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Texas Border Operation Captures Half a Million Illegal Immigrants, Thousands of Felons

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By Judicial Watch

The Biden administration’s failure to secure the Mexican border forced Texas officials to establish a security initiative that has endured heavy criticism from Democrats and the media despite its success in apprehending hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants—including thousands of criminals—and seizing millions of lethal doses of fentanyl. It is known as Operation Lone Star, and it was launched by Governor Greg Abbott in March 2021 as the illegal immigration crisis gripped his border state. Under the program, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and the Texas National Guard pick up the slack for the federal government, which is charged with protecting the famously porous southern border but has failed miserably to do so. Operation Lone Star works to stop the smuggling of drugs, weapons and people into Texas, and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry.

This month the state published an update on the security initiative’s work. Since it was put into place, over 507,200 illegal immigrants have been captured and more than 41,500 criminal arrests have been made with more than 36,900 felony charges filed. Additionally, Texas officials have transported over 100,000 illegal aliens to sanctuary cities throughout the country that openly welcome and protect migrants. New York received the largest chunk—42,000—of relocated migrants caught entering Texas illegally, followed by Chicago (34,400), Denver (18,000), Washington D.C. (12,500), Philadelphia (3,400) and Los Angeles (1,500). “Operation Lone Star continues to fill the dangerous gaps created by the Biden Administration’s refusal to secure the border,” reads the statement announcing the latest figures. “Every individual who is apprehended or arrested and every ounce of drugs seized would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and the nation due to President Joe Biden’s open border policies.”

Among the examples offered in the latest update is the arrest of an illegal immigrant from Mexico by the DPS after a brush team working the Rio Grande Valley saw the man get picked up by a human smuggler while crossing the Rio Grande River on a jet ski. After vetting the migrant, Gabriel Gutierrez-Perez, the law enforcement agency found that he was wanted in Florida for sexual assault on a child, sexual battery on a child and child molestation. In another case a DPS trooper busted a smuggling operation during a traffic stop after observing two passengers, illegal immigrants, attempting to conceal themselves in the rear of the vehicle. Two more migrants were in the car’s trunk and the driver was arrested and charged with smuggling of persons. All four were Mexican nationals. During a separate traffic stop a DPS trooper noticed multiple people crammed in the rear of a large sports utility vehicle. It turns out five illegal immigrants were smuggled in the vehicle and the driver and passenger were both charged with smuggling of persons. The passenger was also charged with evading arrest and resisting arrest.

Texas is not the only state to take matters into its own hands in the absence of federal immigration enforcement. A handful of others, such as Arizona, Montana, and North Dakota, have enacted measures to help mitigate the mess caused by the president’s open border policies, though Texas has been the most proactive and its initiative has had the biggest impact. As we delve deeper into the Biden presidency, the situation is only getting worse, leaving local governments on their own to deal with national security threats, elevated crime, and other detrimental impacts of lawlessness along the southern border. In fiscal year 2021 a then record-setting 1.73 million illegal aliens entered the country through Mexico only to be topped the following year with 2.4 million. In fiscal year 2023 a ghastly 2.48 million illegal aliens entered the U.S through Mexico and, unbelievably, 2024 is on track to surpass that. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) records recently published in a congressional report show that the agency recorded 256,094 encounters nationwide in February alone, accounting for the worst February for illegal immigration in decades.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Hatred of Trump Is Rooted In Contempt For Ordinary Voters

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By The Geller Report

Trump is our proxy. Everything thrown at Trump is thrown at us. If they can destroy Trump, what shot does any of us have?

“Far from the bully, Trump is the champion of those who have been bullied relentlessly and mercilessly by a self-appointed elite who holds them in contempt. In Trump, they have found a modern George Bailey….”

By: Louis Markos, The Federalist, April 22, 2024

In Trump, his supporters hear a spirited defense of the hard-working despised and a fearless denouncing of the fashionable despisers.

A complaint I hear increasingly leveled at contemporary American politicians is that they are out of touch with voters, if not downright contemptuous of them. On a number of core issues, politicians seem less concerned with pursuing policies that are deeply unpopular with ordinary Americans than with upholding the ideologies and self-interests of the ruling elite. Two dramatic examples of this political disconnect with average citizens are the refusal of urban governments to prosecute violent criminals, which has caused a surge in crime, and the White House’s tolerance of mass immigration, which threatens jobs, security, and the rule of law.

As I survey the current political and intellectual landscape, I cannot help but see a resurgence of the arrogance and disdain of the 18th-century French revolutionaries for those they considered to be incapable of rational thought and moral behavior. But I am moving too fast. Let me slow down and give some historical background.

In The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004), Gertrude Himmelfarb distinguishes, convincingly, between the French philosophes, who championed reason; the American Founding Fathers, who concentrated on liberty; and the British moral philosophers, who emphasized human nature, benevolence, and our shared, internal moral sense.

While the English reformers showed compassion for the poor and uneducated and treated them as members of the same human race, and the American framers sought to ensure freedom for all classes, most of the French intellectuals looked down on the peasants, dismissing them as bestial and irrational, filled to the brim with the prejudices and superstitions of the Catholic Church. To the philosophes, the common people were neither honorable nor moral, but ignorant and unteachable, enthralled by religion and profoundly non-progressive. They were not citizens but the rabble. Even Rousseau, who extended some sympathy to the masses of the countryside, felt they needed to be guided by those who were enlightened to adopt the “general will.”

“In his article on the Encyclopédie,” Himmelfarb writes, “Diderot made it clear that the common people had no part in the ‘philosophical age’ celebrated in this enterprise. ‘The general mass of men are not so made that they can either promote or understand this forward march of the human spirit.’ In another article, ‘Multitude,’ he was more dismissive, indeed contemptuous, of the masses. ‘Distrust the judgment of the multitude in matters of reasoning and philosophy; its voice is that of wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice. … The multitude is ignorant and stupefied. … Distrust it in matters of morality; it is not capable of strong and generous actions … heroism is practically folly in its eyes.’”

As a citizen in a representative democracy, I expect our political leaders, including Donald Trump, to be held up to public scrutiny and questioned, even investigated, when the facts warrant it. What I do not expect, and find increasingly troubling, is the widespread and ongoing demonization and character assassination of all those who support Trump and approve of his candidacy and his policies.

I am old enough to remember how roughly the political establishment treated supporters of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, especially if they identified with a conservative branch of Christianity. Reagan and Bush supporters routinely had their concerns ridiculed, motives suspected, and intelligence doubted. Still, the dismissal of Reaganites and Bushies as boobs and rednecks pales in comparison to the viciously sanctimonious profiling of Trump supporters as authoritarian, narcissistic white supremacists utterly unconcerned for the common good.

Whereas the liberal progressives of the 1980s expressed some compassion for the needs and struggles of the working man, the woke philosophes of today express only contempt for those who work with their hands. While carrying on the oppressor/oppressed identity politics of Karl Marx and his heirs, they have reduced America’s blue-collar proletariat to a racist, sexist, transphobic rabble who must be suppressed, managed, and reeducated.

Convinced, as the philosophes were, of the “wickedness, stupidity, inhumanity, unreason, and prejudice” of the rabble, today’s progressive philosophical, political, and social engineers have appointed themselves the task of redefining for the masses what it ought to mean “to be a man, a citizen, a subject, a father, a child, and when it is suitable to live or to die.”

The ironic difference between the philosophes of the past and the progressives of the present is that the latter have jettisoned reason altogether in their anti-scientific embrace of transgenderism and other uprootings of natural law. The superiority they claim over the masses is not, like that of Diderot, based on their more refined power of reason. On the contrary, their claims of superiority rest on the dubious ground of rejecting truth, logic, and reason as the product of white, patriarchal, heterosexual, and cisgender minds.

No wonder the majority of working men and women in America look to Trump as their advocate. He not only defends their traditional family values, common sense, and God-given humanity. His seems to be the only voice in Washington speaking up for, or even understanding, the joys and woes, hopes and fears, victories and struggles of that “rabble” that the political establishment, on both the left and right, seems only to dismiss, disparage, and despise.

Read the whole thing here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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“Bidenbucks” Make “Zuckbucks” Look Like Chump Change

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By M.D. Kittle

Election integrity watchdogs say private funds in elections pale in comparison to what Biden has wrought through the power of his pen.

Think “Zuckbucks” are bad? The leftists who crafted “Bidenbucks” say, “Hold my beer.”

Earlier this month, Wisconsin became the 28th state to tell Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the private-money-in-elections mob to go Zuck themselves — and for good reason. The Badger State knows as well as any what millions of dollars of leftist-led activist cash in the administration of elections can do to election integrity and voter confidence.

Zuckbucks — the nickname for the $400 million-plus that Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, dumped into the 2020 elections — predominately flowed to Democrat-centric cities in battleground states such as Wisconsin. Contracts devised by the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life, which has deep ties to the Democrat Party, and signed by city mayors required that election officials work with Democrat activists under the auspices of making voting “safe” during Covid.

Emails show activists, including a longtime Democrat operative, embedded in local election offices, offering to “correct” ballots and engaging in other suspicious conduct.

But as bad as Zuckbucks are, election integrity watchdogs say such private funds in elections pale in comparison to what President Joe Biden has wrought through the power of his pen. As wealthy as Zuckerberg is, his grant initiative was chump change compared to the resources of a politically weaponized federal government.

Cabal at the Core

On Aug. 9, 2021, just five months after Biden signed the executive order that would command the federal government to serve as a get-out-the-vote arm of the Democrat Party, Adam Lioz emailed “Team USDA.” Lioz, who at the time served as senior counsel for left-wing policy activist group Demos, wanted to circle back with Department of Agriculture staff and thank them for “a productive conversation,” according to records obtained by the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project.

“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,” Lioz, who these days serves as senior policy counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote in the email with the subject line, “Demos Meeting on Voting Rights EO.”

“We’re eager to schedule follow up conversations to dig into specific programs and help with integration in any way we can. Just let us know when you are available for that,” he added.

Not surprisingly, Biden’s USDA did just that. New York-based Demos reportedly helped draft Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which directs each federal agency head to develop a plan to “promote voter registration and voter participation.” As the Foundation for Government Accountability notes, Biden’s fiat “follows the same strategy” contained in a Demos policy paper.

If you’re filling your leftist bingo card, Demos is closely tied to the far-left Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wing of the Democrat Party, according to activist tracker InfluenceWatch.

“The organization emphasizes three areas of commitment: voting rights expansion, a hybrid environmentalist-left agenda it calls ‘pathways to ensure a diverse, expanded middle class in a new, sustainable economy,’ and advocacy for communitarianism and a liberal interpretation of racial equality,” InfluenceWatch reports.

Biden tapped former Demos executive K. Sabeel Rahman to serve as Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs senior counselor and Chiraag Bains, the group’s former director of legal strategies, as the president’s deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council for Racial Justice and Equity at the White House. They were responsible for reviewing the actions taken to fulfill Bidenbucks, according to the Foundation for Government Accountability. The GOTV effort is being carried out by Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser who served as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations.

“This is a coordinated effort from left-leaning third parties and the Biden administration to use executive power and taxpayer resources for the purpose of federalizing elections and taking power away from the states,” said Chase Martin, legal affairs director at FGA.

‘Leftist Voter-Turnout Operation’

There are definitely some similarities between Zuckbucks and Bidenbucks. Much like private corporate funds in elections and their contract demands of involving activist groups, Biden’s order mandates federal agencies work with the White House’s “approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations.” These are NINOs, nonpartisan in name only.

Despite repeated requests for information on the implementation of the executive order, including the criteria for the third-party groups, the Biden administration has either slow-walked or altogether stonewalled the release of documents.

“Federal executive agencies, which have no business engaging in voter registration or mobilization efforts, as the EO directs, will surely exceed the scope of their authority under federal law,” House Republicans wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “Moreover, in carrying out this EO, employees of these agencies will likely violate other laws such as the Hatch Act, designed to keep federal agencies, led by political appointees, from engaging in political activities to benefit one political party over another.”

The October 2022 letter goes on to note that any expenditure by the DOJ for this “could violate the Antideficiency Act, which prohibited executive agencies from spending funds Congress has not authorized or accepting volunteer services from ‘approved’ third-party organizations as EO 14019 directs.”

It’s clear the administration doesn’t care about any such constitutional entanglements, as Biden’s lawless record over the past three years suggests. Congressional Republicans have checked Democrats’ sweeping assaults on election integrity such as the ill-named “For the People Act,” so Biden is doing their work for them through executive order.

“Biden has turned the entire federal government into a leftist voter-turnout operation,” Tom Fitton, president of the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, wrote on his X account.

Now federal agencies are working overtime to realize the left’s plan.

Zuckbucks on Steroids

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service is working with state agencies that administer school breakfast and lunch programs to “provide local program operators with promotional materials, including voter registration and non-partisan, non-campaign election information, to disseminate among voting-age program participants and their families.” That includes promoting voter registration in school cafeterias to high school students turning 18 by Election Day and working with leftist groups in Democrat-rich cities.

As The Federalist has reported, Milwaukee Public Schools has joined forces with the California-based VoteRiders and the League of Women Voters to do so. A faculty member at each school is tapped to serve as “Voter Champion” to assist those 18 or approaching 18 who don’t have a photo ID. On the taxpayer’s dime, the school employee connects the student with a representative from the leftist VoteRiders. MPS and the Biden administration have refused to turn over records to The Federalist and the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Meanwhile, the Democrat-led Michigan Department of State recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Small Business Administration “to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan.” The first-of-its-kind collaboration is expected to run through Jan. 1, 2036.

And the Department of Education recently announced a “clarification” to its rules allowing the taxpayer-funded work-study program to be used to hire college students to register their peers to vote — one of the more reliable Democrat voting blocs. My Federalist colleague Shawn Fleetwood has reported on several other ways the federal government is using Bidenbucks “to rig the 2024 election.”

In her book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote about how a cabal of Democrat activists and business titans used Covid “as a pretext to maximize absentee and early voting.”

“Here, one billionaire in particular took a leading role: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg,” Hemingway wrote.

The left doesn’t have Covid to lean on this time around. So it’s using the full force of the federal government in its attempt to keep and consolidate its power.

“The president is acting unconstitutionally, the agencies are acting unlawfully, and they’re doing so with taxpayer money with next to zero transparency for the taxpayer,” David Craig, senior legal fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told me. “That’s something that has to be fixed.”

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Biden’s Title IX Rewrite Strips Away Protections For Women, Denies Women Equal Opportunity thumbnail

Biden’s Title IX Rewrite Strips Away Protections For Women, Denies Women Equal Opportunity

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By Editors of The Independent Women’s Forum

Editors’ Note: Democrats cast themselves as the party of “women’s rights”, while they actually are the party of unrestricted abortion to be paid for with public money.  We hope the knowledge of this most recent decision will change the minds of not only Arizona women, but women across the nation. By using school lunch money for extortion, they impose by bureaucratic non-democratic means the whole of the transgender agenda. No elected representative accountable to the people even got to vote on this. This is pure bureaucratic fiat, showing the grotesque nature of the Administrative State in action. They would rather take the food out of children’s mouths than listen to the public will, which overwhelmingly rejects this action. It defines women as nonexistent. And they will be doing this from the college level down to kindergarten. Wherever schools use Federal money, they will by the nature of the incentives adopt the program of the radical transgenders. This action by the Biden Administration will do great damage to the cause of female advancement, will harm and confuse our children, curtail the rights and prerogatives of parents, and severely damage the public school system. It needs to be fought aggressively and tenaciously. 

”Taking opportunities from women and giving them to men doesn’t enforce Title IX, it violates it. That was true before the Administration dropped this rule, and it is still true today.” – Jennifer C. Braceras

Today, the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), the nation’s most impactful policy organization for women, condemned the Biden administration’s unlawful Title IX regulation, which unilaterally rewrites the landmark sex equality law and undermines women’s rights, and free speech, and due process. This new Omnibus Rule, which governs all aspects of the educational experience, turns Title IX on its head through extra-statutory regulations that require schools to allow males to self-identify into women’s spaces, opportunities, and athletics.

Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Law Center (IWLC) are preparing to sue the Biden administration to enjoin this unlawful action.

Announcing IWF’s lawsuits against the administration, May Mailman, director of Independent Women’s Law Center said, “Title IX was designed to give women equal opportunities in academic settings. It forbids discrimination on the basis of “sex,” which it affirms throughout the statute is binary and biological. The unlawful Omnibus Regulation re-imagines Title IX to permit the invasion of women’s spaces and the reduction of women’s rights in the name of elevating protections for “gender identity,” which is contrary to the text and purpose of Title IX. This is illegal, and we plan to sue.”

”Taking opportunities from women and giving them to men doesn’t enforce Title IX, it violates it. That was true before the Administration dropped this rule, and it is still true today,” added Jennifer C. Braceras, vice president for legal affairs at IWF and founder of IWLC. “The Department of Education can’t just rewrite the statute by administrative fiat. We are confident the courts will remind the Department of this basic principle and strike down this unlawful rule.”

By claiming that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of “gender identity,” a term never mentioned in the original statute, the Biden administration’s rewrite forces schools to let male who identify as women take women’s scholarships and invade women’s private spaces — including women’s athletic teams.

Polling reflects that 69% of Americans believe athletes should play on teams that correspond with their biological sex.

In an election year, the Biden administration’s lie that this Title IX rewrite does not impact women’s sports is a dishonest attempt to hide their woke agenda from to the American people.

In addition to its impact on sports, the Title IX Omnibus Rule also redefines “sexual harassment” to encompass a single instance of speech, which will, in effect:

1. force students and teachers to use “preferred pronouns” or face discipline;
2. require schools to eliminate all sexual misconduct, even such conduct of which they are unaware, pressuring schools to create woke bureaucracies to police speech; and
3. dissolve protections for accused students (again, whose action may be failure to use the “correct” pronouns), including the right to see evidence against them.

The administration’s draft rules, released on June 23, 2022, “in celebration” of the 50th anniversary of Title IX, generated overwhelming public opposition, with citizens filing a record number of comments with the Department of Education.

Independent Women’s Voice, IWF’s 501(c)(4) sister organization, drove more than 20,000 public comments to the Department of Education opposing the Biden administration’s plan to gut Title IX. The legal and policy objections filed by IWF and Independent Women’s Law Center can be read below:

Female athletes and IWF ambassadors react to the Biden administration’s Title IX Omnibus Rule:

Coach Kim Russell, former Head Women’s Lacrosse Coach at Oberlin College and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador, said: “Make no mistake, this rule will be used by schools as justification for unlawfully punishing anyone who dares to dissent from the orthodoxy of gender ideology. I experienced first hand the desire of woke bureaucrats to punish people who speak out on behalf of women. For now, the Biden administration has provided those bureaucrats cover. But I am confident that this rule will not stand and will be struck down as a flagrant violation of the First Amendment.”

Paula Scanlan, former University of Pennsylvania swimmer and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador said: “If allowed to stand, the Biden administration’s new rule will set women back decades, eroding the impressive gains that Title IX ushered in.”

Riley Gaines, former 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky and Independent Women’s Forum ambassador, said: “With its new Title IX rewrite, the Biden administration is unilaterally erasing fifty years of equal opportunity law for women. The president and his administration can’t act like they care about women or our opportunities and then go and wipe out women’s protections under the country’s landmark sex equality law.”

Independent Women’s Forum has been leading the fight to Take Back Title IX and save women’s sports. Learn more below:

Independent Women’s Forum ambassadors recently joined the “Take Back Title IX” roundtable, hosted by U.S. Senators on Capitol Hill, to advocate fairness in women’s sports. Read their written testimonies here.

IWF and IWLC have produced a first-of-its-kind report entitled, “Competition Report: Title IX, Male-Bodied Athletes, and the Threat To Women’s Sports,” to help athletic associations, policymakers, and courts understand the growing threat to female athletes.

IWF’s Female Athlete Storytelling drive featuring real stories from real women athletes can be found here.

IWF organized the first Our Bodies, Our Sports Rally in Washington DC on June 23, 2022 to take back Title IX. The rally, held across the street from the White House, featured female athletes, coaches, parents, and advocates and 17 organizations across the political spectrum to celebrate 50 years of Title IX and urge policymakers to help keep women’s sports female.

*****

This article was produced by the Independent Women’s Forum and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Medical Groups Silent After Review Finds ‘Weak Evidence’ for Recommending Puberty Blockers to Kids thumbnail

Medical Groups Silent After Review Finds ‘Weak Evidence’ for Recommending Puberty Blockers to Kids

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By Katelynn Richardson

Editors’ Note: It is appalling that American medical organizations either remain opposed or silent on this latest study. Already Scotland is looking at banning puberty blockers and several other European countries now severely restrict their use. Among these are Norway, U.K. Sweden, Denmark, France, and Finland. In addition, 22 American states have banned the use of puberty blockers. Between the abuses of COVID-19 vaccines and jumping on the transgender bandwagon, the American medical establishment looks less scientific and less medical every day. Maybe they should drop the pretense and just become left-wing political lobbyists. 

Major medical associations remain silent after the results of a four-year review commissioned by the National Health Service England undermined their recommendations for giving puberty blockers to children with gender dysphoria.

The Cass Report, conducted by Dr. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician and former president of the U.K.’s Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, found only “weak evidence” for offering puberty blockers to children.

Cass concluded that her findings, released April 10, “raise questions about the quality of currently available guidelines” offered by associations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society, yet neither organization has committed to reviewing their guidelines.

The review recommends against treating children with puberty blockers outside of a research setting. It also urged “extreme caution” for providing cross-sex hormones to minors under 18 and stressed the need for a “clear clinical rationale.”

The review further suggested a “full programme of research be established” to “look at the characteristics, interventions, and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS [National Health Service] gender services.”

“Although a diagnosis of gender dysphoria has been seen as necessary for initiating medical treatment, it is not reliably predictive of whether that young person will have longstanding gender incongruence in the future, or whether medical intervention will be the best option for them,” The Cass Report noted.

The American Medical Association, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Endocrine Society did not respond to multiple inquiries over the past week from the Daily Caller News Foundation asking whether they had concerns with the report’s findings or intended to conduct their own review.

Aside from WPATH, these organizations largely have failed to address the report publicly. In a written statement, the transgender health organization said it “supports policies that increase access to high-quality ethical care for transgender youth” and claimed that the report is rooted in a “false premise.”

The organization’s standards of care, eighth version, states that waiting several years to start a young adolescent on puberty blockers “is not always practical nor necessary given the premise of the treatment as a means to buy time while avoiding distress from irreversible pubertal changes.” However, it acknowledges that establishing a “sustained experience of gender incongruence” can be important before starting.

“The foundation of The Cass Report is rooted in the false premise that non-medical alternatives to care will result in less adolescent distress for most adolescents and is based on a lack of knowledge of and experience working with this patient population,” the World Professional Association for Transgender Health said in a press release. “It is harmful to perpetuate this notion and does not acknowledge the very real fact that medical pathways are an important treatment option for many young people.”

The Endocrine Society characterizes puberty blockers as a “reversible pause to puberty” and “a first step in treatment to allow the adolescent to explore their gender identity and/or to provide relief from distress.” WPATH’s guidelines likewise recommend putting adolescents on “puberty-suppressing hormones” to “alleviate gender dysphoria.”

Physicians at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health acknowledged puberty blockers can cause irreversible consequences in minors such as infertility, bone loss, and disrupted brain development in educational sessions from September 2022 previously obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Both the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry recommend WPATH’s guidance for handling gender dysphoria in children. The AMA often opposes red state laws that ban sex-change procedures for minors, including puberty blockers.

The Cass Report notes that “there is no evidence that puberty blockers buy time to think, and some concern that they may change the trajectory of psychosexual and gender identity development.”

The report also questions WPATH and the Endocrine Society on the “circularity” of their citations, which make support for their positions appear stronger than they are.

Early versions of the two organizations’ guidelines influenced “nearly all” guidelines set by other organizations, the report notes. Their guidelines are also “closely interlinked” because WPATH provided input on the Endocrine Society’s recommendations, it says.

“The circularity of this approach may explain why there has been an apparent consensus on key areas of practice despite the evidence being poor,” the report states.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Hold Obama-Biden Foreign Policy Responsible for Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel thumbnail

Hold Obama-Biden Foreign Policy Responsible for Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel

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By Family Research Council

The terrorist Iranian regime’s unprecedented recent attack on Israel, which included 185 drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles, is an unambiguous casus belli — an act of war — under international law.

Of course, Iranian proxies spread across the Middle East, such as Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Gaza-based Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Yemen-based Houthis, have committed countless previous acts of war against Israel. But last weekend was something different entirely: For the very first time since fanatical Islamists overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and took power in 1979, Iran launched such attacks directly from its own soil.

The regime’s attack against the Jewish state, a tactical failure in which 99% of Iran’s varying projectiles were successfully intercepted by the Israel Defense Forces and a U.S.-led multinational coalition, is highly revealing. No longer can anyone deny the Iranian regime’s role as “head of the snake” of Middle East chaos; nor can anyone now deny the regime’s genocidal intentions. It turns out that when they chant “Death to Israel” in the streets of Tehran, they really mean it. (They also chant “Death to America,” incidentally.)

The obvious question: How? How did we reach the point where Iran feels so emboldened, and so unafraid of any repercussions, that it lobs hundreds of offensive weapons from its own territory toward another sovereign nation — especially one so closely allied with the U.S. and interconnected with the broader Western order?

The answer is just as clear as it is troubling: The Middle East “realignment” so doggedly pursued by President Joe Biden, and by former President Barack Obama before him, got us here. Under the Obama-Biden foreign policy doctrine, an Iran so emboldened that it feels free to wage offensive war against Israel in such brazen fashion is not a bug; it’s a feature.

Steeped in pseudo-academic theories, such as postcolonialism and surrounded by left-wing ideologues who held America and Western civilization responsible for collective global sin, Obama sought to remake the Middle East map. On the one hand, he sought to hamstring the region’s sole outpost of Western civilization, Israel, as well as America’s traditional Sunni Arab allies such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. On the other hand, he bolstered those countries’ natural foes: Iran, Qatar, and the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The apotheosis of the Obama-Biden Middle East “realignment” was the terrible Iran nuclear deal of 2015, laundered to a skeptical American people by failed novelist-turned-Obama White House apparatchik Ben Rhodes via a cynical, astroturfed “echo chamber” of a PR campaign.

In 2016, Obama secretly delivered $400 million in wooden pallets of cash to the mullahs — on the same day the nuke deal went into effect. More recently, the Biden administration agreed to cough up a whopping $6 billion in return for five illegally detained U.S. citizens — just weeks before the Iran-sponsored Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7. And just last month, Biden approved a fresh $10 billion sanctions waiver for Iran.

There are too many other examples to count. But it is all in service of the Obama-Biden doctrine: Punish America’s allies in the Middle East and reward its enemies.

Just as bad, the Iranian regime has also shown itself capable of infiltrating and co-opting America’s corridors of power: Last September, Semafor scooped emails revealing an Iranian regime-supported intelligence operation seeking to influence high-ranking government offices, think tanks and academic institutions in the U.S. The man at the center of it all? Robert Malley, Obama’s lead negotiator for the 2015 nuke deal and Biden’s now-suspended special envoy for Iran.

Most recently, Iranian reporter Vahid Beheshti revealed a stunning internal Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps document this week that inculpates the Iranian regime in helping to orchestrate America’s day of anarchic, crippling, pro-Hamas “demonstrations” on Monday.

The Trump administration, something of an interregnum between the two “realignment” presidencies, pursued the precise opposite policies: Punish America’s enemies and reward its friends. That is what basic logic would dictate, and the results were historic: new peace deals forged between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco under the umbrella of the Abraham Accords.

It turns out that the obvious thing is often also the best thing.

The Hamas pogrom and the ensuing war in Gaza was the first real test for the accords — and the Iran-containment coalition they represent. Crucially, none of the Arab signees have severed relations with Israel. Even more remarkably, Saudi Arabia — not part of the accords — acknowledged on Monday that it assisted the U.S.-led coalition that foiled Iran’s weekend attack.

All of this is a tribute to the statesmanship of former President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shepherded the accords across the finish line. And it is a glimmer of hope that more peace — and less Iran-emboldening Obama-Biden foolishness —might be just around the corner.

Josh Hammer is senior editor-at-large at Newsweek.

This article appeared in The Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Josh Hammer

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran’s Attack on Israel Was a Direct Result of American Weakness

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Largest Christian University in the U.S. Was Fined $37 Million. Coincidence or Targeted Attack? thumbnail

The Largest Christian University in the U.S. Was Fined $37 Million. Coincidence or Targeted Attack?

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By Family Research Council

A dust storm of political madness is brewing in Phoenix, Arizona as Grand Canyon University faces the continued threats of Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. Christians have watched as the Biden administration attacks biblical views left and right, with a particularly vehement disregard of the sanctity of life and marriage. As such, it can’t be too surprising that Cardona, a part of this leftist administration, has “vowed” to shut down America’s largest Christian university.

In late October, GCU was hit with “a $37.7 million fine brought by the federal government over allegations that it lied to students about the cost of its programs,” AP News reported — an accusation GCU President Brian Mueller described as “ridiculous.” Around the same time, Liberty University, America’s second largest Christian university, was also fined $37 million “over alleged underreporting of crimes.” GCU appealed its fine in November even though a hearing is not expected until January 2025. But the question Mueller has is one of integrity. Is this genuine consideration for the well-being of students, or is this a targeted attack against religious institutions?

“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the two largest Christian universities in the country, this one and Liberty University, are both being fined almost the identical amount at almost the identical time?” the college president speculated in a speech. “Now is there a cause and effect there? I don’t know. But it’s a fact.”

This April, the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing specifically about the administration’s decision to “crack down on GCU and other universities like it.” During the proceedings, Cardona and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), made their disapproval for GCU and similar universities obvious. “[W]e are cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students,” Cardona emphasized.

Supporters of GCU agree the fine seems unprecedented and motivated by ideological bias, including American Principles Project Policy Director Jon Schweppe, who said, “The federal government’s education agenda is punishing schools that do not conform to their progressive ideology. It’s time we take a stand against this egregious abuse of power.” Another conservative think tank, the Goldwater Institute (GI), sued the Department of Education for “refusing to turn over” public “documents that explain why” they’re fining GCU. The goal of their lawsuit is to unmask the reason behind the fine.

“With its motto of ‘private, Christian, affordable’ and its track record of graduating students into high-demand and high-paying jobs, GCU is a success story by any metric. And it stands apart from universities across the country that are facing declining enrollment, that are indoctrinating students with radical politics, and that are under attack for failing to defend the First Amendment,” GI wrote. “So then why are the feds targeting GCU, a popular university that seems to be doing everything right? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.”

While there is still immense uncertainty surrounding this case, GCU president took the time to share with The Washington Stand how his staff, faculty, and students are fairing in these troubling times and how believers everywhere can help. Mueller emphasized that GCU has faced various issues over the years. But despite the government’s action, he wanted people to know that “interestingly enough, “it has had zero impact on anything that we’re doing.”

He continued, “The enrollments are just continuing to grow … [and] the morale is very high in terms of our faculty and staff. The campus is extremely vibrant. I mean, the students absolutely love this place. They’re extremely loyal to it, and so we just keep marching through it.” And while the fine they’re being dealt by the Department of Education is “a problem,” Mueller is just thankful that GCU remains optimistic.

The Christian “mission, not politics, is our motivation and it is our hope,” he told TWS. As a university, Mueller explained how they exist to “pour into” the community around them. He added, “[O]ur reach into the neighborhood and caring for disadvantaged populations has been a way to live out our faith” in a way “that has risen above … political divide.” Ultimately, with support from “both sides of the aisle” in Arizona, he noted, “[A]ll the issues we have are with a very small number of people in Washington D.C.”

“We encourage people to be involved politically and vote,” Mueller said. “… But our faith will stand above the politics always, and our politics will never become our religion.” Because, for “many people in our country today, their politics have become their religion, and that’s when things … go really bad in our society.” He pointed out that GCU is “trying to be an example of a Christian community that can rise above those things and focus on helping people” through service, as Scripture calls believers to do.

Mueller concluded with a request for prayer as they work through these troubling times and for “the hearts of certain people in Washington, D.C. to be softened,” adding that “it’s hard to make progress and resolve differences when people just … don’t want to talk to each other.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

A Female Jewish Yale Student Stabbed in Eye By Male Terrorist Student thumbnail

A Female Jewish Yale Student Stabbed in Eye By Male Terrorist Student

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By The Geller Report

Hitler youth have taken over college campuses. Horrific.

Where did America think all this jihad porn and islamophilia would lead would lead?

Geller Reader commenter, ‘Will National and Conn. Jewish Federation, ADL, AJC demand appropriate punishment – or just have another meeting to tell parents and students how to “handle” antisemitism? Think how powerfully the establishment Jewish organizations would act if the victim was part of any other minority group other than a Jew.’ 

Jewish Yale student stabbed in eye with PLO flag

BY: JNS, April 21, 2024:

A Jewish student at Yale University was stabbed in the eye with a PLO flag during an anti-Israel demonstration at the school’s New Haven, Conn., campus on Saturday night.

“Tonight at Yale, I was assaulted by a student today at an anti-Israel protest. He stabbed me in the eye with a Palestinian flag. Now I’m in the hospital. This is what happens when visibly Jewish students try to attend and document these rallies,” Sahar Tartak, a sophomore, tweeted after the incident.

Tonight at Yale, I was assaulted by a student today at an anti-Israel protest. He stabbed me in the eye with a Palestinian flag. Now I’m in the hospital. This is what happens when visibly Jewish students try to attend and document these rallies.

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱🇺🇸 (@sahar_tartak) April 21, 2024

Tartak, who is studying history and is the editor-in-chief of the independent Yale Free Press college newspaper, was attempting to film the pro-Palestinian encampment set when she and a friend were confronted by five activists who formed a wall and would not let them pass.

“One of them takes their Palestinian flag and waves it in my face and then jabs it in the face,” Tartak told The Jerusalem Post.

Tartak reported the incident to the campus police who called her an ambulance. She went to the hospital and was discharged without suffering permanent damage.

She said that protesters pushed her and her friend repeatedly. Earlier documentation Tartak posted to X showed the demonstrators commemorating the recently deceased Walid Daqqa, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist who was convicted of murdering an Israeli soldier in 1984.

Here is the terrorist that Yale student group Yalies4Palestine put on display on campus Walid Daqqa. Convicted of commanding a group which kidnapped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered an Israeli soldier in 1984. Students put flowers at his shrine at Yale pic.twitter.com/X6LDVmcN5b

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱🇺🇸 (@sahar_tartak) April 21, 2024

Tartak also posted video she took of protesters at Yale yelling, “Viva via Palestina” as they pull down an American flag, cheering when it hits the ground. She noted that the university police and administration did nothing in response.

A mob of Yale students shout “VIVA VIVA PALESTINA” as they tear down an American flag on campus, cheering when it hits the floor.t but they said they needed “authorization.” She also noted that they were outnumbered by the pro-Palestinian mob of thousands of activists to only seven police officers.

No arrests were made during the protests, according to two groups involved—Yalies for Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine Connecticut. They said the protest started on Friday night in response to attempts to break up a similar encampment on the Columbia University campus.

“These students are violating every policy in the books, they should have been disbanded immediately,” Tartak told the Post. “These students have taken over campus, and it’s an intimidation tactic.”

In her tweet and Post interview, Tartak did not identify the assailant who stabbed her with the flag or say if she will press charges.

A mob of Yale students shout “VIVA VIVA PALESTINA” as they tear down an American flag on campus, cheering when it hits the floor.

(Oh, and university cops do nothing in response. Nor does the administration) pic.twitter.com/4aghYw1NBo

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱🇺🇸 (@sahar_tartak) April 21, 2024

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

Pro-Hamas hunger strikers at Yale have drag queen speak, he doesn’t condemn Hamas

HITLER YOUTH Rampage at Columbia University; Pro-Terror Jew Haters Call for Killing of Jewish Students, Praise Jihad Murderers

POSTS ON X:

Yale University – a female Jewish student was stabbed in the eye by the pictured man at last night’s pro terror rally on campus.

Recognize him? DM us and help secure his arrest!

Enough is enough. pic.twitter.com/GOa8l0fwkb

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) April 21, 2024

Yale: Jewish student told by protest organizers blockading me at a violent anti-Jewish rally that he can only join the rally on the “outskirts” and “outside.” Jews can’t get too close—when I tried to walk forward, they blockaded. Then I got stabbed in the eye by a 🇵🇸 flag pic.twitter.com/lhKnOirJJv

— Sahar Tartak🇮🇱🇺🇸 (@sahar_tartak) April 21, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Pro-Hamas hunger strikers at Yale have drag queen speak, he doesn’t condemn Hamas thumbnail

Pro-Hamas hunger strikers at Yale have drag queen speak, he doesn’t condemn Hamas

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By Jihad Watch

These people’s balloon never lands. Let Tifa Wine/Ryan Persadie visit Tel Aviv and see what happens to him there, and then make his way to Gaza City.

Facts, however, seldom trouble the left.

Drag performer speaks to anti-Israel Yale hunger strikers — without condemning homophobic Hamas

by Olivia Land, New York Post, April 20, 2024:

A drag performer spoke to anti-Israel hunger strikers at Yale University about higher education being a “capitalist necropolitical machine” — but failed to mention that Hamas is anti-LGBTQIA+ rights.

“No matter how many equity seminars you hold, how many DEI committees you form, how many land acknowledgments you produce …we know that educational institutions are crafted as corporate legacies of entrapment, confinement and ideological regulation,” drag performer Tifa Wine told the hunger strikers Friday clad in a [sic], according to a video from independent reporter Stu.

The Yale Hunger Strike had Tifa Wine/Ryan Persadie deliver a “Drag Sermon” to keep them motivated as they held their hunger strike.

“I stand in deep solidarity and grief with everyone here as we feel in our bodies the layered ongoing Colonial violences of the transatlantic… pic.twitter.com/QsCN4y5i1M

— Stu (@thestustustudio) April 19, 2024

The performer — wearing a red cape and jumpsuit with a keffiyeh scarf — went on to lament the “genocides and dispossessions” that “made Yale University … possible as a capitalist necropolitical machine” as she addressed the crowd at the New Haven campus’ Beinecke Plaza.

When not performing in drag, Tifa Wine — also known as Ryan Persadie — is a visiting instructor of gender, sexuality and intersectionality studies at Connecticut College, according to his online profile.

On Friday, the Yale hunger strikers were on their sixth day of forgoing food as part of their demonstration to push the university to divest from weapons manufacturers affiliated with Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip….

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden regime set to sanction IDF unit while sending billions to Hamas-funding Iran

Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush want to stop aid to Israel until Hamas frees the hostages

Al Jazeera Publishes Egyptian Journalist’s Antisemitic Screed

Italy: Muslim migrants savagely beat another migrant for attending church

What the Dutch Should Do About Rising Antisemitism

Uganda: Muslim puts pesticide in his mother’s food, killing her, because she left Islam and became a Christian

Dutch Jews Fed Up With Antisemitic Harassment

Uganda: Muslims beat Christian on Good Friday after saying he was not allowed to preach during Ramadan

Love Jihad hits India: Hindu girl raped throughout Ramadan, another is publicly stabbed to death

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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The Perfidious Nature of Lawfare – Democrats “Saving Democracy”

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By Neland Nobel

On April 17th, we attended the symposium put on by Dave Wanetick and “Davos In The Desert” in Ahwatukee.  It was mostly a somber evening with a few flickers of hope.

The subject was “lawfare”, a relatively new term to connote the use and abuse of the legal system to damage a political opponent or a political movement.  This may include lawsuits, prosecution, and the abuse of regulatory power to distract, bankrupt, and exhaust a political opponent.  Almost always this attack is coordinated with the dominant left-wing media to amplify the effect of the effort.

It has been around in various forms before, but not to the extent we see today.  However, the use of the IRS to harass political opponents and the Watergate Case, are early examples of the use of lawfare.  More recently we have seen it used against Supreme Court nominees, against a sitting President, and now a former President.

Especially when conducted by government prosecutors, political victims face the onerous task of defending themselves against the immense resources of government.  In short, lawfare is often conducted with money confiscated from the very political opponents being subjected to the attack, one the greatest feats of political ju-jitsu ever designed.

The intent is to use the legal system to arrange a political outcome that one might not be able to obtain in “fair” political competition or to severely damage the opposition with the intent to render them ineffective.

The two speakers have been personally subject to lawfare and were therefore close observers of the process.

Rachel Alexander is a lawyer specializing in election law and is the Editor of the Intellectual Conservative and a columnist for The Arizona Sun-Times.

John Eastman was Dean of the Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University, Director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and has served as a lawyer for President Donald Trump.  He also used to debate at least weekly, Irwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the UC Berkeley Law School on the Huge Hewitt radio show. As a lawyer for President Trump, he has run into great controversy because of advice given to challenge the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.  For that effort, he is facing both criminal prosecution and professional disbarment.

If you would like to assist Dr. Eastman with his legal expenses, click here.

It was pretty clear from the presentations that Democrats are willing to not only engage in election interference but will attack and destroy any attempt by Republican lawyers to represent their clients. The goal is to make any Republican lawyer professionally “radioactive” and by intimidation, send a clear signal not to oppose them.

For those unable to attend the event, we offer below videos of the respective presentations made by the speakers.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

The Colorblind Counterattack thumbnail

The Colorblind Counterattack

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By GianCarlo​​​​ Canaparo

We prefer the term “righteous indignation” to “hatred” because we know that it is very hard to pour hatred on sin without splashing any on the sinner. Yet hatred is the right response to evil. Righteous indignation can deliver only a pulled punch; hatred, a death blow.

That blow must be carefully aimed, but if it is, we will find in delivering it a kind of joy: the joy of “finding at last what hatred was made for.” Few good men, CS Lewis tells us, ever encounter this joy. They pull their punches, fearing that their hatred is aimed, at least in part, not at evil, but at another soul.

Two men writing two books, however, have found that rare and furious joy. In their very different assaults upon the same evil idea, Andre Archie (The Virtue of Color-Blindness) and Coleman Hughes (The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America) have found “congruity between [their] emotion and its object,” and they rain blows on it.

Their object is the racialism that has poisoned America. It goes by different names: critical race theory, antiracism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Whatever it’s called, it holds that color, not character, is the locus of moral merit; that differences in material outcomes among color groups are the prime evil; that these differences come from oppression; and that to cure this oppression, society must discriminate against oppressors. In short, it holds that individuals of certain colors ought to be sacrificed to benefit groups of another color.

Hughes calls this ideology “neoracism,” and Archie, “corrosive barbarism.”

Each frames his book as a defense of color-blindness — the principle, in Hughes’s words, that “we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives.” Yet both authors are frustrated that their books are even necessary. How on earth, Archie seems to wonder, could the “noble racial tradition of color-blindness” retreat in the face of race hucksters peddling “intellectual nonsense” to “useful idiots” who go along with it to get along? How on earth, Hughes seems to wonder, could the ideas of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., find themselves labeled “white supremacist”?

Hughes and Archie have shaken off the shellshock, and now stand ready to fight back. Their books are therefore better characterized as counterattacks than as defenses.

The authors pour fire and scorn on the “sophistry,” “absurdity,” “bigotry,” “defeatism,” and “nihilism,” of the “depressing and debilitating belief” that every American is defined by his race label. Both books explore the origins of this evil idea, paying special attention to the prominent race hucksters who popularized it. After that, however, the authors’ avenues of attack diverge.

Hughes attacks on logical and empirical grounds. He argues that the defining features of the racialist worldview are arbitrariness and fact-blindness. The hucksters are wrong, he reasons , because they cannot produce the quantitative outcomes that they say they want. Worse, they will harm the very people they claim to want to help, to say nothing of everyone else.

Consider the racial categories with which we’re all so familiar. They may work in casual conversation, but try to use them as the basis of policy, and you will immediately realize that they are spectacularly arbitrary. To give slavery reparations to black people, for example, you run into a host of unfixable problems. One-in-five black Americans are recent immigrants, only four-in-ten black Americans say their ancestors were enslaved in the United States, and many, like former president Barack Obama, are descendants of both slaves and slaveholders. Most vexing yet is the problem of deciding who is black. One-half? One-eighth? One drop?

And then there are the neoracists’ empirical claims about the causes and cures of racial disparities. Here, Hughes channels Thomas Sowell and launches a fusillade of data at his opponents’ myths and absurdities. If we discriminate on the basis of race, as the neoracists do, the results will be arbitrary, and arbitrary policies can’t help anyone. Instead, Hughes argues, they will “create an enormous amount of justified resentment,” and breed the “racial tribalism” that has “marred and disfigured human societies throughout history.”

The core of the problem, says Hughes, is that the race hucksters are trapped in cognitive dissonance. They say race is a social construct but enforce “the rules of race” with a zeal matched only by “old-school racists.” They decry stereotypes but use stereotypes. They demand justice but mete out injustice to punish “racial-historical bloodguilt.”

Hughes’s argument is thorough, his logic relentless, and his use of data rigorous. These strengths, however, are also weaknesses. His opponents’ arguments are neither logical nor empirical. They speak in the language of morality warped by emotion, and Hughes has responded to them in a different language.

Still, there are many people who are not in thrall to the misbegotten morality of the neoracists. They speak Hughes’s language, and his message is powerful.

This brings us to Andre Archie.

Unlike Hughes, Archie attacks the racialist worldview on ethical grounds. It is no coincidence that a professor of Greek philosophy called his book the Virtue of Color-blindness. The hucksters are wrong, he argues, because they promote ascriptive qualities over character. They assign moral worth to the body, not to the soul. In so doing, they tear at the creed and culture that sustain America and, if left to it, will “destroy completely the ordered liberty that has defined our way of life for nearly three hundred years.”

Archie’s book is aimed at conservatives. In his telling, the race hucksters successfully beat back and bottled up the color-blind principle mainly because conservatives failed to fight. Conservatives didn’t want to fight when the race hucksters falsely claimed the moral high ground. Conservatives didn’t want to be called racist.

Left unsaid by Archie, but true, is that many conservatives failed to defend color-blindness not only out of fear of being called racist, but also because they forgot how to make any arguments but utilitarian ones. And those are hard arguments to make; who has the time to read everything by Thomas Sowell?

But Archie’s point — and this is his profound contribution to a genre over-saturated with data analysis — is that data don’t matter. Even if the hucksters were right that “antiracist discrimination” would usher in a utopia of material equality, Archie would still oppose them because material ends cannot justify immoral means. There are souls within these arbitrary racial groups, and when souls are at stake, “quantitative judgments don’t apply.”

At this point, we find a potential weakness in Archie’s book: its highest authority is the ancient Greeks. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were three of the greatest minds in history. Their philosophical tradition served as a cornerstone of America. But what those great Greek minds said about human nature, character, and choice — about the soul — is not worth believing simply because those great minds said it, but because it was first written on their hearts by a higher authority that Archie only hints at, leaving his reader wondering whether the Greeks’ greatness alone is enough to rally wavering conservatives.

In Archie’s defense, however, because the truths that the Greeks found are written on our hearts, people will respond to them no matter what they believe about their source. Truth moves us. We can’t help it.

At any rate, it is very good luck, if luck it is, that these books came out at the same time. Like hammer and anvil, both are needed to smash what lies between them. Hughes’s book is needed because Americans have forgotten how to make moral arguments. We are utilitarians now, so empirical books remain essential. If, however, empirical books were enough to defeat racialism, then Semple, Sowell, Steele, Loury and countless other data wizards would have dispelled it ages ago. Unfortunately, empirical analysis is not enough: “The race problem is a moral one,” wrote Alexander Crummel in 1889, “its solution will come especially from the domain of principles.” Thus, a rebirth of moral reasoning is needed. Thank heaven for Archie.

Maybe, if we storm racialism from both sides, then color-blindness can retake the offensive and beat back and bottle up its foe. We might not kill racialism outright on this side of eternity, but we might just manage to make color-blindness our “North Star,” as Hughes said in a recent interview. If we do, we will have done ourselves and our country a lot of good.

But only, as Archie reminds us, if we are willing to stand up and fight. So up, and over your barricades. There is joy to be found in this fight.

*****

This article was published by AIER, the American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

The Illegals Are Truly a Benefit thumbnail

The Illegals Are Truly a Benefit

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By Bruce Bialosky

Of course, they are not really “illegals” as they should properly be referred to as “undocumented immigrants,” “unauthorized immigrants,” “non-citizens,” “without status,” and/or “unlawfully present.” As the Left stumbles over the correct characterization of people who have entered this country with no compliance to our national laws and remain here despite their continuing non-compliance, the Left is now telling us they are actually enhancing our economy.

Our national press and elected leaders have finally woken up to the fact that Democrats have been conflating “illegal” immigrants with “legal” immigrants and combining them in one big punch bowl. This has been something the Left has been touting for years (and has been pointed out in this column for years) to validate the illegals and taint their political opponents as “anti-immigrant.” We are now being told that the Illegals are actually a huge benefit to the economy.

The timing for this claim is odd, to say the least. Mayors across the country (nearly all Democrats) have been pounding President Biden to provide funds from that money tree just outside the Oval Office to pay the staggering costs of housing, feeding, and caring for the mass illegal immigration that finally has slapped them on their sanctuary derrieres. As the mayors call for cuts in essential services to provide support for their cities’ interlopers, it is quite startling that the residents of these cities don’t demand a change of course as they drive over their unfilled potholes and by their uncollected trash.

A perfect example of the new way of thinking about our illegal immigrants is illustrated in the Washington Post’s column by Catherine Rampell who writes on economic issues. Ms. Rampell has the same qualifications on economics as Jared Bernstein, Mr. Biden’s chair of United States Council of Economic Advisors – meaning none. Her biography states that her mother is an accountant, arguably the closest Ms. Rampell comes to having a background in the area. Yet she keeps writing things like: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/13/immigration-economy-jobs-cbo-report/. She cites in her column, “As CBO Director Phill Swagel wrote in a note accompanying the forecasts: As a result of these immigration-driven revisions to the size of the labor force, ‘we estimate that, from 2023 to 2034, GDP will be greater by about $7 trillion and revenues (taxes) will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.’”

People can make an effective argument that we need to have some immigrants because of our declining birthrate. The most recent figures show a birthrate of 1.6 children while the replacement rate for a population is considered 2.1 children. The rate ticked up slightly in 2022, but only a smidgeon.

The most fascinating statement in her column: “The CBO has now factored in a previously unexpected surge in immigration that began in 2022.” Unexpected by whom? Biden’s open border policy had illegal immigrants flooding into the country for over a year by that time.

The facts say that the average of legal immigrants over the past 20 years has been a little over 1,000,000 per year. Given that our country had a Republican administration during 12 of those years (you know, the “anti-immigrant party”), that certainly seems like a significant number. The numbers show that the total of legal immigrants actually plummeted in 2020 and 2021 to an average of close to 725,000 per year. That should not surprise anyone since we are experiencing a worldwide pandemic. It is actually a little surprising the numbers were that high because the legal immigration process was largely shut down prior to a reopening.

So how was the CBO factoring in this unexpected surge? It shows you that not only did Ms. Rampell and the Washington Post willy nilly conflate illegal and legal immigrants, but the Congressional Budget Office does the same.

One must wonder how they create their figures when the illegal immigrants are missing two things that legal immigrants have – defined skills and green cards giving them the right to work here. Despite the touted new jobs numbers each month, there are still 8.9 million job openings in the United States. That number is down some but has been consistently between nine and ten million for a while.

There are two challenges to filling these jobs. First, getting native born Americans off their butts to get to work. The employment rate for American men ages 25-54 has been and remains dismal. The other challenge to filling these jobs is matching applicants’ skills to the available positions. Even if we provided all the illegals with green cards that doesn’t mean they come here with job skills unlike legal immigrants. One might argue you can train them, but the ones crossing the border these days are from all over the world and come with significant language barriers to being trained.

Some of the people coming here illegally may have serviceable skills. Most are qualified to be schleppers at construction sites or housekeeping help at hotels. We only have so many of those positions while we feed and clothe their children. Then there is medical care.

The CBO and Ms. Rampell have been smoking a lot of hooch here. There is no question legal immigrants add a lot economically to our country and we are letting in a huge number each year. There is no way that these Biden illegal immigrants are going to be anything other than a drain on our economy for years to come. Dispelling the CBO and Ms. Rampell’s myths is imperative.

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

A Pulitzer Awaits the Arizona Daily Star thumbnail

A Pulitzer Awaits the Arizona Daily Star

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By Craig J. Cantoni

A recent Wall Street Journal column on the scam of the federal student-loan program brought to mind the financial, governance, and ethical mess at the University of Arizona (UA).

The Arizona Daily Star’s coverage of the UA mess has been commendable, thanks to reporter Ellie Wolfe.  A Pulitzer Prize awaits her if she ties UA’s travails to the moral hazards created by the federal student-loan program, a program that has been implicitly endorsed, if not explicitly endorsed, by UA’s faculty and administrative staff.

The Wall Street Journal column in question was written by the superb columnist Allysia Finley.  (“The Big Bank Elizabeth Warren Loves,” April 14, 2024). Finley drew two conclusions about the federal student-loan program that seem hyperbolic but aren’t:

Never has there been a bigger taxpayer scam than the federal student-loan program.

The student-loan office is the biggest government monopoly and predatory lender in U.S. history.

How is this related to the UA?  Because it stands to reason that student loans have distorted UA’s finances, economics, academic standards, admission numbers, and graduation rates. It stands to reason because empirical studies have documented the distortive effects on higher education in general of billions in federal loans sloshing about.

Certainly, the billions have not resulted in the UA and other universities being more efficient, productive and cost-conscious.

Nor has the money transformed the bastions of social justice into paragons of justice.  To the opposite, colleges have become grifters by taking money from students who would be better off in trade school instead of college, who have little chance of graduating, who are in degree programs with little financial payoff, who can’t pay off their student loans, and who, thanks to the munificence of President Biden, can now expect taxpayers instead of the college grifters to eat the loans.

This is justice?  This is ethical?

Research leading to a Pulitzer could delve into such important questions as the following:

The Global Campus

Would UA have made the questionable acquisition of the on-line “university” known as Global Campus if it were not for student loans?  Related questions:  How many Global Campus students have outstanding loans and in what amount, how many of these students can expect to graduate, what is their loan balance upon graduation or dropping out, and what are their expected earnings, by degree, if they do graduate?

The Brick-and-Mortar Campus

Similar questions as above could be asked and answered about loan balances, graduation rates, and expected earnings of students on the main campus.

University Costs Before and After the Tuition-Loan Bonanza

What were the key metrics and financials at the UA before and after the federal student-loan program became entrenched and caused a skyrocketing of student debt?  What was the amount of administrative overhead before and after, the amount of capital spending on country-club amenities for students before and after, the amount of money spent on athletics before and after, graduation rates before and after, tuition fees before and after, and the cost of room and board before and after?

Political and Ideological Effects

How has the loan money and other government monies affected the political and ideological leanings of students, faculty, and administrators?  Have they become more or less in favor of redistribution, collectivism, and bigger government?

In addition to the above, parallels could be drawn between the rising cost of college and the rising cost of mortgages and housing.  The tuition-loan program played a role in the former, and government housing programs and policies played a role in the latter—along with the Federal Reserve’s years of quantitative easing and zero interest rates, which drove up asset prices to the benefit of owners of assets.  Now, to counter the inevitable economic distortions resulting from the government’s economic distortions, the Fed has raised interest rates, thus making mortgages more expensive and reducing the supply of houses.

Distortions beget distortions beget distortions.

If Arizona Daily Star reporter Ellie Wolfe were to use her talents in exposing the truth about student loans, she might win a Pulitzer.  Even if she didn’t, her work could become a template for other newspapers and could put Tucson in the limelight as a center of excellent journalism free of political bias.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Democrats Move to Strip Trump of Secret Service Protection thumbnail

Democrats Move to Strip Trump of Secret Service Protection

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By The Geller Report

Now the Democrat party of treason wants to kill Trump. Just to be clear, all living former presidents (and their spouses) after receive lifetime Secret Service protection.

Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson on Friday introduced legislation that would strip Secret Service protection from ‘convicted felons’ sentenced to prison, a bill clearly aimed at President Donald Trump.

How long do good people stand by and do nothing?

Democrats Move to Strip Trump of Secret Service Protection

By Cristina Laila, Gateway Pundit,  Apr. 19, 2024:

Democrats want Trump dead.

House Democrats on Friday moved to strip President Trump of his Secret Service protection if he is convicted.

Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson introduced a resolution that would terminate Trump’s Secret Service protection. The legislation dubbed the “Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act would apply to all Secret Service Protectees convicted and sentenced under felony charges.

“The DISGRACED Former Protectees Act would terminate Secret Service protection for individuals who otherwise qualify for it upon sentencing following conviction for a Federal or State felony,” the announcement said.

Critical Medications Every American Can Have On Hand (Including Ivermectin) – And How To Get Them Prescribed

“It is regrettable that it has come to this, but this previously unthought-of scenario could become our reality. Therefore, it is necessary for us to be prepared and update the law so the American people can be assured that protective status does not translate into special treatment —and that those who are sentenced to prison will indeed serve the time required of them,” Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson said according to the Washington Times.

“Obvious subtext here is that removing USSS would make it easier for someone to kill Trump, which is arguably the goal of Thompson’s bill, H.R. 8081,” Byron York said.

Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson ran the January 6 committee, which mixed elements of show trial and reality series. Focused solely on Trump, of course. Now, Thompson wants to take away Trump’s Secret Service protection if Trump is convicted on any of the 88 felony charges…

— Byron York (@ByronYork) April 19, 2024

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

POSTS ON X:

The swamp is hellbent on keeping Trump out of office. First they sued him. Then they prosecuted him. Then they tried to take him off the ballot. None of it worked & now they’re trying to strip his Secret Service protection. I wonder what they’re rooting for? pic.twitter.com/3fdnM7eXUi

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) April 20, 2024

Translation:

Biden Democrats are now plotting to get Trump killed.

* * *

Democrats look to strip Secret Service protection from Trump if he’s convicted https://t.co/mjEuIj09zS

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 20, 2024

Elon Musk calls Democrat bill aimed at stripping Trump of Secret Service protection ‘assassination by legislation’

Has this been their plan all along? pic.twitter.com/aZaNJID2CW

— John R Hobbs (@apg_rocks) April 20, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Sex Education of Our Nation’s Children: Since the Sexual Revolution thumbnail

The Sex Education of Our Nation’s Children: Since the Sexual Revolution

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By Kali Fontanilla

Since the Sexual Revolution

Then came the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution. Many attribute the Sexual Revolution to the birth control pill approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Some states banned the pill entirely or made it illegal for single women to purchase, but by 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting the sale of contraceptives to unmarried women was unconstitutional. At the same time, attitudes about sex changed. Sex was no longer culturally tied to marriage and children.

With this change, a new organization was formed to tackle sexual health and education in America.Mary S. Calderone, the medical director of Planned Parenthood of America, co-founded the Sex Information and Education Council (SEICUS) in 1964. SEICUS had a mission of moving America away from the Family Life focus of sex education of the past. They asserted that “sex is not just something you do in marriage, in a bed, in the dark, in one position. Sex is what it means to be a man or woman.” This was the first time the nation had been introduced to comprehensive sex education programs in our public high schools. The type of sex education promoted by SEICUS included content on gays, lesbians, and masturbation.

Another proponent of comprehensive sex education during the time was Lester A Kendell, who wanted the nation’s sex education programs to move away from the idea that premarital sex was harmful to society or individuals. He explained, “The purpose of sex education is not primarily to control and suppress sex expression, as in the past, but to indicate the immense possibilities for human fulfillment that human sexuality offers.” You can see how this mindset would lead to a focus on pleasure-based sex education, perhaps something fine for classes given to adults but wholly inappropriate for instruction to children.

SEICUS produced study guides on sex education, masturbation, and homosexuality with funding from the Office of Education at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. With the wide distribution of its guides, SIECUS received requests from schools to help with their sex education programs. The Family Life Education programs, as proclaimed by the sexual progressives, were deemed insufficient to meet the educational needs of the rapidly changing sex lives of the American people. Or were the times really changing as quickly as we have been told?

If you look at the statistics from the time of the Sexual Revolution, the mindset of Americans was still pretty tame. It turns out not everyone was a free-love hippie. Of married women, 21 percent had no premarital sex, and 43 percent of women had only one premarital sex partner—their future husband. Even as late as the 1980s, over half of women had only one partner before walking down the aisle. Compare this to 2010, where only 5 percent of new brides are virgins. It’s all relative. At the time, the Sexual Revolution seemed wild, but in comparison, today, it was PG. Regardless, sex education organizations like SEICUS found their angle to get into the schools and promote their loose view of sex to those under 18.

Source: Nicholas H. Wolfinger, “Counterintuitive Trends in the Link Between Premarital Sex and Marital Stability,” Institute for Family Studies, June 6, 2016, https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability.

By the 1980s, around half the states in America adopted comprehensive sex education curricula, while the rest continued to teach Family Life Education classes emphasizing abstinence before marriage. But in the mid-1980s, the deadly AIDS epidemic fundamentally changed how America viewed sex. With an almost 100 percent fatal rate at the time, both sides of the sex education debates blamed each other. Those in favor of more abstinence-centered programs believed that the AIDS epidemic was caused by the overall moral decline of society and the sanctioning of permissive attitudes toward sex by those favoring comprehensive sex education programs. Organizations like SEICUS used the AIDS epidemic to justify the need for more information on homosexual relationships to be taught in our schools. In 1986, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop pushed for comprehensive sex education in our nation’s public schools. “There is no doubt that we need sex education in our schools, and it includes information on heterosexual and homosexual relationships,” Koop wrote in his report. “The need is critical, and the price of neglect is high.”

But was the need critical? Yes, the AIDS epidemic was scary and certainly made the headlines, but the realistic chance for an American to contract and then die from AIDS in the 1980s was around 0.0002 percent. Nevertheless, AIDS deaths were the tragic excuse needed to get more instruction in our sex education programs about homosexual sex and a general push toward comprehensive sex ed.

Fast forwarding to today, some organizations are pushing for more pleasure-based sex education, completely obliterating the lines of what most sane people would consider appropriate to talk about with children. Consider that the National Education Association’s LGBTQ caucus recommends the Queering Sex Education Teen Guide. The guide asserts:

We recognize the need for an alternative sex education resource. It’s not okay that gaps are being left and our sexual experiences are being ignored: there’s so much opportunity in the queer world, and that includes queer sex. Penis and vagina is one kind of sex, but it’s not the only kind of sex! This information should not only be available but celebrated. We want to re-frame the sex that we have and the sex that we want to have as something positive. We want to see the kind of sex we have and want to have reflected in the curriculum. It’s needed.

The guide recommends that students be taught about fisting, rimming, bondage, and sadomasochism. They also have a resource video produced by Planned Parenthood of Toronto to teach students about all those acts. This is just one example of the push for pleasure-based sex education in our schools. The point is that putting a condom on a banana was PG-13, but now they want sex education to be NC-17. America, this is not a joke. This is really happening.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Flyers Urging Illegals To Vote For Biden Found In Left-Wing Group’s Office In Mexico thumbnail

Flyers Urging Illegals To Vote For Biden Found In Left-Wing Group’s Office In Mexico

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By Brianna Lyman

Flyers reportedly posted around a Resource Center Matamoros facility in Mexico encouraged illegal immigrants — who are not eligible to vote in the United States — to vote for President Joe Biden in November, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. One of the organizations operating out of the Resource Center Matamoros (RCM) has ties to Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose articles of impeachment the U.S. House of Representatives delivered to the Senate [this past] Tuesday afternoon.

The flyers, which the Oversight Project posted photos of on X, read “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” The Heritage Foundation said the flyers were first discovered by Muckraker but also confirmed to The Federalist that their own team had obtained a copy of one of the flyers “inside the RCM office.”

“The flyer in the X thread is a direct scan of the one our folks obtained on-site inside the RCM office,” a Heritage Foundation representative said. “The flyers were also posted all over the camp in the port-a-potties.”

Nevertheless, others have raised questions about the flyer, including Fox News’ Bill Melugin.

“I am extremely skeptical of this. The flier appears to be a word for word Google Translate copy & paste of a portion of the NGO’s English website, with ‘vote for Biden’ randomly added in at the end, when it does not appear on the site,” Melugin posted on X. “The translation is bad, then you have ‘bienvenidos’ spelled wrong and ‘todos con Biden’ added onto the flier with a Biden logo.”

Another social media user associated with a left-wing immigration group claimed to have spoken with the executive director of RCM and said the posters were “Totally fake” and “Made up by two posers.”

It is unclear whether RCM authorized the posting of the flyers, but the Heritage Foundation told The Federalist that because they found flyers in the RCM office, they have “every reason to believe” the flyer is from the organization. The Federalist reached out to RCM for more information but did not receive a response.

The flyers “appear to be handed out when illegal aliens use the RCM for assistance in coming to the USA,” according to the Oversight Project.

RCM says it is “a humanitarian organization that provides a safe space where refugees at the southern Texas-Mexico border can access legal and social support services.” Its “6-unit office complex” hosts the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), which provides “legal assistance and assistance with obtaining formal documents for job search and integration into the city of Matamoros as [migrants] wait to access the asylum process in the US.”

RCM founder and executive director Gaby Zavala previously worked with La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE)– a left-wing organization that is partnered with the Open Society Institute, as pointed out by the Oversight Project. The Open Society Institute is funded by left-wing billionaire and mega-donor George Soros.

RCM also worked alongside Team Brownsville, a left-wing organization, and Angry Tias and Abeulas, which aims to help illegal immigrants cross the border, according to the Oversight Project.

Mayorkas — whose disastrous handling of the invasion at the southern border earned him impeachment by the House — was formerly on the board of HIAS and in his current role with the Biden administration has met with members of both Angry Tias and Abuelas as well as LUPE, according to Judicial Watch.

[READ NEXT: Not A Single Democrat Witness In Congress Agreed Only Citizens Should Vote In Federal Elections]

While illegal immigrants and other noncitizens are prohibited from voting in federal elections, federal voter registration forms simply require each individual to check a box affirming he is a U.S. citizen. The lack of any requirement that new voters show documentary proof of citizenship prompted former President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday to announce Republican legislation that would demand such documentation from new registrants.

The federal government currently prohibits states from requiring potential voters to provide such proof to register to vote in federal elections. States may require proof of citizenship to register for statewide elections, as Arizona does. But even in Arizona, a voter who attempts to register to vote with the state form but fails to provide proof of citizenship must then be registered to vote on a federal-only form.

During the 2020 presidential election, 11,600 voters voted using a federal-only ballot, AZ Free News reported. President Joe Biden won the state by 10,457 votes.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Third Republican Announces Support for Ousting Johnson as House Speaker thumbnail

Third Republican Announces Support for Ousting Johnson as House Speaker

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By The Daily Signal

A third House Republican has announced he will co-sponsor a motion to vacate introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., that, if passed, would end Mike Johnson’s tenure as House speaker after fewer than six months.

If all 213 House Democrats vote in support of the motion to remove Johnson, R-Ky., as speaker, only three Republicans would need to cross over for the motion to carry, 216-215, once Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., resigns, as he plans to do imminently.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., announced that he would join the Georgia Republican’s effort to oust Johnson, saying in a written statement:

[R]ather than spending the resources to secure our southern border and combating the invasion of 11 million illegals and despite repeated promises there would be no additional money going to Ukraine without first securing our border, the United States House of Representatives, under the direction of the speaker, is on the verge of sending another $61 billion to further draw America into an endless and purposeless war in Ukraine.

“Our border cannot be an afterthought,” Gosar added. “We need a speaker who puts America first rather than bending to the reckless demands of the warmongers, neo-cons and the military industrial complex making billions from a costly and endless war half a world away.”

My statement joining .@RepThomasMassie on cosponsoring .@RepMTG Motion to Vacate:

Gosar Statement on Supporting the Motion to Vacate the Speaker

Washington, D.C. — Congressman Paul A. Gosar, D.D.S. (AZ-09), issued the following statement after cosponsoring H.Res. 1103,…

— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) April 19, 2024

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., announced earlier this week he supports Greene’s motion to vacate.

Gosar’s decision comes as Johnson relied on House Democrats’ votes to pass a series of foreign aid bills opposed by many conservative Republicans.

Johnson brushed off the threat of Greene’s motion to vacate Wednesday, saying: “I am not resigning. And it is in my view an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs.”

Johnson became House speaker in October after the ouster from the post of his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., by a motion to vacate. The Kentucky Republican has faced increasing pressure from conservatives in the House.

Johnson continues to have the support of former President Donald Trump, who said Johnson is doing a “very good job” when the two appeared together April 12 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“I stand with the speaker,” Trump said.

Johnson was elected House speaker with the votes of 220 Republicans. His predecessor, McCarthy, was removed as speaker after eight Republicans and all Democrats voted against him.

Since Johnson became speaker, McCarthy and Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., have resigned and left Congress. Former Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., was expelled in a House vote, and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., plans to resign soon.

When Gallagher leaves office, that will leave 217 Republicans and 213 Democrats, a razor-thin Republican majority.

Jarrett Stepman contributed to this report.

AUTHOR

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Planned Parenthood Committed 392,712 Abortions, Received $699.3 Million in Taxpayer Funding in 2023 thumbnail

Planned Parenthood Committed 392,712 Abortions, Received $699.3 Million in Taxpayer Funding in 2023

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By Family Research Council

Despite seeing fewer patients and reducing bona fide health care services, Planned Parenthood received a record-breaking amount of taxpayer funding last year, according to Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in the organization’s most recent annual report, which she describes as a “love note” to abortionists.

Planned Parenthood committed 392,712 abortions and received a record-breaking $699.3 million in taxpayer funding in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to its most recent annual report released on Wednesday.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s affiliates perpetrated an average of 1,076 abortions every day of the year, as they amassed $1.8 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in net assets.

Government funding for the abortion giant increased, although Planned Parenthood saw 80,000 fewer patients (2.05 million) last year than in 2022 (2.13 million), according to PPFA’s annual report, titled “Above & Beyond,” which covers the fiscal year which ran from July 2022 to June 2023.

Despite complaining of about half the country enacting pro-life protections for children since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortions Planned Parenthood carried out surged in the last year. Abortions increased by 18,557 over last year — when Planned Parenthood committed 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding, during its 2021-2022 fiscal year — an increase of 9,252 abortions over pre-Dobbs levels.

“This report is our love note” to abortionists, writes Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson.

Pro-life advocates observed Planned Parenthood has inflicted a ponderous number of deaths on innocent Americans last year. “This is a record number of abortions for the organization and represents approximately 40% of the abortions performed in the United States,” said Michael New, a senior associate scholar at Charlotte Lozier Institute, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “This puts abortions performed by Planned Parenthood in the top four leading causes of death in the United States, after heart disease, cancer and COVID-19,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser told TWS.

Taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood surged by $28.9 million over last year and $65.9 million since 2021. Taxpayer revenue accounts for one-third (34%) of Planned Parenthood’s revenue. “Planned Parenthood dropped this bombshell report while many Americans are still recovering from Tax Day,” said Dannenfelser. “Bidenomics has turned into abortionomics.”

“Meanwhile, while your average American’s annual income is down,” wrote Hugh Brown, executive vice president of the American Life League, in a statement emailed to TWS. “We can barely afford necessities — and our government’s answer? Funnel $700 million to the elite baby killers.”

The funding increase comes although a majority (53%) of Americans oppose funding abortion in the United States, and larger majorities oppose foreign abortion funding. Although presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has yet to announce he will protect U.S. taxpayers from funding Planned Parenthood in his second term, he released a Protect Life rule preventing Title X family funding recipients from referring women for abortions in July 2019, his third year in office. Planned Parenthood withdrew from the Title X program rather than curtail or redirect its abortion business.

However, President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s order in October 2021 and subsequently opened multiple funding avenues to the abortion franchise. “The federal government should not be funding the facilitation of abortion in any form or fashion — at home or abroad,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has noted.

More Money, Fewer Health Care Services

The increased funding comes despite the fact that the number of genuine health care services Planned Parenthood offers has fallen precipitously. “Between 2022 and 2023, preventive-care visits fell by 31.0%, pap tests fell by 13.5%, cancer screenings fell by 1.4%, and adoption referrals fell by 4.5%. Interestingly, for every adoption referral in 2023, Planned Parenthood performed over 228 abortions,” explained New. “In the past 10 years, the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood has increased by 20%. Meanwhile, cancer screenings fell by more than 58%, and prenatal services declined by more than 67%.”

The report highlights PPFA’s commitment to selling women on abortion, say critics. “Once again, pregnant women who walk into Planned Parenthood are sold an abortion 97% of the time, rather than helped to keep their child or make an adoption plan. Meanwhile, they saw 80,000 fewer patients, provided 60,000 fewer pap tests and breast exams, and even gave out less contraception,” Dannenfelser told TWS.

PPFA increased its bottom line by working on the logistics of abortions in pro-life states. Some “90 patient navigators across 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates helped more than 33,000 people get the transportation and travel support, financial assistance, and referrals they needed to get abortion,” its report states.

Planned Parenthood compared its abortion-expansion activities to the miracles wrought by faith in Jesus Christ. “For Planned Parenthood [abortion] staff, this was a year of moving mountains: finding appointments in other states and the resources to get patients there, building as much capacity as possible for abortion appointments, fulfilling increased demand in some places for birth control, and much more,” the organization writes. PPFA claimed it provided financial support to 15,000 people for travel for out-of-state abortion and funding for 50,000 mothers to have an abortion. It did not state how it raised these funds.

Transgender Procedures, Abortion Advocacy, and Abortifacients

The latest update reveals that the abortion business’s concerted drive to profit from expanded transgender procedures advanced in 2023. Planned Parenthood refused to specifically disclose how many transgender procedures the abortion franchise carried out in the last fiscal year, lumping its transgender business among 177,237 “Other Procedures.” PPFA reported a mere 15,902 “other procedures” in its 2020-2021 report.

The report revealed that 45 of Planned Parenthood’s 49 affiliates perpetrated transgender procedures in 2022 — up from 41 the previous year and just 30 in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. This year’s report includes first-person testimonials praising PPFA for administering life-altering, sterilizing, and bone-depleting hormone injections. “As a trans woman, the services provided to me saved my life. I am so grateful for the services you provide to ALL women,” wrote the man.

Planned Parenthood and its international affiliate, Planned Parenthood Global, committed tens of millions of dollars to abortion expansion at home and abroad. Planned Parenthood boasts of its 30 open lawsuits against pro-life protections, winning injunctions preventing seven states from defending unborn children from abortion. Its U.S. affiliates spent $46.7 million on “public policy” and $14.8 to “engage communities.”

Planned Parenthood Global dedicated $113 million to abortion “advocacy,” partnering with 80 organizations in nine countries. Its activities included “community-based access to misoprostol,” the second pill in the chemical abortion cocktail, which can be used on its own to induce abortion (with varying degrees of harm to mothers). The abortion business directed 90% of its efforts toward nations that protect unborn children’s lives in the law, such as Mexico, where its efforts led to “the legalization of abortion in Quintana Roo up to 12 weeks — a decision affecting 470,000 women of reproductive age in the state.”

Contraception remained a cornerstone of the PPFA business model in 2023. PPFA distributed contraception 2,250,913 times, including implanting long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in 1,548,022 people and distributing 552,721 so-called “Emergency Contraception” kits. All hormonal contraception may potentially act as an abortifacient by making it impossible for a newly conceived/fertilized child to implant in the uterine wall.

PPFA shapes the way young people see sex both through partnerships with public schools and online influencers. “Planned Parenthood is proud to be the nation’s largest sex educator,” writes McGill Johnson in the report’s opening summary. Planned Parenthood’s videos were viewed three million times, and PPFA reached 1.2 million people through education or training sessions. “PPFA launched a national campaign across platforms to destigmatize abortion,” the report notes.

PPFA also plans to shape academic views by producing “scientific” studies promoting its view of the abortion controversy. In all, “34 Planned Parenthood affiliates participated in 47 studies” last year, including one focusing on “potential logistical, financial, and other burdens of travel faced by patients who are forced to travel for their” abortion, the report states.

Planned Parenthood’s report also raises concerns over possible censorship. A section of the annual report titled “Shifting Culture” states PPFA is “leading tech companies to discuss how to improve corporate accountability and address health care misinformation.”

The report takes on added importance as abortion has emerged as the dominant theme of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign and Democratic campaigns generally. “Vice President Kamala Harris even made a campaign stop at a Planned Parenthood abortion center,” noted Dannenfelser. Harris called pro-life laws “immoral” during the visit. “In turn, their political arm spends more than any other abortion-related group to lobby the federal government against commonsense policies like protecting babies born alive after failed abortions.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

RELATED VIDEO: Planned Parenthood Killed a Record 392,715 Babies Last Year | TIPPING POINT

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Planned Parenthood kills humans. pic.twitter.com/KfVXkppz0l

— Bryan Kemper 🇺🇸 (@BryanKemper) April 16, 2024

RELATED ARTICLE: Poll: Supermajority of American Voters Oppose Abortion Past 12 Weeks

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Netanyahu: ‘Whoever harms us, we will harm them’ thumbnail

Netanyahu: ‘Whoever harms us, we will harm them’

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By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

“All the ‘experts’ fear an Iranian attack on Israel, but Iran fears how Israel will respond much more. Netanyahu is projecting strength, not fear.” — Newsrael.

“We are prepared to meet all of the security needs of the State of Israel, both defensively and offensively,” said the Israeli premier.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the Jewish state would respond in kind to any attack.

Speaking during a visit to the Tel Nof Air Base, he said, “We are in challenging times. We are in the midst of the war in Gaza, which is continuing at full force, even as we are continuing our relentless efforts to return our hostages.”

However, he continued, “We are also prepared for scenarios involving challenges in other sectors. We have determined a simple rule: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We are prepared to meet all of the security needs of the State of Israel, both defensively and offensively.”

Washington and its allies believe a major attack on Israel by Iran is imminent and may be launched in the coming days.

The Islamic Republic’s response to the killing of an Iranian general in Syria on April 1, which Tehran has blamed on the Jewish state, could involve high-precision missiles being launched at Israel.

The U.S. military commander in charge of the Middle East arrived in Israel on Thursday to coordinate with the Israel Defense Forces regarding a possible attack by Iran and its proxies.

Gen. Erik Kurilla, commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), will reportedly meet with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior military officials.

The Israel Defense Forces has been placed on high alert, resulting in combat soldiers’ weekend leaves being canceled and the military calling up additional reserve soldiers to the IDF Aerial Defense Array.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden sent a public warning to Iran, saying: “As I told Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz warned on Tuesday that Israel will respond in kind should Iran launch a direct attack against it.

“If Iran attacks from its territory—Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” tweeted Katz. The minister tagged Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the X post.

NEWSRAEL: While the West still panders to the Iranian Ayatollahs even though it terribly oppresses its own people, Israel is the only country willing to attacks the Iranians head on!

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They waited for his family to be out and no one else around when they sent the senior Hezbollah terrorist on his journey. Ynet pic.twitter.com/Cwf9ZtgkTn

— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) April 20, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This JNS – Jewish News Syndicate column is republished with permission ©All rights reserved.

In Florida Public School Students Will Learn About the Dangers of Communism thumbnail

In Florida Public School Students Will Learn About the Dangers of Communism

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By NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story

“Communist tyranny has already resulted in 100,000,000 victims.” — Governor Ron DeSantis

Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, signed a law this week that will require Florida public schools to educate students about the history and dangers of communism, both in the U.S. and in other countries, and about the growing threat of communism in the U.S. now.

“We are going to tell the truth about the unprecedented death toll of the 20th century at the hands of communist tyranny – 100 million people killed by communist regimes, which spread to China, the Soviet Union, Cuba…” said Ron DeSantis.

VIDEO: Orthodox Christian Receives Two-tier Policing — An Orthodox Christian man in Great Britain wrote on his Facebook “Christians must stand up” after an Islamist stabbed a bishop during mass in Australia. The British authorities responded by sending the police and a psychologist to his home for a checkup. Two-tier policing!

POST ON X:

We need *two* sets of mass deportations.

First, deport millions of illegals out of our country.

Second, deport millions of federal bureaucrats out of Washington, D.C.

That’s how we get our country back. Let’s roll. pic.twitter.com/f4dmmCmoq5

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) April 20, 2024

EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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