A firm knock at the door from Child Protective Services in June 2019 kicked off a months-long nightmare for Texas parents Daniel and Ashley Pardo, bringing with it the couple’s then-indefinite loss of custody over their 4-year-old son, Drake. The nationally reported legal battle to see Drake returned home should have ended that nightmare last…
The Commission on Presidential Debates on Thursday rejected a request from the Trump campaign to either add another debate or to move up the first contest, which is set for Sept. 29.
The commission wrote to Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani that the existing schedule of three debates between the president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is set, but the body might consider adding a fourth, if both sides agree.
“If the candidates were to agree that they wished to add to that schedule, the Commission would consider that request but remains committed to the schedule of debates it has planned as reflected in the attached release,” the commission wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.
Trump on Wednesday called for the first presidential debate to be moved up because it’s scheduled 35 days before the election and said early voting in many states means many Americans will cast ballots before the face-to-face contests between the two candidates even begin.
“The one problem I have, the debate’s very late. It’s at the end of September and a lot of ballots will already be cast by that time,” Trump said in a “Fox & Friends” interview. “Why are they putting the first debate so late? The first debate should be before the first – at least before the first ballots go out. And they have it a month later, almost a month later. It’s ridiculous.”
The key swing state of Michigan, for example, allows residents to submit ballots 45 days before the election. Virginians can also vote in-person at their local registrar’s office at that time, and in Minnesota, another swing state, early voting begins Sept. 18.
Trump also addressed the number of debates, of which there are others scheduled on Oct. 15 and 22. “I wouldn’t mind more,” Trump said, but added, “What’s more important to me is the first debate be moved up so that when people are putting in their first ballot they’re gonna know.”
But the commission said no go.
“There is a difference between ballots having been issued by a state and those ballots having been cast by voters, who are under no compulsion to return their ballots before the debates,” the commission said. “While more people will likely vote by mail in 2020, the debate schedule has been and will be highly publicized. Any voter who wishes to watch one or more debates before voting will be well aware of that opportunity.”
Today, the Attorney General of the State of New York, Letitia James announced through a press conference that she was filing suit against the National Rifle Association (NRA), Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, former treasurer and chief financial officer Wilson Philips, corporate secretary and general counsel John Frazer and former chief of staff and the executive director of general operations Joshua Powell. New York State is suing to dissolve the NRA based on the accusation of misuse of funds, engaged in self-dealing, and made false or misleading disclosures to the attorney general and the IRS.
James said during a press conference, “As today’s complaints lays out, we found that the NRA … fostered a culture of non-compliance and disregard for internal controls that led to the waste and loss of millions of assets and contributed to the NRA’s current deteriorated financial state“.
The NRA fired back on Twitter in a statement from NY NRA Board Member, Tom King, “As stated in the complaint, I was privately warned by then NYAG Eric Schneiderman that Governor Cuomo was engineering an attack on the NRA. I was told Cuomo would use every resource to pursue his lifelong dream of defeatingthe NRA, and an ‘investigation’ of our Association was on the horizon. I always expected better of the governor, and hoped he would rise up to honor the principles under which he was elected“.
(1/3) Statement from NY NRA Board Member Tom King:
"As stated in the complaint, I was privately warned by then NYAG Eric Schneiderman that Governor Cuomo was engineering an attack on the NRA. I was told Cuomo would use every resource to pursue his lifelong dream of defeating…
(3/3) I feel compelled to share this story today for all who hoped this state would put its people first – not use them as pawns to advance Cuomo’s partisan agenda.”
The NRA’s president, Carolyn Meadows, said in a statement that the lawsuit was a “baseless, premeditated” attack on the NRA and on gun rights.
“You could have set your watch by it: the investigation was going to reach its crescendo as we move into the 2020 election cycle,” she said. “It’s a transparent attempt to score political points and attack the leading voice in opposition to the leftist agenda. This has been a power grab by a political opportunist – a desperate move that is part of a rank political vendetta. Our members won’t be intimidated or bullied in their defense of political and constitutional freedom.”
The NRA countered on Thursday by filing a federal lawsuit against James in the Northern District of New York, claiming James’ actions restrict the corporation’s freedom of speech and seeking a judicial declaration that the NRA complied with state law.
President Trump criticized the lawsuit against the NRA in brief remarks shortly after it became public. “That’s a very terrible thing that just happened,” he told reporters. “I think the NRA should move to Texas and lead a very good and beautiful life. And I’ve told them that for a long time. I think they should move to Texas.”
President Trump made a comment on Twitter stating, “Just like radical left New York is trying to destroy the NRA, if Biden becomes President your GREAT SECOND AMENDMENT doesn’t have a chance. Your guns will be taken away, immediately and without notice. No police, no guns!“.
Just like Radical Left New York is trying to destroy the NRA, if Biden becomes President your GREAT SECOND AMENDMENT doesn’t have a chance. Your guns will be taken away, immediately and without notice. No police, no guns!
Ari Fleischer was on Fox News’ Overtime and said, “The New York attorney general is “one of the most partisan figures”. He continued, “This is how an office gets politicized. On the merits of this, there are always two sides to a lawsuit. Let’s see what the NRA says to defend themselves here, I don’t know the facts, but on the politics of it, this is one of the dumbest biggest mistakes an attorney general or anyone can make on an election year”.
Fleischer said that James ran an election campaign on an “anti-President Trump, anti-Republican and anti-conservative platform.”
Fleischer said that the move by James is a “mistake during an election year” because it will “energize gun owners across the country as if they are not energized already. If you think there is a threat to your Second Amendment rights before, wait until the Democrats now try to get rid of the organization that represents gun owners,” Fleischer said.
“This, politically, is going to backfire on the Democrats and then of course, as a suit, it’ll play out over years, not weeks. But the politics are playing out immediately,” he noted.
In an era where governments use news outlets to launder their state propaganda as objective news, one Big Tech company is now beginning to take a decent stand by labeling government and state-affiliated media.
Twitter Inc. announced that going forward, the company “will label some state-backed media accounts, as well as accounts belonging to ‘key government officials’ for certain countries, to create more transparency when governments and their leaders use the social-media platform to discuss important geopolitical issues,” Bloomberg reported August 6.
Twitter explained in an August 6 blog: “We believe this is an important step so that when people see an account discussing geopolitical issues from another country, they have context on its national affiliation and are better informed about who they represent.” Chinese state-run media is a prime example of how tyrannical governments use state-run media outlets to launder their agenda under the guise of spreading news. Viral video app TikTok, is infamously owned by ByteDance, a Chinese firm controlled by the Chinese government. In response, even CNBC acknowledged that Chinese state-run media outlets labeled the U.S. a “rogue country” and smeared the potential sale of social media firm TikTok to Microsoft as “theft.”
The blog carefully outlined that it will add labels to the following types of Twitter accounts:
“Accounts of key government officials, including foreign ministers, institutional entities, ambassadors, official spokespeople, and key diplomatic leaders. At this time, our focus is on senior officials and entities who are the official voice of the state abroad
“Accounts belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff”
This at first will be applied to a specific set of countries who are major players in the world stage. Twitter explained that it is “starting with a limited and clearly-defined group of countries before expanding to a wider range of countries in the future.”
The scope of these changes will include 5 countries:
Labels will only be applied to accounts from the countries represented in the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The blog carefully differentiated media which is overseen by governments from media which is independent but may have a political agenda:
State-affiliated media is defined as outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution. Unlike independent media, state-affiliated media frequently use their news coverage as a means to advance a political agenda.
It remains to be seen what other state-affiliated outlets Twitter will label. How about NPR, which, as NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham observed, “takes our tax dollars and then attacks adding the balance of our viewpoint as racist”? What about the PBS? BBC? Those three outlets fall within the United States and the United Kingdom, and none of them, as of the publishing of this piece, have labels. And what of other state-affiliated media: Qatari state-run Al-Jazeera for example? Will these and other outlets face similar labeling to inform viewers on Twitter?
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Twitter (include link or “at [phone number]”) and demand that the platform provide transparency: Companies need to design open systems so that they can be held accountable, while giving weight to privacy concerns. Demand that Twitter properly label all government and state-affiliated media outlets, including leftist NPR. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
The Satanic Temple (TST) claimed that religious freedom laws ought to exempt them from state abortion restrictions because some of their members regard first-trimester abortion as a religious ritual.
As reported by Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KUTV, TST said in a press release that it “bases its assertions of abortion mandate exemptions on the protections provided by State Religious Freedom Restoration Acts or RFRA, which generally prohibits the government from substantially interfering with a person’s free exercise of religion.”
According to the announcement on their website, which bears the slogan “Thyself Is Thy Master,” TST claims abortion can be a religious rite for some Satanists because “the Satanic abortion ritual provides spiritual comfort and affirms bodily autonomy, self-worth, and freedom from coercive forces with the affirmation of TST’s Seven Tenets.”
“The ritual is not intended to convince a person to have an abortion. Instead, it sanctifies the abortion process by instilling confidence and protecting bodily rights when undergoing the safe and scientific procedure,” it added.
The ritual itself involves gazing at one’s reflection in a mirror prior to either a medically-induced or surgical abortion and affirming aloud the TST tenets that “One’s body is inviolable, and subject to one’s own will alone,” and “Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world,” and “One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.”
The state restrictions by which TST claims Satanists are exempt under RFRA are mandatory waiting periods, the requirement that practitioners withhold certain medical information, compulsory counseling prior to an abortion, required reading materials, medically unnecessary sonograms, mandatory listening to the fetal heartbeat, and the compulsory burial or cremation of fetal remains.
“The intent of the full ritual is to empower and to allow the patient to feel confidence in their choice,” said TST spokeswoman Jane Essex in an explanatory video. Appealing to the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case at the Supreme Court, Essex further explained TST’s assertion that their right to unrestricted abortion falls under that decision.
“Any state-mandated violation of the Third and Fifth Tenets compromises the abortion ritual by forcing the Satanist to violate their deeply held beliefs, which goes against the Hobby Lobby decision. So medically unnecessary requirement violates our religious practices,” she said.
Essex also claimed TST might seek legal action if a clinic denies a Satanist’s supposed religious exemptions. “A denial would mean that the clinic is prohibiting that person from performing a religious ritual, and The Satanic Temple will intervene to make sure that our members’ right to partake in this abortion ritual is granted. So, if necessary, we’ll take legal action to help the patient in filing a complaint for declaratory judgment, a permanent injunction, as well as an emergency preliminary injunction.”
WATCH:
TST lauded the removal of the Confederate flag from Mississippi’s state flag last month, but threatened to sue the state when they did not also remove the motto “In God We Trust.” In 2018, they protested a display of the Ten Commandments outside the Arkansas State Capitol by unveiling a statue of children looking up in adoration to Baphomet, an androgynous winged demon with a goat head.
Founded in 2013, TST denies belief in a personal Devil, maintaining instead that “to embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions,” according to its website.
As The Daily Wire reported, Pastor John MacArthur, whose church made headlines recently for defying Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdown order against in-person assembly, said in a recent interview that “a literal satanic free-for-all” is breaking out in American culture, and that all restraints against evil are under attack. “What we’ve seen in our society is the destruction of the human conscience,” he said.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
There is very little new under the sun. The monument and statue destruction that we are witnessing has been witnessed in other times and other places. A tyrant’s first battlefield is to rewrite history. Most notable were the political purges of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet government erased figures from Soviet history by renaming cities — such as the Imperial capital of St. Petersburg to Petrograd and Leningrad and Stalingrad — and eradicating memories of czarist rule. Stalin’s historical revisions also included changing photographs and history books, thereby distorting children’s learning within educational establishments.
Most of the effort to rewrite American history has its roots among the intellectual elite on our college campuses whose message has been sold to predominantly white college students who have little understanding of how they are being used. Much of their current focus is on tearing down statues and changing names that they deem offensive. They have denounced George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Without much understanding of history, they have demanded that Princeton University remove the name of Woodrow Wilson, a progressive, from its public policy school and residential college. Some are urging Yale University to change its name because its benefactor Elihu Yale was a slave trader.
To purge our society of names associated with evil is going to be quite a task. I suggest that we set up a formal commission to deal with this formidable challenge. Maybe we can name it the Commission to Eliminate Bad Memories. There are some challenging issues. What should be done about our nation’s capital, Washington and District of Columbia? After all, George Washington owned slaves, and Columbia is the feminine form of Columbus. Speaking of Washington, its football team, the Washington Redskins, has finally agreed to temporarily call themselves Washington Football Team until they can find a snazzier name.
Renaming things is a big job. Our military has several fighting aircraft named with what today’s tyrants might consider racial slights, such as the Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota, and Mescalero. Perhaps offensive to PETA, we also have military hardware named after animals, such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra, and Dolphin.
Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “Now that Washington’s NFL team has announced its ‘retirement’ of the racial slur that has been its brand name since 1933, I am tempted to gloat a little.” In response to Page’s article, there is an email making the internet rounds that raises the issue of other problematic names. What about the Kansas City Chiefs, the Atlanta Braves, and the Cleveland Indians?
The New York Yankees might offend Southerners because there is no team named for the Confederacy. Some people, particularly Catholics, might be offended by or deem it sacrilegious to have sports teams named the New Orleans Saints, the Los Angeles Angels, or the San Diego Padres. Then what about team names that glorify savage barbarians and criminals who raped and pillaged, such as Oakland Raiders, Minnesota Vikings, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Pittsburgh Pirates? The New York Giants and the San Francisco Giants might be advocating obesity and the Milwaukee Brewers promoting alcoholism.
There is another naming issue that needs resolution. I have been working 40 years at George Mason University. Despite his monumental contributions, such as our Bill of Rights, George Mason was a slave owner. Therefore, in keeping with the times, George Mason University is due for a name change. How about Al Sharpton University, Jesse Jackson University, or Black Lives Matter University? Does objection to these names make one a racist?
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” to discuss the appeals court reconsidering the order to dismiss criminal case of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
It’s no secret that Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube etc. are censoring and banning conservative content.
We have written about this numerous times at The Gateway Pundit.
In September 2018 The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft testified before Congress on Facebook targeting.
Facebook has flattened conservative content since January 2017. Most of the top pro-Trump Facebook pages from 2016 were put out of business by Facebook.
But the tech giants continue to censor and ban conservative content without any fear of retribution.
On Thursday Facebook announced it was banning the Committee to Defend Trump from running ANY FACEBOOK ADS until November 1, 2020 — or two days before the election.
So far this election cycle the Committee to Defend Trump PAC has spent over $7.5 million in defense of President Trump.
Now they will no longer be able to post ads on Facebook!
The company took action against the account for the Committee to Defend the President, a political action committee which began in 2013 as an anti-Hillary Clinton group but which has since changed its focus to pro-Trump activism.
“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time,” Facebook said in a statement.
The committee has spent roughly $325,000 on ads supporting President Trump and conservative causes between May 2018 and August 2020, according to Facebook’s ad database. Its founders have spent nearly $10 million in support of President Trump and his reelection in 2020 according to campaign finance records.
It is clear this is electioneering by Facebook.
Republicans need to stop this assault on our First Amendment rights before it’s too late.
Police and protesters in Portland, Oregon, have clashed for the second night in a row and the city’s police chief says the ongoing violence is harming the city’s image. The high-profile clashes outside a U.S. courthouse in Portland, Oregon, have largely stopped since the Trump administration sent federal agents to protect the building. But the…
The Minneapolis Charter Commission on Wednesday blocked the possibility of a November ballot measure for voters to decide whether to disband the city police department. Members of the commission claimed the potential ballot item was rushed, the amendment itself was flawed and the proposal gave the city council too much power, according to the Associated…
