Friday, March 31, 2023

Fingerprints? Mug Shot? Here's What's Next for Trump After Indictment

 By Katie Pavlich | Townhall.com

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

On Thursday evening, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg officially filed a felony indictment against President Donald Trump. Two weeks ago Trump took to Truth social and said the indictment, after a grand jury investigation, was coming. The charges have yet to be revealed. 

So, what happens next? 

Trump's attorneys are in talks with Bragg's office for an arraignment, which will reportedly happen sometime next week. Trump attorney Joe Tacopina said during an interview with Fox News Thursday night coordination between the Secret Service and the New York City Police Department is underway. 

According to Trump civil attorney Alina Habba, President Trump will be finger printed during arraignment and his mugshot will be taken. Habba expects Trump will fight all charges. 

Meanwhile, Bragg will continue to allow violent criminals to go free in the city to terrorize local residents. 

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Shock Poll Reveals Biden in Trouble in NY, and Good News for Trump

By Nick Arama | RedState.com

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

People are already going crazy about the 2024 presidential race even though it’s still some time away and a lot of things can happen in the meantime.

But a poll of New York voters shows just how much trouble Joe Biden is in with his party in that blue state. Some Democrats are getting it and they don’t think Joe is the right guy to put back in office.

A new Siena College poll found that more than half the Democrats in the state don’t want Biden and think someone else should be nominated. 51 percent of Democrats want a “different candidate,” while 43 percent think he should be nominated. That’s not exactly a reassuring thing for Biden and the Democrats in terms of him running again. Biden still has not formally declared and this can’t help.

Even in the most liberal area of New York — New York City — only a slight majority (52 percent) of Democrats want Biden. However, what’s killing him is that 60 percent of suburban Democrats and 57 percent of upstate Democrats want someone else.

But the problem is that the Democrats’ bench is horrible when they’re casting around for that “someone else.” Folks like Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg don’t inspire confidence. Their failure at their jobs has only dropped their stock to the public. So while the Democrats want someone else, a whopping 63 percent of those who want someone else said they didn’t know or had no opinion about who should pick up the torch in the wake of Biden.

When given a choice to pick from, however, they picked Buttigieg (five percent), Harris (three percent), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (three percent), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (three percent), Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (two percent), and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (one percent). 20 percent said that they wanted “someone else” other than these characters.

When you step beyond the Democrats on the opinion about Biden, “a strong majority of independents and an overwhelming majority of Republicans view him unfavorably and disapprove of the job he’s doing,” Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg said. That’s also not a good sign for Biden.

If Biden is in trouble in New York, you know that the powers behind the scene have to be scrambling about what to do.

When you look at the Republicans, it’s Donald Trump leading by a lot with 52 percent saying they would vote for Trump, 27 percent for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and 18 percent wanting another candidate. DeSantis has not yet formally declared that he would be running, but it’s pretty clear that he intends to run.

Of the folks who want another candidate, 20 percent would pick Nikki Haley and six percent would go for former Rep. Liz Cheney. What are those Cheney folks thinking? Granted, that’s six percent of the 20 percent, so it’s not exactly a huge number there. But most of the people who wanted someone else didn’t know who they wanted or had no opinion.

Trump is beating DeSantis with self-described conservative Republicans by 24 points (54-30 percent), as well as with suburban Republicans (52-23 percent) and upstate Republicans (52-31 percent). He’s also up by 29 points in New York City, 49-20 percent.

This tracks with a Monmouth poll that showed that Trump was up by 14 points over DeSantis, which showed that Trump had been gaining ground since January.

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

The Village

 By Judd Garrett

In 1996, as Hillary Clinton was crafting her future Presidential résumé, she published a book, ghostwritten by Barbara Feinman, entitled, It Takes a Village. She was channeling John F. Kennedy, who published his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage, four years before being elected President. But that is where the comparison ends. Whereas Kennedy’s book profiled the courage on eight Senators in United States history who helped make America the great country it has become, Hillary’s book was a disguised attack on America. It was an obvious Trojan horse for socialism, and eventually communism to be implemented into our country.

The title of Hillary’s book comes from an old African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”  It is a transparent call for enlarging the role of the state into everybody’s life. If it indeed takes a village to raise a child, then it is only a short step before the state starts raising our children because the state will claim it can perform the duties of the village much more efficiently. I would not be writing about this little red book, except for the fact that I’ve noticed on TV, the Internet, and in my daily life, that more and more people have been evoking the phrase “it takes a village” when discussing child-rearing to the point that it may become part of our zeitgeist, and that scares the hell out of me because I know where it is leading.

The proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child”, may have been true in sub-Saharan Africa a thousand years ago, but in 21st century America, the real expression is “it takes a village to destroy a child.” We are witnessing, in real time, what happens when the village tries to raise our children. The village does not care about our families and does not care about our children. The village is found on TikTok and Instagram, and all the social media sites that are infiltrating our children’s lives, minds and psyches, leading to depression, neuroses and even suicide. 

The village is drag-queen story hour. The village is pornographic books in our children’s school library. The village is the radical racial and gender indoctrination that our children are put through every time they step off the yellow school bus. The village is proliferating the sale of deadly drugs throughout our communities to the point that 100,000 of our young citizens are dying of drug overdoses every year. The village produces and disseminates child pornography across the Internet. The village engages in child sex trafficking throughout our country. 

The village is infested with evil people who aim to do harm to us and our children. The village wants to take 13-year-olds, inject them with puberty blockers, cross gender hormones, and advocate for the amputation of their vital sexual organs without the consent, or even the knowledge of their parents. That is the village. The village should never be trusted. No one outside of your immediate family should ever be made primarily responsible for raising your child. The village does not care about you. The village does not care about your child. Your child is merely a pawn in their long game of trying to create a communist totalitarian state in our country. The left is trying to destroy the family to enact their government take-over of our lives. 

Not one Democrat voted for the Parents Bill of Rights which passed the House on Friday that will give parents a say in what their children are exposed to in the classroom. The Democrats unanimously rejected that concept. They are also against school choice which would give parents the right to choose what school to send their children to as opposed to being forced to send them to failing public schools. The village wants kids in the failing public schools because they control the curriculum which will indoctrinate our children into the far-left wing ideology. 

In order to impose their authoritarian system on the country, the left must detach the children from their parents so they can indoctrinate them into their authoritarian orthodoxy. On Wednesday, Maine Department of Education Commissioner Pender Makin told lawmakers that “Academic learning [reading, writing, and math] is definitely going to take a backseat to” social-emotional learning and programming on race and gender. This is the level of control that the village/state wants to have over our children, and that is why parents who went to school board meetings wanting to have a say in the curriculum taught to their children, were placed on the FBI terror watch list.  

A woman wearing a "Hail Satan" shirt at a school board meeting in Florida called Governor Ron DeSantis is "Tropical Hitler" and claimed that parents were unqualified to teach their children about sexuality and race, and also accused parents of abusing their children. As she was advocating schools take total control over children’s education on all subjects, she failed to mention that on average, one student every day is sexually abused by a teacher in this country. She used false accusations of abuse against parents to advocate exposing children to even more abuse by teachers. We cannot have prayer or the Bible in school, but Satan is fully welcome and was not placed on the FBI terror watch list. 

Authoritarians need two things to take control of the country; remove God from the people and destroy the family. Those are the only two domestic entities that threaten government authority, and the schools are destroying both of them. They have already removed God, and now they are aggressively trying to remove the parents and the family from the schools. LBJ’s Great Society in the 1960’s destroyed the black family in America and the devastating ramifications of that are on display everyday while the Democrat party expands it power over us because of it. 

It does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a two-parent home to raise a child. There is an old Chinese saying, “if families take care of families; the country will take care of itself.” The state’s job is to support and defend the American family which is the backbone of the country. If the state destroys the American family in an attempt to control the country, then after it does, there will not be a country left worth controlling. 

__________________________________________________________

Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Police Confirm Nashville School Shooting Suspect Identified as Transgender

By Julio Rosas | Townhall.com

Fox News

Nashville Police Chief John Drake confirmed to reporters Monday afternoon the suspect in the shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee identified as transgender.

Drake said the investigation into 28-year-old Audrey E. Hale has revealed she was a student at the Covenant School. Hale's LinkedIn had her pronouns as "he/him." The shooting left three students and three adults dead. Responding police killed Hale inside the school within 14 minutes of the first call of the shooting.

Drake further said the transgender shooter had an AR-style rifle, an AR-style pistol, and a handgun. So far, they believe two of the guns were bought locally and legally. He added the shooting was heavily planned, "We have a manifesto ... and a map of how all of this was going to play out."

Reporter Andy Ngo uncovered Hale's graphic designs were used in LGBT+ campaign ads.

Hale identifying as transgender could point to motivation for the attack as Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed a bill banning transitioning medical services for children earlier this month. Puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries are not allowed to be given to children under the new law, according to the Tennesseean.

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RELATED ARTICLES

Hawley Calls on Feds to Investigate Nashville As a Hate Crime

By Katie Pavlich | Townhall.com

Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Pool via AP

Republican Senator Josh Hawley is calling on the Department of Justice to investigate Monday's horrific Nashville school shooting as a hate crime after a biological woman, who identifies as he/him, killed six people at the Covenant Christian school. 

Police revealed during a press conference late Monday afternoon the killer left a manifesto and heavily implied the motive had to do with transgender activism.

The school was deliberately targeted. Maps and plans were found inside a car parked at the school belonging to the killer. 

"The first call to 911 about shots being fired in the building came in at 10:13 a.m. Officers rushed to the campus, made entry and began clearing the building. Shots were heard coming from the second level. It was on the second floor, in a common area, that a team of officers encountered Hale shooting (she had been firing through a window at arriving police cars). Two members of an officer team fired on Hale and fatally wounded her. Those two officers are Officer Rex Englebert, a four-year MNPD veteran, and Officer Michael Collazo, a nine-year MNPD veteran," Nashville police released in a statement. "Writings recovered from Hale revealed that her attack was calculated and planned."

________________

Press Make Absolutely Horrific Move in Dealing With the Psychotic Transgender Shooter

By Bonchie | RedState.com

AP Photo/John Amis

As RedState reported, a militant transgender shooter with a manifesto murdered multiple people at a Christian school in Nashville on Monday. The tragedy that rocked the community was revealed to be politically motivated in short order with prior calls for a “Trans Day of Vengeance” permeating the situation. That Tennessee had recently passed a law banning child mutilation under the guise of “gender-affirming care,” something the left described as a genocide, clearly played a role in the shooter’s psyche.

But as the aftermath of the tragedy played out, the national press latched onto what was really important: Ensuring that the “right” pronouns are used to describe the murderous psychopath.

Truly, this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen the news media do, and I have to make sure and temper myself as I finish this article so as to not lose my mind in anger in the process.

To recap, we have a deranged transgender lunatic that was pretty obviously radicalized by far-left talk of “genocide” being committed by those on the right, and The New York Times, MSNBC, and other outlets are laser-focused on making sure we don’t “misgender” the shooter. It’s hard to not want to put my head through a wall right now.

Let me be clear for the press hacks who don’t seem to understand basic reality. This shooter is a woman. The fact that this woman was mentally ill and believed she was a man does not mean we all need to bend over backward to respect her delusions. Six innocent people, including three children, are dead, and we are talking about “misgendering” and pronouns. That’s one of the most despicable things I’ve ever seen in the political sphere, of which this shooting is firmly ensconced given its motivation.

I just don’t believe most Americans are looking at this and not rolling their eyes at best or seething in anger at worst. The Democratic Party and its press allies have created an environment where mentally ill people are “affirmed” instead of being given the help they need and then they want us to play by their rules when one of those mentally ill people lashes out and commits an atrocity.

To that I say, go jump in a lake. Maybe pumping a psychopathic woman full of testosterone to “affirm” her gender wasn’t the best way to handle the situation? But we can’t talk about that because that would be “transphobic.” We are going to talk about it, though, because we aren’t afraid. We don’t care what you call us. We don’t have to play by your deluded, anti-scientific rules (no matter how much the politicized scientific establishment changes them).

Enough is enough. This is now the second high-profile mass shooting committed by a transgender person in the last few months despite self-described transgender individuals making up a tiny fraction of the population. The connection can’t be ignored anymore, and the news media are hideous ghouls for playing along with this insanity while the bodies are still warm.

____________

WATCH: After Mass Shooting at Christian School, Joe Biden Says He Wants Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Commentary By DC Enquirer 

On Monday, President Joe Biden addressed an assembled group in the White House following the murder of three adults and three children in a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school.

President Biden opened his remarks at the Women’s Business Summit in a unserious fashion following the shooting.

”My name is Joe Biden,” he said as the audience laughed. “I’m Dr. Jill Biden’s husband.”

When Biden came down to address the women’s group, he said he “came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream.”

“By the way I have a whole refrigerator upstairs,” Biden continued. “You think I’m kidding.”

Biden’s unserious comments come after a shooter, reportedly a female which is very rare for a school shooter, entered the Covenant Elementary School in Nashville and murdered six before being killed by police.

In additional response to the tragedy, Biden called for a national assault weapon ban saying that it is “heartbreaking, a family’s worst nightmare,” as reported by CNN.

“We have to do more to stop gun violence. It’s ripping our communities apart,” the president said. “We have to do more to protect our schools so they’re not turned into prisons.”

It seems like President Biden and Democrats are attempting yet again to turn a tragedy into an opportunity to strip law-abiding citizens of their constitutional rights.

Monday, March 27, 2023

The African power grid collapse is spreading

BY JAZZ SHAW | HotAir.Com

Laura Rauch

Last summer, we looked at the collapse of the power grid in South Africa. The country which previously had the most economically stable and prosperous government in sub-Saharan Africa suffered waves of unemployment and looting as its economy buckled under the strain. They’ve managed to put together some foreign aid to apply patchwork fixes since then, but there are still rolling blackouts taking place on a regular basis.

This winter, however, the power grid problems are spreading in one of the more underreported stories of the year. Zimbabwe and Nigeria are now also experiencing near-total collapses of their power grids. People who still have jobs are having to work at night because that’s the only time there is stable electricity. Scheduled blackouts frequently last up to ten or even twelve hours per day, and both nations’ economies are tanking as a result. 

These nations are experiencing unrest, particularly among people who claim that they have continued to pay their utility bills but have no electricity for most of the day. The AP spoke to a couple of residents in Zimbabwe who are food merchants that rely on refrigeration for their products. With no power during the day, the food spoils and they are at risk of losing their livelihoods.

The problems aren’t limited to just these three countries, by the way. 590 million of the 600 million African people who regularly lack access to electricity live in the sub-Saharan region of the country. But even fresh injections of foreign aid have failed to stabilize the situation.

So what do Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and South Africa all have in common? A couple of years ago, Zimbabwe agreed to a UN plan to mandate more renewable energy and move away from coal and natural gas. 

At roughly the same time, Nigeria signed on to the UN Clean Energy Demand Initiative and John Kerry showed up in person when Nigeria’s president signed the mandate. And as we’ve discussed here before, South Africa started its “transition” to renewable energy years ago, dumping $8.5 billion into the plan in a move the New York Times described as a “Breakthrough for the World.” A few years later, people are sitting in the dark with no heat over wide regions of each country. 

But I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, right?

Do you know who isn’t worried about having enough power? China. They’ve been issuing construction permits for an average of two new coal plants per week for the past couple of years. China’s carbon output is more than double that of the United States, where the energy industry has been slashing emissions for years. 

And yet you didn’t hear a peep out of John Kerry and the rest of the climate hecklers who flew their private jets to Davos so they could scold everyone else. China can apparently do what they like because they’re a “developing nation.”

The Chinese are laughing their butts off at us right now. We’re tanking our own power grid and our economy to placate the climate gods. I somehow doubt Beijing is too concerned about potentially getting into a hot war with a country that can’t keep its lights on and gives away all of its missiles to Ukraine. Best of luck, Taiwan. You may need to find a new protector.

Sunday, March 26, 2023

House Passes Parents Bill of Rights Act

By Joseph Lord | The Epoch Times

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) holds the gavel after he was elected on the 15th ballot at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 7, 2023. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

The U.S. House of Representatives on March 24 passed H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights Act.

The bill passed the lower chamber in a 213–208 party-line vote.

Republicans easily defeated a Democrat measure to recommit the legislation to committee.

H.R. 5, the fulfillment of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) long-promised “parental bill of rights,” would do several things, each with the overarching goal of ensuring that parents know what’s going on in their children’s classrooms.

The bill comes after COVID-19 restrictions led many parents to receive a better glimpse into their children’s education, as they were learning at home via their computers. Many parents learned in this setting about the far-left ideology being pushed in the classroom.

In turn, parents across the nation began showing up to school board meetings to protest the curriculum.

Later, Attorney General Merrick Garland was caught in an Oct. 4, 2021, memo offering federal resources and legal aid to states days after the ​National School Boards Association wrote a letter to President Joe Biden saying the country’s “public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat” from these parents and called verbal confrontations and other incidents at local school board meetings across the country “domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

Since that memo came to light, McCarthy has vowed to deliver legislation to ensure that parents’ control over their children’s education is legally protected.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, made the issue his campaign’s primary concern. Voters rewarded Youngkin by giving him a wide-margin victory over his Democrat rival in the blue-leaning Dominion State.

The main component of the bill would require schools to publicly disclose the contents of their curriculum and library materials to parents. Currently, many schools teaching radical ideology do so without the parents’ knowledge.

Additionally, the bill would establish the right of parents to see their kids’ schools’ expenditures.

“Public schools are paid for by taxpayer dollars,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said of the measure during a House Rules Committee hearing on the bill. “Mothers and fathers deserve financial transparency and to see how their money is being used.”

The bill would also ensure that parents are notified of, and give consent to, any medical procedure performed on their child on school grounds.

A similar provision would require that parents be notified of any violent activity on school grounds.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said that the bill would establish new “checks and balances” for parents over their children’s education.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) called the bill “a basic concept but a powerful statement.”

During floor debate on the bill, Foxx accused education bureaucrats and school district employees of “pushing progressive politics in the classroom while keeping parents in the dark.”

“Parents will finally be empowered to examine classroom curricula and protect the safety and privacy of their children without fear of being targeted by the federal government.

Democrats spoke against the bill.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who led Democrat opposition to the bill, dismissed the legislation as the “Politics Over Parents Act.”

Scott said the bill was part of a GOP plot “to allow a vocal minority to impose their beliefs on all parents.”

Protecting Parents Who Speak Out

One of the Republicans’ key goals in crafting the bill was to ensure that parents who speak out against what is being taught to their children do not face retribution from local, state, or federal authorities.

“No longer will [parents] have their speech denied, or feel threatened for expressing their concerns at school board meetings,” Foxx said.

The comment was in reference to a late-2021 controversy in which Attorney General Merrick Garland offered federal resources and guidance to local law enforcement to target parents who attended school board meetings.

In 2021, the United States saw a deluge of concerned parents coming to school board meetings to speak out against left-wing ideology in the classroom.

Many parents came to their school board to speak out against critical race theory (CRT), a highly contentious left-wing theory that holds that white people are inherently “privileged” and that non-white people are inherently oppressed. Critics of CRT note that it has its origins in the political thought of Karl Marx, the ideological founder of communism; the theory has also been criticized as racist for its efforts to reduce the individual to a member of a group on the basis of their skin color.

In his remarks against the bill, Scott suggested that CRT was “an accurate recounting of our nation’s history,” and that the legislation would “punish librarians” who pushed CRT.

Other parents came to school board meetings to speak out against fringe left-wing notions of sex and gender. Many left-wing activists claim that gender is a social construct and that a person can change their gender based on their feelings.

One parent, Terry Newsome of Chicago, who spoke out against allowing “Gender Queer” in his kids’ school library in 2021, was later placed on a terror watch-list with no warning or further explanation.

In an Oct. 4, 2021, memo Garland sent to U.S. attorneys across the nation, the attorney general offered to help local law enforcers to round up and file charges against parents who spoke out.

Republicans took the memo as a sign that the administration was prepared to target parents for protected First Amendment activity. Since then, they have vowed to deliver a “parents’ bill of rights” to protect against such abuses if they took back the House.

During his questioning, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) explicitly referenced the Oct. 4 memo as part of the reason for the bill’s existence.

‘Book Banning’

Allegations of “book banning” took up a large portion of the debates over the legislation.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of state legislatures and school districts have prohibited certain books with overtly sexual or racial themes from certain schools or age levels.

For instance, many school districts and states have barred the book “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe from school libraries. The book, delivered in the form of a graphic novel, recounts the experience of a minor female who believes she is male; during an especially graphic part of the story, the main character is depicted engaging in oral sex with another biological female who identifies as male.

Another such book, “Flamer” by Mike Curato, traces the homosexual experiences of a minor boy at summer camp with another minor boy.

Though these and other controversial works remain protected by the First Amendment and can be purchased in stores or online, they are inaccessible from many school libraries due to their highly-sexual content.

Nevertheless, Democrats have insisted that restricting children’s access to these and other books is tantamount to censorship.

“State Republicans are going on a book banning spree that would make the Chinese Communist Party blush,” House Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said later.

Twenty-five states have passed such laws.

McGovern depicted this as “Republican legislators telling students what they are, and are not, allowed to learn.”

“That allows one racist or homophobic person to tell an entire class, an entire school, what they can and can’t read,” he added.

During later questioning at the Rules Committee hearing, Scott admitted that nothing in the bill would ban books. But he suggested that if libraries were forced to disclose their inventory, more books would be banned.

As part of the bill, school libraries would be required to publish the full list of books in their library, and to update those lists in a timely fashion when they purchase new materials.

Scott painted a portrait of right-wing organizations mounting crusades to have certain books removed from school libraries: “This bill will make the logistics of that easy.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) responded to this argument later in the hearing, citing “Flamer.”

“If libraries have to publish their lists, yeah, some things might be removed,” Roy said. “[Flamer] should be removed. But it’ll be debated. It’ll be discussed.”

_______________

RELATED ARTICLE

‘Parents Bill of Rights’ wins zero votes from Dems who attack it as ‘fascism,’ ‘extreme’ attack on schools

By Peter Kasperowicz | Fox News

The bill is the GOP's response to growing anger about lack of access to school information across the nation

The House voted to pass the Parents Bill of Rights Act on Friday over objections from Democrats who argued the bill is aimed at promoting "fascism" and "extreme" views of Republicans by making it easier for parents to ban books and out LBGTQ+ students.

The GOP bill is a response to growing anger across the country about access to information on everything from school curricula to safety and mask policies to the prevalence of gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom. Parents’ anger over these issues at school board meetings led to an effort by the Biden administration’s Justice Department to examine the "disturbing trend" of violent threats against school officials.

House Republicans reacted by approving the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which would require school districts to give parents access to curriculum and reading lists and would require schools to inform parents if school staff begin encouraging or promoting their child’s gender transition.

The bill passed narrowly in a 213-208 vote that saw just a handful of Republicans vote against it, along with every Democrat.

Democrats blasted the bill during debate this week by accusing Republicans of attacking LGBTQ+ students.

"This Republican bill is asking the government to force the outing of LGBT people before they are ready," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., argued on the House floor. "When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is, and that is freedom over fascism."

Republicans rejected this argument by saying parents have a right to know what is happening to their children in school, especially if schools are promoting gender transition without their knowledge.

"The bill does not address a student’s identity or statements, but is solely focused on notifying parents about actions taken by school personnel to act on a gender transition, such as changing pronouns or switching locker rooms," said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who chairs the Committee on Education & the Workforce.

The bill says parents have "the right to know if a school employee or contractor acts to… change a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name; or… allow a child to change the child’s sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms."

Democrats also accused Republicans of trying to make it easier to ban books at school, and several Democrats said Republicans are looking to ban books across the country on a range of topics.

"Extreme MAGA Republicans don't want the children of America to learn about the Holocaust," accused House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. "They want to ban a book called ‘Melissa,’ a book describing, in very personal terms, the experience of a trans girl beginning to understand her identity."

"They want to ban books, they want to bully the LGBTQ+ community, they want to bring guns into classrooms, kindergarten and above. That’s their educational agenda," he added.

Republicans dismissed those arguments by saying the bill does nothing to ban books but does give parents the right to see a list of books in school libraries and access to those books.

"Nowhere in this bill is it banning any books," asserted Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who said the goal of the language is to make sure parents are aware of sexually explicit books in school libraries.

Norman and others also argued that the books under attack in some states and communities are those that include explicit sexual content that they say is not appropriate for certain ages and is not a core educational requirement. Norman cited books that talk about kids who are "sexually active from the time I was 6," or that include "explicit images of oral sex."

"Parents, is this something you want your children to read?" Norman asked. "Parents, is this something that encourages academics and allows that child to compete in the 21st century?"

The bill passed by the House on Friday would also give parents notice if there are plans to eliminate gifted-and-talented programs for kids, alert them to any violent activity taking place at school and give them the right to speak at school board meetings.

It also provides that school districts "should welcome and encourage that engagement and consider that feedback when making decisions."

Saturday, March 25, 2023

President Trump Kicking Off His 2024 Campaign in Waco Sends the Right Message to the Right People

By streiff | RedState.com

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

The Trump 2024 presidential campaign will officially kick off Saturday afternoon in Waco, Texas.

The symbolism of former President Trump, beset by potential political indictments at the state and federal level, starting his presidential campaign at the site of the most egregious and unprovoked act of violence perpetrated upon US citizens by the federal government in the history of the Republic can’t go unnoticed by even the dimmest bulbs in the ranks of NeverTrump.

76 Americans Murdered at Waco

From February 28 until April 19, 1994 (funny that they chose April 19 to burn the place, isn’t it), the compound belonging to the Branch Davidian religious sect was besieged by federal law enforcement. Though the siege was kicked off by the goobers in the ATF, they were eventually joined by the same people who remorselessly gunned down a woman holding an infant a year earlier in rural Idaho.

In the end, law enforcement started a conflagration that burned the compound to the ground, killing 76 people. Among them were 25 children, 27 if you count the two pregnant women burned to death.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE VIDEO.

See Jeff Charles’s description of Waco today: I Took a Trip to Waco.

Crowds Gather for Rally

The rally promises to be well attended. It begins at 5 p.m., and lines are already forming.

The festivities officially begin with Ted Nugent playing a lit AF version of “The Star Spangled Banner,” our only national anthem.

...

I think that holding the rally at Waco shows a critical part of the battlefield for the next election. Our federal government no longer subscribes to the principle of “that government is best which governs least.” We no longer have the right to be left alone. A more significant problem is that federal law enforcement has been weaponized to punish citizens who deviate from approved beliefs. I’d always thought “enemy of the state” was a label Stalinist regimes slapped on their enemies…until January 6 when suddenly misdemeanor trespass could provoke a nationwide hue-and-cry.

While I think everyone should be subject to the same laws, I find it telling that no move was made to prosecute either Bill or Hillary Clinton for some pretty flagrant felonies…and maybe a bit of pedophilia and sex trafficking, if the Lolita Express stories are true…while two states and the federal government are investigating President Trump. It is almost as if someone wants to create the conditions for political violence as a pretext for a crackdown (The Political Persecution of President Trump Is Not Going to Make Trump or His Supporters Go Away or Accept the Outcome and Lindsey Graham Predicts Violence if the Persecution of President Trump Continues). These are not “Trump” issues; these are issues any Republican will be forced to confront.

The Left Doesn’t Fear Violence, It Fears Losing Power

Nothing President Trump says Saturday is going to incite violence. Sane people on the left know this. What they are reacting to is the likelihood that Trump will be a metaphor for the effects of endemic government cruelty. From Ruby Ridge to Waco to the COVID-19 lockdowns, the government has become increasingly aggressive in asserting its ability to control what citizens believe and how they choose to live. While it is difficult to draw attention to the daily injustices, a former president running on the theme of, “if they did this to me, can you imagine what they will do to you and your family?” has to scare the living hell out of a lot of people. And it should.

Friday, March 24, 2023

Obama: I’d Be Fine with a Third Term If There Was Someone Who Would’ve Been a Stand-In with an Ear Piece

Shared at GrabienNews.com


Obama: I’d Be Fine with a Third Term If There Was Someone Who Would’ve Been a Stand-In with an Ear Piece

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE VIDEO.

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Thursday, March 23, 2023

BOMBSHELL: Trump grand jury will not hear 'hush-money' case for the rest of this week

By Laura Italiano | Insider


Former U.S. President Donald Trump. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

There will be no grand jury testimony, deliberations, or vote in the Trump "hush money" case in Manhattan for the remainder of this week, a source told Insider.  

Grand jurors will return to court Thursday, according to the law enforcement source. But the panel will meet in connection with a different case — not the Trump hush-money matter, the source said early Thursday.

The panel has been meeting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays and has been hearing evidence since mid-January concerning former President Donald Trump and his alleged involvement in a 2016 pre-election payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels. 

The grand jurors are not expected to take up the hush-money case again until Monday at the earliest, according to the source, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss high-level planning for the panel, which meets in secret. 

At the request of Trump's defense team, grand jurors heard testimony on Monday from Robert Costello, a former legal advisor to prosecution witness Michael Cohen. Costello said he hoped his testimony would challenge Cohen's credibility. The grand jury has not met to consider the hush-money matter since then. 

It is not unusual for state grand juries to hear evidence in multiple cases at the same time. It is not clear if the case on hand for the Trump panel on Thursday has any relation to Trump or to anyone in his sphere, or if it is entirely unrelated.

Prosecutors are statutorily barred from discussing grand jury proceedings. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

[So much for Trumpmas! And as I noted earlier, there’s supposed to be another witness testifying in the Trump case now, so even next week might be a wash … assuming Bragg wants to continue this folly. — Ed]