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Heritage Foundation Sues Biden Administration to Stop Vaccine Mandate Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / November 29, 2021   The Heritage Foundation will "fight tooth-and-nail and send the message that our freedoms are not up for debate," Heritage President Kay C. James says. Pictured: President Joe Biden speaks Nov. 3 at the White House about authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images) The Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden administration to stop its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers, calling the requirement a “gross abuse of power.” “The mandate clearly encroaches on the police power of states expressly reserved by the 10th Amendment [to the Constitution],” argues the complaint filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The lawsuit adds: “It also exceeds the federal government’s authority under the Commerce Clause.” Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James and the think tank’s incoming president, Kevin Roberts, who takes office Wednesday, both issued statements on the lawsuit. “Dr. Roberts and I, along with the Board of Trustees, unanimously agreed The Heritage Foundation has a vital role to play in the courts to protect and secure the freedom of all Americans to make medical decisions for themselves,” James said, adding:    To all of our members, to the conservative movement, and to Americans concerned by this unacceptable overreach by President [Joe] Biden and his administration, I say this—Heritage’s leadership is united behind this lawsuit, and we are going to fight tooth-and-nail and send the message that our freedoms are not up for debate.   Heritage’s court action became one of the latest challenges to the vaccine mandate, which imposes a Jan. 4. deadline for businesses and other organizations that employ 100 or more to require their employees either to be fully vaccinated or produce the results of weekly tests for the coronavirus. Heritage has about 270 employees.  The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Heritage, which is the parent organization of The Daily Signal. “The Heritage Foundation has not historically filed lawsuits,” Roberts said in his own written statement. “That we are doing so now should make clear to any observer that we view this mandate as a deadly serious threat to our individual liberty and the values that make America great. Under my predecessors, The Heritage Foundation has stood rock-solid in defense of liberty, freedom, and opportunity for all, and it will continue to do so under my leadership.” Roberts continued:  I wish this lawsuit were unnecessary. I wish we had an administration in the White House that respected the Constitution and the rule of law.  From the unprecedented border crisis, to the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, to now this unlawful COVID vaccine mandate, it is irrevocably clear that this administration will stop at nothing—even harming Americans and our national interests—in pursuit of the most radical policy agenda in American history. Rest assured, we at Heritage are only just beginning to fight back. … I am so thrilled to be leading this incredible organization at this pivotal time in our nation’s history, and to be engaged in the trenches on the most important fights we’ve seen in a generation.   On Sept.9, Biden authorized the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to require employers with 100 or more workers to make sure those workers either are fully vaccinated or provide weekly test results showing that they don’t have COVID-19.  “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers,” Biden said in announcing the mandate. The Biden administration contends that the mandate is necessary because too many Americans refuse to get vaccinated and that OSHA has the statutory authority to impose the mandate. During remarks Monday at the White House about the omicron variant of COVID-19, Biden said the United States is doing its part to get its citizens vaccinated, and added: “We can’t let up until the world is vaccinated.” The Heritage Foundation joins other employers as well as state attorneys general in filing lawsuits challenging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s emergency rule implementing the mandate.  “The ACLJ is honored to serve as counsel for The Heritage Foundation,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, in a written statement. “This case focuses on the serious constitutional issues raised by the Biden administration’s employer mandate.”  Implementing the mandate, which would cover at least 84.2 million Americans working for about 164,000 different businesses and other organizations, could be difficult and might rely on employees’ snitching on bosses and colleagues.  The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals enjoined the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate on Nov. 6, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues.”  The appeals court affirmed its previous ruling, writing that Biden’s vaccine mandate is “staggeringly overbroad” and likely “violates the constitutional structure that safeguards our collective liberty.”  The Biden administration announced it would not enforce the mandate while the litigation is pending.  Monday also marked another setback for the Biden administration when a federal court in Missouri halted the federal requirement for health care workers to be vaccinated in 10 states: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.  The requirement, which came under a rule from the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year, is separate from OSHA’s emergency regulation.  In yet another separate regulation, the Biden administration’s Office of Personnel Management announced that it would delay penalties against federal employees who were not vaccinated by a Nov. 22 deadline. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now   @FredLucasWH Fred Lucas Fred Lucas is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of "The Right Side of History" podcast. Lucas is also the author of "Abuse of Power: Inside The Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump." Send an email to Fred.  

Horrific Waukesha Deaths Preventable Result of Ill-Considered Bail Policies Amy Swearer / @AmySwearer / Zack Smith / @tzsmith / Cully Stimson / @cullystimson / November 23, 2021         John Chisholm, pictured, the rogue Soros-backed prosecutor in Milwaukee County, released Darrell Brooks from custody when he should have sought no bail. On Nov. 21, Brooks drove his car through a Christmas parade, killing five adults and injuring more than 40 people, including children. (Photo: county/Milwaukee.gov) Commentary By Amy Swearer @AmySwearer Amy Swearer is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Zack Smith @tzsmith Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Cully Stimson @cullystimson Charles “Cully” Stimson is a leading expert in national security, homeland security, crime control, immigration, and drug policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research. After a summer of wildly destructive civil unrest followed by the looming shadow of the high-profile trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, residents of Wisconsin suffered another blow in the form of unspeakable tragedy. Five people were killed and more than 40 injured when a driver plowed through participants of an annual holiday parade, appearing to intentionally speed up and swerve into lines of marchers, before speeding off. Hours later, police arrested 39-year-old Darrell Brooks as the suspected driver of the vehicle. He is charged with five counts of homicide. Investigators are still looking into possible motives, including, according to some reports, the possibility that Brooks did not necessarily target the parade but was instead attempting to flee from a knife fight.   Whether the act was intentional or merely reckless and without regard to others, one thing is already clear—what happened in Waukesha was entirely preventable. Darrell Brooks should have been in jail several times over. The devastation he wrought happened only because grossly reckless bail policies touted by local officials enabled the release of an unrepentantly violent man whose actions routinely placed members of the community in serious danger. Brooks is a career criminal with a long rap sheet. His history of violence—including violence toward women—is well documented, and wide-ranging.   In 1999, Brooks pled guilty to felony battery with intent to cause bodily harm, and was sentenced to six months in jail and three years’ probation. Over the next seven years, Brooks had a series of short stints in jail for various drug and obstruction charges. In 2006, he was convicted of felony statutory sexual seduction for impregnating a 15-year-old girl. Brooks was 24 years old at the time. He was sentenced to probation and required to register as a sex offender. In 2010, Brooks pled no contest to felony strangulation and suffocation charges, as well as to violating the terms of his probation. He was sentenced to 11 months in jail and three more years of probation. Brooks spent much of 2011 and 2012 in jail, serving two separate 180-day sentences for charges of drug possession and bail jumping, and a 37-day sentence for misdemeanor resisting arrest. In 2016, Brooks was arrested and charged with failing to obey Nevada’s sex offender registration laws. He posted bail, then fled the state and never returned to court. He still has an active warrant out for his arrest in Nevada. In July 2020, Brooks was again arrested after allegedly getting into a fist fight with his nephew over a cellphone and then firing a gun at the nephew’s car as the nephew drove away. Arresting officers found Brooks still in possession of the firearm as well as a small amount of meth. He was charged with a slew of serious felonies, including possession a firearm as firearm and two counts of second-degree recklessly endangering public safety with the use of a firearm. Brooks’ bond was initially set at $10,000 but was quickly lowered to $7,500. He remained in custody until his Feb. 9 trial was postponed. His attorney then successfully argued for Brooks’ bail to be dropped even lower, and on Feb. 21, Brooks posted $500 bond and was released. On Nov. 5, with his 2020 charges still pending, Brooks was again arrested and charged with several serious felony offenses after a woman—reportedly the mother of Brooks’ children—told police that he purposefully ran her over with a vehicle after an argument. According to reports, the vehicular assault left tire marks on the woman’s pants and injured her so severely that she was hospitalized. Incredibly, despite two decades of violent behavior, an open felony warrant in Nevada, routine failures to abide by his probation or bond conditions, and an active case involving the violent use of a weapon, Brooks was allowed to post $1,000 cash bail. By Nov. 11, he was back in the community. When all relevant information comes to light about possible motive or premeditation, it seems incredible that no one could have reasonably foreseen that Brooks would commit this specific type of violence and leave this amount of carnage in his wake. Brooks’ propensity for violence and his lifetime spent disregarding the safety of others made a violent tragedy anything but unforeseeable. It also could have been foreseen that this kind of tragedy would inevitably occur as a result of the well-intentioned but ill-thought-out and poorly executed bail reform policies that progressives are putting into effect across the country. In fact, John Chisholm, the rogue George Soros-backed prosecutor in Milwaukee County who released Brooks when he should have sought no bail, issued a prophetic statement in 2007. He said: “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into [a] treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? … You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen.” He went on to argue, though, that “does not invalidate the overall approach.” We disagree. And now that the dire consequences of these rogue prosecutors’ policies are sparking public backlash, Chisholm has called for an investigation into Brooks’ “inappropriately low” bond. Unfortunately, this is emblematic of the rogue prosecutor movement more generally. They take a criminal-first, victim-last, passing-the-blame approach. And while the consequences here were undoubtedly tragic, it’s far from the only example of rogue prosecutors’ lax bond policies wreaking havoc on their communities. In Philadelphia, for example, rogue District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies led to the murder of Philadelphia Police Cpl. James O’Connor by an individual whom Krasner released through his lenient policies. Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain said, “The murder was the direct result of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s pro-violent defendant policies.” In Chicago, police have pointed to the “skyrocketing use of electronic monitoring as a key factor in the city’s shocking 50% rise in killings” last year. And no wonder. In Kim Foxx’s Chicago, there are apparently no consequences for violating bail terms. According to the Chicago Tribune, “About 400 people are charged every year with felony escape. During [her predecessor’s] last three years in office, she dropped a total of 55 such cases, compared with 420 for Foxx.” And then there’s San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin. As two of us (Cully and Zack) have previously written, “Since taking office, Boudin has also been criticized for releasing suspects with long criminal records who have gone on—surprise, surprise—to commit other crimes.” The events in Wisconsin were tragic. But the nightmare was a completely avoidable consequence of a criminal justice system run by Soros’ rogue prosecutors. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.    The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now  

Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in 2 Texas Heartbeat Act Cases. Here Are the Top Takeaways. Thomas Jipping / @TomJipping / Sarah Parshall Perry / @SarahPPerry / November 01, 2021 Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Nov. 1. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) COMMENTARY BY Thomas Jipping@TomJipping Thomas Jipping is deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Sarah Parshall Perry@SarahPPerry Sarah Parshall Perry is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. We are only a month into the Supreme Court’s 2021-22 term and abortion already appears to be this season’s defining topic. The court heard arguments in two cases on Monday related to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans most abortions after the fetal heartbeat is detected (which is usually about six weeks after conception). And in just one month, the court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks. While Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization focuses on the constitutional merits of the Mississippi ban, the Texas cases focus on how the legislature sought to shield the Texas abortion ban from legal challenge in its Heartbeat Act. Ordinarily, parties that opposed the law would file a lawsuit before it was scheduled to go into effect, asking for an injunction to stop any enforcement while its constitutionality is litigated. That’s what happened in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Texas law, however, says that it can be enforced only by “private civil actions” and removes public officials (those normally tasked with the enforcement of state and federal law) from the enforcement process on the Texas Heartbeat Act altogether. As a result, the law went into effect as scheduled on Sept. 1.   In Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, abortion providers sued to prevent state courts from handling any private civil actions to enforce the Texas abortion ban. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit put the Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson case on hold, and on emergency appeal, the Supreme Court left the hold in place, but said that the case raised “serious questions” about the law’s constitutionality. Even though the 5th Circuit scheduled arguments on the issue of whether federal courts could enjoin state courts from handling these lawsuits for early December, the plaintiffs appealed again to the Supreme Court by way of a rarely used procedural move known as “certiorari before judgment.” In United States v. Texas, the federal government sued Texas, also asking that the abortion ban be put on hold while its constitutionality is litigated. Like the abortion providers did in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the Biden administration did not wait for the 5th Circuit to rule, but appealed directly to the Supreme Court. So, on Nov. 1, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases—one brought by abortion providers and one by the federal government—involving procedural issues that must be cleared up before the constitutional merits of the Texas abortion ban can even be addressed. In Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the question is whether Texas can insulate its state law from federal court review by delegating enforcement to the public instead of state officials. In United States v. Texas, the question is whether the federal government has an interest in the case sufficient enough to sue state courts and officials to prevent them from enforcing the law. Texas argues that its new law does not prevent the courts from deciding this underlying constitutional issue. The enforcement mechanism simply prevents blocking the law before it is enforced. But abortion providers can still claim the law is unconstitutional should it be enforced against them in a private civil action. Besides, Texas says, the federal government’s desire to see the law declared unconstitutional is not enough to justify its intrusion into the state’s legislative business. At the Nov. 1 argument in United States v. Texas, newly appointed Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that the United States has a vested interest in vindicating constitutional law and warned that if the Supreme Court approved of this method of limiting judicial review, it could be replicated in other contexts. That may be true as a matter of general principle or policy, but the question for the Supreme Court is whether the United States has the legal standing to sue Texas over it. It would appear not—as the United States cannot demonstrate it has standing to bring a suit against an entire state, because it cannot prove it was somehow harmed by the actions of Texas and all its citizens. Justice Neil Gorsuch appeared impatient with the United States’ broad request for relief, saying that there had never been such an injunction so expansive “in the history of the United States.” This skepticism about the federal government’s desire to intervene in a state’s legislative and judicial process may mean that United States v. Texas is on shakier ground than Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. The justices were concerned not with the choice of enforcement mechanism in the Texas abortion ban—using private citizens to sue for violation of a state law—but were skeptical of the Texas solicitor general’s argument that the mechanism, by its nature, exempts the law from judicial review at all before it goes into effect. Because of how it’s written, the Texas Heartbeat Act cannot be challenged until after someone has brought suit on the act itself, and this seemed to be a universal hang-up for nearly the entire bench. Justice Sonia Sotomayor in particular cited a long list of constitutional rights, from the Second Amendment to same-sex marriage, that might also be infringed if the Texas act could be replicated in other states.  This is the crux of the issue in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson. Though that would remedy only one of the issues facing the justices. Ex Parte Young, a Supreme Court case from 1908, featured prominently in the arguments of the United States. In that decision the Supreme Court allowed suits in federal courts for injunctions against officials acting on behalf of states, despite the state’s sovereign immunity, when the state acted contrary to any federal law or contrary to the Constitution. But at the same time, that decision held that federal courts could not enjoin state courts from hearing cases. The abortion providers in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson argued that they were entitled to an injunction that would prevent state court clerks from accepting complaints (brought by private citizens) that claim the act has been violated. But that seems to run afoul of Ex Parte Young’s prohibition on federal courts enjoining state courts. Justice Brett Kavanaugh mentioned that the “spirit of Ex Parte Young” ought to apply, and that the underlying holding in that case might be expanded to permit an exception in this case. Justice Elena Kagan was quick to point out in oral arguments, saying: “Essentially, we would be inviting states, all 50 of them, with respect to their unpreferred constitutional rights, to try to nullify the law [on abortion] of—that this court has laid down as to the content of those rights.” Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone, arguing for the state of Texas, responded: “The state of Texas has not nullified anything. Abortions have dropped to 50% or 60%. We have not wholly extinguished the right of women to get abortions and Texas judges are [still] bound to follow this court’s precedent fully and faithfully.” The outcome in the Nov. 1 cases will have little to no effect on the outcome in Dobbs v. Jackson Whole Women’s Health, set for oral argument on Dec. 1. If the Supreme Court decides to ditch 50 years of abortion precedent and overturn Roe v. Wade—and some conservatives have posited there are enough votes from the justices to make it happen—all state abortion lawmaking ability and all related regulations would be sent to the states for determination of what can and cannot be done within their own boundaries on this hot-button issue. But if the Supreme Court keeps Roe v. Wade alive, Texas may be out of luck, as the Texas Heartbeat Act restricts exercise of a constitutional right. The justices’ line of questioning seemed to betray their desire to let the abortion providers’ case move forward. In either case, the Texas Heartbeat Act—and not Roe v. Wade—might well be the law sent to history’s dustbin. Editor’s note: Kagan’s quote has been corrected to reflect the official transcript. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Transgender Bathroom Policies Open Doors for Sexual Predators Nicole Russell / @russell_nm / October 14, 2021   A male student sexually assaulted a female student in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia in May. The girl’s father was arrested on June 22 at a Loudoun County School Board meeting for protesting a proposal that would expand protections for transgender students. Pictured: The Loudoun County School Board discusses transgender issues at a meeting on Aug. 10. (Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images) COMMENTARY BY Nicole Russell@russell_nm Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. An explosive piece published this week by The Daily Wire shows what happens when crime, liberal school policies, and leftist law enforcement induce a parent’s worst nightmare. In “Loudoun County Schools Tried To Conceal Sexual Assault Against Daughter In Bathroom, Father Says,” investigative reporter Luke Rosiak reveals a story about a young man who sexually assaulted a female student in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School. This incident is a harbinger of what will happen as school systems, law enforcement, and other powerful groups embrace politically correct social justice agendas over the safety and security of all. While official juvenile records are sealed, attorneys reveal that a young man wearing a skirt was “charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio,” after he assaulted a young woman in the school restroom.   On June 22, weeks after the incident, the young woman’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting for protesting a proposal that would expand protections for transgender students. He was dragged out, arrested, and later charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was merely upset about his daughter’s sexual assault and the connection to changing school policy so that biological boys can use the women’s bathroom if they identify as transgender. The school banned Smith from its property. Smith’s arrest has sparked media attention, further humiliating him. The only person who has been convicted of a crime is the heartbroken, angry father, not the young man who assaulted not one, but two women—the story later reveals—in the women’s restrooms. “My wife and I are gay- and lesbian-friendly,” Smith told The Daily Wire. “We’re not into this children transgender stuff. The person that attacked our daughter is apparently bisexual and occasionally wears dresses because he likes them. So this kid is technically not what the school board was fighting about. The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.” Many angles of this story are disturbing. Elected Democrats in Loudoun County are implementing liberal policies in school districts despite the obvious ramifications as described.  The school brushed off the sexual assault of a young woman in order to continue pressing for broad bathroom policies that are inclusive to the small transgender population in high school. The school administrators also treated a concerned father disrespectfully. The story also reveals an obvious truth about criminal behavior: Predatory people will take advantage of any policy that favors them. Even though a small percentage of society’s citizens are sexual predators, it only takes a few to upend the lives of victims and clog the criminal court divisions. Similarly, it’s also true that among the transgender population, which is already quite small, very few—if any—are sexual predators. However, that does not mean sexual predators would not readily take advantage of loosened or broad bathroom policies that allow bisexual or transgender people into women’s bathrooms. The nature of predatory criminals is that they can and will find loopholes so they can prey on vulnerable people easier—transgender or not. This has already happened in California. In January 2021, S.B. 132 was implemented. This law allows prisoners to request which facility they will be placed in based on their preferred gender, along with a few other parameters. Like clockwork, nearly 30 biological males asked to be transferred to California’s two women’s prisons. Many of these men were in prison for committing murder or sexual assault. Female prisoners must now live in fear and comply with this law, which was passed to protect the feelings of biological males. The Daily Wire article—worth a subscription and a read—provides harrowing details about how bad things will get if political correctness and law enforcement align to cover up truth. It also provides an inside look at just how sexual predators will use school bathroom policies or loose laws favoring transgender people for social justice’s sake. This is a watershed moment for conservatives, particularly parents, who wish to shield their children from leftist ideology taking precedence over physical safety. Most transgender people, like the rest of society, are largely not criminals, but all it takes is a few predatory people to take advantage of well-meaning, politically correct laws, to wreak havoc on the vulnerable. The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

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Attorney General Garland Abuses Power He Doesn’t Have to Threaten Parents GianCarlo Canaparo / @GCanaparo / Mike Howell / @mhowelltweets / October 05, 2021   Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo on Monday that essentially directs the Department of Justice and the FBI to intimidate parents who oppose the teaching of critical race theory in schools. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images) COMMENTARY BY GianCarlo Canaparo@GCanaparo GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Mike Howell@mhowelltweets Mike Howell is senior adviser for executive branch relations at The Heritage Foundation. A lawyer, he previously worked in the general counsel's office at the Department of Homeland Security and, before that, for the chief oversight committees of the House and Senate. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo on Monday directing the Department of Justice and the FBI to “launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”  The Garland memo looks like an effort to use the FBI to threaten and silence parents who are outspoken opponents of critical race theory in schools. That alone would be a stunning partisan abuse of power.  What Garland has done, however, is even more disgraceful. Maybe Garland doesn’t actually intend to use the FBI to go after parents—maybe he knows that he doesn’t have that power. In that case, he’s trying to trick parents into thinking that he does. This tactic, he hopes, will suppress parents’ free speech, and throw a bone to a powerful ally of his political party. Even a few FBI agents questioning parents may be enough to convince others that standing up for their values is not worth the risk.   To understand what Garland is doing with this memo, you’ll need a short primer on the background facts and government legalese. Starting with the facts: What is this “rise in criminal conduct” against school officials?  You won’t find any evidence cited in Garland’s memo. You won’t find any evidence in the FBI’s crime data either. This claim is parroted from a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the National School Boards Association—a powerful leftist group representing many of the school boards around the country pushing critical race theory curricula. That letter made vague claims about “threats and acts of violence” against school board members from parents who oppose critical race theory. The letter complained about “disruptions” by angry parents but managed to find only one example of violence against a school official (likely a security guard), which was handled by local law enforcement. Most of the letter is the National School Boards Association clutching its pearls, aghast that justifiably angry parents are zealously advocating for their children’s interest. The tactics thus far employed certainly are nothing compared to the riots of the summer of 2020 that destroyed over a billion dollars in property and resulted in multiple deaths. Those tactics were not decried by the National School Boards Association and its liberal friends. In fact, the current vice president organized financial support to the criminals engaged. The National School Boards Association is not really concerned about an isolated instance of violence adequately handled by local law enforcement. It is much more upset that it is powerless to stop parents from exercising their First Amendment rights to push back against critical race theory in the classroom. And so, in a move that is nearly a reflex among many leftist organizations, it asked the government to lend it some of its law enforcement power to shut up its meddling critics. Garland was only too happy to oblige. In doing so, he has made a hypocrite out of himself and Biden. When Biden announced Garland’s nomination, he promised to uphold the independence of the DOJ from the political influence of the White House. Garland promised the same, saying: I have spent my whole professional life looking up to Ed Levi and the other post-Watergate Attorneys General who stood up on behalf of the Department against impermissible pressure and influence. If I am confirmed as Attorney General, I intend to do the same. There is no clearer example of political influence seeping into the DOJ than a demand letter to the president from a leftist advocacy group turning into a DOJ memorandum in less than a week. But Garland’s weaponization of the DOJ has a problem: There is no conceivable basis for federal law enforcement action against these parents. Unlike Attorney General Eric Holder, who twisted and abused the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to silence pro-life advocates, Garland can’t find any law that he can similarly mangle to silence parents. If he could, he would have put it in the memo. But the parents don’t know that. And here enters the government legalese. Garland’s memo fails to cite any basis for law enforcement action by the DOJ or the FBI, but it hides that with a morass of official language that says nothing more than that federal law enforcement will provide some advice to local school boards.  FBI agents and federal prosecutors (who have nothing better to do, apparently) will travel the country giving school boards the phone number of their local police and the web address of the FBI’s internet tip line. After the sound and fury calms, nothing beside remains. What do we make of all this?  First, there is no reason to bring federal law enforcement into this; local authorities have this under control. Second, Garland has demonstrated, disappointingly, that he is beholden to powerful leftist political groups and perfectly happy to let them use the threat of federal government’s law enforcement power to suppress their critics’ right to free speech. The promised impendence of the DOJ is a farce. Third, it is more important to Garland to spend scarce law enforcement resources appeasing liberal interest groups than on more pressing national concerns. Fourth, some good news, parents need not be afraid. It is their constitutional right to push back in legal ways against schools teaching children critical race theory. Go forth to the school boards and make your voices heard. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

McAuliffe vetoed a law that would have allowed parents to block their children's exposure to sexually explicit books in schools. Such as illustrations of oral sex and masturbation and Evision’s allegedly shows graphic descriptions of a man having sex with children.   Terry McAuliffe: ‘I Don’t Think Parents Should Be Telling Schools What They Should Teach’ NICOLE SILVERIO CONTRIBUTOR September 28, 202111:59 PM ET     Democratic Virginia Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said parents should not have authority over what schools teach their children during a debate Tuesday evening. McAuliffe was challenged on his change in stance, as he previously advocated for protection for transgender students and now supports allowing local school districts to make independent decisions about controversial issues. His opponent, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, argued during the debate that local school districts should include parents in decisions regarding the educational content taught to their children. “In regard to our kids in schools, we are called for everyone to love everyone,” Youngkin said. “And I agree with your conclusion, Terry [McAuliffe], that we should let local school districts actually make these decisions. But we must ask them to include concepts of safety and privacy and respect in the discussion and we must ask that they include parents in the dialogue.” “I’m not gonna let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe replied. “I stopped the bill that I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” He explained that he supports parents having the right to veto books rather than make decisions for the schools on which books are placed in school libraries.         McAuliffe vetoed a bill, known as the “Beloved” bill in 2016 that would have allowed parents to block their childrens’ exposure to sexually explicit books in schools, the Washington Post previously reported. The legislation would have required teachers to inform parents of any “sexually explicit material” being presented in the classroom and give them the option to have their child opt out of the lesson. (RELATED: As Virginia Governor Race Draws To A Close, McAuliffe Will Not Name One Abortion Restriction He Supports)  Youngkin criticized McAuliffe’s veto of the bill during his time as governor, arguing that “parents should be in charge of their kid’s education.” The Republican candidate mentioned parents’ uproar this past week over Fairfax County High School allegedly presenting “sexually explicit” material in the library without parental consent. The school system removed the books “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathon Evison from the high school library Friday, according to WTOP News. Kobabe’s book reportedly contains illustrations of oral sex and masturbation and Evision’s allegedly shows graphic descriptions of a man having sex with children. The school board held a meeting Thursday evening during which parents challenged school administrators regarding their children’s accessibility to the books, according to the outlet.     Tags : education gubernatorial race sexually explicit book terry mcauliffe

The Morning Brew: Myth of January 6 ☠ ⚔ Insurrection ⚔ ☠ Takes Another Blow, Even CNN Calls Out Biden Border Agent Slander FBI Informant Was Inside Proud Boys on Jan 6, Told Feds No 💥 Insurrection or Violence 💥 Was in Their Plans   By AL PERROTTA Published on September 27, 2021   iStock.com/Dennis Garrels   By AL PERROTTA Published on September 27, 2021 Al Perrotta Happy Monday! We’d need to be an octopus to handle all the pots that are brewing this morning. Wow: So FBI Information Was Inside Proud Boys on Jan 6, Told Feds No “Insurrection” or “Violence” Was in Their Plans Remember how we were told Trump, along with groups like the Proud Boys were planning a violent “insurrection” on January 6? Further proof that was a lie emerged Saturday. And the “conspiracy theory” that the Feds were in the middle of everything? One step closer to proven true. The New York Times revealed Saturday that the FBI had an informant inside the Proud Boys who was with the group on January 6 at the Capitol. That informant had told the FBI the Proud Boys had no plans to commit violence and certainly no plans for an “insurrection.” This is consistent with news from a few weeks ago that the FBI has determined nobody was planning any insurrection, or anything beyond trying to get in the Capitol … which, of course, was made easy by police actually opening up the doors for so many. Last week, several videos were released from inside the Capitol that further disintegrated the myth that masses of Trump supporters were storming the Capitol to overthrow the government. Revolver reported a few months ago that FBI agents and informers were not only active in groups planning to come to the rally, but were helping instigate the trouble that did erupt. A couple questions: Just how many federal agents and informers were involved in the January 6 protests? And to what degree did they instigate the trouble? Since the Feds knew nobody was there to launch an insurrection or coup, when did Nancy Pelosi know this? Doesn’t this make the whole second impeachment a fraud? To say nothing of the entire “insurrection” narrative? Since Twitter used the notion of an attempted insurrection as an excuse to throw a massive number of conservatives off Twitter – including yours truly — can we have our suspensions lifted? Arizona Audit Finds “Critical” Issues With 44,000 Votes … and Clear Signs of Corruption I know what the media says the Arizona audit found. Joe Biden still won. But that’s not what the report itself says. Biden won Arizona the way Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France. Like Rosie Ruiz won the Boston Marathon. I lay out what the report actually says, and tie it in with evidence from other states, in “Forget the Spin on the Arizona Audit. It Proves the Election Was Corrupt.” Interestingly, a draft of the audit report declared: “Based on these factual findings, the election should not be certified, and the reported results are not reliable.” The Rich Guy Who Wants to Tax the Rich Owes Half a Million Bucks to the IRS Joe Biden declared again last week that he is hellbent on raising taxes on the rich. What he failed to mention is he’s not even paying what he owes. According to a bipartisan government report, Biden could owe about $500,000 to the IRS in back Medicare payments. One Hunter Biden painting sale should cover that. No problem. Which gets to Biden’s bigger problem. His history of corruption and using his influence to enrich his family and friends. That’s not me saying it. Or Trump. Or Peter Schweiker. Ask Politico’s Ben Schreckinger. He’s got a new book out on the Bidens’ 50 year rise to power. He told CBS News Sunday morning, “I found a number of incidents which there were scandals, questions of favorable treatment surrounding some of their business dealings going all the way back to the 1970s.”   When You Lose CNN: Jake Tapper Calls Out “Patently False” Allegations Against Border Patrol Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris went to “war” against America’s own border agents, expressing horror at mounted agents “whipping” Haitian migrants trying to illegally cross the border. Biden promised the agents would be punished. “Make no mistake, those people will pay!” growled Biden. Except it never happened. By the time Biden and Harris were attacking the agents, they knew the allegation was false. On Sunday, CNN’s Jake Tapper ripped Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for the administration’s slander of those protecting our border. “Some of the initial descriptions of those images were just patently false,” Tapper said. “There’s now video out there that provides more context. Having seen the video are you certain that there was actually wrongdoing?”  (Imagine how Tapper would have framed it for a Trump official. “Why are you lying to the American people, and besmirching honest government workers?”) Even with Tapper giving him an out, Mayorkas didn’t have the class or honesty to admit the border agents were simply and properly doing their job. Admit nobody was whipping anybody with anything. Only that the investigation would continue.   He also admitted to Fox News at least 12,000 of the illegal immigrants who flooded into Del Rio, Texas in recent weeks have been released into the U.S. And “the numbers could be even higher.” Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic and Moral Issues of Our Day. Meanwhile, if Biden does follow through on his vow to punish the border agents, they won’t be out of a job long. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told the agents Sunday, “You have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.” Great! But let’s look at the bigger picture: Joe Biden angrily and publicly threatened to punish border agents for successfully doing their job. He has refused to punish anyone in his administration for their abject failure in Afghanistan.   Along The Stream John Zmirak has kicked off our week shredding the Red Flag bill passed by the House with the help from Republicans. John asks, “Did Matt Gaetz and 134 Other Republican Congressmen Just Swear Allegiance to the Taliban?”   Al Perrotta is the Managing Editor of The Stream, chief barista for The Morning Brew;and co-author, with John Zmirak, of; The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration. You can follow him at @StreamingAl at Gab, Parler, MeWe and now; GETTR.   Like the article? Share it with your friends! And use our social media pages to join or start the conversation! Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, Instagram, MeWe and Gab.

When Politicians Call For 'Fairness,' They're Usually Lying By Ben Shapiro September 22, 2021   This week, President Joe Biden attempted to inject life into his ailing presidency by dragging out of the closet the hoariest of political cliches: "fairness" in taxation. Touting his new $3.5 trillion tax and spending bill, which would radically increase corporate taxes, personal income taxes and so-called sin taxes, Biden stated, "It's not enough just to build back; we have to build back better than before ... I'm not out to punish anyone. I'm a capitalist. If you can make a million or a billion dollars, that's great. God bless you. All I'm asking is you pay your fair share. Pay your fair share just like middle-class folks do." Of course, those who earn high incomes don't pay like middle-class folks do. They pay far, far more. IRS statistics show that the top 1% of income earners pay more in federal income tax than the bottom 90% combined — while the top 1% earned 21% of all income in 2018, they paid 40 % of all income tax revenue. The top 10 % paid over 70 % of all federal income tax. In fact, according to the American Enterprise Institute, those in the highest quintile of income earners pay, on average, well over $50,000 per year in net taxes — taxes minus government benefits received — while those in the bottom 60% of income earners receive net tax benefits. According to The Washington Post, the top 10 % of American income earners pay nearly half of all income taxes, compared with just 27% for the top 10% of Swedes, 31% for the top 10% of Germans, and 28% for France's top 10%. So what, precisely, does Biden mean by "pay their fair share"?     Perhaps he means simple sloganeering. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez donning a Cinderella ball gown emblazoned with the words "TAX THE RICH" to the Met Gala — a dress made by Aurora James, a woman who owes tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes and who has received over $40,000 in federal pandemic aid — class warfare sloganeering is more about the sloganeering than the class warfare. No Democrat seems prepared to define what "fairness" constitutes, other than "a word I use to pander to the rubes, while hobnobbing with the rich." And Biden's "fairness" pitch has to do with good economic policy, of course. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked during a debate about raising the capital gains tax, even if it lowered net government revenue. He answered, "I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness." In other words, Obama explicitly stated that he would damage the economy on behalf of a vague, kindergarten notion of equal outcome. In the end, the "tax the rich to be fair" notion rests on a simple lie: the lie that income distribution is purely a matter of privilege or luck. It isn't. In the main, in a free market system, income distribution is the result of successful decision-making that must be incentivized rather than punished if we wish to see a more prosperous society. Some people game the system; some are indeed beneficiaries of insider deal-making. But most success in capitalism is due to innovation, entrepreneurialism and creativity. Biden's "fairness" cuts directly against these core elements of progress on behalf of political pandering.     If we truly care about fairness — a more nuanced and complete definition of fairness that encompasses rewards for productive decisions and disincentives for counterproductive decision-making — we must abandon the politically convenient notion that those who earn more have somehow stolen from the system and must be punished for their crimes. Lack of distributive equality does not equal unfairness, and anyone who argues differently abandons the real world — and the possibility of a better life for everyone — in favor of the flattering lie that all roads ought to end in the same basic material outcome. Ben Shapiro, 37, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and editor-in-chief of DailyWire.com. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers "How To Destroy America In Three Easy Steps," "The Right Side Of History," and "Bullies." To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. Photo credit: Free-Photos at Pixabay             Like it? Share it!       1 opinion conservative conservative taxes economics free market wealth capitalism taxation inequality fairness tax the rich About Ben Shapiro Read More | RSS | Subscribe

As Vaccine Mandates Increase - Religious Exemptions Come Under Fire Mary Margaret Olohan / @MaryMargOlohan / September 22, 2021   Pressure from activists and mandate-minded lawmakers suggests that the religious objections of Americans to COVID-19 vaccine mandates may face more serious inquisition in the coming weeks. (Photo Illustration: photos/Getty Images) Columbia University’s Robert Klitzman shared a tragic story with CNN Saturday of a woman riddled with cancer who reportedly refused to undergo medical procedures, relied on the power of prayer, and ultimately died. “Her religious belief contributed to her death, unfortunately,” he said. Klitzman, who directs Columbia’s bioethics master’s program, stressed that employees should not be able to easily obtain religious exemptions from President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates, pointing to the extreme beliefs of jihadists and noting, “there are limits in our society to how far religious beliefs can go.” He also suggested that the Biden administration should create “guidelines” to decide whether Americans’ religious objections measure up.   “The problem is a lot of religious exemptions that people are claiming … are based on myths,” he said. “People saying, for instance, ‘All vaccines are made using fetal cells, and I’m pro-life.’ That’s simply not true.” A Biden administration official told The Daily Caller News Foundation Tuesday afternoon that protecting religious Americans “will be part of the policy process,” but did not further explain the remark. From the briefing room, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that some individuals may receive religious exemptions from the Biden mandate. But pressure from activists and mandate-minded lawmakers suggests that the religious objections of Americans may face more serious inquisition in the coming weeks. “How much can we ask? How far can we push? Do we have to accommodate this? Those are the questions employers are trying to figure out,” Society for Human Resource Management adviser Barbara Holland told The New York Times. “How do I tease out who’s not telling the truth?” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, told reporters in early September that she was unaware “of a sanctioned religious exemption from any organized religion,” dismissing the idea that health care workers could be religiously exempt from the state’s vaccine mandate. “To the extent that there’s leadership of different religious organizations that have spoken, and they have, I’m not aware of a sanctioned religious exemption from any organized religion,” Hochul said. “In fact, they’re encouraging the opposite. They’re encouraging their members, everybody from the pope on down, is encouraging people to get vaccinated. So people will say what they choose.”  But neither the governor of New York nor any employer has the authority to tell an individual what he or she believes, Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Roger Severino told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Should an employer rebut the religious objection of a Catholic employee by noting that the pope had encouraged Catholics to get vaccinated, Severino told The Daily Caller News Foundation, that would amount to religious discrimination. “For employers to say, ‘you are wrong’ about your own beliefs is a) arrogant and b) discriminatory because people are entitled to their own religious beliefs,” Severino said. “Even if they disagree with their own religious leaders.” Many thousands of Americans are seeking religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, citing reports that some of the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal cell lines. Objectors also cite concerns over the haste with which the vaccines were made, anxieties over the vaccines’ effects on fertility, and distaste for the authoritarian government mandates. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, U.S. employers are required to accommodate their employees’ “sincerely held” religious beliefs—including potential religious objections to a vaccine.  “Public institutions should not act like inquisitorial boards, quizzing people’s religious beliefs and trying to find holes because somebody has a different view of things,” said Severino, who is the former director of the Office of Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services.  “If separation of church and state means anything, it means that state institutions don’t second guess to try to resolve religious truths.” Workplace Religious Accommodations: What Are They? There is longstanding legal precedent for workplace religious accommodations to be taken as sincere, Religious Freedom & Business Foundation President Brian Grim told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “They are viewed as personal religious convictions rather than ecclesiastical, in other words, matters of conscience rather than doctrine per se, given that there is wide variety in how people put to practice their faiths,” Grim said. “The question then becomes whether the accommodation request puts an undue burden on the employer, who is also protected by law and responsible for the health and well-being of all employees.” U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance warns that “whether or not a religious belief is sincerely held by an applicant or employee is rarely at issue in many types of Title VII religious claims. “For example,” the guidance said, “with respect to an allegation of discriminatory discharge or harassment, it is the motivation of the discriminating official, not the actual beliefs of the individual alleging discrimination, that is relevant in determining if the discrimination that occurred was because of religion.” Neither the commission nor the courts should “be in the business of deciding whether a person holds religious beliefs for the ‘proper’ reasons,” the guidance said, but they may examine the individual’s motives or reasons for holding the belief. An individual would not be deemed insincere in his belief just because he is not scrupulous in his observance, the guidance notes, but an employee’s credibility could be undermined by behaving “in a manner markedly inconsistent with the professed belief,” if the accommodation the individual is seeking would have a “particularly desirable benefit that is likely to be sought for secular reasons,” if the timing of the religious objection is suspect, or if the employer has other reasons to believe the “accommodation is not sought for religious reasons.” None of these factors are final, however: An individual may inconsistently practice his faith but still hold sincerely held beliefs, or an individual may have “forgone his or her sincerely held religious practice” out of fear of discrimination, according to the EEOC guidance. How Far Can the Biden Administration Go? Legal experts at the Alliance Defending Freedom are evaluating what the Biden administration mandates mean for religious employers and churches. “Should these mandates encroach on the First Amendment freedoms and autonomy of religious institutions, ADF stands ready to challenge the administration in federal court,” ADF President and CEO Michael Farris and General Counsel Kristen Waggoner said in a statement. Some have already taken the mandates to court. In early September, a group of 17 health professionals represented by the Thomas More Society sued New York and Hochul, accusing the state of violating Title VII and constitutional rights through its vaccination mandate and by disavowing religious exemptions. The United States District Court for the Northern District of New York granted a temporary restraining order to the medical workers Sept. 14, barring the New York Department of Health “from interfering in any way with the granting of religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination going forward.” New York Medical Workers Su… by Mary Margaret Olohan Hochul, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Caller News Foundation, has until Sept. 22 to respond in court. “What New York is attempting to do is slam shut an escape hatch from an unconstitutional vaccine mandate,” Christopher Ferrara, Thomas More Society special counsel attorney, said in a Sept. 14 statement. “And they are doing this while knowing that many people have sincere religious objections to vaccines that were tested, developed, or produced with cell lines derived from aborted children.” Vaccines and Abortion-Derived Cell Lines Analysis by the Charlotte Lozier Institute released in December 2020 found that AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson use abortion-derived cell lines in development, production, and lab testing. Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, Novavax, and Inovio use abortion-derived cells in some tests but do not use abortion-derived cells in other tests, the analysis found, but these four do not use abortion-derived cell lines in development or production of the vaccine. Charlotte Lozier Institute Vice President Dr. David Prentice previously told The Daily Caller News Foundation that when abortion-derived cell lines are used in the production of a vaccine, that means the cells are “directly involved in making the final product, the vaccine that is injected in our arms.” “It is an essential element for the final vaccine,” Prentice said. “Although the connection is distant both in time and space, since the abortion occurred decades ago and the cells have been grown in the lab ever since, that connection to abortion remains and is of concern to many Americans. ” Laboratory testing using abortion-derived cell lines is potentially less morally problematic, since it is “another step removed” Prentice said. “When an abortion-derived cell line is used in laboratory testing, that is not done within the production line,” he explained. “It’s a confirmatory test done on the final vaccine, to validate what the scientists believe they’ve produced.” 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 for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now   Mary Margaret Olohan @MaryMargOlohan Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter covering social issues for The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Critical Race Theory Will Destroy the Fabric of Our Military Sep 14th, 2021  COMMENTARY BY John Venable@JVVenable Senior Research Fellow for Defense Policy John “JV” Venable, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force is a senior research fellow for defense policy at Heritage. KEY TAKEAWAYS The U.S. military has mastered the process that develops unity by compelling recruits to let go of their individualism for the sake of the team. Critical race theory divides organizations against themselves, and history shows that divided organizations cannot stand. If allowed to propagate, it will foster internal contempt, destroy morale and undercut the demand for excellence on which the success of our military relies.   Copied  In just 10 words, Napoleon captured perhaps the most important element for leading a team to success: "The moral is to the physical as three to one." Morale involves cohesion, confidence, a sense of common purpose, and loyalty all wrapped up into a hard-to-measure but readily discernible package. Teams with high morale radiate energy and meet heady challenges head-on. The indifference of those without it is equally palpable. Back in July, President Joe Biden publicly conveyed his belief that the Afghan army, with 300,000 soldiers and its own air force, would hold against some 75,000 Taliban. And yet, even with 4 to 1 odds, that well-equipped organization melted away in the face of a poorly armed militia. Though hard to quantify, morale is an essential element of effective teams. More often than not, it is the difference between winning and losing in any arena. Those precious few who have served during conflicts don’t just embrace that fact; they view Napoleon’s dictum as one of the most treasured and carefully guarded elements within their fighting force. They hold the morale of their units close to their chests because it is incredibly hard to develop and so easily lost. >>> Critical Race Theory Over the course of its history, the U.S. military has mastered the process that develops unity by compelling recruits to let go of their individualism for the sake of the team. The traits of race, creed, color, faith, and family heritage are hard enough to put in check, but in recent years, technology has delivered an accelerant to individualism. The military works to rid the iPhone generation of its focus on self through a relentless series of physical and emotional challenges that can be resolved only by believing in and being part of something bigger than themselves. Marine Corps basic training is perhaps the most effective in that role. Its graduates leave with a service culture, work ethic, and an indelible bond that is shared with all others that have earned the right to wear that uniform. Units receiving those graduates know that any semblance of cliques or individual isolation can be cancerous, so they further that bond by onboarding them technically and socially to ensure every new Marine is fully assimilated into the team. That process enables units to grow closer through the most arduous of circumstances and, when required, to fight and win. Leaders of organizations with exceptional morale will fight off every stimulus that could pit one part of their team against another or could divide the whole into favored and unfavored elements or factions. And yet, that is the very essence of critical race theory now working its way into the Defense Department. By design, critical race theory destroys unifying organizational cultures by dividing people by race and sex. And then, incredulously, it demands each subgroup to identify themselves and the others as either oppressors or the oppressed. The fix, the remedy critical race theory offers society, is to subjugate the "oppressors" to the whims of those it has predetermined to be "oppressed," sanctifying the blight of racism the service has worked so hard to stamp out. Put simply, critical race theory divides organizations against themselves, and history shows that divided organizations cannot stand. >>> Democrats Just Revealed They Don’t Understand How Critical Race Theory Threatens Our Military For more than 50 years, our military has set the standard for race relations in the United States. While there will always be room for improvement, critical race theory will reverse that trajectory. If allowed to propagate, it will foster internal contempt, destroy morale and undercut the demand for excellence on which the success of our military relies. Senior leaders within the Defense Department must stand alone, if necessary, against every introductory element or seemingly benign aspect of this destructive scheme. They must make that stand now, before we lose the bond that holds our military together and relegates those segregated groups, and our nation, to the kind of nightmare the people of Afghanistan now endure. This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner

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Teachers Union Sues Rhode Island Mom for Seeking Records About School’s Critical Race Theory Curriculum‼️ Virginia Allen / @Virginia_Allen5 / August 05, 2021   The National Education Association is suing mother Nicole Solas after she filed multiple public records requests with the South Kingstown School District in Rhode Island requesting information about the schools’ teaching of critical race theory. (Photo: Podfoto/ Getty Images) The National Education Association, America’s largest teachers union, is suing a Rhode Island mom for seeking information about what her kindergartener will be taught in school.  Both the National Education Association Rhode Island and National Education Association South Kingstown, the union’s local branch, are suing Nicole Solas after she filed public record requests with the South Kingstown School District to learn what students are being taught regarding critical race theory.  “It appears … [the teachers union wants] a court to say I can’t get the public information that I’m requesting because it will somehow harm teachers,” Solas told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.  The complaint was filed with the Rhode Island Superior Court on Monday and a constable arrived at Solas’ home on Wednesday to deliver papers informing the mother of the lawsuit.   “I just got served with a lawsuit from the teacher union, NEARI,” Solas wrote on Twitter. “Throwing down the gauntlet, are we? Game on.” On Thursday, the union also filed for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Solas. The legal action is intended to prohibit the South Kingstown school board from “responding to public record requests referenced in the Verified Complaint, unless and until a determination can be made that such documents are required to be released pursuant to the Access to Public Records Act,” the court filing reads.   “Today, the teacher union NEA filed ANOTHER lawsuit against me – this time a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction,” Solas tweeted. “Will teacher unions bullying moms be an everyday thing now?” Over the past few months, Solas has filed more than 200 public records requests with the South Kingstown School District, about 30 miles south of Providence, Rhode Island.  In April, the principal of the elementary school told Solas to file records requests after the mother emailed the principal asking for a copy of the curriculum and other information about the school district.  Solas was told that due to the breadth of her questions, she needed to file records requests, which she did.  In June, the South Kingstown school board threatened to sue Solas over the requests she was making. Ultimately, the school board voted not to take legal action against her. But now, the union representing South Kingstown teachers has filed a 30-page suit against her.  The teachers union is asking the court to “prohibit the disclosure of non-public records” and for the court to use a “balancing test” to assess whether or not teachers’ “personally identifiable and other personnel-related information” must be released, according to the complaint.  The National Education Association Rhode Island “laid out a lot of reasons [in the complaint] why some of the information I requested may not be subject to public disclosure, but that is all controlled under the Rhode Island Access to Public Records Act, and the School Committee attorneys would be making all those decisions themselves,” Solas said.  She added that if the “teachers union believes that the School Committee attorney made a wrong decision on the release of information, the teachers union can certainly sue the school.” Instead, Solas is the one being sued.  “I think this is purely an intimidation tactic,” Solas said of the lawsuit.  The complaint is outlined in 70 points detailing why the information Solas is requesting should not be released, including concerns over a conservative group’s reporting of educators teaching critical race theory.  Point 70 reads:  Given the circumstances of the requests, it is likely that any teachers who are identifiable and have engaged in discussions about things like critical race theory will then be the subject of teacher harassment by national conservative groups opposed to critical race theory. Appendix C of the complaint includes two news stories covering the South Kingstown school board’s threat to sue Solas in June. The first is from Legal Insurrection, which first covered the story, and the second is from The Daily Signal.  Solas says that it appears that the teachers union is seeking to act as a “third-party intermediary” to decide whether or not she can receive the public information she is requesting.  “I hope teachers see this lawsuit as the last straw of their union’s decades-long denigration of their profession,” Solas said. “I hope teachers leave the union because they refuse to fund litigation that harasses and bullies mothers who exercise their civil right to access public information about their children’s education.” The young mom is being represented by the Goldwater Institute, a conservative public policy and ligation organization based in Phoenix.  “Rhode Island law does not authorize what the [National Education Association] is attempting to do here,” Goldwater lawyer Jon Riches told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.  “Nicole did what any conscientious parent would do,” Riches added. “She sought out information about what her child is going to learn, and from Day One, she was stonewalled. First, she was stonewalled by the district. Now, she is being intimidated by the union.”  The Daily Signal reached out to the National Education Association Rhode Island for comment and received a prepared statement in response with a quote from Deputy Executive Director Jennifer Azevedo. We are asking the Court to conduct a balancing test to determine whether our members’ privacy rights outweigh the public interest. We believe they do, and those records should either not be disclosed or should be redacted accordingly. Multiple APRA requests were made in recent months to the South Kingstown School Department demanding detailed information about specific educators and members in general of NEA South Kingstown, our local NEARI educator affiliate.  While NEARI and NEASK support access to public information, the organizations firmly believe in protecting the rights, safety, and privacy of its members and will continue to advocate strongly on their behalf. We look forward to the Court’s declaratory judgement. “As long as such information does not include ‘personally identifiable information,’ which legally must be kept confidential, the NEA’s request for a behind-closed-doors review with the judge in this case, in addition to previous statements about wanting not to distract from ‘equity efforts’ by fulfilling Solas’ requests, indicates that whatever the school board is teaching, it very much wants to hide,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)  Even though Solas has now enrolled her daughter in a private school, both she and the Goldwater Institute are prepared to move forward with the lawsuit in an effort to stand up for parents across the nation who are concerned about their child being taught critical race theory and other leftist ideology in the classroom.  “They made the wrong mom mad,” said Solas, who added that the fight is about so much more than simply her own records requests. This is about parents having a right to know what their child’s education is. This is about not being bullied by a teacher union who wants to challenge a stay-at-home mom for asking questions about education. And this is about open government.  The actions of the teachers union are “unacceptable,” Riches said. “It’s not going to stand. We are going to fight back every step of the way. Nicole is not going to be intimidated.”  Correction: This piece was corrected after publication to accurately state that the lawsuit was filed in the Rhode Island Superior Court. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now                 @Virginia_Allen5 Virginia Allen Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia.

Ashli Babbitt's Family Lawyer Says Cop 'Ambushed' Her on Jan. 6 with No Warning Elizabeth Stauffer August 6, 2021 at 12:28pm   Despite the chaos unfolding at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, just a single shot was fired — the shot that killed unarmed Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, 35. Unbelievably, not a word was uttered about either the shooter or his victim during the opening hearing of the House select committee’s sham investigation into the Capitol incursion. As the Babbitt family attorney, Terry Roberts, prepares to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. Capitol Police and the officer involved, believed to be Lt. Michael Byrd, a conflict is heating up over whether or not Babbitt was warned before the officer pulled the trigger. It should be noted that Byrd has reportedly been placed on a paid administrative leave from his position with the Capitol Police. RealClear Investigations’ Paul Sperry has followed this story closely and addressed this situation in a new report. Trending: 29-Year Police Vet Debunks Massive Lie About Capitol Cop Suicides, Exposes Truth Behind Horrible Deaths Byrd’s attorney, Mark Schamel, insists his client issued a warning and that he “did so loudly and clearly,” according to Sperry. “He was screaming, ‘Stay back! Stay back! Don’t come in here!” Schamel said. Although I have no background in the law, shouting, “Stay back! Stay back! Don’t come in here!” to a mob doesn’t constitute a warning that an officer is about to shoot. It’s a command. A true warning would mention that shots were about to be fired into the crowd. “He was acting within his training. Lethal force is appropriate if the situation puts you or others in fear of imminent bodily harm,” Schamel argued. Do you believe Ashli Babbitt received sufficient warning of lethal force? Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. He said his client had been guarding a critical chokepoint and prevented a “potential massacre of lawmakers and staff.” Schamel went so far as to say, “There should be a training video on how he handled that situation. What he did was unbelievable heroism.” “Schamel said witness statements back him up,” Sperry wrote. “He explained the lieutenant’s commands were not picked up on video recordings because the footage was shot on the other side of the doors where dozens of rioters were shouting and banging and drowning out his words. And he said his client could not be seen yelling out the instructions because his mouth was covered by a mask he wore as part of COVID-19 protections.” Sperry interviewed Roberts who said, “It’s not debatable. There was no warning.” “I would call what he did an ambush. I don’t think he’s a good officer. I think he’s reckless,” Roberts said. Related: 29-Year Police Vet Debunks Massive Lie About Capitol Cop Suicides, Exposes Truth Behind Horrible Deaths Shooting randomly into a crowd is reckless. Roberts told Sperry he has several witnesses who were with Babbitt and did not hear the officer issue “any kind of warning.” Roberts made the very compelling point that if Byrd had indeed issued a warning, why did no one react to it? His investigators, he told Sperry, had examined video which showed that none of the officers who were in the hallway with the shooter reacted before he pulled the trigger. He said none of them took cover or crouched or pulled their own guns as would have been expected had they heard a warning. Instead, he said that, just prior to the shooting, they’d been casually milling about in the lobby. “Those other officers were within earshot. If he’s yelling, they certainly aren’t showing any reaction to it,” he said. “If he was giving any kind of warning, why didn’t they react?” A veteran Capitol Police officer, who reportedly spoke to Sperry on the condition of anonymity, said, “I’m not sure how he was justified shooting her when there was a SWAT team right behind her. They saw no immediate threat.” Sperry explained the SWAT team consisted of  “three heavily armed USCP officers who had positioned themselves between the doors and the mob.” This is an issue that Republicans have brought up repeatedly. They would like to see members of the SWAT team testify before the House select committee. Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar said, “They were right next to her and saw no threat, certainly no lethal threat. Why were there no warnings given or escalation of command and force in proper law enforcement technique?” Former Capitol Police officer Patrick Skinner told Sperry that “we were trained in what to do if gunmen tried to storm the Capitol, but we were not trained in what to do if hundreds of people decided to rush the building.” He explained that officers didn’t know what they were facing on Jan. 6. The situation was unprecedented. Sperry also reportedly spoke to a former inspector general who reiterated what Skinner had said. “This is not meant pejoratively but just as a fact, but the [Capitol Police] is far from being some kind of elite law enforcement body. Its principal function is to assist tourists, maintain decorum in a tourist environment, and help out members of Congress and their staffs.” So far, Democrats and the DOJ have managed to shield the shooter from the legal consequences of those actions. We know that Capitol Police were overwhelmed by an unprecedented situation (which could have been prevented had House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not rejected then-President Donald Trump’s request for 10,000 National Guard troops to be present, but I digress.) Neither the DOJ nor the Democratic Party can protect the officer from the Babbitt family’s wrongful death lawsuit. Roberts can call the members of the SWAT team standing right behind Ashli Babbitt that day or anyone else he chooses. And Schamel is kidding himself if he considers his client’s shout of, “Stay back! Stay back! Don’t come in here!” inside of the chaotic and noisy House chamber to be a proper warning of lethal force.

Why States Should Tune Out Washington’s COVID-19 Noise Doug Badger / @Dougsbriefcase / August 02, 2021 Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci looks on as Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies before a Senate committee on July 20. Walensky has expressed support for European-style COVID-19 vaccine "passports." (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/Getty Images) COMMENTARY BY Doug Badger@Dougsbriefcase Doug Badger is a former White House and Senate policy adviser and is currently a senior fellow at the Galen Institute and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation. The federal government continues to offer garbled COVID-19 messages that undermine its credibility and sow confusion about the pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now thinks there are more infections among the vaccinated than it did previously (35,000 weekly with symptomatic infections) and suggests that vaccinated people are helping spread what President Joe Biden calls a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Biden, meanwhile, continues his unsuccessful vax-“shaming” campaign. He says that unvaccinated people “aren’t nearly as smart as I thought” and alleges that they “get sick and fill up our hospitals,” denying medical care to heart attack victims.  According to the Department of Health and Human Services, of the nation’s more than 919,500 hospital beds, COVID-19-associated hospital admissions totaled just 944 on July 24. That compares with 6,679 such hospital admissions in early January.   The administration’s vaccine campaign also has turned to coercion. The CDC director has voiced support for “vaccine passports,” which deny the unvaccinated access to public venues. The president has ordered unvaccinated federal employees and contractors to submit to frequent testing and workplace restrictions from which their vaccinated colleagues are exempt. Washington’s frenetic and ineffectual reaction to the most recent run-up in cases points up the virtues of constitutional federalism, a decentralized approach that defers policy decisions to states and localities. Not everyone agrees. “When our collective fate relies on speed, efficiency, and unity,” a Journal of the American Medical Association editorial reads, “federalist ideals fall flat.” “Divided gov­ernment creates unnecessary challenges for residents of states that are too slow to act or take up federal policies,” it claims. The Bipartisan Policy Center laments the “patchwork of state responses” and says it’s “vital for states and localities to follow federal evidence-based guidelines.” A recent analysis of the public policy response to COVID-19 co-authored with my Heritage Foundation colleague Robert Moffitt reached the opposite conclusion. It finds that the country benefited from policies adapted to the varied conditions of states and localities, a principal virtue of federalism. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) Advocates of centralized decision-making assume that federal policymakers formulate consistently sound, evidence-based policies. The corollary is that states that deviate from those policies will fare worse than states that adhere to them. We found both suppositions false. The CDC made repeated errors in judgment; issued policies that were often unclear, misguided, and not evidence-based; and made recommendations that too often yielded few, if any, public health benefits while inflicting social and economic damage. Our look at the four most populous states (California, Texas, Florida, and New York) found that the two that spurned CDC-favored policies (Florida and Texas) had comparable or better public health outcomes and far better economic outcomes than the two (California and New York) that closely followed federal agency guidelines. With a new run-up in cases, it’s vitally important that states strike appropriate policy courses and not accept the CDC’s spasmodic policy declarations at face value. They should begin by avoiding the CDC’s obsession with case counts. While higher confirmed case rates raise concerns, they don’t carry the same implications as previous spikes. Unlike last winter’s case surge, vaccination rates among those most susceptible to severe illness and death are high. According to the CDC, 80% of the elderly are fully immunized, and 90% have had at least one shot. State and local public health officials should instead focus on hospitalizations and deaths. The experience in the United Kingdom is instructive. Its spike in cases began in late May and only started to subside in late July. But while its seven-day moving average of newly confirmed cases peaked at 703 per million on July 21—not far from the record number of new infections that the U.S. recorded in January—COVID-19-related death rates in the U.K. increased only modestly. As of July 27, they were around one per million residents, similar to the U.S., and a fraction of the 18.46 deaths per million rate the U.K. endured last winter. The U.K. demonstrates that case counts can rise in a population with significant vaccination rates without producing nearly the devastation of earlier waves of infection. State and local policymakers should base policy on more relevant measures of pandemic severity, such as hospitalization and death rates.   That would facilitate more intelligent and tolerant approaches toward people who are reluctant to get the vaccine—approaches based on respect, not on condescension. Instead of smearing unvaccinated people as menaces to society, states can stress that vaccines protect individuals against the worst consequences of COVID-19 even if they don’t always prevent infection. States should also encourage people to listen to their doctors—not their Twitter feeds—when deciding whether to get immunized. It will be hard for state officials to make themselves heard above the Washington noise, but people will more likely respond favorably to rational and balanced messaging than to insults, coercion, and contradictory messages. Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Fact-Checking 6 Claims at Senate Democrats’ Voting Law Hearing Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / July 19, 2021 "Spurred on by the big lie, these same actors are now rolling back voting rights in a way that is unprecedented in size and scope since the Jim Crow era,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., testifies Monday during a Senate Rules Committee hearing on Georgia's new voting law in Atlanta. (Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images) Senate Democrats took their push to nullify state election laws on the road Monday, holding a “field hearing” in Atlanta to attack Georgia’s recent election reforms and promote their bill to eliminate voter ID and other requirements.  Only Democrat members of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee showed up to question witnesses, also all Democrats.  Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Republicans had the opportunity to call a witness to defend the Georgia law, but didn’t request one. A spokesperson for the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., didn’t respond Monday to The Daily Signal’s emails and phone inquiries on this point.  The hearing, held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, included numerous assertions, some true, but others debunked in previous fact checks.    Here’s a look at six big claims from the hearing in Atlanta, which Democrats titled “Protecting the Vote.” 1. ‘Hurdles’ to Ballot Drop Boxes Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., isn’t a member of the Rules and Administration Committee, but was the first witness in his home state. Warnock, who took office in January, criticized Georgia’s election reform law for “reducing the number of drop boxes where voters can return those ballots.”   Klobuchar jumped in later to say, “If you’re looking for evil, you can find it pretty easily” in the Georgia law.  “Drop-off boxes cannot stay open beyond the time of the early voting,” Klobuchar said, adding, “Some of these voters were working day and night, several jobs, then they can’t go to a drop-off box.”  The fact is that ballot drop boxes weren’t used in Georgia nor in most other states before the 2020 election, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.   Georgia election officials provided drop boxes to collect voters’ ballots based on Gov. Brian Kemp’s emergency order to address voting concerns during the pandemic.  But for Senate Bill 202, passed by Georgia lawmakers, officials wouldn’t have to provide drop boxes in future elections. That said, fewer drop boxes will be available as those elections presumably take place without a pandemic. Also, the new law restricts voting by drop box to hours when early in-person voting is available. Each county in Georgia must provide at least one drop box under the law. But boxes will have to be located near early-voting sites and be accessible for dropping off absentee ballots when those polling locations are open.  2. ‘Big Lie’ Democrat senators and witnesses argued that the law in Georgia and other election reforms across the United States were prompted by former President Donald Trump’s claim that his election loss in November to President Joe Biden was fraudulent.  “We saw record-breaking voter turnout in our last elections—participation that should have been celebrated—get attacked by craven politicians, and, spurred on by the big lie, these same actors are now rolling back voting rights in a way that is unprecedented in size and scope since the Jim Crow era,” Warnock said.  Biden beat Trump by about 12,000 votes out of 4.9 million cast, according to official final results, to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.  Georgia state Rep. Bill Mitchell, a Democrat and president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the November election a major success.   “I define its success not by our candidates’ winning their elections, but by the fact that when you have as many people vote as we did in the 2020 election cycle, with as few problems, with all challenges being dismissed—you have to consider that to be successful,” Mitchell said.  Mitchell later said “The Heritage Foundation and others” were pushing election reform legislation.  The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.  “When you have the highest levels of voter participation, combined with the lowest levels of challenges, why would you want to change that?” Mitchell said.  However, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week reported that digital ballot images show that Fulton County election officials scanned about 200 ballots two times in the November election. Skeptics of the election results argue that apparent double counting is evidence of a need for a closer examination of ballots in Georgia.  The newspaper noted that the discovery was unlikely to change the election results in Georgia. But some conservative commentators, such as Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, expressed concern about the finding.  The duplication of at least 200 ballots is evidence of problems with tallying votes in Georgia, but far from proof that the state’s election results were affected in Biden’s favor.  3. ‘Adequate Polling Locations’ One of the more compelling witnesses was neither a lawmaker nor an activist, but a voter named Jose Segarra. The Air Force veteran told his story of waiting in line for hours. “I, along with thousands of Georgians, had to wait for hours in order to cast my vote in the 2020 general election,” he said.  “Our government needs to ensure that we have adequate systems and processes in place to allow every eligible voter to cast their ballot without such undue burdens,” Segarra said without specifying federal or state government, adding:  To do this, we need to have an adequate number of polling locations and these locations to be properly resourced and open for as expansive a period as possible. Voters should have the opportunity to vote on Saturdays and Sundays. Lots of people work on Saturdays, so Sundays need to be an option. It would also make it much easier for some people to vote if Election Day were a federal holiday. Georgia’s new election law does provide “additional voting equipment or poll workers to precincts containing more than 2,000 electors.”  The law added early voting on two Saturdays and one Sunday that previously were not available to Georgians, stating:  Requiring two Saturday voting days and two optional Sunday voting days will dramatically increase the total voting hours for voters across the state of Georgia, and all electors in Georgia will have access to multiple opportunities to vote in person on the weekend for the first time. Under the new law, counties in Georgia have flexibility to open early voting for as long as from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum.  Previously, some rural counties didn’t provide for early voting for eight hours on a workday, The Washington Post reported.  Thus, the law actually expanded hours for early voting.  4. ‘Mass Challenges’ Warnock announced new legislation he is co-sponsoring with fellow Senate Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Jon Ossoff of Georgia. Ossoff, like Warnock, took office in January after defeating a Republican incumbent in a special election.  The legislation, called the Preventing Election Subversion Act, seeks to prevent the overturning of elections based on mass challenges or by legislators controlling the makeup of a state board of elections.  The proposal is tied directly to provisions that Warnock said are in SB 202, the basis of Georgia’s new law.  Warnock said Georgia’s law would let “a single person make unlimited, mass challenges to the ability of other Georgians to vote, clearing the way for baseless accusations.”  The language of the law does make it more difficult for government officials to outright dismiss a complaint about election procedures and ballots. Specifically, it says:   Any elector [voter] of a county or municipality may challenge the qualifications of any person applying to register to vote in the county or municipality and may challenge the qualifications of any elector of the county or municipality whose name appears on the list of electors. Such challenges shall be in writing and shall specify distinctly the grounds of the challenge.  There shall not be a limit on the number of persons whose qualifications such elector may challenge. Upon such challenge being filed with the [local] board of registrars, the registrars shall set a hearing on such challenge within ten business days after serving notice of the challenge. As another justification for his legislation, Warnock argued that Georgia’s new law “allows partisan officials in the state Legislature to control our state board of elections and take over local election administrators, and it allows them to engage in these takeovers even as the votes are still being cast.” The Associated Press reported in March that under the new law, the Legislature does indeed have an increased role in the State Election Board, but it can’t overturn elections at a whim, as Warnock seemed to suggest.  Georgia’s elected secretary of state has a diminished role in elections under the new law. This is the basis for Democrats’ claim that partisan politics could play a role.   “The secretary of state will no longer chair the State Election Board, becoming instead a non-voting ex-officio member,” Georgia Public Broadcasting explained in a report. “The new chair would be nonpartisan but appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate. The chair would not be allowed to have been a candidate, participate in a political party organization or campaign or [have] made campaign contributions for two years prior to being appointed.” 5. ‘Rushed Through’ Georgia state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Dunwoody, said the Republican-sponsored law lacked adequate input from Democrats in the state Legislature.  “Election bills were rushed through without public input and voted out along party lines,” Harrell said. “Questions addressed to bill authors by minority members were frequently answered dishonestly and disrespectfully. … In the nine years, I have served in the [Georgia] General Assembly, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with the passage of SB 202.” Previous media reporting shows the legislation moved quickly through the Legislature to Kemp’s desk. Questioning this speed has been a consistent line among critics, including the U.S. Justice Department.  Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is leading the federal lawsuit against Georgia’s voting law, has said the bill was “a rushed process that departed from normal practice and procedure.” “The version of the bill that passed the state Senate … was three pages long,” Clarke said in June during a press conference announcing the litigation. “Days later, the bill ballooned into over 90 pages in the House. The House held less than two hours of floor debate on the newly inflated SB 202 before Gov. Kemp signed it into law the same day.” 6.  Water Bottles, Ballot Harvesting Warnock also complained that Georgia’s election law is “making it harder for community organizations to assist voters, whether from requesting a ballot to just handing out a bottle of water.” The law prohibits campaign workers from distributing food, drink, or anything else of value to waiting voters, and from setting up a table within 150 feet of the building or 25 feet of a voter.  However, the law specifically allows official poll workers, as opposed to campaign workers, to provide water to voters.  As for the “community organizations” Warnock cited, the law prohibits ballot harvesting, a controversial practice in which  political operatives obtain large numbers of ballots from election officials and then deliver the ballots to those officials once they’ve been voted.  The practice has been used to achieve fraud in several elections, among them a North Carolina congressional race later overturned in court and a Texas mayor’s race that led to multiple indictments.  Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Heritage Battles Nation’s Largest Teachers Union on Critical Race Theory   NEA’s attacks with a promise to “continue to take on ideas like CRT.” July, 2021 The Heritage Foundation and its experts have been tireless in its efforts to fight critical race theory. It’s not often you get singled out for attack in a resolution by one of the nation’s biggest unions. But in its zeal to shove critical race theory into schools, the National Education Association singled out The Heritage Foundation as “one of the well-funded organizations” that is committing “attacks on anti-racist teachers.”    The resolution calls on the NEA to conduct “research” into Heritage and other such groups—a polite way of saying it plans to smear critics of CRT. We’re not intimidated and we won’t be backing away from our effective strategy to educate Americans about the dangers of CRT.   Heritage’s Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy, and Mike Gonzalez, the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum senior fellow, responded to the NEA’s attack with a promise to “continue to take on ideas like CRT.” They said in a statement:   Heritage is proud of its comprehensive work in this field, which has always focused on explaining the facts behind critical race theory and how it is infecting all aspects of our everyday life. We stand with parents, educators, lawmakers, and other Americans who want children to learn about all of America’s history, without indoctrinating them in a toxic narrative that undermines student unity and achievement or implementing CRT’s racially divisive principles in ways that violate the Civil Rights Act and the Constitution. Efforts to treat students or educators differently based upon their skin color not only betray fundamental principles, but they also violate federal civil rights laws and other statutes.     Only a few days later, the NEA scrubbed this resolution from its website after considerable pushback from conservative organizations, including Heritage. The NEA’s original resolution, along with the fallout, earned major coverage in multiple news outlets.    Before it was removed from the NEA’s website, the resolution stated:   NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked...     The attacks on anti-racist teachers are increasing, coordinated by well-funded organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. We need to be better prepared to respond to these attacks so that our members can continue this important work.   Critical race theory, or CRT, makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life, categorizing individuals into groups of oppressors and victims. It is a philosophy that is infecting everything from politics and education to the workplace and the military. In the aftermath of the 2020 protests, CRT became the rallying cry of numerous organizations, businesses, and educators.      The Heritage Foundation has been tireless in its efforts to fight critical race theory and numerous Heritage experts have appeared in television interviews and published several reports and commentaries on the issue.  Last year, Gonzalez co-authored a comprehensive Heritage report on the subject with Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman fellow in education. The report, “Critical Race Theory, the New Intolerance, and Its Grip on America,” is one of Heritage’s most-read publications.  Since then, Gonzalez has crisscrossed the country to bring his research on critical race theory and identity politics to audiences eager to counter these left-wing ideas. He has briefed lawmakers in Louisiana, spoken at major conservative conferences, and counseled parents how to fight back against the left’s indoctrination of their kids. In addition, Gonzalez is a go-to resource for media outlets who want sage insight on the dangers of critical race theory.  Gonzalez has also teamed up with Burke to expose colleges of education as a source of critical theory, an offshoot of CRT.  Heritage also published a report by Christopher Rufo, one of CRT’s leading critics, warning of its implications. The report, “Critical Race Theory Would Not Solve Racial Inequality: It Would Deepen It,” documented how critical race theory seeks to undermine the foundations of American society and replace the constitutional system with a near-totalitarian “antiracist” bureaucracy.  Rufo spoke out against the NEA’s latest effort to smear CRT critics, naming Gonzalez as an ally, and promising to counter those who are “ruining American education.”  Heritage’s work is getting noticed. “The Morning Call” newsletter recently praised Rufo and Gonzalez for their leadership: Rufo and Gonzales are, almost without question, the leaders of the campaign to push back against CRT, and their efforts are (almost) entirely cultural, not political. … Rufo and Gonzalez are neither ham-handed in their calls for state intervention nor quiet and sneaky. They have the luxury of not only being right on the facts, but also of knowing that what they are exposing is largely unknown but would be rejected by the majority of the American people. For more information on Heritage’s efforts to fight critical race theory, click here. 

Critical Race Theory Will Destroy Our Military Jun 16th, 2021 By: Dakota Wood Senior Research Fellow, Defense Programs Dakota L. Wood, who served America for two decades in the U.S. Marine Corps, is the Senior Research Fellow for Defense Programs. KEY TAKEAWAYS Success in combat depends on the cohesion and competence of the forces involved. Critical race theory and identity politics seeks to impose on our military a manufactured victimization that is inherently divisive. All Americans should demand that the Biden administration put an end to indoctrination of our military with critical race theory.   As a young Marine Corps first lieutenant assigned to an infantry battalion in the late 1980s, I had charge of the unit transport section of operators, mechanics, and supervisors tasked with taking care of our fleet of combat vehicles. This group of Marines, like all with whom I served over a 20-year military career, was a wonderful cross section of America representing all walks of life. My maintenance and operations chiefs were American Samoan and an African American, respectively. Our collection of more junior Marines included blacks, whites, and Latinos, young men from Texas, New Jersey, California, and West Virginia, among others. They came from the city and the country, from poor and middle-class families. Some were Catholic, others Protestant, and some had no strong affiliation with any organized religion. In the maintenance bay, on the equipment lot, or in the field, we would hear a musical mix of country, rock ’n’ roll, heavy metal, and rap. Everyone pitched in to accomplish the mission during unit fitness runs, shop clean-up, preparing for inspections, embarking equipment for deployments to Japan and South Korea, and supporting battalion operations during training and exercise events. Everything just worked and worked well. Why? Because they were all Marines, wearing the same uniform, supporting the same combat organization, serving the same country. They all had been through the same training. They had to measure up to the same standards. They had to make the same cutoff scores for promotion. They humped the same combat loads, ate the same field rations, fired the same qualifications at the rifle range, suffered the same annual refresher training for proper use of gas masks. They worked the same long hours in hot and sweaty, cold and damp, sunbaked or frigid or windblown field conditions, tolerated the same irritating micromanagement, and enjoyed the same positive leadership interventions from higher headquarters. They were a team, committed to each other and expecting the same high levels of performance irrespective of skin color, ethnicity, economic or social background, accent, or taste in music. Each shared in the accomplishments of his fellow Marines, and each was quick to take to task any teammate who fell short of standard. It was wonderful. I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if each person in that section had been pitted against each other, assessing his fellow Marine’s trustworthiness or reliability or capability based on the color of his skin. What if the black Marines judged the white Marines from the perspective of oppressed and oppressor? What if the white Marines viewed the black Marines as having achieved their rank or position by virtue of tokenism, or the black Marines assumed that the white Marines held their positions because the “system” was structured to ensure white dominance? What if the Latino Marines viewed everyone with suspicion, presuming that they were to be treated as an inherently separate group that spoke a different language among themselves and therefore were not to be trusted? And what was with the Samoan and his completely different childhood, body type, food preferences, and speech peculiarities? How could this group of Marines have operated as a team, especially when stressed in a combat situation? But this is what class-warfare ideologies such as critical race theory and identity politics seek to impose on our military: perspectives and identities and manufactured victimization that are inherently divisive, inherently anti-team, and inherently anti-American. Each of those young Marines had the same opportunity to excel, to reenlist, to be promoted based on merit, to take advantage of education programs, and to prove he had what it takes to be a Marine—again, regardless of where he came from or what he looked like. That unit was the finest representation of the American idea just as every crew of a Navy ship; every company, battalion, and brigade of the Army; every squadron within the Air Force; and delta within the Space Force. America’s military draws young men and women from all backgrounds and all walks of life, integrating them into teams united in common identity and shared purpose, to serve our country. What are they to think when they are told that the country they have sworn to serve is structurally prejudiced to favor one group over another? How is anyone to have credibility if he or she is viewed as having gained a position not from hard work, competence, and meeting or exceeding standards but because of race or gender? How is the chain of command in any military organization to retain its legitimacy and authority if those more senior in command second-guess how their directives might be viewed through the personal lenses of those in their charge, or those who are junior question the legitimacy of the hierarchy above them? Yet these very problems are now emerging as a result of such training being imposed on our troops, evidenced by hundreds of personal complaints registered by personnel on a whistleblower website established by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, both military combat veterans. Success in combat depends on the cohesion and competence of the forces involved. These, in turn, derive from teamwork and standards, which are built on trust, mutual respect, merit, shared experience, and a belief in service to a higher purpose. Critical race theory and other such divisive concepts would destroy all this. The U.S. military is the epitome of opportunity, shared purpose, and constructive idealism—the very things America was built on and that have driven it to become the best example of what is possible. This is why so many people from around the world have flocked to our shores since our founding, to participate in our ongoing great experiment. Critical race theory is as great an insult to our men and women in uniform as their shared service and identity is the best example of what it means to be an American. The leaders of our military, both uniformed and civilian, must not lose sight of this. All Americans should demand that the Biden administration put an end to indoctrination of our military with critical race theory.

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: What Anti-Critical Race Theory Legislation Actually Does   Conn Carroll / June 28, 2021 After the House of Representatives voted 415-14 to make Juneteenth a national holiday, New York Times national political reporter Astead Herndon tweeted, “its kinda amazing: juneteenth is gonna be a federal holiday for reasons teachers won’t be allowed to explain to their students out of fear critical race theory backlash.” Herndon’s claim is outrageously false, as many on twitter quickly pointed out, including WFAA Dallas reporter Chris Sadeghi who responded, “This is the type of tweet that gets shared a lot and many will use similar logic to support their stance. But there’s nothing banning the teachings of emancipation. In fact, the Texas law mandates the history of slavery/white supremacy be taught. Please don’t fall for this.” The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Social Studies does in fact require the teaching of “the abolitionist movement, which led to the Emancipation Proclamation,” as Sadeghi notes. Herndon’s false claim about what is taught in our nation’s schools is understandable, however, when you consider how his employer, The New York Times, covered recent Texas legislation that sought to ban the use of critical race theory in Texas schools. Under the headline “Texas Pushes to Obscure the State’s History of Slavery and Racism,” the Times claims that “nearly a dozen other Republican-led states” are seeking “to ban or limit how the role of slavery and pervasive effects of racism can be taught.” “Idaho was the first state to sign into law a measure that would withhold funding from schools that teach such lessons,” the Times continues. “And lawmakers in Louisiana, New Hampshire and Tennessee have introduced bills that would ban teaching about the enduring legacies of slavery and segregationist laws, or that any state or the country is inherently racist or sexist.” Everything the Times published in this paragraph is false, except its claim that some of these states banned the teaching “that any state or the country is inherently racist or sexist.” That part is true. Here is what the legislation from each of these states actually does: Texas Senate Bill 2202 forbids any teacher, administrator, or other employee in a state agency from requiring any of the following concepts in their course work: (1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex. (2) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. (3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex. (4) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex. (5) An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex. (6)  An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. (7) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex. (8) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race. Idaho House Bill 377 forbids any public school or public institution of higher education from directing or otherwise compelling any student to adopt the following tenets: (i) That any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior. (ii) That individuals should be adversely treated on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin. (iii) That individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin. Louisiana House Bill 564 forbids any trainings provided to students or employees that promote “divisive concepts,” which the legislation then specifically defines as: (a) That one race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex. (b) That either the United States of America or the state of Louisiana is fundamentally, institutionally, or systemically racist or sexist. (c) That an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently or systemically racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, or has negative or positive characteristics that inhere in the individual’s DNA. (d) That an individual should be discriminated against, favored, or receive differential treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s race or sex. (e) That an individual of one race or sex should be treated disrespectfully regarding that individual’s race or sex. (f) That an individual’s moral character is anyway defined, described, or determined by the individual’s race or sex. (g) That an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility or is to be held accountable for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. (h) That any individual should feel or be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological or emotional distress on account of that individual’s race or sex. (i) That the concept of meritocracy or traits such as a strong work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by a particular race or sex to oppress another race or sex. (j) That the concepts of capitalism, free markets, or working for a private party in exchange for wages are racist and sexist or oppress a given race or sex. (k) That the concepts of racial equity and gender equity, meaning the unequal treatment of individuals because of their race, sex, or national origin, should be given preference in education and advocacy over the concepts of racial equality and gender equality, meaning the equal treatment of individuals regardless of their race, sex, or national origin. (l) Any form of race or sex scape goating or race or sex stereo typing. New Hampshire  House Bill 544 forbids the teaching, instruction, or training of any employee or student to adopt or believe any “divisive concepts,” which the legislation specifically defines as: (a) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex. (b) The state of New Hampshire or the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist. (c) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. (d) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex. (e) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex. (f) An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex. (g) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. (h) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex. (i) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race. (j) The term “divisive concepts” includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating. Tennessee Senate Bill 623 prohibits any local education association or public charter school from “including or promoting the following concepts as part of a course of instruction”: (1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex. (2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously. (3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex. (4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex. (5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. (6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex. (7) A meritocracy is inherently racist or sexist, or designed by a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex. (8) This state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist. (9) Promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government. (10) Promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people. (11) Ascribing character traits, values, moral or ethical codes, privileges, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of the individual’s race or sex. The Times Is Plain Wrong As you can see, after actually reading the bills, none of them “ban teaching about the enduring legacies of slavery and segregationist laws,” as the Times claims. What they do do is reaffirm America’s core commitment to equality: that “no sex, race, ethnicity, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior”; that no individual should be “adversely treated on the basis of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin”; and that no individual should be held responsible “for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin.” These core American concepts of equality and individual responsibility are antithetical to critical race theory just as they are antithetical to Marxism. Where Marxism asked Americans to understand history as a struggle between classes, critical race theory asks Americans to understand history as a struggle between races. This is a fundamentally un-American idea and state legislators have every right to make sure it is not being taught in our nation’s schools. >>> WATCH: Christopher Rufo breaks down what critical race theory in “Critical Race Theory: Coming to a School Near You?“ The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.  Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.  Print

Kangaroo Court Confirmed: Prosecutor in George Floyd Case Makes Stunning Admission Christine Favocci June 28, 2021, at 4:36pm   Derek Chauvin’s murder conviction was a pivotal event in American history — not as the moment of racial reckoning the professional race-baiters have sold it as, but rather as the day the Sixth Amendment died. The white former Minneapolis police officer was convicted of three counts of murder and will spend more than two decades behind bars after George Floyd, a black suspect, died while in his custody in May 2020. Instead of the usual case of an impartial jury finding him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt (much more on that in a bit), it now appears there was a concerted effort to scapegoat and sacrifice Chauvin to appease the violent mobs who burned cities for months. But you don’t have to take my word for it. According to Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota and lead prosecutor in the case, Chauvin would not be in jail but for “ordinary people who courageously bore witness to Floyd’s death and the pressure from a community that demanded accountability and action,” he said in an Op-Ed for The Washington Post. “For generations, America has been stuck in a cycle of inaction when it comes to addressing decades of mistrust between communities of color and law enforcement,” Ellison began. “To honor the legacy of George Floyd, we must act now to break the cycle.” Though Chauvin’s trial didn’t include any official accusations of racism against the ex-cop, Ellison subtly tied his conviction to larger tensions that exist between minority communities and law enforcement (Chauvin was somehow such an unabashed white supremacist that he married an Asian immigrant). Ellison lamented how the prosecution of cops is scarce, pointing out that “Chauvin is one of the few police officers ever convicted of murder for a death on the job,” he wrote. “Chauvin’s 22½-year sentence, announced Friday, is one of the longest any police officer in the United States has received in modern times for the death of a civilian,” Ellison gloated. The attorney general further recommended “vigorous, visible and swift prosecutions” for officers who harm civilians with excessive use of force but ratcheted up that reasonable proposition into a call for activism. “They should not be afraid to use all the tools the law puts at their disposal,” Ellison advised other prosecutors. “The visibility of prosecutions, to restore and build credibility with the public, is as important as the vigor employed.” However, it was his conclusion that proved the outsized influence Black Lives Matter riots and activism had on the outcome of the case. “My office could not have led the prosecution of Chauvin without the help of ordinary people who courageously bore witness to Floyd’s death, and the pressure from a community that demanded accountability and action,” Ellison said. Related: Report: Here's More Evidence Chauvin Juror Lied During Jury Selection It was a sentiment shared by veteran instigator the Rev. Al Sharpton who similarly credited groups like BLM for Chauvin’s conviction and harsh sentence. “Justice would have been the maximum. We got more than we thought, only because we have been disappointed so many times before,” Sharpton said Friday following the sentencing. He asserted Chauvin’s 22.5-year sentence is “longer than we’ve ever gotten, but shorter than what we should have gotten in the past” for police involved in other such incidents. “Let us remember: A man lost his life. This is not a prayer of celebration; it’s a prayer to thank God for giving the strength to this family and those activists that stayed in the streets to make sure this court had to do what was right,” he said in an apparent nod to the rioters who burned down several major cities in Floyd’s name. Ben Crump, the Floyd family’s attorney, also credited the uprisings for the severe sentence. “You all raised your voices and because you raised your voices, that is why we got the guilty conviction and that is why we got the longest sentence in the state of Minnesota history,” he said. But more than Ellison’s words or Sharpton’s rallying cry or Crump’s gratitude, the actual circumstances of the trial reveal the greatest miscarriage of justice when it comes to the influence the racial activists had on Chauvin’s fate. When footage of Chauvin with his knee across Floyd’s neck first went viral on social media, it sparked a months-long outbreak of protests and riots across the country largely fueled by the unfounded narrative that the incident was a racially motivated killing. By the time Chauvin and the other officers involved would stand trial, Minneapolis had become ground-zero for those protests — but a judge denied a change of venue anyway. This meant the jurors were plucked from a city still suffering from the aftermath of those protests tied directly to the man whose fate they would decide. It was clear those selected were painfully aware of the grave consequences that would await the city all over again if Chauvin was set free as an implicit threat. But then there was also California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters who urged protestors at another anti-police rally in Minnesota to “get more confrontational” if they didn’t get their way just ahead of the Chauvin trial verdict — and jurors had not been sequestered at the time she said it. Worst yet was juror Brandon Mitchell who it was later learned had attended BLM protests and on more than one occasion wore a shirt that specifically referenced the Floyd case with graphics that read “Get Your Knee Off Our Necks/BLM.”   Chauvin was no choir boy, but he still deserved a fair trial that the Sixth Amendment specifically guarantees to all who are accused under the law. Instead, what he got was an activist media exploiting racial tensions and a violent mob to influence prosecutors and jurors to send the man to jail. Never mind that it could have been the number of drugs in Floyd’s system or resulting excited delirium that caused his death — only Chauvin’s conviction would appease the mob. Many on the left cheer the verdict and the decades-long sentence as a victory for their movement, but it’s more likely this was a loss for the right to a fair trial. Today it’s Derek Chauvin rotting in jail after facing such odds, a prospect many don’t find so bad considering he appeared to be callous and cold while a man died on the street — but who will it be next time?