President Trump called out House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during his speech to a pro-life group Tuesday in Washington D.C.
Here’s what he said:
“We will be appealing to voters all across America who previously sent a Democrat to Washington, only to discover they elected a proxy vote for [Senator] Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] and Nancy Pelosi.”
“These are people who don’t believe in borders,” he added, “don’t believe in fighting crime, don’t believe in making a strong military. They don’t believe in what the people in this room believe, that I can tell you!”
“If Democrats ever gain power,” Trump continued, “they would try to put up the taxes, so many things, open those borders, they don’t want walls. They don’t want people stopping.”
“And the other day,” he said, “just the other day, Nancy Pelosi came out in favor of MS-13, that’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
“She wants them to be treated with respect,” Trump concluded, “as do other Democrats, that’s not going to be happening. We’re not going to release violent criminals into our country.”
“And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these aren’t people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder does he not believe in the spark of divinity?” Pelosi asked. “The dignity and worth of every person?”
Despite polling that suggested every Seattle “head tax” proposal had little support, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a $275 per-employee tax targeting Seattle’s biggest businesses. Now, businesses large and small are fighting back: they’re actively collecting signatures for a referendum to overturn the tax.
In response, unhinged progressive activists are going to great lengths to find any business that supports the referendum in order to boycott them, though, inexplicably, the activist behind the boycott list claimed it doesn’t really exist. Screenshots of her online conversation suggests she’s not being truthful.
The boycott list idea was started on socialist City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant’s personal Facebook page, and the discussion is as nuts as you think it would be.
Local activist Diane Rose Vincent noticed a West Seattle restaurant posted the petition backing the referendum and complained about it on Sawant’s page. Someone asked here “where is the boycott list?” noting that they had a list to boycott businesses that stood in the way of raising the minimum wage to $15/hour. Vincent replied “we’re starting one.”
When asked by another commenter to “please send me the boycott list on FB when you have it,” Vincent responded that she needed help looking up profiles that “liked” the petition post so she can identify the businesses to boycott. Indeed, she ended up calling out four businesses: Peel & Press Pizza and Spirits, which posted the petition, and three business owners that apparently “liked” the post.
When I asked Vincent about the boycott list via email, her response was kind of adorable: “There is no ‘boycott list’ that I’m aware of and I never said the word ‘boycott’. There really is no story here.”
When I emailed her a screenshot of the discussion about the boycott list, Vincent stopped responding. Oops.
The other comments on Sawant’s post are frighteningly uninformed.
One commenter asked if the businesses against the head tax realize it’s only for businesses “making over $20 million?”
This is naive – and misleading. The head tax is based on $20 million in gross revenue, not net — which means it’s not on companies bringing home $20 million in profits at the end of the day. That’s before they’re hit with the insane tax burden they owe.
But, as the owner of Peel & Press explained to me on the Jason Rantz Show, it hits him because the vendors he purchases from are raising their prices due to the head tax. That means he’ll have to raise menu prices at a business that offers an already-low profit margin.
“It’s hillariously aweful [sic] for a group to look at big business paying taxes to reduce homelessness and think ‘SOS, those poor businesses are in trouble!’” claimed one commenter incapable of using Facebook’s built-in spellcheck.
But the City of Seattle has spent tens of millions a year on homelessness and the problem has only gotten worse.
“Businesses in Seattle account for 60 percent of the city’s total general fund budget,” wrote ZippyDogs, co-founder Elise Lindborg. “Based on the City Councils past performance their fiscal responsibility has been a joke!”
Indeed, a county-wide audit showed horrible mismanagement and a lack of communication in tackling homelessness. Only recently did Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announce that she’ll start demanding the city work more closely with the county on homelessness efforts. Additionally, the audit says Seattle lacks “affordable” housing. But what did the Council do this week? They passed a resolution for another property tax, hitting homeowners and businesses near the Seattle waterfront. It’s so expensive in Seattle that they’re adding another property tax?
Seattle doesn’t need more money to tackle homeless; it needs better leaders.
The Jason Rantz Show airs weekday mornings from 6-9am on 770 AM in Seattle/Tacoma and the greater Puget Sound. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or KTTH.com. Follow him on Twitter @jasonrantz.
A new CBS/YouGov poll presents some heartening news to Donald Trump and his Republican allies and some sobering numbers for the Democrats hoping for a “blue wave” in November: A lot of Americans feel quite good about the economy, and a strong majority of them give Trump the credit.
“Nearly 2 in 3 Americans think the nation’s economy is in good shape, and most of them believe President’s Trump’s policies are at least somewhat responsible for that,” CBS reports. While “more Republicans rate the economy positively than do Democrats,” as expected, the overall numbers are trending in a very positive direction for Trump.
Over two-thirds (68%) of Americans think that Trump’s policies have either “a great deal” (35%) or “somewhat” (33%) to do with the positive direction of the economy. Less than a third (31%) think his policies are “not very” or “not at all” influencing the improved economy.
Meanwhile, the percentage who say they now strongly support Trump is up 4 points to 22% from January, though he still hasn’t reached majority support in the CBS poll.
Asked if Trump is looking out for the interests of the middle class or the interests of the wealthy and big business, many Americans say both. While 88% say he is looking out for the interests of the wealthy, 49% say he is looking out for the middle class. CBS notes that “there are big divides on this, as there have been throughout his Presidency: his core supporters are the most steadfast in saying that he is looking out for their interests, as well as those of the working and middle class overall.”
As for his commitment to keeping his campaign promises: 49% say he is either keeping most of them (23%) or getting around to them (26%). Just under a third (29%) say he is keeping some but breaking others.
Other promising news in the poll for Trump is his growing political capital among Republicans, 75% of whom say they’d prefer a candidate supported by Trump. However, he doesn’t hold the same sway with Independents, more of whom see his support as a negative.
The increasingly positive view of Trump among Republicans is a growing problem for Democrats, who remain deeply divided about how progressive or moderate they want their candidates to be.
Trump got mixed reviews on the issue of foreign policy; a slim majority now agree with his handling of China, though a majority aren’t confident in his handling of North Korea.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte is reportedly tweaking his comprehensive immigration reform bill in a way that makes it more attractive to the several dairy-district GOP legislators who have signed the discharge petition.
Goodlatte’s adjusted bill, first revealed by TheHill.com, would make the proposed H-2C agriculture worker program more useful to small-scale farmers and agriculture companies, including those in the districts of Rep. Chris Collins, Fred Upton, Jeff Denham, and David Valadao.
Those GOP legislators face strong pressure in their districts for more farm labor — either via a ‘DACA’ amnesty or a Goodlatte-style guest-worker bill. The Goodlatte option may leave room for discharge-signers to drop their tacit support for the Democrats’ ‘dreamer’ amnesty and accept a Goodlatte compromise which is backed by GOP legislators in suburban districts.
TheHill reported:
Goodlatte already made some minor tweaks earlier this year to appease the agricultural industry’s concerns over the guest worker program that is established by the legislation. But lawmakers from agricultural regions said the changes weren’t enough.
Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), who represents the Golden State’s agriculture-heavy Central Valley and is leading the discharge petition push, said at the time that the cap on [H-2C] seasonal workers was still too low and the “touchback” provisions did not provide strong enough guarantees that workers will be able to come back to the U.S. once they return to their home countries.
Goodlatte’s new proposal would make additional tweaks to the bill’s agriculture section, such as eliminating a requirement that guest workers prove they have a residence in a foreign country that they don’t intend on abandoning; ensuring that guest workers don’t need to wait for a visa while they touch back to their home countries; and providing 40,000 new [H-2C] visas for meat and poultry processors.
Goodlatte is the chairman of the Hosue Judiciary Committee. Staff at his office declined to answer questions about the dairy industry from Breitbart News. “We continue to have discussions with Members and build support for the bill so that we have the votes needed to pass the Securing America’s Future Act in the House,” said a statement from his office.
The bill is expected to get a floor vote in the third week of June.
Goodlatte’s H-2C program would deliver roughly 1.2 million lower-wage guest workers to the nation’s farm industry, including the dairy industry, via three-year work visas. The overall number would even climb by 10 percent year, minimizing any need for the farming sector to invest in labor-saving machinery, such as robot cow-milkers. The robot cow-milkers are widely used in Europe but are produced in limited numbers in the United States.
In 2017, farm-industry groups rejected Goodlatte’s H-2C proposal as inadequate, and have demanded more workers, at lower wages, with less paperwork. Goodlatte’s reported rewrite offers more workers and less paperwork, as sought by Denham, the most outspoken advocate for the discharge petition.
The Goodlatte pitch to the agriculture GOP signers of the petition showcases the importance of cheap imported workers to the cash-strapped, low-tech food business, whose output surpluses have lowered prices even as new transport technology spurs growing competition from low-wage, high-tech foreign competitors.
Rising wages in the United States — partly caused by President Donald Trump’s immigration-law enforcement policies — have further pressured the meatpackers, dairies, and fruit farmers, who have long relied on illegal migrants and imported refugees.
The reliance on cheap foreign workers encouraged the industry to ignore the labor-saving machinery that is widely used in high-wage Europe. But with U.S. milk prices down by a third since 2014, the dairy industry now cannot buy the labor-saving machinery without some financial aid from Congress.
But the chief problem with the H-2C program is that it is going nowhere, said Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. Senate Democrats will block it even if it passes the House, she said. Last year, steady pressure on Midwest Democratic Senators might have allowed Trump to get the Goodlatte bill into law during 20127, she said. This year, GOP leaders in the House are not even pressuring GOP legislators to support the Goodlatte, bill, she said.
Also, the discharge-petition contains a hidden gift to dairy farmers, she added.
The discharge-petition is designed to provide political cover for House passage of the “Uniting and Securing America Act of 2017’’ which would allow at least 2 million young illegals to get on an eight-year track to a green card.
The bill will provide few legal workers to farmers, but it will keep some of the illegal-immigrant parents of young illegals on farms while their children are in the long process, Jenks said.
That long approval process is much better for farmers than a full amnesty, which would quickly allow the migrants and their children to move into nearby towns and cities for better-paid jobs, she said.
Dairy-industry members are prominent backers of the discharge petition. The Washington Postreported May 21:
Upton, for instance, represents a farm-heavy district in southwest Michigan where apple growers, asparagus harvesters and dairy farmers all rely on immigrant labor. Trips around the district routinely mean talking to farmers who fret over the potential loss of their workforce and constituents who are living in legal limbo …
Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) stands apart from the other signers in many ways: He occupies a safe Republican seat and was among Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress. But his western New York district is home to hundreds of dairy farms that rely on immigrant labor.
“Right now, my dairy farmers are saying to Republicans: You’ve got the House, the Senate, the White House, and you’ve got to give us a legal workforce, and I agree with that,” he said.
Collins, who favors a conservative immigration bill that would set up an agricultural guest worker program, acknowledged that the House may never be able to pass a bill. “But then those of us can go home and say we did our best,” he added. “I fought for you and I’m willing to go against leadership to fight for you, and that’s all you can expect out of me.”
Eight GOP members from agriculture districts have signed the pending discharge petition, which threatens to allow Democrats to pass a no-strings amnesty through the House in late June. The other dairy-district signers include New York’s Reps. John Faso, Elise Stefanik and John Katko, and Pennsylvania’s Ryan Costello. That roster puts eight GOP dairy-sector legislators on the discharge petition.
Another dairy-district Republican, New York’s Rep. Tom Reed, is signaling he will sign the discharge petition.
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is also from a dairy district in California, and has very close ties to agriculture pressure groups, said Jenks. Retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan also represents a district with many dairy farms in southern Wisconsin. In 2014, Ryan pushed for the Gang of Eight” amnesty while arguing that the dairy industry needs a perpetual supply of cheap workers.
Neither McCarthy or Ryan are opposing the discharge petition, Jenks noted.
In fact, Ryan’s main Super Pac, the Congressional Leadership Fund, is aiding most of the discharge-signers. The CLF donors are not driven by concern over the fate of dairy farms but will gain if the discharge-amnesty wrecks Trump’s four-part immigration reforms, which are expected to raise Americans’ wages and slow the rising price of real-estate.
Cheap migrant labor has also slowed the development of other labor-saving technology, such as the use of asparagusharvesters to replace hand-picking by migrant workers in cheap-labor California or higher-cost Michigan.
While the agriculture industry pushes for the amnesty, GOP representatives in suburban districts worry that public opposition will hurt their reelection chances. Any amnesty will provide business with a wave of low-wage workers, so forcing down salaries for Americans and pushing down the workforce-participation rate.
According to a May 22 report by the Center for Immigration Studies:
[Federal] Bureau of Labor Statistics data for the first quarter of 2018 shows that the labor force participation rate has not returned to pre-2007 recession levels, and relative to 2000 the rate looks even worse. Things are particularly bad for those without a college education. The problem is not confined to one area of the country; in virtually every state, labor force participation is lower in 2018 than in 2007 or 2000 among the less-educated.
While the unemployment rate has improved significantly in recent years, the official unemployment rate includes only those who say they have looked for a job in the last four weeks. It does not include those of working age who have dropped out of the labor force entirely – neither working nor looking for work.
Dr. Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research and author of the report, said, “The current low unemployment rate is misleading because it does not include people who have left the labor force entirely. There is an enormous pool of potential workers who could be drawn back into jobs if we let the market work, forcing employers to change recruiting practices, raise wages, and improve working conditions. Instead, some employers are lobbying to bring in more foreign workers to avoid having to make such changes.”
So far, 20 GOP legislators have signed the discharge petition.
If 25 GOP legislators sign the pending discharge petition, then 193 Democrats will join them to get the 218-vote House majority needed for a discharge petition to successfully schedule a floor vote, despite leadership opposition. The legislation in their petition will create a rare “Queen of the Hill” debate, in which legislators are allowed to vote for or against four rival amnesty-and-immigration bills. The bill which gets the most votes is the winner and is sent to the Senate.
That “Queen of the Hill” debate will allow the business-first GOP caucus to unite behind an amnesty bill that will pass with support from 193 Democrats but also split its votes to guarantee the failure of pro-American immigration bills. That complicated process will allow the business-first GOP members to pass the Democratic-backed amnesty bill while also pretending they support a pro-American bill.
However, Speaker Ryan can block the Queen of the Hill vote if the petition gets sufficient signatures. If a bill passes the House, it would likely be ignored by the Senate, and vetoed by Trump.
The Goodlatte bill is unlikely to go anywhere because of opposition from the GOP leadership and the Democratic Party, said Jenks. “I don’t think leadership has any intention of passing it,” she said. GOP leaders prefer an amnesty, perhaps after the election, she said. “The question is whether Trump decides to veto.”
The folks at CNN were fuming Tuesday after a correspondent and her cameraperson, along with those from the Associated Press, were kept out of a press event held by the EPA to discuss a plan to deal with a certain kind of toxin in water supplies. And during The Situation Room that evening, a host of CNN personalities threw hissy fits about not being allowed in. They even seemed to suggest the EPA couldn’t be held accountable unless CNN was in that room.
To discuss what happened from CNN’s point of view, anchor Wolf Blitzer brought on government regulation correspondent Rene Marsh, who was one of the reporters who were kept out, to describe what happened.
“Our photographer briefed her on what the situation was. She entered the building and just about five minutes later our CNN photographer saying all he saw was an arm opening the door and shoving her out. To the point, she was having trouble keeping up with her steps,” she claimed.
Despite the suggestion of witness confirmation, this claim the AP reporter was physically forced out of the building may be “overblown.” According to Daily Caller reporter Jason Hopkins, who attended the event: “No one ‘forcibly’ grabbed her. She wasn’t on the list, but felt she was too special for the rules and simply refused to leave, despite being asked numerous times to do so. After ten minutes of stonewalling, the police told her if she didn’t leave they would make her leave.”
The other questionable detail about what had unfolded at the EPA event had to do with who was allowed to be there. According to CNN’s Marsh: “This is an event that was billed as open press, there was no mention about a need to rsvp. So open press usually means when the press shows up, they can be allowed to cover the event.” But at the same time, they and AP were turned away because they didn’t have an invitation to the event.
And what Marsh put off mentioning, until she was reading the EPA’s statement on what happened with the reporters, there was a live video stream event available for everyone. The Hill even noted that there was a reporter who had left the even to watch the live stream when they learned EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wouldn’t be taking questions. The EPA also suggested that the reason some were barred was that there was a seating issue.
“Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous indeed. And another reporter inside saying there were empty seats in that room,” Wolf huffed as he brought on CNN’s senior media reporter Brian Stelter to decry what happened and read the statements CNN and the AP put out.
“This is an agency that cries out for accountability coverage right now and we need to know what the heck is going on in Pruitt’s office, and with his deputies, and with his agency,” Stelter opined dramatically. “And instead, what we’re seeing is the door being closed, and in some cases literally.”
Even though the room Pruitt was speaking to was filled with reporters, Stelter seemed to describe how it was up to CNN to be the ones to hold the EPA accountable:
Let’s be honest Wolf, both of us know there’s always a push and pull between the news media and government. That’s the way it is. But government agencies have been pushing harder lately, much more aggressively closing the door, sometimes literally. Especially in response to reporters who are pursuing accountability stories, trying to hold the government accountable.
“It is pretty outrageous to think about it, somebody who’s been reporting on these kind of issues for a long time. That this is happening right now it is awful and we’ll stay on top of this story certainly for our viewers,” Blitzer whined as they wrapped up the segment.
Yes, it’s the job of the press to hold the government accountable. But outlets like CNN have enormous egos and they depict themselves as the physical embodiment of the First Amendment. There were other outlets there and no Q&A anyway. So CNN was basically complaining they couldn’t shout questions that wouldn’t be answered.
The transcript is below, click “expand” to read:
CNN’s The Situation Room
May 22, 2018
5:36:23 PM Eastern [6 minutes 47 seconds]
WOLF BLITZER: Everybody standby. There is other news we’re following in Washington as well. CNN and other news organizations attempted to cover a national summit meeting on harmful chemicals in our water. The summit featured a speech by the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt. But CNN’s government regulation correspondent Rene Marsh and other reporters were not allowed into the meeting, even though it was an open meeting and no classified information. Renee is joining us now, along with our senior media correspondent Brian Stelter. First of all, Rene, tell us what happened.
RENE MARSH: Well Wolf, we should point out that we didn’t even learn about the event from the EPA. We learned about it from a service that CNN subscribes to that essentially tells you a daily list of events happening throughout Washington, D.C. This was an event about harmful chemicals in the public water. So we attended the event this morning. I can tell you our CNN photographer showed up at about two hours early when he arrived there he was told that he was not invited and he needed to leave. As he was leaving, the AP reporter was on her way in.
Our photographer briefed her on what the situation was. She entered the building and just about five minutes later our CNN photographer saying all he saw was an arm opening the door and shoving her out. To the point, she was having trouble keeping up with her steps. That reporter then told our crew that she informed them. She wanted to speak with the press office first because she was there to cover this event, a very important topic and at that point, she was shoved out of the door.
Myself and one of our producers here at CNN, we tried to enter through another door that was not designated for media and other attendees attending this conference. We too were told that we were not invited and CNN was not allowed to enter. But we were not given a reason as to why we would not be allowed to enter right on the spot. However, all of this started quite an uproar as you would imagine because this is an event that was billed as open press, there was no mention about a need to rsvp. So open press usually means when the press shows up, they can be allowed to cover the event.
After the backlash, the EPA spokesperson Jahan Wilcox did issue a statement and this is what it said. It said, quote, “This was simply an issue of the room reaching capacity which reporters were aware of prior to the event. He goes on to say, we were able to accommodate ten reporters provided a live stream for those who could not be accommodated and were unaware of the individual situation that was being reported.”
So the EPA saying they didn’t know about the reporter being shoved out of the door. And the group of reporters that cover the EPA, we all speak and speak on a regular basis. And those who were in the room, they do not explain it as a capacity issue. In fact, there was room for other cameras and there were actually empty seats. So it really is unclear why certain media outlets were allowed and selected to attend this event with the administrator, the head of the agency speaking, while others were barred from the event.
BLITZER: Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous indeed. And another reporter inside saying there were empty seats in that room. Brian Stelter, first of all, how are the Associated Press and CNN responding?
BRIAN STELTER: By saying this is unacceptable, especially because as your banner on screen says the EPA chief has been embattled. Everywhere you turn, there seems to be another scandal involving the EPA. This is an agency that cries out for accountability coverage right now and we need to know what the heck is going on in Pruitt’s office, and with his deputies, and with his agency. And instead, what we’re seeing is the door being closed, and in some cases literally.
Let’s be honest Wolf, both of us know there’s always a push and pull between the news media and government. That’s the way it is. But government agencies have been pushing harder lately, much more aggressively closing the door, sometimes literally. Especially in response to reporters who are pursuing accountability stories, trying to hold the government accountable.
(…)
BLITZER: It is pretty outrageous to think about it, somebody who’s been reporting on these kind of issues for a long time. That this is happening right now it is awful and we’ll stay on top of this story certainly for our viewers. Guys, thanks.
Michelle and Barack Obama have signed a multi-year contract with online-streaming giant Netflix to produce and write documentaries and shows.
While financial details weren’t disclosed, the bombshell deal begs the question: Will the Obamas be paid in pallets of unmarked bills covertly dropped off in the middle of the night à la Barry’s beloved Iran Nuclear deal?
As BizPac Review has reported, Barack Obama wants to follow in the footsteps of President Trump by becoming a reality-TV star with Netflix, for which the Obamas will produce and appear in shows that will chronicle their lives after the White House.
While Obama does not necessarily plan to use the huge Netflix platform to criticize Trump, he does plan to discuss many of the issues he championed, including climate change, immigration, health care, voting rights, and foreign policy.
So in other words, Obama wants to continue his failed presidency to a third term via streaming video. And it’s no coincidence that this Netflix partnership was clinched just as we’re heading into the critical 2018 midterm elections.
Not surprisingly, the Obama-Netflix partnership fueled mass cancellations and some hilarious reactions on social media.
Justin Washington quipped: “Maybe Netflix arranged for the Iranian mullahs to send back a few pallets of our US taxpayers’ cash that Obama send to them under cover of darkness.”
One woman wondered how the Obamas will be able to crank out their leftist propaganda from jail.
Alexander W. Bruesewitz asked: “I wonder how much of the money Barack and Michelle Obama will be getting from Netflix will be given to the poor African-Americans Obama promised to help as President. My guess is $0.”
The establishment wing 0f the Republican Party was dealt another serious set of blows on Tuesday as candidates from the grassroots anti-establishment wing, especially in Texas but also in Georgia, emerged victorious in another set of key primary and runoff races.
In the 21st congressional district of Texas in particular, the former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and an anti-establishment crusader Chip Roy cruised to victory over the Washington establishment-backed Matt McCall in the primary runoff. Roy is heavily favored to win in November, and is expected to quickly become a fighter against the establishment as soon as he gets to the Capitol.
“Absolutely, without reservation,” Roy replied when asked on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel last weekend if he would join the Freedom Caucus when he wins. “I’m proud to be endorsed by Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows in the House and Louie Gohmert and other members of the Freedom Caucus. I’m just unequivocally supportive of what they’ve been doing and would be proud to join with them.”
LISTEN TO CHIP ROY ON BREITBART NEWS SATURDAY:
Part of the reason Roy’s victory is so significant is that he will, assuming he wins in the heavily GOP-favored race in November, replace retiring House Science Committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). While Smith is a solid conservative who is firmly in line with conservative policies on basically every issue, stylistically he is not a rabble-rouser who causes problems for the establishment wing of the party. In other words, conservatives in the Freedom Caucus have flipped this district their way in the intra-party war–getting a committee chairman’s seat, and turning it into a Freedom Caucus seat.
In the numbers game that lies ahead in the battle for control of the House GOP conference, every pickup for the Freedom Caucus matters. They already flipped another high-profile seat in North Carolina when Dr. Mark Harris defeated Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) and now add more likely members to their ranks after these runoffs in Texas–Roy chief among them. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the group’s chairman emeritus, demonstrated just this past week what they are capable of with a member count in the high 30s or low 40s–the group’s actual member list and count is a secret, but it is estimated to be in the high 30s or low 40s–so imagine what they could do with 50 or more members, maybe even into the 60s.
Roy’s victory was hardly the only anti-establishment win on Tuesday. In the second district of Texas, the fiercely anti-establishment Dan Crenshaw crushed his establishment-backed opponent. Crenshaw, who similarly is favored to win easily in November, is a retired Navy SEAL Lieutenant Commander who literally lost his eye fighting terrorists.
Check this ad out from Crenshaw:
Here’s Crenshaw himself explaining it more in depth:
Crenshaw was backed by members of the Texas Freedom Caucus, which is reportedly in some cases even more hardcore than its national U.S. House counterpart. Crenshaw is the odds-on favorite to win against the Democrat in November and will replace outgoing Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), who abandoned his slot in the Freedom Caucus during the healthcare debate at the beginning of this Congress. The establishment Poe’s abandonment is seen as some kind of win against conservatives, but the joke’s on the establishment now, because Crenshaw is expected to join the rowdy conservative outsiders’ group upon his swearing in–and what a pickup this is for Meadows’ team: a Navy SEAL who lost his eye battling terrorists and sports a pretty badass-looking eyepatch.
That’s not all: Conservatives are very excited about two more wins in Texas, as well. Michael Cloud’s victory in the 27th district of Texas is being widely hailed by outsiders on Tuesday evening, as is the win by Ron Wright in Texas’s sixth congressional district. Both are expected to join the House Freedom Caucus when they arrive in Washington.
In Georgia, anti-establishment forces also won big in the governor’s primary–which is headed to a runoff–as the two top vote-getters have run hardcore pro-Trump, anti-establishment campaigns. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, for instance, made national headlines a couple months ago when he killed a thought-to-be-finalized tax break deal on jet fuel for Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits over the course of the coming years when Delta cut ties with the NRA.
Cagle said in an appearance on Breitbart News Daily in March:
First of all, corporations have the right to do business with whoever they want to–but in this situation though, and this is an important distinction in my view. Delta negotiated with the NRA to do their national convention and they sold out an x number of seats at a price no different than a hotel would sell out in order to provide a discount for that particular group. But then the liberal left weighed in and said you have to abandon your relationship, along with the discounts with the NRA–and Delta caved. I think it was a horrible decision on their part. I’m kind of like Warren Buffett–I think corporations exist not to push a social agenda, but they exist to make money to return back to their shareholders. This has to end. So I just stepped up and said enough is enough. Conservatives are tired of continuing to get kicked around, and law abiding citizens and gun owners that are out here trying to do their thing, and then you’ve got corporations weighing in to this degree. So the little sweetheart tax deal that they had went away as a result of their decision. When conservatives stand up and conservatives fight back, we always win. And we’re winning on this. Now, listen the left has attacked me like you wouldn’t believe.
Cagle was viciously attacked by the establishment media, from USA Today to the New York Times and more, for his stand for the Second Amendment and against corporate warfare.
LISTEN TO CASEY CAGLE ON BREITBART NEWS DAILY:
But the other candidate heading into the runoff with Cagle, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, also has run a gun-and-culture focused campaign with a series of colorful campaign ads.
In this ad, for instance, Kemp shows off his truck that he has just in case he needs to round up “criminal illegals” and deport them himself–all in between blowing stuff up and locking and loading his guns:
And then there is this ad, in which Kemp interviews a young man interested in dating his daughter about his values and support for the Second Amendment–while holding a gun:
The Boy Scouts World Scout Jamboree, which is held every four years and next will be held in West Virginia in 2019, may offer something to Scouts that would have been unthinkable years ago: condoms.
Scouts from around the world will attend the event, which will be guided by the World Scout Committee’s handbook, which offers health and safety guidelines for the event. On page 11 of the handbook, it reads, “The Host Organization must ensure that condoms are readily and easily accessible for all participants and IST (International Service Team] at a number of locations on the site … When making this information available onsite, consideration shall be given to the various cultures and beliefs present.”
The handbook also writes, “The use of alcohol shall not be permitted on the Jamboree site. Some exceptions may be made for adults in confined areas, in accordance with the host country’s habits.”
As The Blaze notes, an announcement on the event’s page states, “For the first time, a world jamboree will be hosted by three national Scout organizations: Scouts Canada, Asociación de Scouts de México, and the Boy Scouts of America.”
John Stemberger, Florida Family Policy Council president and chairman of the board of Trail Life News, a Christian Scouting group, stated:
In light of the mandatory condom policy, it is not clear how far down the rabbit hole the Boy Scouts will continue to fall. With the addition of condoms and alcohol, the World Jamboree is starting to sound more like a 1960s Woodstock festival rather than a campout that parents would want to send their children to! All of this should be deeply disturbing to the churches that are chartering Boy Scout Troops. These policies present a clear youth protection problem that the BSA absolutely refuses to recognize. The fact that they are requiring that condoms be “readily accessible” and are communicating this to everyone—including youth participants—shows that the BSA is both anticipating and facilitating sexual conduct between minors at this event. These policies are both outrageous and completely irresponsible.
Russell Kirk wrote in his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, that the last of the truly great statesmen, those being the champions of traditionalist, hierarchical, and organic society rooted in a transcendent morality, order, and class-based system, all got swept away in the early nineteenth century as the ideals of the French Revolution spread globally like wildfire. As liberalism evolved into something increasingly technocratic and clinical, the political sphere slowly absorbed and compartmentalized its most depersonalized tenets.
This was actualized on the American political scene in the early 1960s, when President Kennedy appointed his cadre of “Whiz Kids,” led by Rob McNamara, Walt Rostow, Arthur Schlesinger, McGeorge Bundy, et al. – those disciples of the technocratic application of neo-liberal economic theory as a means to effect sweeping capital accumulation through rapid, self-sustained growth and free trade policies. Once advanced societies achieve a maximum threshold of efficiency, the societal evolution culminates in an age of mass consumerism, manifested in the outsourcing of traditional manufacturing industries in accord with the principle of comparative advantage. This happened to be the guiding thesis of Rostow’s magnum opus, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, and it seems to likewise perfectly encapsulate the modus vivendi of the power-brokers in Washington ever since.
Where President Trump figures into all of this is his propensity to cut past the conventional wisdom deeply seated in the historical attributes of the neo-liberal dogma that has for generations, and especially since the Cold War, subsumed the Washington political establishment. Our president’s willingness, if not outright eagerness, to flex the muscles of heterodoxy – expressed early on through his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Paris climate accord – has been in keeping with his campaign promise to uproot the Washingtonian swamp.
But it could have been argued with some credence that Trumpism, insofar as that might qualify as an acceptable political ideology – contrasted with Reaganism, for instance – was heretofore logically vacuous and purely reactionary. Those doubts, however credible they were initially, ought now to be dispelled in reflecting on the administration’s actions to date. President Trump’s almost unilateral decision to implement steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, shows quite demonstrably a governing philosophy oriented away from the orthodoxy that has longed typified economic and foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.
For these reasons, our president has moved the fulcrum of American politics closer to his natural intuition, which makes traditional conservatism a viable alternative within a party that has long been entrenched in its neo-liberal orientation. As a governing principle, President Trump has, in his colorful way, so far demonstrated an uncanny devotion to a refashioned and purer conservatism that would behoove a Russell Kirk or a G.K. Chesterton, to say nothing of the avowed fusionist, William F. Buckley, if each could bear witness to what is presently happening.
Specifically, the reason the tariffs were paramount to rendering this value judgment is that they signify a policy measure radically divergent from mainstream “Republicanism.” As an extension of the president’s “ideology” – namely, the abstract reasoning that informs particular policy measures – the tariffs are wholly consistent with this global outlook. This is an ideology averse to the neo-liberal global order in its prioritization of a revamped nationalism – even though it should be noted that traditional conservatism was never considered “ideological” or “nationalistic,” as those terms connote a materialistic perversion of classical political theory.
Nonetheless, these broader ideas, supplemented with the actions touched on above, can be discerned as constituent elements ordered toward a grander, but predictively methodical vision that threatens seismic change to the neo-liberal status quo. In this sense, Trump’s acting ideology represents more a paradigm shift vis-à-vis existing policy norms, at least in consideration of the mainstream policies since the Cold War, than anything else.
Moreover, the matter and means by which the tariffs were effectuated as public policy bespeak a greater, palpable worldview or ideology to which our president systematically adheres. Indeed, he had several of his advisers, including his top economic adviser, who helped spearhead his tax cuts – outwardly criticize this decision. Despite such opposition, our president nevertheless prevailed all the same in his original vision, supported largely by his own gut instinct in addition to a small cadre of renegade advisers.
Trump’s going through with the tariffs may have been an act largely intuitive on principle, but it was an intuition backed by a concrete philosophical reality – one that had previously been articulated by a long line of political philosophers, who, while espousing the virtues of the free market, never believed that unchecked capitalism is the be-all, end-all “of political economy and morals.”
There is, in addition to the above, another element to the president’s ideology, suggesting that it is not something newly unearthed, amorphous, or novel, but actually a worldview long cultivated and indicative of a greater ordered understanding of man and society, which had prior to now been only vaguely known.
This part is realized whenever our president places himself caustically into the arena of culture wars, be it through the castigations of the media elite or his lambasting the NFL or Hollywood for its flagrantly unpatriotic displays or his tapping into what made America “great.” Trump is tactfully accentuating what part of the civic society, in both classical and Christological definitions, is most important: the culture. Markets, banking, and financial services are purely and simply outgrowths of a stable civic society. For these reasons, two of our greatest Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – knew next to zilch about these domains (though this was largely unnecessary, as the republic was a still a fledgling, agrarian society), considering them a defamation of the burgeoning American experiment.
Fast-forward to today. We are largely the benefactors of a society wrought by those establishment wonks. While the deleterious results of bureaucratic and technocratic governance are revealing themselves as not only a system ineffectual, but a system unsustainable, President Trump has proved that an overhaul to conventional politics is possible, though difficult to maneuver. Whether the void in modern politics will be filled by a rebirth of classicism – that being a renaissance of cultural renewal, anchored by a state that espouses natural law and a Judeo-Christian moral code – remains nothing more than a lofty ideal at this point.
But if there is any saving grace in the worldwide populist revolt, it is that liberal practitioners are for once and for all having to come to terms with the fact that their largely nihilistic worldview is unsustainable. The plague of modernity is likely not precipitated by the philosophical culmination of Aristotelianism through Nietzsche, as some have championed; rather, somewhere along the line, a seismic break from classical philosophy instigated the aimless orientation in which modern man now finds himself. So long as liberalism continues to show signs of fatigue, and so long as President Trump retains his clout within the American political sphere, the peripatetic condition modern man now finds himself in will eventually show its cosmological transience.
That does not necessitate that man’s resurrection through the movement away from de facto liberalism guarantee a cultural renewal. That remains but a dream in the current age, but there’s presently a gap to be filled in politics, and our society would do itself good to exploit that hole with classical tenets. It is a long shot, for sure, but conservatives should want to reorient man back to those ancient virtues that long grounded Western civilization for centuries before, and provided the spark for humanity’s intellectual and spiritual blossoming ever since.
Paul Ingrassia is a graduate of the Fordham University, a former White House intern for President Trump, and a contributor to National Review Online.
Russell Kirk wrote in his seminal work, The Conservative Mind, that the last of the truly great statesmen, those being the champions of traditionalist, hierarchical, and organic society rooted in a transcendent morality, order, and class-based system, all got swept away in the early nineteenth century as the ideals of the French Revolution spread globally like wildfire. As liberalism evolved into something increasingly technocratic and clinical, the political sphere slowly absorbed and compartmentalized its most depersonalized tenets.
This was actualized on the American political scene in the early 1960s, when President Kennedy appointed his cadre of “Whiz Kids,” led by Rob McNamara, Walt Rostow, Arthur Schlesinger, McGeorge Bundy, et al. – those disciples of the technocratic application of neo-liberal economic theory as a means to effect sweeping capital accumulation through rapid, self-sustained growth and free trade policies. Once advanced societies achieve a maximum threshold of efficiency, the societal evolution culminates in an age of mass consumerism, manifested in the outsourcing of traditional manufacturing industries in accord with the principle of comparative advantage. This happened to be the guiding thesis of Rostow’s magnum opus, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, and it seems to likewise perfectly encapsulate the modus vivendi of the power-brokers in Washington ever since.
Where President Trump figures into all of this is his propensity to cut past the conventional wisdom deeply seated in the historical attributes of the neo-liberal dogma that has for generations, and especially since the Cold War, subsumed the Washington political establishment. Our president’s willingness, if not outright eagerness, to flex the muscles of heterodoxy – expressed early on through his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Paris climate accord – has been in keeping with his campaign promise to uproot the Washingtonian swamp.
But it could have been argued with some credence that Trumpism, insofar as that might qualify as an acceptable political ideology – contrasted with Reaganism, for instance – was heretofore logically vacuous and purely reactionary. Those doubts, however credible they were initially, ought now to be dispelled in reflecting on the administration’s actions to date. President Trump’s almost unilateral decision to implement steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, shows quite demonstrably a governing philosophy oriented away from the orthodoxy that has longed typified economic and foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.
For these reasons, our president has moved the fulcrum of American politics closer to his natural intuition, which makes traditional conservatism a viable alternative within a party that has long been entrenched in its neo-liberal orientation. As a governing principle, President Trump has, in his colorful way, so far demonstrated an uncanny devotion to a refashioned and purer conservatism that would behoove a Russell Kirk or a G.K. Chesterton, to say nothing of the avowed fusionist, William F. Buckley, if each could bear witness to what is presently happening.
Specifically, the reason the tariffs were paramount to rendering this value judgment is that they signify a policy measure radically divergent from mainstream “Republicanism.” As an extension of the president’s “ideology” – namely, the abstract reasoning that informs particular policy measures – the tariffs are wholly consistent with this global outlook. This is an ideology averse to the neo-liberal global order in its prioritization of a revamped nationalism – even though it should be noted that traditional conservatism was never considered “ideological” or “nationalistic,” as those terms connote a materialistic perversion of classical political theory.
Nonetheless, these broader ideas, supplemented with the actions touched on above, can be discerned as constituent elements ordered toward a grander, but predictively methodical vision that threatens seismic change to the neo-liberal status quo. In this sense, Trump’s acting ideology represents more a paradigm shift vis-à-vis existing policy norms, at least in consideration of the mainstream policies since the Cold War, than anything else.
Moreover, the matter and means by which the tariffs were effectuated as public policy bespeak a greater, palpable worldview or ideology to which our president systematically adheres. Indeed, he had several of his advisers, including his top economic adviser, who helped spearhead his tax cuts – outwardly criticize this decision. Despite such opposition, our president nevertheless prevailed all the same in his original vision, supported largely by his own gut instinct in addition to a small cadre of renegade advisers.
Trump’s going through with the tariffs may have been an act largely intuitive on principle, but it was an intuition backed by a concrete philosophical reality – one that had previously been articulated by a long line of political philosophers, who, while espousing the virtues of the free market, never believed that unchecked capitalism is the be-all, end-all “of political economy and morals.”
There is, in addition to the above, another element to the president’s ideology, suggesting that it is not something newly unearthed, amorphous, or novel, but actually a worldview long cultivated and indicative of a greater ordered understanding of man and society, which had prior to now been only vaguely known.
This part is realized whenever our president places himself caustically into the arena of culture wars, be it through the castigations of the media elite or his lambasting the NFL or Hollywood for its flagrantly unpatriotic displays or his tapping into what made America “great.” Trump is tactfully accentuating what part of the civic society, in both classical and Christological definitions, is most important: the culture. Markets, banking, and financial services are purely and simply outgrowths of a stable civic society. For these reasons, two of our greatest Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – knew next to zilch about these domains (though this was largely unnecessary, as the republic was a still a fledgling, agrarian society), considering them a defamation of the burgeoning American experiment.
Fast-forward to today. We are largely the benefactors of a society wrought by those establishment wonks. While the deleterious results of bureaucratic and technocratic governance are revealing themselves as not only a system ineffectual, but a system unsustainable, President Trump has proved that an overhaul to conventional politics is possible, though difficult to maneuver. Whether the void in modern politics will be filled by a rebirth of classicism – that being a renaissance of cultural renewal, anchored by a state that espouses natural law and a Judeo-Christian moral code – remains nothing more than a lofty ideal at this point.
But if there is any saving grace in the worldwide populist revolt, it is that liberal practitioners are for once and for all having to come to terms with the fact that their largely nihilistic worldview is unsustainable. The plague of modernity is likely not precipitated by the philosophical culmination of Aristotelianism through Nietzsche, as some have championed; rather, somewhere along the line, a seismic break from classical philosophy instigated the aimless orientation in which modern man now finds himself. So long as liberalism continues to show signs of fatigue, and so long as President Trump retains his clout within the American political sphere, the peripatetic condition modern man now finds himself in will eventually show its cosmological transience.
That does not necessitate that man’s resurrection through the movement away from de facto liberalism guarantee a cultural renewal. That remains but a dream in the current age, but there’s presently a gap to be filled in politics, and our society would do itself good to exploit that hole with classical tenets. It is a long shot, for sure, but conservatives should want to reorient man back to those ancient virtues that long grounded Western civilization for centuries before, and provided the spark for humanity’s intellectual and spiritual blossoming ever since.
Paul Ingrassia is a graduate of the Fordham University, a former White House intern for President Trump, and a contributor to National Review Online.
The folks at CNN were fuming Tuesday after a correspondent and her cameraperson, along with those from the Associated Press, were kept out of a press event held by the EPA to discuss a plan to deal with a certain kind of toxin in water supplies. And during The Situation Room that evening, a host of CNN personalities threw hissy fits about not being allowed in. They even seemed to suggest the EPA couldn’t be held accountable unless CNN was in that room.
