Tag Archives: The Daily Signal

Lied To Again

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about an ABC News article about Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. secretary of education. The article at ABC stated that McMahon has no formal education training and little experience.

The article reports:

On Dec. 11, ABC News’ Jay O’Brien reported false information about Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. secretary of education, on “ABC News Live Prime.” 

In the first minute of an eight-minute overview, O’Brien stated that McMahon has no formal education training and little experience:

“If she receives Senate confirmation, McMahon, who has no formal teaching training and little experience in education, will be tasked with setting policies for the nation’s schools.”

This is patently false. 

While receiving a bachelor’s degree in French at East Carolina University in the late 1960s, McMahon earned a teaching certificate after completing a teacher preparation program at the school. This information has been available publicly for years, reported in outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today, was confirmed in a Hartford newspaper in 2011, and has been listed in official statements from East Carolina University.

The article concludes:

This is not the first time ABC News has published false information about members of the Trump transition team. On Dec. 14, ABC News agreed to pay a $15 million settlement after falsely asserting on air that Trump was guilty of rape.

In addition to her teaching certification from East Carolina University, McMahon served as a member of the Connecticut Board of Education and has served as a member of the Sacred Heart University board of trustees since 2004.

ABC News did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, nor did it confirm if its news team has standards for reporting accurate information about story subjects.

I don’t really care what her teaching credentials are–I just want to know if she can shut down a department of the government that is unconstitutional–the Department of Education.

When The Mistakes All Go The Same Way

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On Wednesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about an investigation by the House Oversight and Accountability Committee into the last census. Populations in blue states were over-counted and populations in red states were under-counted. Congress wants to know if that was simply an incredible coincidence or something more.

The article reports:

The head of the U.S. Census Bureau is set to face questions from Congress on Dec. 5 regarding its overcounting of residents of blue states and undercounting of those in red states. Such errors could aid Democrats politically by giving blue states a larger share of Electoral College votes as well as more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Daily Signal first reported in September that the House Oversight and Accountability Committee opened an investigation into the potential politicization of the population count and miscounts in 14 states. 

The December Oversight hearing will review the Census Bureau’s 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES. The hearing will also look at the bureau’s preparations for the 2030 Census. 

The article notes some of the miscounts:

The Biden administration’s Census Bureau revealed in May 2022 that it undercounted the Republican-leaning states of Arkansas by 5%, Florida by 3.4%, Mississippi by 4.11%, Tennessee by 4.78%, and Texas by 1.92%. The Census Bureau undercounted one Democratic-leaning state, Illinois, by 1.97%.

The Census Bureau overcounted Biden’s home state of Delaware by 5.45% as well as other Democratic-leaning states: Hawaii by 6.79%, Massachusetts by 2.24%, Minnesota by 3.84%, New York by 3.44%, and Rhode Island by 5%. It also overcounted two Republican-leaning states, Ohio by 1.49% and Utah by 2.59%.

A more accurate census gives us a more representative House of Representatives and a more accurate Electoral College. We need to get this right.

This Story Could Have Ended Very Differently

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about Amaya Price, a 20-year-old who was going to share his struggles with gender dysphoria in high school and how he overcame them at an event about social change for a class at Berklee College of Music, a private music college in Boston. The college forced him to cancel the event, but the MIT Open Discourse Society allowed Amaya Price to host his lecture on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The article reports:

“I feel like I’ve given a lot of these parents hope, because I’m here today, I’ve been through this, I came out the other side, and I’m OK,” he said, “That’s what a lot of these parents need. They need hope. And right now how it is in Massachusetts, especially, there aren’t a lot of places to look.”

Amaya Price’s presentation highlighted the hate he says he has received on social media since announcing his event and his journey from identifying as trans to accepting his biological sex. He ended with the reminder: “No child is born in the wrong body.”

The article notes:

Amaya Price, who has been diagnosed with autism, said he experienced social ostracism and a mental health crisis in ninth grade, leading him to decide his problem was that he actually was a girl.

He told his therapist, who affirmed his gender dysphoria and referred him to Boston Children’s Hospital for hormones and surgeries. His pediatrician told Amaya Price’s father he could choose between having a “dead son or a living daughter,” and that the then-14-year-old would kill himself if denied hormones and surgery.

Amaya Price’s father immediately shut down the possibility of a medical “transition,” which his son now says is “the best thing he could have done.”

Amaya Price calls himself a “desister,” someone who identified as transgender but decided to live in accord with his biological gender instead of undergoing medical interventions.

Blackmailing parents by telling them their child will commit suicide if they are not allowed life-changing medical treatments that will permanently alter their lives should be considered medical malpractice. Children who change genders generally have a higher rate of suicide. That might be because the gender dysphoria might be a symptom or a deeper problem rather than being the problem. Also, a child who changes their gender will be on hormones for the rest of their life as their body attempts to go back to where it was. No trans surgery can change DNA.

Please follow the link to read the rest of the article. It offers hope to parents dealing with this issue.

What Law?

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Some federal judges are stepping up to stop the abuses of power by the Biden administration during the past four years. Immigration is one area where our laws have been ignored or stretched beyond the point of reality.

On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a recent immigration policy that was overturned.

The article reports:

Two days after the election, a federal court in Texas ruled against President Joe Biden’s latest unauthorized scheme to subvert immigration law: “parole in place” for illegal aliens who are the spouses of U.S. citizens.

In a 73-page decision, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas upheld a challenge by 16 states to the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to create the parole program by administrative rule. 

Introduced by Biden back in June, “parole in place” for spouses was built on a legal house of cards, as my BorderLine column explained at the time.  In promulgating the order, Biden’s government created another administrative runaround to dodge the lawful visa process.

Congress mandated a three-year bar from returning to the U.S. for those who have been here illegally between six to 12 months, and a 10-year bar for those present for more than a year.

But illegal aliens who are spouses of American citizens may apply for a waiver to these bars from a DHS subagency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; many of them are approved every year.

Parole in place was a backdoor amnesty for half a million or more aliens living illegally in the United States. It would have treated an alien who is paroled the same as someone who was admitted legally, thus eliminating the three- and 10-year bars to return.

Once paroled, roughly a half-million alien spouses could have applied for green cards and later become U.S. citizens. This would have encouraged yet more illegal immigration, fraud, and access to already overextended federal and state benefits.

I truly believe that our current immigration policies are a disaster and need to be overhauled. However, ignoring them or rewriting them without the proper legal process is not the answer. We need some courageous legislators to sit down and work together to create a reasonable immigration plan that would allow people who want to come here and work to come (in numbers that would be able to assimilate). Immigrants would be required to have either a sponsor or a job and would be barred from receiving public assistance for a period of ten years. The numbers would be limited to a number that would allow the immigrants to be easily integrated into the communities where they settle.

Ruining Our Relationships With Our Allies While Aiding Our Enemies

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On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted about the recent sharing by the U.S. government of the Israeli surveillance in Iran. Those plans were shared with Iran directly from the U.S. government.

The article reports:

The Pentagon is looking into the leak of intelligence information related to an upcoming Israeli attack on Iran. It was America’s responsibility to keep the information safe, officials say. 

The leak likely has “deeply” damaged U.S.-Israeli relations during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, says Victoria Coates, Heritage Foundation vice president in charge of the Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy. The leak is “very, very concerning,” she says.

After Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles Oct. 1 at Israel, the Jewish state announced that it would respond. The leaked documents don’t include specific targets that Israel plans to strike, but do include surveillance information. 

The article notes:

Release of that information “definitely” has changed Israel’s original response plan, Coates says. 

“The Iranians clearly have this information,” she says. “We don’t know what other information they have, and so I think Israel can and should take the time they need to develop an alternative plan.”

The article includes a podcast regarding the leak. Please follow the link above to hear the podcast.

It is bad enough to refuse aid to an ally when they are fighting for their survival, but to supply information to their enemies is beyond the pale.

The Biggest Cases Coming Up For The Supreme Court

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On Sunday, The Daily Signal posted an article listing the biggest cases that will be decided by the Supreme Court in the upcoming session (which began Monday).

This is the list of the controversial cases:

  1. The case is called United States v. Skrmetti, and it involves a Tennessee law that bans giving children hormone treatments or genital surgeries to change a child’s body to match his or her chosen “gender identity.” That is, giving testosterone to and cutting off the breasts of girls who think they’re boys, and giving estrogen to and cutting off the penises of boys who think they’re girls.
  2. Americans have been handcrafting their own guns for hundreds of years. And for all those hundreds of years, nobody ever thought it was illegal. Even Democrats thought it was legal until just recently.What changed? Well, the Biden-Harris administration realized that it might be able to end this ancient tradition by deploying a slur. What were once handcrafted guns are now “ghost guns,” and with a name that spooky, they must be banned.
  3. The case is Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, but don’t get confused by the plaintiff’s name. This case doesn’t involve a noble fight against Big Tech censorship or a righteous stand against a screaming campus mob. No, this case is brought by pornographers hiding their smut behind the banner of free speech.Pornography rots brains, especially children’s brains, so Texas joined 19 other states and prudently passed a law saying that pornographic websites must verify that their users are over 18 years old. Texas, being a free state, wanted to strike the balance of allowing adults the freedom to make the self-destructive choice of watching pornography while protecting children who are too immature to fully appreciate the consequences of that choice.
  4. The Biden-Harris administration is obsessed with telling us that anyone who disagrees with it hates democracy. But at the same time, members of the administration are obsessed with doing end-runs around Congress and local elected governments to impose their will on the country.Their latest end-run is so egregious that even San Francisco is fighting back. The case is San Francisco v. Environmental Protection Agency, in which a super-lefty presidential administration has gotten on the last nerve of a super-lefty city.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. The last case is particularly interesting. If you don’t tell someone what a limit is, you can make a lot of money when you accuse them of going over it!

The Cost Of Bidenomics

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article that provides some insight into the actual state of the American economy.

The article reports:

Small-business bankruptcies are up 61% on the year. It is a cackle-nomics miracle.

The data comes from bankruptcy analyst Epiq, which reports that commercial filings for Chapter 11 bankruptcies soared to 4,553 so far this year.

Meanwhile, total corporate bankruptcies are also rising, hitting the highest since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence, which is hitting especially hard in retail, with a parade of chains going under this year, including Red Lobster and its beloved endless shrimp. Never forget what they have taken from us.

What’s causing it? Simple: Inflation, high interest costs, and COVID-19 loans.

Inflation, of course, drives up business costs to the point they have to hike prices, which chases consumers out.

High interest rates are well-known to strangle business. In fact, that’s why the Fed does them, to strangle household spending enough that federal spending has inflation all to itself.

And then the COVID-19 loans: During the pandemic, the Small Business Administration pumped out 4 million loans—worth about $380 billion—in so-called economic-injury disaster loans. Note these were separate from the Paycheck Protection Program loans, where $800 billion were handed out to bribe voters into lockdowns.

While many of the PPP loans were fraudulent—actually, most of them, according to NPR—96% of those loans were forgiven.

Incidentally, one gang member recently killed in a Baltimore shootout had, it turned out, an outstanding PPP loan for a nanotech company. Not a joke.

Thing is, those $380 billion in injury loans actually do have to be paid back.

And it turns out a lot of companies can’t. Eighty percent are still outstanding—$300 billion—so, we’re probably just seeing the tip of the injury-loan bankruptcies.

As Tim Walz stated at a recent Pennsylvania rally, “We can’t afford four more years of this!”

Please follow the link above for further details.

Imaginary People Making Real Donations

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On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the funding for ActBlue. ActBlue was founded in 2009 to help Democrats in fundraising. The organization serves as a conduit for left-wing donors, with two more arms—ActBlue Charities and ActBlue Civics—funneling money to 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) clients, respectively.

The article reports:

Paging Dr. Adrienne Young, M.D. 

The good doctor is listed online as an “internist” in McKees Rocks, a borough in western Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, known locally as “the Rocks.”

Campaign finance filings report Young’s practice is located on Heckel Road in McKees and list a 412 area code phone number. But her office does not appear to exist at this address and the number is not in service. Moreover, none of the receptionists attached to doctors’ offices located in close proximity to Young’s office address in McKees have ever heard of her. That’s peculiar in and of itself. But a search of campaign finance records only adds to the intrigue. 

Someone identified as Adrienne Young has been making substantial contributions to a left-of-center political action committee known as ActBlue, according to Federal Election Commission records. 

…Restoration News is still attempting to contact the individual listed in campaign finance documents as Adrienne Young. Records list her residing on Leet Road in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. These records show that since 2017, Young has made 17,342 in contributions to ActBlue totaling $209,670.06—which averages seven contributions per day. 

Evidently the doctor is doing very well.

The article notes:

“Smurfing” involves repackaging large sums of money into smaller, individual transactions to appear less suspicious and avoid scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Is “Adrienne Young” a cover for such an operation, benefiting Democrats?

While it is indisputably the case that ActBlue is ringing the bell with hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, it’s not evident the smaller contributions that translate over time into larger sums are coming from an individual donor.

One of the more recent contributions to ActBlue leading back to the donor identified as Young came on March 16, 2023, in the amount of $1196.50. That’s not an unusual amount for an individual, but what is unusual is folding that amount into more than 17,000 contributions made over the span of several years. The donor identified as Young was actively contributing to ActBlue at least through part of this year with a donation of $429.00 made on April 30, 2024. If a smurfing operation is underway, it may not be limited to what’s flowing into ActBlue. 

Please follow the link to read the entire article. This sort of cheating needs to have serious legal consequences.

On Friday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the response of the Former Chief Impact Officer at ActBlue.

This is the response:

In a recent interview with an OKeefeMedia Citizen Journalist, Geri Prado former Chief Impact Officer at ActBlue, downplayed concerns about the organization’s suspicious fundraising practices. Prado attempted to brush off allegations by describing ActBlue merely as “a payment processor for campaigns, but it’s not a campaign,” and likened it to PayPal, citing credit card fees as a standard issue.

When asked about potential money laundering, Prado dismissed the concern, “No… It’s a very hard thing to do,” downplaying the likelihood of any illegal activity. However, she admits, “There are other problems,” hinting at other issues within the organization.

This comes amidst reports that Federal Election Commission (FEC) records are inaccurately reflecting senior citizens as having made donations far beyond their actual contributions.

It will be interesting to see what the current Department of Justice does with these allegations.

How You Draw The Districts Determines The Vote

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a recent decision by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals regarding voting districts. There was a county is Texas where a voting district was carved out specifically to make sure a minority-race Democrat would be elected. The Court ruled that was not acceptable.

The article reports:

In Petteway v. Galveston County, the full appeals court concluded that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not protect or “authorize coalition claims, either expressly or by implication.” Coalition districts are districts in which no single minority group constitutes a majority of the voters. Instead, in those districts, there is a combination of different minority racial, ethnic, or language groups that make up a majority of voters. 

The citizen population of Galveston County is 58% white, 22.5% Hispanic, and 12.5% black. Although the black population is concentrated in the center of the county, the Hispanic population is evenly dispersed throughout. The county commission consists of five seats: four elected from specific districts and one elected at-large. Neither the black nor the Hispanic population of Galveston County is large enough and concentrated enough to draw a single commission district in which either group constitutes a majority of the voters in that particular district.

As a result, in 1991, the county drew one coalition district that combined the black and Hispanic population in one district, which was represented by a black Democrat as of 2021. The other seats were all held by Republicans, including a black Republican. However, in the 2021 redistricting, the county eliminated the coalition district, which had a black citizen population of 31% and a Hispanic citizen population of 24%. 

The NAACP and the Justice Department led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, along with a number of individual plaintiffs, sued Galveston claiming that this was a violation of federal law because coalition districts are required by Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. 

This case is not the only one involving coalition districts. Please follow the link to the article for further details.

The States Are Taking Action Because Congress Is Not

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On Sunday, The Daily Signal posted an article about eight states that are going to put citizen-only voting on their ballots in November.

The article reports:

States set to vote on whether to amend their constitutions to prevent noncitizens from voting are Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

In previous election cycles, such amendments to state constitutions passed overwhelmingly.

It will be interesting to see how the voters vote this time.

The article notes:

The House last month passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which would require that states obtain documentary proof of U.S. citizenship from someone before he or she may register to vote. The bill would amend the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the “motor voter law.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate, however, is unlikely to take up the House bill.

In the states, the proposed constitutional amendments in effect would prevent local governments from expanding voting rights to noncitizens, as has occurred in California, Maryland, and Vermont. 

“States can take action constitutionally to protect citizen voters,” Kerri Toloczko, executive director of the Election Integrity Network, told The Daily Signal. 

“Opponents [of banning noncitizen voting] say it’s already illegal for foreign nationals to vote. It’s also illegal to steal a car,” Toloczko said. “There are so many loopholes in the National Voter Registration Act.”

As noted in my book “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” there have been numerous adjudicated cases of foreign nationals registering to vote and voting in past elections. 

A 1996 federal law specifically prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections for president or members of Congress. However, the law doesn’t dictate what local governments can do.

In addition, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act requires voter registration at states’ motor vehicle departments and social services agencies. 

There are some cities in America that allow non-citizens to vote in local elections, but what happens when a local election is included on a national ballot? When America was first founded, only land-owners were allowed to vote. The idea was that they were ‘stakeholders’ and were going to protect their own interests. What interest does someone who is not a citizen have in America’s success?

More Lies

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On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article about one of the lies that has been told multiple times Kamala Harris during her brief campaign for the presidency.

The article reports:

A campaign official for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris acknowledged Wednesday that the vice president is deliberately misleading voters about Project 2025.

CNN first reported the stunning admission as part of a fact-check article accusing Harris of making false claims about Project 2025 and former President Donald Trump’s stance on Social Security. CNN’s Daniel Dale revealed:

A Harris campaign official said the campaign has ‘made a deliberate decision to brand all of Trump’s policies’ as ‘Project 2025,’ since they believe ‘it has stuck with voters.’

The article also notes:

CNN, for example, examined Harris’ comments at her first campaign rally Tuesday about Project 2025:

When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill. They intend to end the Affordable Care Act. And take us back, then, to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions.

After reviewing “Mandate for Leadership,” the Project 2025 book of policy recommendations, CNN concluded:

One of Harris’ claims about Project 2025 is false, while another is at least misleading. The Project 2025 document does not show that Trump intends to cut Social Security; the document barely discusses Social Security at all and does not propose cuts to the program. In addition, contrary to Harris’ suggestion, Project 2025 does not call to ‘end’ the Affordable Care Act or eliminate its protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

If a campaign thinks it has to lie about its opponent to get votes, why should anyone vote for the campaigner?

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

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The mainstream media is desperate to distract the public from the failing health of our current President. I honestly feel sorry for the man, but I also believe it is time for him to retire–NOW–not in the future. I understand the consequences of that, but he’s obviously not running things right now. All his retirement would mean is replacing Jill Biden with Kamala Harris. So what is the shiny object put forth to distract us–Project 2025, a suggested policy framework for the Trump administration if President Trump is elected. The lies are flying fast and furious.

On Tuesday, The Daily Signal listed some of the current lies:

1. ‘Terminates the Constitution’

Ironically, the Biden campaign claims that Project 2025 “terminates the Constitution.” While the campaign backs up some of its claims on the website with drop-down menus and explanatory bullet points, it doesn’t even bother backing up this particular claim.

Contrary to Biden campaign spin, Project 2025 actually represents an attempt to restore the Constitution, not terminate it.

Bringing the administrative state more firmly under the control of the president, whose authority traces directly from the Constitution, could not be further from terminating this quintessential founding document.

2. Gives Trump ‘More Power Over Your Daily Life’

With no sense of irony, the Biden campaign claims Project 2025 aims to “give Trump more power over your daily life.”

That’s completely false. Project 2025 aims to weaken the bureaucracy that churns out tens of thousands of pages of rules every year. A more restrained administrative state translates into less control over Americans’ daily lives, not more.

3. ‘Guts Democratic Checks and Balances’

The Biden campaign claims Project 2025 “guts democratic checks and balances on presidential power,” but the fine print on the website makes a consequential admission about these checks on Article II powers.

The website claims that the project will empower a president “to fire and replace independent civil servants across the government with extreme MAGA loyalists—turning independent government employees with specialized technical expertise, such as the people who keep our food safe, working for the American people into political creatures implementing his extremist agenda.”

The article concludes:

The Biden campaign’s lies come across as a desperate attempt to distract Americans from the president’s horrific debate performance last month and from the many ways that the Left has twisted the administrative state to its purposes.

Biden is so insistent on defending the status quo because the Left has already done what he claims Trump is trying to do—leverage the “expertise” of the administrative state to shove its agenda down Americans’ throats without a single vote. Contrary to his spin, reversing this is both democratic and constitutional, not to mention in the best interests of the American people.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. The current mainstream reporting on this is fear-mongering, and we need an informed public to make sure it doesn’t work.

Did They Wake The Sleeping Giant?

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the impact and possible consequences of the Democrat’s lawfare against President Trump and his supporters.

The article notes:

It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have “crossed the Rubicon.” Well …

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the demonic Obama administration sued the nuns—yes, literal nuns—of the Little Sisters of the Poor to try to force them to subsidize abortifacients?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Democrats threw out 4,000 to 5,000 years of “innocent until proven guilty” civilizational norms to try to derail the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris solicited funds to bail out anarchic Antifa-Black Lives Matter street hooligans?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the American Stasi—sorry, the FBI—raided Mar-a-Lago over a document dispute?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when myriad Trump attorneys, including the renowned scholar John Eastman, were prosecuted for practicing the legal profession?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon (just now) were ordered to jail?

The article notes that the Democrats have laid the groundwork for a new era in politics:

Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?

That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.

The article notes three things that their lawfare has brought the Democrats–first, they did not get the expected bump in the polls after the verdict in the Trump trial. Second, the trial seriously eroded the faith of Americans in the justice system. And third, the continued lawfare woke up the sleeping political right.

The article concludes:

My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.”

Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: “I’m going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon.” The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.

Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don’t even care.

Stay tuned.

 

Economic Growth Has Significantly Slowed

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On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the revised downward economic growth in the first quarter of 2024. America is not doing well economically.

The article reports:

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024 amid a slowdown in consumer spending, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product was revised down in the first quarter from 1.6% to 1.3% year-over-year in a sign that the economy is not as strong as initial estimates indicated, according to a release from the BEA. Economists originally expected growth in the first quarter to be around 2.2%, more in line with the above trend growth seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, which were 4.9% and 3.4%, respectively.

The revision was due to new information that shows that consumer spending, private inventory investment, and federal government spending were lower than initial estimates, while state and local government spending, nonresidential and residential fixed investment, and exports were slightly greater than original tallies, according to the BEA.

Current-dollar GDP was also revised down to 4.3% from 4.8%, and real gross domestic income totaled just 1.5% in an initial estimate from the BEA.

Consumer spending is down because consumers are being forced to spend more on necessities and less on extras.

The article concludes:

In an attempt to bring inflation back down to around 2%, the Fed has placed its federal funds rate in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, a 23-year high, which has put pressure on consumers and businesses to slow spending. The hike in the federal funds rate has increased the cost of credit across the board, making it more expensive to take out debt, such as through credit cards.

The cumulative amount of debt held by Americans totaled $17.69 trillion in the first quarter, with $1.12 trillion of that being on credit cards. The share of people who were behind 90 days or more on their credit card payments in the quarter jumped to 10.7%, outdoing the pandemic high of 10% in the first quarter of 2021.

Job growth has also slowed as of late, with the U.S. adding just 175,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in April, far lower than the 242,000 that were expected, while the unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.9%. In April, there were fewer gains in government jobs than in previous months, contributing largely to the slowdown, with March adding 303,000 new jobs.

This problem was government-caused and can be government-solved. Cut taxes and cut spending–that is the solution if Congress ever has the integrity to do it.

Why Are Chinese Crossing Into America Illegally?

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In an article posted Sunday, The Daily Signal lists six reasons why so many Chinese are crossing into America at our open border.

These are the six reasons:

1. San Diego Infrastructure

2. Money Motivates Cartels

3. Because They Can

4. ‘A Better Life’

5. Chinese Influence on America

6. Marijuana Farms

There are some things to keep in mind when reading this list. Urban San Diego is a very easy place for illegal migrants to blend in. The Mexican drug cartels are selling immigration packages to the Chinese–for a little more money, the Chinese illegal migrants get legit legal travel documents so that they could fly on domestic airlines in Mexico. Because the Biden administration has left the southern border wide open, there is nothing to stop Chinese illegal aliens. The Chinese economy is struggling, so many Chinese are coming here for better economic opportunities. With an increasing Chinese population, Chinese influence on America will increase. Finally, China is running drug-producing factories in Mexico and marijuana farms in America. The legalization of marijuana in some states has made it a taxed product., The higher taxes have resulted in a flourishing black market.

The bottom line is simple–some Chinese are coming here simply to find a better economic life, but some are coming for nefarious purposes. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing at this point which are which.

 

 

What Happens When Justice Is No Longer Blind

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the priorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Christopher Wray’s leadership.

The article notes:

The director of the FBI is being accused of hypocrisy for allowing the targeting of concerned parents, Trump supporters, and American Catholics but not “monitoring” pro-Hamas rallies and protests on college campuses.

Director Christopher Wray was asked in an interview on Tuesday about “actively monitoring” the rallies erupting across college and university campuses, which have become the subject of controversy and condemnation from even senior government officials. Wray replied, “We don’t monitor protests.” He added, “But we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence.”

I’m curious–which is a greater threat to the security of America–mothers attending School Board meetings, people attending Catholic Churches, or people with ties to a group that routinely shouts “Death to America”? Just asking.

The article concludes:

Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The FBI shouldn’t be monitoring most protests, but when massive demonstrations are shutting down higher education institutions that threaten fellow students and incorporate genocidal slogans like ‘From the river to the sea,’ that all should pique the interest of federal law enforcement.”

She continued, “Wray’s comments are yet another hit to the FBI’s credibility after the Department of Justice’s inspector general held last week that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing when it was looking into ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ that they alleged were connected to ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.’”

Del Turco added, “The FBI’s heightened concern over traditional Catholics appears especially absurd when considering the agency’s total disinterest in protestors who are threatening Jewish students on college campuses.”

Currently, pro-Hamas rallies are taking place at schools such as Ohio State University and the Ivy League Columbia and Yale universities.

The FBI should be protecting Americans, not violating their civil rights.

In Case You Doubted “The Plan”

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On Wednesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about some of the information being given to the people who are illegally crossing our southern border.

The article reports:

The “vote for President Biden” flyers found at a center for migrants in Mexico constitute foreign meddling in U.S. elections, congressional Republicans say. 

Amid the ongoing crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border, the lawmakers decried flyers posted at the migrant services center near Brownsville, Texas, that tell illegal aliens: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States.”

“Joe Biden has sacrificed our nation’s safety and security in his pursuit to get as many people here as possible. Why? Because he believes these are future Democrat voters,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told The Daily Signal. 

“This is election interference orchestrated at the highest levels. We have to get our hands around this—Americans have to have complete confidence in their elections,” Marshall said. “Any NGO receiving federal funds and pushing illegal get-out-the-vote efforts for Joe Biden should be stripped of their funding immediately.”

Translated from Spanish, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project notes, the flyers posted at the nongovernmental organization Resource Center Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas say: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” 

“Democrats want permanent power and they are willing to import a new electorate to get it,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told The Daily Signal in a written statement after his office was asked about the flyers. 

The article concludes:

The discovery of the “vote for Biden” flyers in Mexico is more evidence of the need for voter ID laws, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said.

“Like Iowa, every state in the union should require IDs and proof of citizenship in order to vote,” Ernst told The Daily Signal. “American elections are for Americans, not whoever manages to show up at Joe Biden’s open border. We must secure election integrity and secure the border.”

The pro-Biden flyers, discovered by Muckraker and shared with the Oversight Project, were found throughout Resource Center Matamoros, including on the walls of portable toilets, a video shows. 

The city of Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas borders Brownsville, where Biden spoke in February about the crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border that has grown since he became president in January 2021.

Federal law bans foreign nationals, or non-U.S. citizens, from voting in federal elections. On Friday, former President Donald Trump endorsed proposed legislation by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that would require proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections.

It is long past time to make sure that the people who vote in our elections are the people who are legally entitled to vote in our elections. Any illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter.

Government Intrusion Into The Election Process

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On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the collaboration between the federal government and left-leaning get-out-the-vote organizations.

The article reports:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with a left-wing advocacy group to boost voter turnout as part of President Joe Biden’s executive order directing federal agencies to get involved in elections.

The USDA worked directly with Demos, a New York-based group that helped draft Biden’s Executive Order 14019, according to records obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.) 

Biden signed his order on agencies and voter registration in March 2021. On Aug. 9, 2021, Demos’ Adam Lioz emailed USDA officials, many in the office of Secretary Tom Vilsack, under the subject line: “Demos Meeting on Voting Rights EO.”

“Team USDA, with apologies for the delay, I wanted to follow up and thank you all for all your time and a productive conversation,” wrote Lioz, who was Demos’ senior counsel and political director before departing in September 2021. “As we noted, we’ll have our ‘best practices’ slides ready in the next 1-2 weeks and in the meantime, y’all had asked for data on voter registration at the state level, which I’ve pasted below.” 

Just for the record, the Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits civil servants in the Executive Branch of government (except the President and Vice-President) from engaging in some forms of political activity. The goal of the law is to stop the federal government from affecting elections or going about its activities in a partisan manner.

The article concludes:

Biden’s initiative includes the Department of Homeland Security’s registration of voters during naturalization ceremonies, the Department of Education’s promotion of voting at high schools and colleges, and agencies’ work with private, nonprofit organizations to increase voter turnout. 

Many congressional Republicans have joined government watchdog groups in expressing concern about agencies’ engaging in partisan political activity under Biden’s executive order, in violation of laws such as the Hatch Act. 

The records obtained by Heritage’s Oversight Project include the USDA’s directions to employees on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act. 

Neither the Department of Agriculture nor Demos responded to inquiries from The Daily Signal before publication of this report. 

The effort to steal the 2024 election has already begun.

We Have A Spending Problem

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On Monday, The Daily Signal posted an article about government spending. The article included five charts that illustrate the problem.

These are the charts:

When interest payments make up a quarter or our spending, we have a problem. We have been living beyond our means for so long that we will never get out of debt without drastic action. There have been various plans to cut the federal budget in the past–one of which simply required taking one penny away from every dollar. It is time to reconsider these plans and to reconsider shrinking federal employment by at least 10 percent. If companies are forced to cut back because of inflation, the federal government should also be required to reduce its size. We are becoming the economically illiterate consumer who pays the minimum payment on his credit card every month and wonders why the balance never goes down.

Getting Around The Illegal And Dangerous Border Crossing

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On September 21st, The Daily Signal reported that 221,456 illegal aliens have flown directly into America from Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua thanks to a program set up by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA, Bensman (Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies) says, he learned of the federal government’s “CBP One” mobile application parole program, which “permits inadmissible aliens to make an appointment to fly directly to airports in the interior of the United States, bypassing the border altogether.”  

The Biden administration introduced the CBP One mobile app to illegal aliens as a way to schedule an appointment at a port of entry and be paroled into the interior of the United States. (The acronym CBP refers to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.)

President Joe Biden said the program was part of an effort to form “lawful pathways” for illegal aliens to enter the country and seek asylum. Illegal border crossings between ports of entry at the southern border appeared to decline in June as more illegal aliens presented themselves at a port of entry.  

But, according to Bensman’s findings, migrants also are presenting themselves at ports within the interior of the country.

One of the “least noticed, mysterious, and potentially the most controversial of the new rechanneling programs that use the CBP One app allows migrants to take commercial passenger flights from foreign countries straight to their American cities of choice, flying right over the border—and even over Mexico,” Bensman writes in the Center for Immigration Studies report titled “New Records: Biden DHS Has Approved Hundreds of Thousands of Migrants for Secretive Foreign Flights Directly Into U.S. Airports.”  

According to Worldometers, the United States 2023 population is estimated at 339,996,563 people at mid year.

Keep in mind that the number of people flown in by airplane is only a fraction of the number coming over the border every day. According to The New York Post, 820,500 illegal aliens had crossed our southern border in 2023. Even if they were here legally, that is a tremendous number of people to assimilate. How many of those people will have to be supported by American taxpayers who are already struggling because of inflation?

Misusing The Office Of The Presidency

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article detailing how the Obama administration used secret information to undermine the incoming Trump administration.

The article reports:

Heavily redacted documents from the National Security Agency tell at least part of the story of a final-month rush by the outgoing Obama administration to torpedo the incoming presidency of Donald Trump. 

The Daily Signal obtained 217 pages of documents from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents reveal that Obama administration officials, from Vice President Joe Biden down to several ambassadors and many officials in the Treasury and Energy departments, gained access to secret information about Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Trump’s choice for national security adviser.

The article includes screen captures of many of the documents.

The article continues:

In May 2020, then-acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell declassified information and provided Congress with a list of names involved in the Obama administration’s “unmasking” of Flynn, Trump’s original pick for national security adviser, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency for two years under Obama.

Senate Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin released the list of Obama admnistration officials. 

“Unmasking” is the practice of disclosing to political appointees the identities of U.S. citizens referenced or recorded in intelligence surveillance of foreign nationals. Names of citizens typically are redacted, or obscured, from such reports, unless a specific request is made to “unmask” those citizens. 

NSA emails about most such requests from Obama officials regarding Flynn bear this message: “The identities of the named U.S. persons and organizations is required for full understanding of the intelligence in the report.” 

Several of the NSA documents note Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, including the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The amendment to the Constitution also requires warrants “upon probable cause.”

The Obama administration and the Biden administration have consistently ignored the Constitution. Rarely have the other two branches of government pushed back. Some recent decisions by the Supreme Court have undone some unconstitutional laws, but we need the Republicans in Congress to stand up for our Constitution.

Investigating Government Policies On Covid-19

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I seriously doubt that there was a perfect solution for handling Covid-19 when it appeared in 2020. However, I also wonder if the government actually got anything rights. An investigation into the government’s handling of the pandemic would be very useful in developing a template for handling future pandemics.

On January 19th, The Daily Signal posted a checklist for the House of Representatives committee that is investigating the government’s handling of the pandemic.

The article notes:

After three years, and more than 1 million deaths in the U.S. associated with COVID-19, a comprehensive, sober, and detailed investigation into the federal government’s response is a necessary precondition for restoring Americans’ trust in federal public health agencies.

Specifically, that includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.  

A Heritage Foundation analysis of the federal public health performance identified 13 pandemic-related topics that deserve detailed congressional inquiry. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Here are some of the things that need to be investigated:

  • Why did the CDC, despite statutory requirements dating back to 2006, fail to modernize and upgrade its systems of data collection and dissemination? Dr. Deborah Birx, former coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force under Trump, has already told Congress that “the No.1 public health issue in the United States today is that there is no comprehensive database or integration of data from laboratories, public health institutions, and clinics.”  
  • Why did federal public health authorities send out confusing messaging on the value of masks and mask mandates? Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams initially insisted, very publicly and sometimes vehemently, that masking was unnecessary or ineffective. Previous studies on masking indeed failed to provide strong support for cloth masking, let alone mask mandates. Between February and April 2020, however, top federal officials did a U-turn, and insisted on the value of a masking policy that they previously opposed. What was the new scientific evidence, then available in the professional literature, for such a dramatic policy reversal in that brief period? Congress should find out.
  • Why did federal officials attempt to impose a set of unprecedented vaccine mandates on tens of millions of Americans without weighing the risks and benefits of vaccination for different cohorts of the population, based on age, the acquisition of natural immunity, or an underlying vulnerability to the virus?  Young and healthy persons faced little danger of severe illness or death from COVID-19. Robust findings in the professional literature demonstrated the strength of natural immunity. Recent research on vaccine boosters for young adults concludes that potential harms outweigh the benefits of the vaccination.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. America is supposed to be a representative republic–our elected officials are supposed to represent us and answer to us–it’s time they did.

A Coup We Never Knew

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On January 6, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at The Daily Signal about the changes we have seen in America over the last two years.

The article begins:

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?

Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas, furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes, with placards declaring “Off with their d—s”?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?

How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?

That is just the beginning. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The article concludes:

Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? Whose idea was it to reboot racial segregation and bias as “theme houses,” “safe spaces,” and “diversity”? How did that happen in America?

How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

It’s time to join or to start a local grassroots organization dedicated to protecting the rights and structure defined in the U.S. Constitution. We have a number of organizations like that in eastern North Carolina. Hopefully there are some where you live.

What Happens When There Is No Oversight

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The House Judiciary Committee is supposed to provide some oversight into the activities of the Justice Department. Unfortunately, so far during the Biden administration the House is controlled by the Democrats, so there has been little if any oversight. The result of that was recently illustrated in an article in The American Thinker on Thursday.

The article quotes The Daily Signal:

The Justice Department has been targeting pro-life activists through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act as a response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, according to Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

Gupta delivered remarks at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division’s 65th Anniversary earlier this month. The associate attorney general described the overturn of Roe v. Wade as a “devastating blow to women throughout the country” that took away “the constitutional right to abortion” and increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s work—including the “enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.”

The article at The American Thinker reports:

So, crisis pregnancy centers are being vandalized and burned, and churches are being attacked, and all she’s willing to do is target pro-life activists, in junk cases, for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances for arrest. She’s scored 26 notches in her lipstick case for that one, while utterly ignoring the violent and real violations of the act coming from the other side.

One such example of her 26 scalps is the case of Mark Houck, a pro-life rosary-sayer who got into an altercation with a clinic “escort” in front of an abortion clinic, after the latter began shouting at and intimidating and violating the space of his 12 year-old son. It happened several years ago, and even Pennsylvania’s woke prosecutors declined to prosecute the case because it was so flimsy. But Vanita Gupta, enraged at the decision on Roe, had a partisan agenda, and instead of prosecute the leftist clinic escort who got in the child’s face (turns out he had quite a previous rap sheet), which also would have been applicable under the FACE act, she sent in the SWAT team with 15 squad cars to haul Houck away in front of his terrified kids. I wrote about that travesty here.

There is something very wrong when she is allowed to keep her job after exhibiting that much bias in enforcing the law.

The Cancel Culture Continues

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On November 2nd, The Daily Signal posted an article about a conference held last month by The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM).

The article reports:

Medical organizations in the birthing field have vocally endorsed abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. A prominent group of pro-life obstetricians and gynecologists found itself excluded from a national midwifery conference over its views on abortion, The Daily Signal can exclusively reveal. The pro-life group is also raising the alarm about the potential decertification of medical professionals who refuse to toe the line on abortion.

The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) held its Midwifery Works Conference last month, but the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) had no presence there for the first time in six years.

AAPLOG, a nonsectarian organization, operated as a “special-interest group” within the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for 40 years before ACOG discontinued the designation. Now, ACNM, ACOG, and the organization responsible for certifying OB-GYNs, the American Board of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ABOG), have embraced pro-abortion stances.

“One of the greatest threats to maternal health care is the rabid pro-abortion activism currently being displayed by both ABOG and ACOG,” AAPLOG CEO Dr. Donna Harrison told The Daily Signal. “Three national studies have revealed that somewhere between 75% and 93% of OB-GYNs do not perform abortions in their practices.”

…Harrison also raised the alarm about a July statement from ABOG, which she characterized as a threat to decertify pro-life OB-GYNs.

“Physicians and midwives who care for both of their patients, both the pregnant mother and the human being in her womb, are being systematically bullied and eliminated from being able to practice medicine, at a time when maternity care deserts are worsening around the country,” Harrison added. “ACNM has recently joined in the bullying by refusing to allow midwives who care for their in-utero patients to even speak or exhibit at the recent ACNM national conference.”

The article concludes:

Harrison, the AAPLOG CEO, predicted more struggles ahead.

“The threats to decertify OB-GYNs who do not participate in killing their patients will not only worsen the existing maternity care deserts but also completely ignore the fact that many women do not want to be treated by an abortion provider,” Harrison told The Daily Signal. “Many women want a physician who cares as much about the human being in their womb as they do, so that they can trust that the recommendations for treatment are being given in consideration of the best outcome for both the mother and her child. This is good obstetrical care.”

I don’t think killing babies is good medical practice nor is it good for society as a whole.