One Week After NFL Tryout Stunt, ‘Nothing Has Materialized’ for Kaepernick
Carmen Mandato / Getty ImagesFormer San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick takes a breather during his workout for NFL teams Nov. 16 outside Atlanta. The much-publicized workout hasn’t resulted in any team taking an interest in hiring the former quarterback, according to a new report. (Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
By Jack Davis Published November 25, 2019 at 7:56am
Not one single NFL team has reached out to quarterback Colin Kapernick in the week since his much-publicized workout in Georgia, according to a new report.
The report by Adam Schefter of ESPN cites “league sources” as saying “no teams have reached out to work him out, visit with him or sign him.”
Kaepernick held the workout Nov. 16 to show his fitness to return to the NFL. However, it became fodder for more controversy. The workout was originally scheduled at an Atlanta Falcons practice facility, then moved to a high school an hour away from the initial site only half an hour before it was to begin, according to Sports Illustrated.
The change was cited as a reason that instead of 25 teams expected to send representatives to the workout, far fewer showed up. The Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, Philadelphia Eagles, San Francisco 49ers, Tennessee Titans and Washington Redskins sent representatives, according to CBS.
To remedy that, Kaepernick’s team sent a video of the workout to the teams that did not attend, ESPN reported.
But, as Schefter wrote, “nothing has materialized, and nothing is expected to at this time.” He later added that “the chances are bleak that a team will step forward and sign him.”
Earlier in the week, Mark Geragos, Kaepernick’s attorney, had hinted that something might be stirring for Kaepernick, who last played in the 2016 season, according to the New York Post.
Speaking on The Adam Carolla Podcast, Geragos said two teams had shown interest.
“One who is legitimately in need of a quarterback who had a very poor showing on Sunday and has got an owner that I don’t think gives a sh-t,” he said.
Would you root for an NFL team that signed Colin Kaepernick?
0% (0 Votes)
0% (0 Votes)
Kaepernick has claimed that he is being frozen out by the NFL for his national anthem protests.
In a commentary piece in The New York Times, writer Ta-Nehisi Coates supported the former quarterback and indicted everyone from President Donald Trump to the NFL owners for the fact that no one will sign the 32-year-old Kaepernick.
“The NFL is revered in this country as a paragon of patriotism and chivalry, a sacred trust controlled by some of the wealthiest men and women in America. For the past three years, this sacred trust has executed, with brutal efficiency, the cancellation of Colin Kaepernick. This is curious given the NFL.’s moral libertinism; the league has, at various points, been a home for domestic abusers, child abusers and open racists,” Coates wrote.
Coates then criticized Trump, who was an outspoken critic of NFL players’ refusal to stand for the national anthem.
Coates compared Trump’s criticism to the president’s attacks on Hillary Clinton and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
“Perhaps it is shocking for some to see the president of the United States endorse the cancellation of a pro football player, like he endorsed the cancellation of Hillary Clinton (‘Lock her up’), and of Ilhan Omar (‘Send her back’). But it is precisely this kind of capricious and biased use of institutional power that has birthed the cancel culture practiced by campus protesters and online. But whereas the wrongdoing of elite institutions was once hidden from public view, in the era of Donald Trump it is all there to be seen,” he wrote.
Coates wrote that the controversy of Kaepernick’s workout “helped obscure this central fact — a multibillion-dollar monopoly is, at this very hour, denying a worker the right to ply his trade and lying about doing so.”
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
As House Democrats continued their impeachment push, President Donald Trump scored yet another victory toward reshaping the federal judiciary—flipping a third appeals court to a majority of Republican-president nominees.
Moreover, as the House engaged in partisan bickering, the Senate voted to confirm Barbara Lagoa to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta on a bipartisan vote of 80-to-15 on Wednesday. The circuit—which handles cases out of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia—now has a 7-to-5 majority of Republican appointees.
Trump nominated Lagoa, then a Florida Supreme Court justice, in September.
Since taking office in January 2017, Trump also has been able to change the makeup of the Manhattan, New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to a 7-to-6 Republican-appointee majority and the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit to an 8-to-6 majority of appointees of Republican presidents.
“With the confirmation of Judge Barbara Lagoa to the [11th] Circuit, President Trump has now transformed three of the nation’s federal appellate courts from Democrat-appointed majorities to Republican-appointed majorities. This is a major achievement for his presidency,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, tweeted after the confirmation.
With the confirmation of Judge Barbara Lagoa to the Eleventh Circuit, President Trump has now transformed three of the nation’s federal appellate courts from Democrat-appointed majorities to Republican-appointed majorities. This is a major achievement for his presidency. 1/4
Trump has won 46 appeals court confirmations by the Senate, according to The Heritage Foundation Judicial Tracker, in just under three years in office. That’s double that of his predecessor, President Barack Obama, who had 23 appeals court judges confirmed during his eight years in office.
Since appeals courts decide the overwhelming majority of court cases, because the Supreme Court can only handle a limited number of cases each year, these confirmations are highly important.
“This success—along with the record number of federal appellate judges President Trump has appointed to date—is a testament to the tangible impact the president has had in reshaping the federal judiciary with constitutionalist judges who are committed to the rule of law,” Severino added.
That’s no guarantee of outcomes in cases, but Democratic presidents’ judicial appointees tend to make more liberal decisions, while Republican presidents’ court picks tend to make more conservative legal rulings.
Though Trump has been prolific in securing judicial nominees, federal appeals courts are still lopsided in favor of Democratic appointees. When Trump took office, only four of the 13 appeals courts had a majority of Republican appointees. Now seven have majority-Republican appointees.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis named Lagoa to the state’s high court after she previously served as a state appeals court judge and before that as an assistant U.S. attorney. She was also the chairwoman of the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee from 2015 to 2016.
The judge also has a personal story that impresses Severino.
“Lagoa’s parents fled Castro’s Cuba, and their experience gave her a deep and abiding respect for the rule of law,” Severino tweeted. “The first Cuban-American woman to sit on the [11th] Circuit, Judge Lagoa will solidify the follow-the-law jurisprudence exemplified by the court’s new majority.”
Lagoa’s parents fled Castro’s Cuba, and their experience gave her a deep and abiding respect for the rule of law. The first Cuban-American woman to sit on the Eleventh Circuit, Judge Lagoa will solidify the follow-the-law jurisprudence exemplified by the court’s new majority. 3/4
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also a Cuban-American, praised the confirmation.
“I thank Justice Lagoa for her years of service in both the federal and Florida state justice systems, including as a justice on the Supreme Court of Florida,” Rubio said in a statement. “I am confident Justice Lagoa’s experience will serve her well as she begins the next chapter of her service to our nation as a U.S. circuit judge for the [11th] Circuit.”
Few would have predicted that one of President Donald Trump’s strongest defenders in the House impeachment hearings would be a Republican congresswoman who on occasion has been critical of him.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., has attracted public attention for her spirited defense of the president and her status as the only GOP woman on the House Intelligence Committee.
Those attributes came to the fore during the impeachment inquiry as Stefanik asked questions of Marie Yovanovich, a former ambassador to Ukraine. Skirting procedural rules, the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., tried to yield a portion of his time for asking questions to Stefanik.
When the committee’s chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., repeatedly interrupted Stefanik and cut her off, Trump’s defenders could claim that sexist Democrats in the hearing had silenced a woman and prevented Republicans from asking questions.
Here are five things to know about Stefanik:
1. When elected to Congress, she was the youngest woman ever to win.
In a landslide victory over Democratic candidate Aaron Woolf in 2014, Stefanik became, at age 30, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, as well as the first Republican candidate to win her district in 21 years. She won 53 percent of the vote to 32.5 percent for Woolf and 10.6 percent for a Green Party candidate. (Another New Yorker, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in November 2018 broke Stefanik’s record when she was elected at age 29.)
In her 2014 campaign, Stefanik worked hard to win the trust and confidence of voters, driving more than 100,000 miles through upstate New York’s 21st Congressional District. The district covers 12 counties, stretching north to the Canadian border and east to the border with Vermont.
She said that voters told her she was too young to run for office, but she won the election despite their doubts.
Even then, her troubles weren’t over. Stefanik was so much younger than the average member of Congress that the Capitol Police initially stopped her when she tried to enter the building. They didn’t believe she was a member of Congress.
2. She has voted against Trump and conservatives in the past.
Now 35 and in her third term, Stefanik has not shied away from asking questions that helped Trump in the impeachment hearings, but she also voted against one of his most important legislative priorities.
She was one of only 12 House Republicans to vote against the president’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Four of the others who voted against it also were from New York. The measure became law without their support.
According to Albany, New York’s Times Union newspaper, Stefanik voted against the act because limitations on a federal tax deduction for high state and local taxes meant 13% of New Yorkers would face a tax hike.
She also was one of just eight Republicans who voted in May in favor of the Equality Act, which would extend Civil Rights Act protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The Equality Act’s provisions would harm women by dismantling sex-specific sports and locker rooms, among other negative effects, according to The Heritage Foundation. It passed the Democrat-controlled House, but is unlikely to get a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
According to The Hill, Stefanik supports the act because it ensures protections in “employment, housing, credit access, education, public spaces and services, federally funded programs and jury service” for gays and transgender individuals.
In 2014, she pivoted from plywood to politics in her campaign for Congress.
4. A graduate of Harvard, she wrote op-eds for The Harvard Crimson.
At Harvard, Stefanik gained valuable political experience, serving as vice president of Harvard’s Institute of Politics before graduating with a degree in government.
While at Harvard, Stefanik wrote eight articles for The Harvard Crimson, the college’s famed newspaper. By senior year, she was in charge of editing the editorial pieces. Her editorial topics ranged from criticizing leftists for disrupting a panel discussion on careers in counterterrorism to commenting on love’s “capriciousness and involuntary nature.”
Stefanik’s understanding of love seems to have served her well. She married her husband, Matthew Manda, in August 2017 in Saratoga, New York. With appropriate capriciousness, he proposed to her using a ring secured in its box with dental floss, Stefanik told the Glens Falls Chronicle. Manda’s father is a dentist.
5. She opposed a proposed New York City ban on flavored milk.
Not cowed by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposed ban on flavored milk in the city’s public schools, she signed an open letter saying she “strongly opposed” it.
She attacked the proposed ban on chocolate milk as “a serious disservice to North Country dairy farmers” that was “reckless and irresponsible.”
This is the experience of just one
American parent whose family has had to navigate the trans journey in recent
years.
To protect the identity of the child I will be deliberately vague about locations and some specifics. But the family was living in one of the big cities of America and have only fairly recently moved to a more rural location. This is where they are when I speak with the child’s mother, who I will call Sarah.
Sarah is,
in every way, an average middle-class mom. She cares for her children and like
her husband works to support them. She describes her politics as “slightly left
of center.” Four years ago, at the age of 13, her daughter announced that she
was trans and that she was actually a boy.
The
daughter had already been diagnosed with a mild form of autism, and had had
trouble being accepted by some of her peers. She had trouble picking up on
conversational signals. Invitations to play weren’t reciprocated, and her
fashion choices weren’t deemed quite right by all of her peers.
In time
Sarah’s daughter found that boys in her school were slightly more amenable to
her than girls. But even then she couldn’t quite get the degree of social
acceptance which she wanted.
“Why doesn’t anyone like me?” she used to intermittently ask her mother. Trying to make sense of why she was “not fitting in with girls” in particular, she was also trying to work out why she wasn’t fitting in with her peers in general.
Then one
day she announced to her mother that she was in fact a boy and that this was
the cause of her problems.
Sarah
asked her what had given her the idea that she was trans. After all, for her
family it had all seemed to come on very suddenly. Her daughter said that she
had got the idea after a presentation at her school.
At this
point it emerged that around 5% of the children at her daughter’s school now
identified as transgender. They included a remarkably similar range of
children, including children who had been diagnosed as having forms of autism and
a history of being unpopular or poor at connecting with their peers.
Her mother would not be able to understand this, because she was “cis.”
Of course
her mother wanted to know more. If there had not been any other children at her
school who identified as trans, would she have decided that she was a boy?
Sarah’s daughter said that no, she wouldn’t have done so because she “wouldn’t
have known that it was an option.”
It was not
that she thought she was a boy, but that she was a boy. And what is more, her
mother would not be able to understand this, because she was “cis.”
Sarah had
never heard the word “cis” before, let alone been described as it. Sarah’s
daughter repeatedly told her mother that “trans children know who they are.”
But Sarah was supportive. She agreed to call her daughter by her new, preferred, male name and began to address her using male pronouns. She even introduced her daughter to her friends as her son.
Trying to be as supportive as possible, mother and daughter even went on a “trans pride” march together and danced along to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.”
Sarah was
so supportive that she bought the first binder her daughter needed to conceal
her developing breasts. It is hard to see what more a mother could have done.
At the
same time, quite understandably, Sarah started to read up online about the
whole trans business. It was new to her family’s life and she wanted to get a
range of views in order to arrive at some understanding of her own.
The clinician told her that “parental acceptance was the first step to prevent suicide.”
By Sarah’s
own admission, her first impressions of the online debate were not good. A lot
of the critical reading online was, she thought, marked by a strain of
“anti-LGBT” sentiment. The people who wrote about it often seemed to be what she
describes as “bigoted or religious.”
She had
never explored any of this deeply before. She was “just concerned about my
daughter.” And so Sarah went to speak to some professionals—starting with some
gender clinicians.
The first
of these told her something which echoes what many other people in her position
have heard. The clinician told her that “parental acceptance was the first step
to prevent suicide.”
As with any parent, this was a threat of the worst nightmare imaginable. The doctor clinician also told Sarah that since her daughter had been “insistent, persistent, and consistent” in her claims this meant that her daughter was indeed a boy.
Sarah was
not only worried by the words of the professionals but also by some of what her
daughter was saying. Whenever Sarah’s daughter described her feelings of gender
dysphoria her mother noticed that the words seemed “rather scripted.”
And to say
that the script was manipulative is an understatement. At one stage her
daughter issued a list of demands which included blackmail and threats unless
these demands were met.
Sarah’s
daughter was 13 and a half when she announced that she was trans. At 14 and a
half she went to the therapist. And at 15 she was told that she should start
taking the puberty blocker Lupron.
At each stage it was stressed that it was “insulting” for the mother to question the feelings of her daughter and that as with trans people so with autistic people.
At each stage it was stressed that it was “insulting” for the mother to question the feelings of her daughter.
“Autistic
people know who they are,” she was reassured. Even to question this was to be “able-ist.”
A number of different therapists were approached and eventually mother and
child returned to the first one.
When Sarah
expressed some concerns over the choices being offered to her daughter by the profession,
and specifically the idea of her daughter going on puberty blockers, she was
told, “You have a choice between puberty blockers and the hospital.”
And so at
17 and a half Sarah’s daughter announced that she wanted to transition.
Of course Sarah asked her daughter about whether she really wanted to do this. She stressed the irreversibility of the path down which her daughter was going.
Even more
irreversible than the hormones was the irreversibility of transitioning. What
if—Sarah asked her daughter—after choosing to transition she then felt the need
to de-transition? What if having made this change she decided she didn’t want
it?
Her
daughter’s response was, “So. I’ll kill myself.”
While no
parent should ever take such a threat lightly there does seem to be a pattern
to it, as Germaine Greer had claimed much earlier. And not only from the young
people, but from some of the medical professionals who are pushing their case.
For
instance, in 2015 Michelle Forcier, MD, professor at Brown University Medical
School and director of Gender and Sexual Health Services at the Lifespan
Physician Group in Providence, Rhode Island, was interviewed on NBC.
Asked
about whether children as young as three or four could possibly know what they
want, Forcier replied, “To say three- and four-year-olds don’t understand
gender doesn’t give our kids a lot of credit.”
When asked
what harm could be done by waiting before transitioning she said, “The biggest
harm is not to do anything.”
But what
was the risk of waiting, she was asked.
Her reply: “The risk of waiting is suicide. The risk of waiting is running away. The risk of waiting is substance abuse. The risk of waiting is bullying and violence. The risk of waiting is depression and anxiety.”
Joel Baum,
who is senior director at the campaign group Gender Spectrum, has put this even
more starkly. To parents worried about consenting to their children going on
hormones he has said, “You can either have grandchildren or not have a kid any more,
either because they’ve ended the relationship with you or in some cases because
they have chosen a more dangerous path for themselves.”
The
problem with the choice being presented this way—in the most catastrophizing
light possible—is that it leaves no room for discussion or dissent.
Instead,
the moment that a child says they think they may be of the opposite sex, they
must be greeted only with acceptance and from then on only with a set of
life-changing steps which an increasing trans body of professionals appear to
want to encourage with as little pushback as possible.
Yet
stories like James’s and also that of Sarah’s daughter are filled with suggestive
turns. Just as James says he might never have considered trying to become a
woman if he hadn’t been in a milieu in which drag and trans were common, so
Sarah’s daughter admits that she might never have considered the possibility
that she was actually a boy if there had not been other pupils at the same
school who were making the same claims.
All of which brings us to the crux of the issue.
in the U.S. there is not merely a movement but a business incentive for pushing this.
Even if there are some people who actually suffer from gender dysphoria, and even if for some of them life-changing surgery is the best possible option, how might they be differentiated from people who have such ideas suggested to them but who later turn out to have made the wrong decision for themselves?
Among the
most hard-nosed but likely arguments for an eventual slowing of the current
trans stampede is the growing possibility of an avalanche of lawsuits. Although
the United Kingdom, including the National Health Service, has opened itself up
to this eventuality, the potential in Britain for successful future legal
actions is nothing compared to the U.S.
Whereas
Britain’s health service is struggling to satisfy the increased demand for
gender reassignment surgery, in the U.S. there is not merely a movement but a business
incentive for pushing this.
Just one of the signs that trans is an area where social demands are starting to attract business opportunities lies in the extraordinary levity with which trans activists—including some surgeons—are now talking about life-changing surgery. Some of this requires a strong stomach.
“It’s pretty simple,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., tweeted last March, in calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment. “No one is above the law, including the President of the United States.”
But perhaps Tlaib—among Trump’s harshest critics in Congress—needs to follow up with another tweet, in the interests of transparency. This tweet could read: “No one is above the law. Except me.”
According to a report issued last week by the House Ethics Committee, there is “substantial reason to believe” that Tlaib used campaign funds for personal expenditures, thereby violating both campaign finance laws and House ethics rules.
The alleged violations stem from $17,500 that her campaign paid her, apparently to cover personal expenses, after she was elected to Congress.
Text messages and emails between Tlaib and her campaign staff show that throughout her campaign she repeatedly asked her campaign for money to cover personal expenses like “car maintenance, child care, and other necessities.”
At one point, Tlaib asked her campaign to give her $2,000 every two weeks. Between May 7 and Nov. 16, 2018, it did so. Then, on Dec. 1, 2018, it paid her $15,500.
In total, Tlaib’s campaign gave her $45,000 over seven months.
Federal campaign finance law (52 U.S.C. §30114(b)) prohibits the use of campaign funds for personal use. The law, including the regulations promulgated by the Federal Election Commission, defines “personal use” very broadly.
Personal use includes any “commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate’s campaign duties.” That plainly includes car maintenance, child care, and “other necessities.”
Additionally, House ethics rules prohibit representatives from using campaign funds for personal expenditures. They and their staffs are tasked with ensuring that their campaigns operate in compliance with the law.
While candidates may take a salary from their campaigns, there are very strict limits on that. Among the litany of restrictions is this one: The salary can only be paid for work performed before the election. The salary has to end the day the candidate is either elected or withdraws from the race and is no longer a candidate.
Tlaib’s eligibility for a salary paid from her campaign funds ended on Nov. 6, 2018, when she was elected to the House of Representatives. Yet her campaign continued to pay her through the end of December. She collected $17,500 after the election.
Tlaib’s lawyers concede that the payments were made after Nov. 6 last year, but argue that the money was for services performed before the election. But according to the report, documents taken from her campaign “suggest otherwise.”
A spreadsheet of campaign salary payments shows that Tlaib’s campaign paid her $2,000 on Nov. 16 last year for work performed between Nov. 1 and 15. And according to that same spreadsheet, the $15,500 paid on Dec. 1 was for work performed between Nov. 16 and Dec. 31 last year.
Additionally, the checks confirm those dates, as do emails from Tlaib’s campaign treasurer. As to the $15,500 payment, her campaign treasurer’s records show that at least $8,000 of it was paid for work performed after the election, and the remaining $7,500 was an unspecified “adjustment.”
It certainly appears to be a clear violation of federal law. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that the best arguments her lawyers can come up with are that there was no “conscious disregard” of the law, and that it’s “most irregular” for the Office of Congressional Ethics to look into pre-election activities.
In other words, Tlaib should be excused because she didn’t bother to learn the law or because Congress should permit candidates to violate ethics laws with impunity until they get elected. It doesn’t take a lawyer to see how feeble these arguments are.
Given how bad this looks for Tlaib, it’s no surprise that she and her campaign staff refused all interview requests from the Office of Congressional Ethics.
And Tlaib’s problems extend beyond the Ethics Committee.
Both the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Justice Department have jurisdiction over violations of federal campaign finance law. The FEC can force those who err to repay the money and impose a civil penalty – even where there was no “conscious disregard” of the law.
If Tlaib “knowingly and willfully” violated the law, that is a criminal violation that comes under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. Criminal violations of the law can result not only in civil penalties, but prison time.
We agree with Tlaib that “no one is above the law.” Does she agree with her own tweet?
Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, lauded the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which has sent tens of thousands of asylum-seekers back across the southern border to wait.
Cuccinelli appeared Sunday on “Fox & Friends” to discuss the White House’s efforts to manage the illegal immigration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, including its recent order to relocate National Park rangers to the area to help Border Patrol rangers and its success with the Remain in Mexico program.
“Well, first of all, the Department of Interior owns an enormous portion of the border. I want to say as high as 40% of the border is in Department of Interior land, so there’s a logic to bringing Department of Interior law enforcement down to the border,” Cuccinelli said Sunday. “President Trump has been aggressive with every legal lever he can pull. Doesn’t mean we pull them all at the same time, but this is one more way to interdict these flows of illegal aliens.”
Cuccinelli also noted that these National Park rangers will have arrest powers, allowing them to fully assist Border Patrol agents as the U.S. government cracks down on the flow of illegal migration and fight against cartel activity.
When DHS chief Chad Wolf visited the border earlier this week, according to Cuccinelli, officials within Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services all called Remain in Mexico an “overwhelmingly useful, helpful, successful” program.
Remain in Mexico, which is also known as Migrant Protection Protocols, requires asylum-seekers who crossed through Mexico to reach the southern border to go back and wait in Mexico while their claims are processed through the U.S. immigration court system—a process that could take months. The program is ultimately designed to mitigate fraud as it prohibits asylum-seekers from escaping into the interior of the U.S. before their claims are adjudicated.
Cuccinelli said the program, which was launched in January, has sent roughly 60,000 migrants back to Mexico.
“This is not just for people seeking asylum. It is also for people who’ve crossed the border illegally and they’re essentially on what we call a ‘detained docket.’ It means they are not going to be released until their case is heard, and so they’re waiting in Mexico as well,” he said.
“It’s been phenomenally successful, phenomenally helpful, and really we need Mexico to maintain it and expand it,” Cuccinelli continued.
Remain in Mexico has not been the only tool the Trump administration has used to push asylum-seekers back over the southern border. Earlier in November, the White House began implementing its asylum cooperation agreement with Guatemala, which requires migrants who cross Guatemala to first seek protected status there before doing so with U.S. officials. Migrants who do not follow this rule are subject to be returned to Guatemala.
The Trump administration has also reached similar asylum cooperation agreements with El Salvador and Honduras.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been accused of being a paid agent of the government of Qatar and using her position in Congress to access sensitive information for the benefit of Iran, according to testimony in a civil suit in Florida.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, screen image.
Alan Bender, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian businessman, made the accusations in video-conference testimony on October 23 from Toronto for a civil case filed in Florida against the brother of the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad al-Thani, over allegations the Sheikh ordered his American bodyguard to murder two people and that he held his American paramedic hostage.
…In explosive testimony made by video link from Toronto, Canada to a Florida District Court on October 23, Kuwaiti-born Alan Bender claims to have deep ties with governments and royal officials across the Middle East including Qatar. In his statement, he says he met Qatar’s Secretary to the Emir for Security Affairs Mohammad bin Ahmed bin Abdullah al-Masnad and two other senior Qatari officials.
The three allegedly claimed credit for the meteoric rise of Omar, saying: “If it wasn’t for our cash, Ilhan Omar would be just another black Somali refugee in America collecting welfare and serving tables on weekends,” according to Bender’s sworn deposition. The deposition was obtained by Al Arabiya English and authenticated by the attorney for the plaintiffs.
…In the testimony, Bender claims to have been asked to recruit American politicians and journalists to be Qatari assets. He says he objected and the Qatari officials responded by saying that several American politicians and journalists were already on the payroll—most prominently Omar, who was allegedly described as the “jewel of the crown”, according to the deposition.
…Bender’s accusations go much further. According to his testimony, Al-Masnad said that Qatar “recruited Ilhan Omar from even way before she thought about becoming a government official.… They groomed her and arranged the foundation, the grounds, for her to get into politics way before she even showed interest. They convinced her.” For her part, Omar cooperated with the Qataris and received cash payments, he alleges in the deposition.
…Bender claims that once Omar took office, she used her position in the House of Representatives to access sensitive information which she relayed to Qatar, and through them to Iran.
Imam Tawhidi, known as the Imamofpeace on Twitter has been working for months to expose Omar as a foreign agent. He posted a blind item thread in July starting with this tweet:
This thread will be one of the most important threads I make on Twitter. The illegal case behind this will be exposed with full transparency, in full details. For now, I direct the following information to: @realDonaldTrump, @VP, @jaredkushner, @DonaldJTrumpJr, @seanhannity.
The first step was to make the thread in the quoted tweet above, and show how @IlhanMN is working with and for the Qatari government and intelligence in the US Congress—And framing her critics (me and others).
But those were allegations. This is where the evidence comes in.
In this tweet thread, Tawhidi wrote about the lawsuit and that Bender had been subpoenaed to testify. Tawhidi indicated he planned to leverage the case to expose Omar’s ties to Qatar by suggesting questions to the plaintiff’s attorney, which he apparently has succeeded in doing. (Tawhidi also accused Linda Sarsour of being involved with Qatar.)
I will now move forward with a formal recommendation to @RCastanedaUSA to ask specific questions from those who will attend the depositions.
Qatar’s Ambassador is in the USA, and @alanbender1965 is a Canadian. They have to attend; and Alan Bender is already complying.
Tomorrow, I will publish the letter that I shall now write to attorney @RCastanedaUSA, recommending that along with her questions regarding her legal case, she also asks the Qataris and ALAN questions that relate to Qatar’s illegal activities in the USA, and its Congress.
Then, we will wait for the depositions to be over. I can and will obtain copies of them.
If @RCastanedaUSA asks them the questions we recommend regarding Qatar’s relationship with @IlhanMN and @lsarsour— there will be serious information America needs to know of.
Barack Obama corrupted everything he could touch over his eight years as President. His military was prosecuting its own soldiers for murdering enemy combatants. Obama’s State Department was a pay-for-play racketeering enterprise and Obama’s FBI and DOJ morphed into sick and criminal gangs.
What a mess!
Over the weekend we learned from another leak to the Washington Post, that an individual in Obama’s FBI altered documents that provided support for a FISA Warrant obtained to spy on candidate and President Trump.
The individual (or individuals) was soon identified as Kevin Clinesmith who worked with his reported lover Sally Moyer for the current Intelligence Community (IC) Inspector General (IG), Michael Atkinson.
If you have followed the case closely, the intentional removal of Peter Strzok in combination with the explanation of the lawyer’s FISA responsibilities; and in combination with prior reporting of FBI lawyer 2; it seems pretty obvious the line-level lawyer was Kevin Clinesmith.
If the WaPo article had added all the detail and left in how the line-level attorney worked for Peter Strzok everyone would have known who it was. Hence they put in more details about his activity but removed the Strzok reference.
Kevin Clinesmith was one of the key FBI small group members on the original Clinton investigation known as the “mid-year exam”, or in text messages the “MYE”.
Within the MYE Clinesmith was one of the key legal staff working with Peter Strzok. Clinesmith was lawyer #2 for Strzok who eventually transferred to the subsequent Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Clinesmith was also previously reported to be having an intimate relationship with another member of the FBI team, Sally Moyer, though that is uncertain. [Tashina “Tash” Guahar was also a key legal figure on the Main Justice side of the MYE team.]
Sally Moyer was FBI unit chief in the Office of General Counsel (counterintelligence legal unit within the FBI Office of General Counsel).
Ms. Moyer was responsible for the legal compliance within the FBI counterintelligence operations that generated FISA applications.
When the MYE investigation finished, the Carter Page FISA construction is where Kevin Clinesmith and Sally Moyer come together in their next assignment, the FBI investigation of Trump.
The interesting connection is that Clinesmith and Moyer both also reportedly worked for Michael Atkinson while he was an attorney with the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Atkinson next took a position as the ICIG. Recently, it was reported that Atkinson changed the IC whistleblower form in September shortly after a CIA Agent, who was spying in the Trump White House, drafted a complaint on President Trump.
Atkinson saw to it that the whistleblower form was updated to allow for second hand information, which the ‘whistleblower’ (believed to be Eric Ciaramella) provided in his complaint. Although, the form should not have been accepted based on second-hand information and because it was about the President of the United States (who is not in the IC), Atkinson accepted the complaint.
The whistleblower later attempted to edit the form he originally provided. The original form stated that the whistleblower did not talk to Congress before filing the form but after it was discovered that he had met with Adam Schiff’s team in Congress, the whistleblower attempted to edit his form.
The fact that the whistleblower worked as a CIA operative also causes concerns since the CIA is only supposed to work overseas while working on external threats. He is not supposed to be spying in the White House on the President.
This Obama group of criminals should all be in jail, not running around attempting another coup on the President of the United States. #LockThemAllUp
A new sex-ed curriculum recently instituted in some classrooms in the United Kingdom is one of the most blatant examples of institutionalized child sex abuse that we’ve seen in the West. As the Daily Mail reports, the All About Me program being unveiled in over 240 schools across the country would give very young children “rules” for “touching yourself.” The Mail offers details about these rules:
Under a section called Touching Myself, teachers are advised to tell children that ‘lots of people like to tickle or stroke themselves as it might feel nice.’ They are also instructed to inform youngsters that this may include touching their ‘private parts’ and, that while some people may say this behaviour is ‘dirty,’ it is in fact ‘very normal.’
It gets worse:
In the same lesson, children are given scenarios which they must judge to be ‘OK’ or ‘not OK.’
In one, pupils are told that when a girl called Autumn ‘has a bath and is alone she likes to touch herself between her legs. It feels nice.’
This is for six- and seven-year-olds, remember. Not that it would be any more appropriate for older children.
An overview of the All About Me program seems to indicate that this lesson plan will be very hands-on, in a literal sense:
Children will be given the opportunity to explore a variety of different touch and feel sensations and allowed to decide which they like and dislike.
By the end of the lesson, children will understand that just because they like how something feels does not mean that everyone feels the same.
By year four of the program, things get more specific:
Children will consider the rules of when it is appropriate to be naked or semi-naked and when it is appropriate to touch themselves, including self-stimulation.
And in year five, the kids will have graduated to discussions about erections and wet dreams:
Children will be informed of their own personal anatomy and the development of their genitals, including wet dreams, erections, self-stimulation, and menstruation.
A similar program was recently rolled out in South African schools, instructing kids on the wonders of masturbation, anal sex, and oral sex.
And lest you think we are safe from this madness here in the States, our own compulsory sex-ed curricula are not far removed from what’s described above. A recent “framework” for sex education in California features, among other things, graphic descriptions of sodomy and bondage.
What we’re witnessing here is not a “slippery slope” to the normalization of pedophilia. This is pedophilia. There’s no more slope. We’ve reached the bottom, which isn’t to say that we can’t pull out a shovel and continue our descent. My point is simply that these “programs” are a form of widespread, institutionalized child sexual abuse. The administrators who approve this material are predators, and the teachers who teach it are complicit. The “I’m just following orders” excuse rarely gets you off the moral hook, and it certainly doesn’t in this case.
But we should not be surprised by this. It is the inevitable consequence of allowing public schools to teach “sex-ed” in the first place. There is, it turns out, no non-creepy way for schools to handle the topic. There is no approach that isn’t at least inappropriate, and at worst abuse. That’s because schools have no business delivering lectures on sexuality, no matter what is being said about it. By broaching the subject, they are already treading on ground where they don’t belong. It’s no wonder that they marched all the way to this point.
As far as schools are concerned, sex should be a purely scientific subject. Teach the kids about anatomy. Teach them where babies come from. Teach them the facts of human reproduction. That’s it. The children don’t need to hear, and should not hear, the teacher’s personal views on what kind of touching is appropriate, and what sort of sex positions are enjoyable, and “when it is appropriate to be naked or semi-naked,” whether our cultural attitudes towards sexuality are repressive, and so on. None of that constitutes objective scientific information. It is, at best, the subjective view point of the person who came up with the lesson plan. And subjective view points about sexuality have no place — at all — in a school.
This is not a pitch for “abstinence education.” Abstinence programs are certainly less creepy and less morally fraught than some of this other stuff, but I don’t want my child’s teacher to give him tips on how to avoid having sex any more than I want her giving tips on how to have it. It’s simply none of her business, either way. She is an unwelcome intruder. Just because I send my kids to school to learn the ABCs and 123s doesn’t mean I also want them to be indoctrinated into Mrs. Wilson’s personal philosophy on human sexuality. Actually I don’t send my kids to school at all — we homeschool — but the point stands.
If it would be considered a gross infringement for a teacher to stand up and proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the middle of algebra class, why is it any less of a gross infringement for a teacher to proclaim the Gospel of Sexual Enlightenment — the Gospel of Freud, basically — in the middle of health class? You might argue that schools “have to teach it” because parents refuse to do it themselves. But where does that end? There are many ethical, moral, and spiritual lessons that parents often fail to impart to their children. Should schools then become churches, daycare centers, therapists, spiritual gurus, and sex coaches all rolled into one, just to compensate for lackadaisical parenting? Schools don’t automatically inherit the right to teach whatever a parent doesn’t teach.
Besides, parents might “refuse” to teach their children how to masturbate because they, as parents, feel (rightly) that such a lesson would be extremely bizarre and inappropriate, and probably warranting a visit from CPS. It might be a teacher’s opinion that parents should teach those things, but her opinion is irrelevant. It’s also, in this case, insane. That’s why schools should stick to the academic basics. Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. It is not their job, or their right, to go beyond that.
Bloomberg News‘s leadership promulgated a new editorial policy forbidding staff journalists from investigating 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
According to multiple reports, Bloomberg News editor in chief John Micklethwait informed staff in a memo that the outlet would continue "our tradition" of not investigating owner Michael Bloomberg, his family, or his personal foundation. But Micklethwait also announced it would "extend the same policy to [Bloomberg’s] rivals in the Democratic primaries." Reporters will still be allowed to investigate President Donald Trump so long as he is not a "direct rival" to Bloomberg’s presidential aspirations.
The policy change follows Bloomberg’s formal announcement on Sunday that he was entering the 2020 Democratic presidential race. The billionaire and former New York City mayor’s presidential run presents difficult questions for Bloomberg News, which has a longstanding policy of not reporting on its founder and CEO.
In the memo, Micklethwait announced that Bloomberg‘sopinioneditorial board will cease operation. Several members of the opinion team will take leaves of absence and join the Bloomberg campaign as staffers.
2020 is not the first time the news outlet has had to grapple with its founder’s political ambitions. Bloomberg Politics Washington news director Kathy Kiely resigned in protest in 2016, when Bloomberg was considering running for president, citing concerns that the outlet would be unable to cover his campaign fairly. Kiely’s resignation came on the heels of reports that Bloomberg News staffers were being instructed not to write stories speculating about their boss’s potential run without approval from higher-ups.
Asked for her opinion about the Sunday memo, Kiely told the Associated Press Monday that the policy will "relegate [Micklethwait’s] political writers to stenography journalism…. It’s not satisfying for journalists and it’s not satisfying for readers. I think people will go elsewhere for in-depth political coverage."