.To add insult to injury, said Morrison, who lives in southeast Wyoming, a Cheney visit is a rare occasion. We never see her in the state.

Neyer said when Cheney is in Wyoming, its almost always in the northwest corner, which he described as the California part of the state.

Yet a Cheney more comfortable in D.C. than Wyoming has not backed down from aggressive antagonism against the president who captured his highest winning margins of any state among her own constituents in November. In fact, Cheney was hand-selected by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to give the opening remarks in the Democrats weaponized probe to investigate the January riot, after Republicans were kicked from the committee.

Right now the only job Republicans have in Washington D.C. is to stop the Democrats from destroying our country, Hageman told her supporters. But not only is Cheney not helping us to fight what is truly the battle of our lifetimes, she jumped ship, dog-paddled to the other side, and is now shooting back at us.

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The GOP Civil War Liz Cheney Waged Might Throw Her Out Of Congress - The Federalist

Names in this story were changed to protect identities.

The United States longest war is over, but the battle for Afghan-Americans to recover their families is just beginning.

Henry, an Afghan-American translator, is just one of the many people still dealing with the fallout of the Biden administrations botched withdrawal operations. After the last group of U.S. military took flight from Afghanistan to meet the presidents August 31 deadline, hundreds of Americans and Afghan allies who assisted the U.S.s decades-long occupation in Afghanistan were left behind, including Henrys wife, brother, and children as young as three years old.

Henry, who received his U.S. citizenship in 2020 after spending time in the Afghan Special Immigrant Visa program, lives and works in the United States, so when the Taliban advanced into Kabul and the Afghan government fled in mid-August, his first priority was getting his family, who was still tied up trying to enter the U.S. immigration process, out of the Middle East country and to safety with him.

I received an email from the U.S. Embassy. They had a pass in the email. It said please go to the airport, you know, take your family, go to the airport,' Henry told The Federalist.

Henrys family rushed to pack up and travel to the Hamid Karzai International Airport airport in Kabul but when they got there, they met crowds of thousands of other Americans and Afghans hoping to reach the U.S.-controlled area where they could catch a lifeline flight out of the country. It took them two days to navigate their way through the desperate mob, which previously trampled a 2-year-old girl to death, before they reached the right gate.

Once they got inside the terminal, Henrys family faced another crowd of people hoping to get bussed to a departure spot. There, his wife and kids sat for two more days in the heat without any supplies. At one point, Henry lost contact with his family because his wife lost her phone, her purse, and even some jewelry after being jostled by other panicked people fleeing the Taliban.

They were not prepared, Henry said. They didnt have water and no food, nothing.

My family and everybody else was asking about water because the kids were getting unconscious. They were asking the Marine guys to see if they can provide some water. My wife was calling me. And I was like, helpless and I was trying to see if I can talk to one of those marine soldiers out there so that he or she could provide some water to them. And they were saying they dont even have water. Like no water, no food, so just be patient, you know, and that was a really sad moment, Henry said.

Henry also tried calling some of his friends in the military who he used to work in Afghanistan to see if they could help his family.

After talking to them, me and my American Marine friends were like begging to those guys out there to at least provide some water for those people and those children. And finally they would, from somewhere, find like two or three bottles of water, Henry said.

The water, however, didnt last. It wasnt long before Henry said people were instructed to go home or risk dehydration and starvation. Henry said a lot of people left but his wife was determined to stay.

My wife, she said if it takes me whatever, Im gonna stay here. If theyre gonna take me, Im gonna stay here so I can go and get with the dad of my kids together,' Henry said. So she stayed there. Those two days, they were just begging for water and luckily they were getting some water and that was after getting in contact with my Marine guys and the army guys.

After six days of waiting, Henry said buses finally came to get his wife and kids, but their joy didnt last for long. When his family failed to show a U.S. passport or green card, they were told to go home.

All they had was the Afghan passports and they had the path that I sent which was from the U.S. Embassy, Henry said. It was a very sad moment.

The U.S. military may have turned Henrys family away, but all hope was not lost.

After six days, somehow these people, like angels, they fall from the sky and say we will do our best to get to your family here because theyre the family of the U.S. citizen. And I shared that with my wife. And she got so happy. That was a happy one, Henry said.

Much like the Pineapple Express, the group assisting Henry is using covert, private operations to assist Americans who felt abandoned by the Biden administrations abrupt departure. This hodgepodge of individuals, some of which have served in the U.S. military in special operations or still do, are actively shepherding people who are at risk of Taliban retaliation out of the country.

Others are using their knowledge and relationships with translators and connections on the ground to relay information to the network of rescuers who have the skills and resources to complete private missions and step in after the Biden administration failed. One group member told The Federalist that they have successfully rescued approximately 200 people.

Then we were going through whatever these guys were guiding us like to go, Henry said. My wife never gave up, and she was going to wherever we were saying.

These same individuals are also assisting Henry with getting his family into U.S. immigration proceedings. Henry previously spent months bouncing between bureaucratic agencies and even hired an expensive lawyer to help him get his family to the United States through the same program he used.

I also applied for my wife and my kids when I came here. They were also in the process that they will be here sometime. And that actually took like four years and I was just running around with immigration, providing them all the documentation, and the passport, everything that they needed. And still, I guess, its because maybe there are too many people who applied for thatevery time they were thinking that its under reviewThey took forever, Henry said.

But when these angels swept in, they also paid Henrys lawyer and helped expedite the process for Henry to be reunited with his wife and kids in the states.

We got approval confirmation for my family and the lawyer is working on it because these guys, like I said, the angels, they paid the remaining balance for my family. They can get the visas after the interview, Henry said.

The rescue mission for Henrys family is still underway, but Henry said he already feels much more optimistic than he did in August.

Im so happy, Henry said. I hope my family would come here soon so we can go and see these people up close and hug these people. Their kids are prayingfor my daughters, every day.

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

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How Americans Are Rescuing The People Biden Left Behind In Afghanistan - The Federalist

Pastors who speak softly about the brutal murder of more than 60 million children should instead mimic Catholic leaders who boldly challenged racial segregation in the 1950s, said the Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore J. Cordileone.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Cordileone condemned Catholic politicians who use their platforms and power to bolster abortion and anti-life sentiments. Some of the highest-ranking American politicians including President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi proclaim their Catholic faith while pushing for abortion laws that go against the church they claim to be a part of.

After the Supreme Court ruled to at least temporarily allowa Texas law that protects babies with a detectable heartbeat from abortion, self-described Catholic politicians openly opposed the ruling.

I find it especially disturbing that so many of the politicians on the wrong side of the preeminent human rights issue of our time are self-professed Catholics. This is a perennial challenge for bishops in the United States: This summer, we provoked an uproar by discussing whether public officials who support abortion should receive the sacrament of the Eucharist, Cordileone said. We were accused of inappropriately injecting religion into politics, of butting in where we didnt belong.

This summer, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops met to advance a document about Eucharistic coherence, revitalizing the sacrality and importance of the Eucharist to the Catholic Church. Many ignorant politicians accused the church of politicizing the Eucharist and using the document as a ploy to deny communion to public officials like Biden and Pelosi who constantly oppose church teachings. The church did neither.

Rather, Cordileone wrote, Catholic bishops have a responsibility to respond strongly to prominent officials who openly oppose church teachings on abortion. Bishops must only look to the example of New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel, who courageously confronted the evils of racism, and employed a long, patient campaign of moral suasion to change the opinions of pro-segregation White Catholics.

Rummel did not stay in his lane. Unlike several other bishops throughout this countrys history, he did not prioritize keeping parishioners and the public happy above advancing racial justice, Cordileone said.

Rummel admitted two black students to New Orleanss Notre Dame Seminary in 1948 and in 1951 ordered the removal of white and colored signs from Catholic churches in his archdiocese. He ardently opposed segregation and in 1953, told white Catholics that there could be no further discrimination or segregation in the pews. He also closed a church for refusing to accept a black priest and championed the end of segregation in New Orleans Catholic schools.

Rummel knew what the church taught and was willing to back up his faith with action.

Was that wrong? Cordileone asked. Was that weaponizing the Eucharist? No. Rummel recognized that prominent, high-profile public advocacy for racism was scandalous: It violated core Catholic teachings and basic principles of justice, and also led others to sin.

The modern parallel is abortion.

Abortion kills a unique, irreplaceable human being growing in his or her mothers womb. Everyone who advocates for abortion, in public or private life, who funds it or who presents it as a legitimate choice participates in a great moral evil, he said.

When the blood of 60 million innocent American children cries out for justice, pastors cannot speak quietly, reducing the murder of babies to a culture of choice, Cordileone said. To do so would be going against the church and human dignity.

You cannot be a good Catholic and support expanding a government-approved right to kill innocent human beings. The answer to crisis pregnancies is not violence but love, for both mother and child, he said. This is hardly inappropriate for a pastor to say. If anything, Catholic political leaders response to the situation in Texas highlights the need for us to say it all the louder.

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Archbishop: Catholics Must Fight Abortion Like They Fought Segregation - The Federalist

There is a myriad of reasons why California voters would vote to recall Newsom. Whether its his overbearing COVID-19 restrictions and hypocrisy; the seemingly neverending homelessness and camping crisis; or his continual failure to address the states strained energy supply, prevent raging wildfires, address the billions of taxpayer dollars lost to unemployment fraud, or reverse climbing gas prices, Newsom is in hot water and he knows it.

Thats why top California Democrats from the Biden administration and Congress are begging California voters to spare the governor in the upcoming recall election.

In addition to official support from U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, another hypocritical California politician who refused responsibility for breaking COVID rules, Newsom will be awarded time from President Joe Biden, who spent days hiding out at Camp David and in Delaware last month while the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

Early next week, Biden plans to jet across the nation to the West Coast to campaign for the Democrat governor in what White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said is a strategic political move for both the president and the governor. While hes there, Biden plans to throw his name behind Newsom with the hopes of scoring points in the blue state for both politicians.

Vice President Kamala Harris also signed up to campaign for Newsom in August but was forced to cancel last minute as the Afghanistan crisis continued to unfurl and 13 U.S. service members lost their lives to an explosion in Kabul. That didnt stop her from rescheduling her trip to the week before the Sept. 14 vote.

California, let us send a message to the world that these are the things we stand for, these are the things we fight for, and we will not give up, Harris told a crowd in San Leandro this week.

Even former President Barack Obama jumped on the bandwagon to gaslight voters to defend Newsom and frame the recall election as a Republican effort to hurt Democrats.

Governor Newsom has spent the past year and a half, protecting California communities. Now Republicans are trying to recall him from office, and overturn common sense COVID safety measures for health care workers and school staff. Your vote could be the difference between protecting our kids and putting them at risk, helping California to recover or taking us backward. Protect California by voting no on the Republican recall, Obama said in a video.

This support for Newsom not only shows the Democrats devotion to keeping hierarchical bureaucrats in power but also indicates the Biden administration and progressive Democrats commitment to Californicate the U.S. with an avalanche of radical and doomed-to-fail policies.

On the other side of the election, the California GOP opted not to endorse a specific Republican candidate for the election, expressing hopes that the unendorsed, crowded recall ballot would maintain higher voter turnout.

The polls are showing that the recall is in a statistical tie, and we cannot afford to discourage voters who are passionate about a particular candidate, yet may not vote because their favored candidate didnt receive the endorsement, Republican National Committee members Harmeet Dhillon and Shawn Steel told the Associated Press.

Despite the lack of endorsement, broadcaster and Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder quickly rose to the top of polls and garnered support among those who are dissatisfied with Newsoms track record.

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

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Democrats Beg California Voters To Spare Newsom But Will It Be Enough? - The Federalist

I remember many things from when I was five years old losing teeth, watching Leave It To Beaver with my babysitter, giggling as one of my classmates went to the principals office for dumping a little carton of chocolate milk on his head. September 11, 2001, is one of the things I cant. Despite its shock and significance, its a memory I just cant pull.

Vivid, however, is my memory of the first time I hauled my moms 9/11 coffee table book out of its dusty nook and saw the picture of the falling man. Thats an image you cant unsee, and as a youngster whose only concept of the terror attack was that some plane hit some building, that photograph immediately instilled the gravity of what those events meant for the 3,000 people on whose tombstones is engraved September 11, 2001, and the millions more whose lives will never be the same.

I also remember in great detail the time I visited the memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, looking out over the field where Flight 93 went down. I listened through the phones mounted onto the visitors center wall to the final words of men and women who should still be speaking today, and I pored over the timeline of events trying to imagine what it would have been like to be aboard the aircraft and to experience the wave of realization that there would be no exit and that my final moments would be spent in horror with strangers.

Those tactile experiences from my youth and adolescence left me with heavy questions. Why would a man jump out the window? I wondered. Why would someone storm the cockpit?

Its that second scenario, of the plane that didnt strike the Twin Towers but went down in the middle of an empty field, that I think about most. Now that Im older and can grasp the circumstances, I better understand why someone would storm the cockpit. The weightier question now is:Would I have?

Its a question we all should ask. None of the ordinary passengers aboard United Flight 93 on that September morning had any idea they would soon be voting whether to try wrestling their flight away from terrorists, meaning their quick, mid-air decision to do so was one they had made long before they boarded the plane, in their principles and everyday habits.

Men like 32-year-old Todd Beamer a husband, father of two boys with a baby girl on the way, brother, son, account manager, Sunday school teacher, baseball lover, and Christian. Beamer, who was flying for work, was on the morning flight because he had opted to spend the prior night with his family instead of taking the evening flight.

Beamer and his fellow travelers were only four minutes into their journey from Newark to San Francisco when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. By the time hijackers had commandeered their aircraft, Flight 175 had already crashed into the South Tower, and Flight 77 was headed for the Pentagon. Any sense that Flight 93s situation might have a happy ending surely evaporated as soon as its passengers got the news of the other planes.

That didnt stop Beamer and his fellow brave passengers from deciding to take action, ultimately voting on a plan to storm the cockpit because, like the other three planes, this one would also be headed for a high-profile building in a densely populated area if the terrorists could proceed uninterrupted.

Like others aboard the flight, Beamer tried to call his wife from a credit card payphone on the back of one of the seats, but his call went instead to customer service and ultimately to airphone supervisor Lisa Jefferson, who would later describe him as a soft-spoken, calm gentleman. Jefferson talked with Beamer, prayed with him, and later relayed his parting words of love to his wife and children and his final candid words of bravery to the rest of the world: Lets roll.

I feel that Todd played a great role, Jefferson later said of the passengers plan to storm the cockpit. Because when he told the guys, Are you ready? I assume that they were waiting on his cue then they responded to him. And he said, Okay, lets roll.

What is it that enables a man to look death square in the face and say, Lets roll? How courageous must you be to face your brutal end and, rather than think of yourself, to think of the people still firmly planted on Earth who might be in harms way? How does a young, hard-working wife and mother like policewoman-turned-flight attendant CeeCee Lyles dial her husband to say I love you and goodbye with a calm voice?

As then-Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly said after hearing that Flight 93 had gone down in Pennsylvania: I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.

But heroes arent born. They are formed. Theres an obvious contrast in the brave men and women of Flight 93 two decades ago and most Americans today.

The former stared down death and, despite fear, spent their final breaths in service to each other and to Americans they had never met. They clung to their humanity and their freedom in one hand and their faith in the other and bravely forged ahead for the good of others. Their untimely deaths represent thousands of other lives spared, for if the passengers hadnt taken action, the plane likely would have shredded the U.S. Capitol and everyone inside.

The latter group, the Americans of 2021, compose a culture mired in an unhealthy relationship with death. Here we kill off the weak and innocent and chalk it up to empowerment and choice. We consume death as entertainment and shrug at mid-day murderous carjackings and cities leveled by lethal riots. We tremble and rage at the risk of contracting an endemic virus and demand that others sacrifice for our own comfort.

I might never wrestle Islamic terrorists as I plummet through the sky. But there are questions I must answer questions you must answer about death, sacrifice, family and strangers, and the God that Beamer and Lyles served. If we are unwilling to display small acts of valor in our everyday choices or make small sacrifices in our personal relationships, then the answer to Would we storm the cockpit?is a resounding and damning No.

As we near another anniversary of that dark September day, dont just remember the heroes. Strive to be like them.

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Would You Have Stormed The Cockpit? - The Federalist

Celebrity singer Britney Spears may be finally free by her 40th birthday in December after her father, Jaime Spears, petitioned to end his daughters conservatorship Tuesday.

In the surprise move by her father, who has fought to keep Britney under guardianship for more than a decade, the petition to the Los Angeles Superior Court argues the pop stars circumstances have changed to the point that the arrangement may be doing more harm than good.

Recent events related to this conservatorship have called into question whether circumstances have changed to such an extent that grounds for establishment of a conservatorship may no longer exist, the filing reads, according to CNN, which obtained a copy.

Ms. Spears has told this Court that she wants control of her life back without the safety rails of a conservatorship. She wants to be able to make decisions regarding her own medical care, deciding when, where and how often to get therapy. She wants to control the money she has made from her career and spend it without supervision or oversight. She wants to be able to get married and have a baby, if she so chooses. In short, she wants to live her life as she chooses without the constraints of a conservator or court proceeding.

Spears has remained under the conservatorship of her father in a temporary arrangement that turned permanent in 2008, affording her family control over a Forbes-estimated $60 million estate. Since then, Spearss handlers have maintained not only control of the singers finances, but also Spearss housing, health care, and social life under a legal arrangement typically reserved for those who suffer severely debilitating conditions, which include severe mental issues or old age.

From her conservatorships inception, however, Britney rejuvenated her career with four new albums, three world tours, and completion of a grueling four-year residency in Las Vegas.

In June, the princess of pop railed the conservatorship in a public rebuke of her handlers as abusive. She also charged them with barring her from another pregnancy in the form of a forced IUD.

After Ive lied and told the whole world Im okay, and Im happy, its a lie, Britney said. Ive been in denial. Ive been in shock. I am traumatized Im not happy, I cant sleep. Im so angry its insane, and Im depressed. I cry every day.

Weeks later, Britneys court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham III, stepped down. The financial firm Bessemer Trust, which was appointed co-conservator to manage the singers estate last November, also petitioned to remove itself from the arrangement.

Britney sought to remove her father as a co-conservator but the judge denied her request in July.

According to the Department of Justice, 1.3 million adults are under conservatorships that dictate an estimated $50 billion in assets. Two top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee demanded hearings on conservatorship reform in March, citing abuse of the system as an infringement on civil liberties.

The court hearing in Britneys case is currently scheduled for Sept. 29.

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Britney Spears' Father Files To End 13-Year Conservatorship - The Federalist

The city of Portland moved to ban official business with and travel to Texas Friday, after a Lone Star State law went into effect protecting babies with a heart beat from being aborted.

Its not surprising; Portlands been flirting with dangerously illiberal secessionist thinking for a while now. Just last year, they allowed the federal governments courthouse and officers to come under violence siege for weeks, even referring to lawful federal officers as occupiers. Threatening neighboring governments fits in perfectly (and even trails the California government).

Does banning business with another American government sound illegal? No one cares: More and more, even asking if something is legal has been relegated to a relic from a time and place that no longer exists in our country. There is no more legal or illegal all that matters is whether something is desired by the leftists in charge.

Be it sanctuary cities, bathroom laws, or just calling Tony Fauci on his lies, much of the modern left feels more and more justified in any action they take to shut you down or oppose you, regardless of the law. Antifa may be among the foot soldiers, but recall how the partys elites cheered them on while covering for their violence. Their tactics might be different, but their mindsets are the same.

And nothing nothing is more sacred to the left than abortion. Having long shed the safe, legal and rare lie of the 1990s, the abortion of children has achieved an Arc of the Covenant-like status, with all who touch or even approach it becoming worthy of pitiless destruction. Simply speaking of it without active celebration is heresy.

Free speech in support of a state law protecting babies, for example, is absolutely haram. In line with this, internet-server provider GoDaddy.com followed Amazon Web Services lead on censorship last week, banning the pro-life group Texas Right to Life.

Why? They had the gall to set up resources for reporting illegal abortions. Indeed, banning Christian and pro-life organizations from the internet became so popular, DigitalOcean, a company that had signed a deal with Texas Right to Life but had not even launched a site, jumped onto the good publicity train. Thanks to their ridiculous public crowing, they earned news article after news article of free publicity (a quick Bing search for GoDaddy DigitalOcean reveals the commercial benefits to attacking the unborn).

While a conservative Washington, D.C. non-profit was finally able to connect Texas Right to Life with a server that wouldnt restrict their constitutionally protected right to speak, a loose network of hackers has actively worked to uncover them, goaded on by leftwing journalists.

You dont even need to be actively engaged in the battle to be targeted for destruction. After John Gibson, the president of video game developer Tripwire, outed himself as being pro-life, at least one business client threatened to end their contract and Gibson was pushed to resign. The company hed co-founded even released a statement condemning him.

Our leadership team at Tripwire, they wrote, are deeply sorry and are unified in our commitment to take swift action and to foster a more positive environment.

Our countrys self-proclaimed artist class in Hollywood, of course, is here for it all.

The new rules, if they can be called that, are as clear as they can be: Do not touch, do not even approach, and if you speak, speak only in worship and praise.

This is the new reality, this is the America they want and it is the America we will have if we dont loudly and publicly fight with every ounce of breath and strength we have, speaking with force, demanding action, and supporting the small but growing economy of Christian-friendly companies working to build the infrastructure we need to even engage in speech and commerce.

This fight is real, its here, and its coming for every Christian and pro-lifer who opens his mouth. John Gibson, the people who fight for Texas Right to Life, and those working to keep their ministry alive in the face of threats and danger are not the other they are the best versions of ourselves, and we cant let them fight alone: We must support Texas, we must support every person who takes a hit for it, and we must be prepared to be hit ourselves.

Every little girl and little boy spared death by this new law needs us and were in it together.

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The Left Has Made It Clear: There Are No Civilians In The Fight For Life - The Federalist

Last week, Reuters reported based on two anonymous sources that Amazon Web Services, which controls 40 percent of web hosting in the world, plans to take a more proactive approach to determine what types of content violate its cloud service policies.

Over the coming months, Amazon will hire a small group of people in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division to develop expertise and work with outside researchers to monitor for future threats, one of the sources familiar with the matter said. It could turn Amazon, the leading cloud service provider worldwide with 40% market share according to research firm Gartner, into one of the worlds most powerful arbiters of content allowed on the internet, experts say.

Amazon declined to comment to Reuters for the story, then after the article published sent a statement insisting the report was wrong, claiming, AWS Trust & Safety has no plans to change its policies or processes, and the team has always existed.'

Weve always reserved the right to police who is allowed to speak on our internet is not a very comforting response to an article alleging a coming content crackdown. In addition, to this post-publication claim from Amazon, A Reuters spokesperson said the news agency stands by its reporting.

Dont forget the context: The Biden administration revealed a few weeks ago that they, mafia-like, pressure big tech entities like Facebook and Twitter to remove information that contradicts their political goals. (Thats an, um, misinformed piece of content over there on your platform. Sure would be a shame if the super-touchy Democrats controlling the entire federal government decided it was a reason to regulate and legally harass you.)

The reported Amazon Web Services crackdown also comes in the wake of news that the Jan. 6 congressional committee subpoenaed the cell phone records of GOP lawmakers, including the House minority leader, from their service providers, which already help the federal government spy on Americans through routinely recording the contents of everyones texts and calls.

Dont forget, either, that leftist pressure on big tech companies is a big reason they are economically and socially persecuting the lefts enemies. As Glenn Greenwald notes, The extraordinary destruction of Parler in January by three Silicon Valley monopolies Apple, Google and Amazon occurred after leading Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) publicly demandedthe platforms removal from the internet. And Democratic-led Congressional committeescontinue to summon Silicon Valley executives to demand they impose greater degrees of political censorship against their political adversaries or else face legislative and regulatory reprisals.

Amazon is obviously not immune to any of this, and Jeff Bezos is ideological kin to those demanding their political opponents be shut out of their livelihoods, ability to speak publicly, and financial services. Thats why Amazon cut off Americas Frontline Doctors from web hosting, for another example, but hosts Netflix despite its promotion of child pornography and donates on users behalf to mass-murder machine Planned Parenthood. Their biases are clear.

Now, both Patreon and Substack reportedly use Amazon Web Services for hosting most of their data. These platforms bill themselves as a way for creators to be independent and cut out the middlemen. But when infrastructure services like web hosts and banks get political, it turns out these independent sites just replaced the middlemen with themselves.

Patreon has a history of allowing leftist politics to moderate its platform. Famously, Jordan Peterson and David Rubin left it in 2018 to create their own crowdfunding platform, Locals, after Patreon selectively banned a creator with evidence it was due to political animus. Patreon has continued that bias to the present day, most recently banning investigative journalists for not parroting shifting government claims about COVID-19.

Locals also uses Amazon Web Services, though, or did as of earlier this year, making them also vulnerable through their host to the kind of crackdown Peterson and Rubin created the site to repudiate. The big domain name and hosting outfit GoDaddy uses AWS servers, and has also repeatedly defenestrated people on the right, from gun sites to, just over the weekend, Texas Right to Life in the wake of that organizations successful push for a bill protecting unborn babies after their heartbeats are detectable.

On that note, who could possibly be Amazons outside researchers who determine what they host? Not independent factcheckers like those Facebook pays to give them cover for blocking politically incorrect ideas, right?

Or what about lucrative leftist smear machines like the Antifa affiliate-supporting and violence-inciting Southern Poverty Law Center, which already partners with Amazon to block mainstream Christian and conservative organizations from Amazon Smile? Or how about the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League, which influences on a partisan basis whom PayPal will bank with? The prospects look pretty dim indeed.

If servers like AWS will shut you down, that inherently threatens the economic independence of anyone who dares have different ideas than their speech monitors and whose livelihood is in any way routed through the Internet and whose isnt? Even meatspace-focused jobs like farmers and plumbers have to have websites and email addresses. Unless they happen to have a storefront on a busy intersection, they have to have at least a Google Maps shingle up, so enough people can find their services to keep food on their tables.

There can be no personal independence, no entrepreneurship, no social creativity if youre not allowed to use the roads, the phones, the banks, or the internet unless you publicly burn pinches of incense to the leftist gods. In a world like that, we are all slaves to the pagan religion of leftism and, more importantly, its priests.

This entire dynamic is also another example of the build your own infrastructure asymmetric warfare the new left is deploying, with increasing depth and force, against their opponents. Its endpoint is clearly, as Federalist Senior Contributor Nathanael Blake observed to me in an email, build your own government.

Thats because American governments essentially control who is allowed to start businesses you need building permits, and to follow health code, and to offer certain benefits, and to file your taxes a certain way, and on and on and on, all of which are potential chokepoints for a militant bureaucrat motivated by a woke mob to squeeze.

Previously, these kinds of administrative functions were seen as neutral and available to all, but especially since the Obama years, these bureaucrats have unmasked themselves like never before as blatantly partisan actors. Remember Lois Lerner? So people who want to start competing and alternative infrastructure better as hell have political patrons all the way up the ladder, plus a big group of funders and lawyers, who will block for them.

In other words, today even building private infrastructure requires government permission, at some level, and typically at many. The massive size of our government and the multitudinous duties it has assumed have multiplied the pressure points that partisan activists can apply to anyone they see as their political enemy. Fixing this private infrastructure problem requires fixing the big-government problem that weaponizes it.

You wouldnt believe how many people come up to me and they say, Hey, Martin, you got to start a bank. And Im like, Well, what Ill do is Ill stand up a bunch of server infrastructure so that bank wont get pulled by the internet provider,' Right Forge CEO Martin Avila told The Daily Signal in June. And then were talking to people who are starting banks. Were talking people that are thinking about Stripe and how much power it has, or Square, like point of sales. And theres entrepreneurs that are just beelining to create solutions because they see the enormity of the market. And what RightForge can do is support those things where they wont be taken down.

And who is going to bat for RightForge if IRS bureaucrats decide its taxes need some extra scrutiny? Or if politically motivated hackers wage an attack? Or come up with your own speculation, because lets not give bad guys any ideas.

When Sen. Tom Cotton gets asked next time what he can do about cancel culture, he and every other Republican candidate should be able to whip out a list of painful legal and other penalties their legislative assistants have written up that will be applied to entities that abuse the public trust in any of these ways. Democrats got big business to be their lapdogs, not just because big business leaders are catechized in the leftist religion in college, but also because big business isnt afraid of Republicans but they are of Democrats.

That needs to change, or Republican voters will be increasingly banned from basic infrastructure and subjected to economic insecurity in America, based entirely on their politics. Even more than in 2016, that will have them pondering why in the blazes do they even come out to vote for such a freaking useless political party that has no idea what to do with power. People abandon leaders who dont bring home the bacon, and thats exactly what this issue is all about.

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The Amazon Web Crackdown Threatens Patreon, Substack, And You - The Federalist

(Watchthevideofor the monologue and an interview with WMAL and The Daily Callers Vince Coglianese on the how we can fix our foreign policy.)

The war in Afghanistan is finally at its end. It was a catastrophe and a mess a mess that some of us saw up close, a mess that some of us are still living through in Kabul and a mess that cost many lives.

Theres no nice way to say this, but somebody has to: There have been a lot of bad reactions on the right to the Afghan calamity. The great majority of these reactions are simply misguided, but some are flat-out stupid and a few are truly ghoulish.

What unites all of them is partisanship: The need to hit Democrats, and the Democratic Party, for being the enemy the reason everything is wrong.

That need is understandable: Its very difficult to resist that partisan urge when the Democratic Party has politicized everything in daily life, from your church to your bathroom, and from your distant ancestors to the skin color they handed down. But when we gaze out on the ruins of our foreign policy, on the wounded and maimed young men and women growing old around us and on the graves of the fallen we need to resist partisanship at all levels.

Why? Because this war this catastrophe implicates all parties in Washington.

It started under a Republican who ran as a non-interventionist; it was escalated by a Democrat who beat out Hillary Clinton in part by emphasizing his opposition to wasteful wars abroad. Both those presidents eventually ended up parroting the talking points of pompous, dishonest, and incompetent Ivy League politicians presented to the public as generals.

And if were honest, President Donald Trump ended up parroting many of those talking points as well. Hes parroting some of them right now.

Trump saw in 2016 how insane Americas endless wars are, but like so many 20th century Americans, great and small, he had a fatal love for the myth of the American general the Douglas MacArthur, the George S. Patton, the Ulysses S. Grant never realizing that those men are long gone.

Now, in the last chapter of this 20-year book, a Democrat has forced through a sloppy exit. It was uglier than it needed to be, but it was, mercifully, an end. Now the rush is on to blame him for the entire thing, but we cant fall for that.

Youve likely been told about a lot of controversies things that at first glance fill any American with rage. Some are true, like the surrendering of Bagram, but others, like so much of this war, are missing crucial context.

One example is the list of Americans and green-card holders we handed to the Taliban. That was infuriating, right? Why would we give them such a list? But to quote everyones least favorite Democrat, what difference did it make?

The answer is basically none because the Taliban controlled the perimeter of the airport like a nightmare version of the TSA, if there is such a thing. In order to get through that perimeter, American persons needed to show their green card or their American passport. No one else was getting through those lines, and the Taliban were checking the list for us.

Does that sound bad? It is; but it is not made worse by us giving them a cross-reference.

And guess what: They had the information already. They knew who was in country at least as well as the Afghan government knew and at least as well as the seriously imperfect State Department had communicated to them because the Taliban had the Afghan government, computers, personnel, and all. At that point, they were (and still are) the Afghan government, so sadly, as one American whos evacuated dozens of American persons told The Federalist, the list wasnt Secret-Squirrel stuff.

But now its the worlds biggest hostage situation! Unfortunately, it already was. That ship had sailed; that train had left the station. That government you sacrificed a trillion dollars and 2,300 of your finest fellow citizens propping up? That government fled the country carrying $169 million in cash. (At least they thought to bring their toys with them.)

It was the Talibans country, and that gave them power. That is the sad truth about defeat the bitter reality of losing a war. But its better to accept the truth than cause even more harm through denial and misdirected outrage.

All of this was known; all of this had been reported. A lot of people are just angry or misdirected, but some people are lying to you about what happened. Theyre lying because they want President Joe Biden to take all the blame for a disaster they did just as much to create. Theyre lying because even now, they want to restart a war America was never going to win.

But not everyone is lying. Some mean well. This is a hard one, because any one of us can fall prey to poisonous thoughts if we arent vigilant.

Allow me to start with an example. There are a lot of flags in my neighborhood: American flags, Nationals baseball team flags; theres a Lannister flag from Game of Thrones, a few for foreign soccer teams, and one Gov. Ron DeSantis flag (which I love).

More than any of these, there are a lot of rainbow flags a pennant that keeps getting stranger and stranger. Right now its a Black Lives Matter transgender rainbow, and a few really avant garde ones have a symbol for prostitutes too. Its annoying, but fine its a slice of America.

One day I asked a neighbor, What do you think about me flying the Vatican flag in June, our only month specifically devoted to a cardinal sin?

She replied that she thought I ought to fly that flag from time to time and that most people probably wouldnt recognize it, but before I do anything ask myself, Where is this coming from? Am I flying our flag out of a Christian spirit? Out of love? Or is it to troll my neighbor?

I had to think about that. I love the Catholic Church; I love her coat of arms the triple crown and Peters keys to the kingdom; I think it should be represented in Washington; but was that why I was suggesting this?It was a hard question to ask myself. It took looking inward and I didnt like every answer I found.

Heres the point: There have been a lot of memorials to our honored dead. They deserve it they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old and we must ensure that they are not forgotten.

In the last couple weeks, a lot of people put up 13 flags in their yard. It was lovely to see; God bless those men and women. But so help us God, make sure we do this with goodness and with love in our hearts. Did you put out flags when Americans died under Presidents Trump and Bush?

Its not an inconsequential question: its an important one. During the peak of COVID, by RFK stadium (where a good number of people drive by entering Capitol Hill), a city-owned green space was filled with American flags and a counter was put up to number the dead attributed to COVID-19. Was this done to honor Americans who had passed?

We got our answer when they took it down after the election. The answer was no the people who erected this [quote] monument were ghouls, feigning grief for the dead in order to serve based political ends. It reminded me of my old hometown left-wing newspaper, which would print the names and faces of our war dead under President George W. Bush but dropped the practice not long after he left office.

When we put up flags to honor the dead, we must always ask ourselves why this tragedy is different and what it means to us and we have to pray on that. We need to always think deeply when we remember them or we do them no service.

Since the deadly attack on Kabul airport, weve been flooded with pictures and videos of grieving parents whose young children were killed like so many others in that Godforsaken country. Immediately, and over and over again, Ive heard good people I know planning political ads around these messages ads designed to hurt their political opponents, and help their political friends.

Its gruesome, and Ive told them that. There might be a place for it, but search yourselves: Do we honor their memory in this way? Its an honest question and there are different right answers but if you think we do so by just throwing out the ruling party and electing the one we like better, Ive got 20 years of failure to show you.

America will only survive by being an actual country. Its history, its traditions, its institutions, and its heroes cant simply be the squabbling ground for political factions. Thats one reason the War in Afghanistan dragged on so disastrously for so long: Many people knew it was a sham and a mess, but very few people wanted to take the political hit for ending it.

Dont let the awful end of our latest war just be another political news cycle proving that this party is smart and good and the other is stupid and bad. Turn it in a positive direction: Demand better policies, better priorities, and better people from both parties going forward. Dont see this as a way to win the next election see it as a way to have a better country 10, 20, 100 years from now.

Do we want to honor those brave men and women who laid down their lives, or who came home bearing the scars of that war, both physical and mental? We all know some of those people. Theyre having a very difficult time right now.

Its a hard time for this country. If we want to honor them if we want to show them their sacrifice was worth a solitary damn to us well do this right.

This is our chance to right Americas twisted foreign policy. We cant miss it.

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Afghanistan Was A Bipartisan Disaster, And We Must React Accordingly - The Federalist

A Portland State University philosophy professor is resigning from his position after the university Sacrificed Ideas For Ideology.

In a scathing letter to the universitys Provost Susan Jeffords disseminated through Bari Weisss substack, Peter Boghossian explained that the academic institutions unwillingness to accept free thinking is harming education.

Boghossian first joined PSU more than 10 years ago. During his time teaching, Boghossian explained that he often invited guest speakers to campus not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didnt.

From those messy and difficult conversations, Ive seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers; staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances; and even changing their minds, he wrote. I never once believednor do I now that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

Over the years, however, Boghossian said that the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible and transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.

Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicatedthe universitys truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense wherestudents are now afraid to speak openly and honestly, he continued.

Under the guise of fighting off microaggressions and bigotry on campus, the professor said PSU systemically sacrificed free-thinking and dialogue. When he called attention to the incidents of illiberalism and began asking the administration hard questions about their lurch toward homogenous thinking, Boghossian was met with retaliation and an investigation into whether he was beating my wife and children.

The universitys investigation found nothing to back up the claim, but the professor said there was no apology for the false accusations. Instead, Boghossian was told he was not allowed to render my opinion about protected classes or teach in such a way that my opinion about protected classes could be known a bizarre conclusion to absurd charges.

Universities can enforce ideological conformity just through the threat of these investigations, he warned. I eventually became convinced that corrupted bodies of scholarship were responsible for justifying radical departures from the traditional role of liberal arts schools and basic civility on campus. There was an urgent need to demonstrate that morally fashionable papers no matter how absurd could be published. I believed then that if I exposed the theoretical flaws of this body of literature, I could help the university community avoid building edifices on such shaky ground.

Boghossians attempts to draw attention to this phenomenon through an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy were only met with more vandalism and physical pushback from students and the university without any consequences.

Shortly thereafter,swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. They also occasionally showed up on my office door, in one instance accompanied by bags of feces. Our university remained silent. When it acted, it was against me, not the perpetrators, the professor wrote.

Boghossian said this series of events pushed him to realize that every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, beeninitially condemned.

Portland State University has failed in fulfilling this duty. In doing so it has failed not only its students but the public that supports it. While I am grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Portland State for over a decade, it has become clear to me that this institution is no place for people who intend to think freely and explore ideas, Boghossian concluded. This is not the outcome I wanted. But I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didnt?

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

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Portland Professor Resigns After University 'Sacrificed Ideas For Ideology' - The Federalist