Pushing back against politicized investing, 21 state attorneys general signed onto a letter late Thursday warning 53 top asset management companies about the legal perils of focusing on environmental, social, and governance standards, known as ESG. 

The attorneys general’s letter is addressed to financial management firms—including BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs—that oversee a total of $40 billion in assets.

“We are writing this open letter to asset manager industry participants to raise our concerns about the ongoing agreements between asset managers to use Americans’ savings to push political goals during the upcoming proxy season,” says the 21-page letter, which was led by Attorneys General Austin Knudsen of Montana, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, and Sean Reyes of Utah, all Republicans. 

Also signing on to the letter were Republican attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

“As explained further below, asset managers have committed to use client assets to change portfolio company behavior so that it aligns with the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goal of achieving net zero [carbon emissions] by 2050,” the state attorneys general’s letter continues. “This specific, political commitment changes the terms of the products offered, as well as engagements with individual companies.” 

Asset managers are legally required to act in the best fiduciary interests of their clients. In their letter, the state attorneys general specifically raise concerns about asset managers that, instead of acting in clients’ interests, push the goals of Climate Action 100+, an investor group aiming to combat climate change by influencing companies that emit greenhouse gases, and the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, a global investor group that supports the Paris climate accord.  

Beyond climate change, activist asset managers push political issues such as abortion, race, gender, and political spending, the letter notes. 

“We will continue to evaluate activity in this area in line with our ongoing investigations into potential unlawful coordination and other violations that may stem from the commitments you and others have made as part of Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, or the like,” the attorneys general add. 

The letter notes that, at shareholder meetings in 2023, asset managers will need “to choose between their legal duties to focus on financial return, and the policy goals of ESG activists,” since banks, insurers, and utility and energy companies face proposals from activists.

The letter from the state attorneys general is encouraging, said Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, a 94-year-old nonprofit organization that looks out for consumers.

“This is real leadership on display. Asset management firms have long used proxy season as means to force their woke agenda on the American people,” Hild told The Daily Signal. “Fortunately, actions from groups like ours and leaders at the state and federal level have pulled back the curtain on ESG and our country is finally seeing this scam for what it really is. With this letter, the attorneys general are sending these asset management firms a clear message, stay in your lane, or face legal action.”

The attorneys general directe the letter to these 53 asset management companies:

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American interests require experts on international subject matter. We need diplomats, analysts, and spies with expertise in particular languages and cultures. But Congress made a mistake when it entrusted U.S. universities with millions of dollars to produce these experts—people who are supposed to be trained to serve U.S. interests but who often end up working against them. Congress must exercise greater oversight over these federal dollars or, even better, discontinue them altogether.

The core mistake was failing to realize that area studies programs tend to attract people who prefer the foreign countries they study over the United States. Additionally, centers studying the Middle East are funded by Middle Eastern countries and their agents. The same goes for programs focused on other regions. And instead of promoting diverse perspectives, too many programs reflect the leftward biases of their universities—some even going so far as to promote antisemitism.

These programs are funded under Title VI of the Higher Education Act and are known as the International and Foreign Language Education programs. Congress created these programs to support the “security, stability, and economic vitality of the United States in a complex global era.”

But they are not achieving this goal. Reports from the National Association of Scholars in 2022 and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in 2014 describe the lack of effective oversight by the U.S. Department of Education, especially in Middle East Studies Centers.

The Brandeis Center report cites a study of Title VI-funded Israel-related public events presented between 2010 and 2013 at the University of California at Los Angeles. The study found “bias against Israel” in 93% of the events.

The 2022 report shows how “foreign governments took advantage of … academics’ ideological commitment over the decades to propagandize Americans.” The report also finds that even without foreign funding, professors’ biases do the job. “Many of the faculty at [Middle East Studies Centers] support or are affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which advocates for an aggressive economic embargo against Israel.”

The problems are not limited to bias against Israel and are not limited to Middle East Studies Centers, but these instances are the best documented so far.

The first development to address the problem came in a March 8 letter to the Department of Education from 15 members of the U.S. Senate led by Sen. James Risch of Idaho. The letter described the senators’ “grave concern” that the department “has been allowing taxpayer-funded antisemitism to take place on college campuses throughout the United States,” particularly in Middle East Studies Centers whose “obsessive negative focus on Israel and the Jewish people” go far beyond legitimate criticism.

The letter cites statistics from the Anti-Defamation League showing that “incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and assault are rising on college campuses,” noting that 15% of antisemitic campus incidents in 2021 “involved references to Israel or Zionism.” Moreover, such harassment and attacks were significantly more likely on campuses with “faculty who actively support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel.”

The senators requested that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona respond to a series of questions about the department’s oversight of federally funded programming at colleges and universities. In particular, the senators asked about the department’s efforts—or lack thereof—to ensure the viewpoint diversity required by Title VI of the Higher Education Act.

There’s a strong case to be made that the Title VI programs have strayed so far from their intended purpose that they should be discontinued altogether. If that is not politically feasible, then the Title VI regulations at least should be significantly reformed so that funded projects actually serve American interests as intended.

A new Heritage Foundation report published earlier this month details how Congress could accomplish this goal. (Adam Kissel, one of the authors of this article, wrote the report.)

The report’s proposed regulations shift funding away from area studies centers in several ways. First, they move substantial funding into the Title VI international business programs. To mitigate the potential for teaching that special business interests should get special privileges, the new regulations include a competitive preference for funding projects that teach the role of free markets or collaborate with colleges’ philosophy, politics, and economics programs (known as PPE programs).

Second, the proposed regulations prioritize funding of external university partners, including organizations that help rescue oppressed scholars from dangerous countries and give them academic homes in the United States.

Third, the proposal recommends using Title VI’s geographical diversity requirement to prioritize funding different centers over the ones that keep getting funded year after year.

The proposed regulations also stop prioritizing identity groups and minority-serving institutions, which are ideological priorities that cannot be defended from the stated purposes in Title VI.

Indeed, under the proposed regulations, grantee institutions as well as the funded centers and fellows all must certify that they actually intend to serve the statutory mission of the programs—to serve U.S. interests. If a person or a university files a false assurance to the Education Department, significant penalties are available.

Along those lines, the proposed regulations would prohibit the use of federal funding for projects that seek to undermine U.S. interests when those projects argue that:

• The interests of another country should take precedence over the interests of the United States.
• The United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.
• American rule of law is primarily a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other kinds of identity groups.
• All Americans are not created equal or are not endowed with certain unalienable rights, including, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
• A government should deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.

Unfortunately, such funding prohibitions are necessary because all too many U.S. colleges and universities have faculty members who teach such divisive things. Academics should, of course, be free to express whatever viewpoints they want—but U.S. taxpayers should not have to fund them through these specialized programs.

As described above, the proposed regulations would do much more than address the problem of antisemitism in area studies centers that are funded with U.S. tax dollars and dollars from foreign countries. In fact, the proposal involves all of the International and Foreign Language Education programs, as well as the Fulbright programs that the International and Foreign Language Education office also oversees.

The Education Freedom Institute has published the full set of proposed line-by-line edits to the existing regulations in Title VI. These changes are ready to go if a future secretary of education is ready to hold these programs accountable.

But rather than rely on government programs, the better way to produce area studies experts is to end these programs and let market forces raise salaries until we have all the experts we need. Even if some subsidy turns out to be necessary, Congress should invest in more trustworthy institutions than U.S. universities, at least until our universities work through their biases.

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While checking out the “banned and challenged” display at my local Barnes & Noble recently, I was reminded that the entire kerfuffle is a giant racket.

For publishers and booksellers, “banned” books are likely a money-making racket. Virtually every allegedly “banned” book on the display table is already a massive (sometimes generational) bestseller.

Not that this reality stops authors like Jodi Picoult, whose books dot virtually every bookstore in the country, from running around pretending their novels are “banned” because a sliver of taxpayers are no longer on the hook to buy them.

For the Left, the banned book claim is a political racket, allowing them to feign indignation over the alleged “authoritarianism” of Republicans who don’t want kids reading identitarian pseudohistories or books depicting oral sex, rape, violence, or gender dysphoria in their schools.

Yet, major media now regularly contend, as indisputable fact, that “book bans” are in place. The claim is embedded in the Democrat’s daily rhetoric.

After the mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, we were not plunged into another inane discussion about “stochastic terrorism” or political violence, but rather a preposterous comparison of Tennessee’s “book bans” and lax gun control.

As former Rep. Liz Cheney noted, “If we really want to keep our children safe, we need to spend less time banning books and more time stopping the horrific gun violence in our schools.”

Books are banned in Tennessee in the same way a person can’t say the word “gay” in Florida. It’s a myth. Yet, here is a recent headline from NPR: “Plot twist: Activists skirt book bans with guerrilla giveaways and pop-up libraries.” In the piece, the reader learns that with “a record number of book bans” on the horizon, “some activists are finding creative ways to make banned books available to young readers anyway.”

“Activists” buying books at a local Barnes & Noble, where an endless supply exists, and handing them to other people’s children against the wishes of parents isn’t so much “creative” as it is creepy. NPR makes it sound as if these people were risking their lives trading samizdat one step ahead of the Secret Police. Any dope with a car, a bus pass, a bicycle, legs, or an internet connection can hand some impressionable kid softcore porn. Because there are no banned books.

Now, if conservative activists set up “pop-up” libraries around the corner from schools in progressive districts handing out “Huck Finn” and books celebrating the Second Amendment or the superiority of traditional families, one imagines NPR would find the guerrilla effort less charming.

One New York Times columnist argues that parents who vote for legislators that temper the cultural Marxist agenda in schools are engaging in a “state-sanctioned heckler’s veto.” So much for “democracy,” I guess.

It is true that leftists, who run virtually every major school district in the nation, don’t need any laws or vetoes to dictate curriculums. But, of course, most schools are run by the state. How else are parents supposed to initiate change? Well, they aren’t, right? That’s the point. The contemporary Left doesn’t believe that parents have any say in which state-run school their children attend or what they are taught in them. Who’s the authoritarian, again?

Teacher-union types like to argue that parental rights bills are tantamount to telling a doctor how to operate on a patient. A more apt analogy is to say that Democrats want to force patients to undergo elective surgeries performed by untrained quacks.

Parental rights bills don’t instruct teachers on methods, they only stop strangers from exposing kids to revisionist histories and ideas about sexuality and ideologies that conflict with their beliefs.

Then again, even if parents who don’t want their prepubescent kids indoctrinated with these ideas are in the minority, why should they be forced to accept instruction or books that have nothing to do with genuine civics or a well-rounded education?

When the government restricts free association in the marketplace, or giant tech companies are engaged in a concerted effort to censor ideas and news, we have a reason to worry about the state of free speech. When a heckler’s veto that dominates universities makes it virtually impossible to have an open discourse on campuses, we have reason to worry. “Book bans,” however, are just curriculum choices leftists don’t like.

It is certainly true that sometimes priggish moralists are overzealous in their targeting of books, sometimes the bans are plain stupid, sometimes they are political, and sometimes they are initiated by left-wing administrations (as has been the case for years). But, for the most part, “book ban” is just a euphemism for progressive administrators and teachers losing some of their power over your kids.

While parents are compelled to live with the devastating professional failures of a teacher union-dominated monopoly that struggles to teach basic math, reading, writing, and science, there is no reason for them to accept political indoctrination as well.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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The Social Security trustees released their annual report Friday, noting significant deterioration in Social Security’s financial well-being.

Here’s what Americans need to know.

Social Security will be broke within a decade. Politicians have no credible plan to fix it. And the longer they wait—choosing to vilify their colleagues instead of working with them—the higher the costs will be for all but the oldest Americans.

According to the trustees, Social Security’s old-age retirement program will run out of money in 2033. That means that anyone who is 57 or younger today won’t receive a single full benefit. And all Social Security beneficiaries—whether 67 or 107—will be subject to 23%, across-the-board benefit cuts in 2033 and beyond.

That will mean a loss of more than $5,000 per year in annual benefits for a typical retiree.

That’s the status quo that any politician who refuses to discuss Social Security reform supports, by default.

The trustees also reported that Social Security’s 75-year unfunded obligations increased by $2 trillion to $22.4 trillion, which means each household’s share of Social Security’s shortfall is now $172,000—a $15,000 increase since last year alone.

A trustees’ summary presentation provided to Hill staff noted a worsening economic outlook contributing to Social Security’s deterioration: “Since the assumptions for last year’s report were set, the trustees have reassessed their expectations for the economy in light of recent developments, including updated data on inflation and output, and have revised down the levels of gross domestic product (GDP) and labor productivity by about 3 percent over the projection period.”

According to the trustees, if policymakers acted now, they could prevent insolvency by enacting immediate and permanent 21% benefit cuts or by immediately hiking Social Security taxes by 3.4 percentage points, from 12.4% to 15.8%. That would be an extra $2,400 in taxes every year for the typical household.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Social Security’s shortfalls are even larger and would require an immediate 4.9 percentage-point tax hike, from 12.4% to 17.3%, to preserve current benefits. That would be an extra $3,500 in taxes every year for the typical household.

The CBO arguably uses more realistic assumptions on inputs such as fertility rates (which have plummeted since 2008) and interest rates (which surged over the past year).

While Democratic lawmakers have maligned Republicans by claiming they want to “sunset” Social Security or slash benefits, the reality is that neither side has a credible plan to save Social Security.

In 2016, both Democrats and Republicans had plans to save the program. The now-deceased Rep. Sam Johnson’s Social Security Reform Act of 2016 would have made the program solvent through a combination of modernizations and progressive benefit reductions. And Democrats’ widely supported Social Security 2100 Act would have made the program solvent by increasing Social Security taxes on everyone and imposing larger tax hikes on higher earners.

But when President Joe Biden promised not to raise taxes on anyone making over $400,000, Democrats removed the biggest source of new revenue—the tax increase on all earners—and cut off their host of proposed benefit increases after just five years.

Even assuming their disingenuous benefit cuts after five years, the revised Social Security 2100: A Sacred Trust proposal still would not make Social Security solvent.

Another group of Democratic lawmakers has a radical Social Security proposal—the Social Security Expansion Act. That proposal fails the “not raising taxes on people making less than $400,000” test, as tax hikes start at incomes of $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples, and it also fails the economic literacy test. The combination of new 12.4% taxes on higher-income workers and investors and a new 16.2% tax on small businesses would destroy American jobs, incomes, and innovation.

The Heritage Foundation has a proposal that would save Social Security and help increase all Americans’  incomes before and during retirement. That includes gradually shifting to a universal benefit that would lift more people out of poverty, modernizing the program’s eligibility age, using a more accurate inflation index, eliminating Social Security’s retirement earnings test, and allowing people the option to build wealth that they own and can pass on to their families. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Researchers with the Penn Wharton Budget Model analyzed a proposal similar to The Heritage Foundation’s that would do a better job of targeting Social Security benefits, and also analyzed a proposal that would expand Social Security. They found that a better-targeted program would result in an economy in 2043 that is 7.3% larger—the equivalent of $12,500 more in annual household income—compared with that expanded Social Security program.

Despite Social Security’s enormous unfunded obligations and the toxic political rhetoric thrown at lawmakers who dare to acknowledge the program’s shortfalls, it is possible to make Social Security solvent, protect and increase benefits for those who need them most, and allow all workers and families the opportunity to have more income and more control of their own money throughout their lifetimes.

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The very notion of republican self-governance, which has been a core tenet of Western civilization since the demise of the great monarchs of Europe, depends upon the willingness of citizens to debate and deliberate the most pressing issues of society.

Sadly, high-profile recent examples, from the tony terrain of Stanford University all the way to the raucous streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, underscore the extent to which Western societies have given up on reasoned deliberation and capitulated to mobocracy. Where this civilizational decline ultimately ends is anyone’s guess.

Earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was relentlessly heckled and successfully shouted down by a frothing mob of mini-Robespierre jackals who call themselves Stanford Law School students.

The mob was simultaneously juvenile and outright vile, with one student unconscionably yelling to the esteemed jurist, “We hope your daughters get raped!”

Even more galling, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach finally rose up upon the judge’s plea to restore order … and, in preprepared remarks, sided with the protesters and ludicrously asked whether the “juice” (of Duncan’s planned remarks) was worth the “squeeze” of the alleged “harm” to the pampered brat students that Duncan’s mere presence caused.

(Steinbach has since been placed on administrative leave by Dean Jenny Martinez, although the culpable students have tragically escaped thus far with impunity.)

Earlier this week in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose conservative governing coalition has for months been pushing a set of anodyne, sorely needed, and long-overdue reforms to the unaccountable and almighty Israeli Supreme Court, agreed to pause his legislative push amidst unprecedented pushback and widespread societal meltdown.

The at-times hundreds of thousands of rioters in the streets, who blocked highways and tracked down and physically intimidated leading pro-reform legislators and even Netanyahu’s wife, had reached a debilitating fever pitch.

A disturbing number of Israel Defense Forces reservists had reneged upon their military duties. Powerful unions had successfully temporarily grounded all departing flights from Ben Gurion International Airport. Venture capitalists had pulled billions of U.S. dollars’ worth of investment out of Israel’s thriving high-tech sector. All this, despite the left-wing opposition categorically refusing to sit down and negotiate in good faith on the judicial reform legislation.

At Stanford Law School, Duncan’s struggle session resulted in a heckler’s veto outright precluding civil colloquy and the legitimate contestation of ideas. The tyranny of an emotive mob, in short, won the day.

In Israel, foes of the judicial reform rebuffed direct political engagement, preferring instead to shriek “authoritarianism!” at the top of their lungs and gin up international incitement—indeed, an attempted color revolution—against the Netanyahu government. The tyranny of an emotive mob, in short, yet again won the day (at least for now).

An old lawyer maxim goes: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” Left-wing activists increasingly find neither the facts nor the law on their side, but they have certainly become proficient at pounding the table.

There is nothing good that can possibly come from a civilization that, far from merely recognizing reason as “the slave of the passions,” as per Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, completely sacrifices any semblance of reason and civil discourse at the altar of wokeness and the crass flexing of raw power.

The rot that we see unfolding, from Palo Alto to Tel Aviv and innumerable places in between, represents the triumph of animalistic, reflexive emotionalism over the distinctly human capacity to engage in logical deliberation in pursuit of that most anachronistic of concepts, the very invocation of which hearkens back to a bygone era: truth.

Mobocracy, which James Madison warned against in Federalist No. 10 and which Abraham Lincoln so powerfully decried in his 1838 Lyceum Address, was supposed to be a thing of the past—not truth.

In fairness to Stanford Law School, Martinez’s post-incident letter was generally sound and even admirable, with the notable exception of its cowardly reluctance to punish the underlying student miscreants. And over in Israel, it remains to be seen what kind of compromise Netanyahu might still be able to negotiate with the opposition during this legislative pause.

Indeed, Western civilization may still have some fight left in it. But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the prospects at the moment appear pretty bleak.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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Violent transgender activists and Antifa agitators interrupted the final Students for Life “Lies Pro-Choicers Believe” Tour at Virginia Commonwealth University on Wednesday and shut the event down. 

Students for Life of America President Kristin Hawkins’ and student ambassador Isabel Brown’s speaking tour concluded at the Richmond, Virginia, public university in violence as police arrested protestors and forced the speakers to leave.  

“We were deeply disappointed in how campus and city police handled the incident as First Amendment rights were trampled upon and physical attacks were made due to inaction,” Students for Life press strategist and staff writer Caroline Wharton told The Daily Signal. “Pro-life speech is free speech and should have been firmly defended as such, especially at a public university.” 

“Two people were arrested Wednesday evening after there was some disruption at an event in VCU’s University Student Commons,” the university told The Daily Signal. “The student organization ‘Students for Life at VCU’ invited a pro-life speaker to its meeting, which was open to the public and attracted about 70 people. The meeting was disrupted by the unruly conduct of some attendees, and VCU Police were called at about 5:40 p.m.”      

The school said that two individuals not related to the university were arrested. 

Antifa agitators showed up to the event holding signs for Black Lives Matter and the transgender movement while goading other protestors in the crowd. Antifa, an organization known for instigating violence, caused numerous altercations between the protestors and Students for Life staff, including documentarian Kevin Feliciano. Autumn Walser, president of Students for Life at VCU, received a leg injury while other students received scratches and cuts.  

“Antifa came for a fight,” Students for Life of America Executive Vice President Tina Whittington said after the event. “The protestors had three chants they kept recycling: ‘Fascists Go Home,’ ‘Nazis Go Home,’ and ‘F**k Pro-lifers.’”  

“It was so ridiculous. That’s the definition of fascism and Nazism—not allowing for free speech,” Whittington said. “They wouldn’t allow other ideas to be expressed, and in a way, they won, even though pro-life students stayed to talk after the event.”   

VCU police arrived and did not address the crowd of violent agitators but instead asked Hawkins to leave, to which she replied, “You would have to arrest me. I’m not leaving.”  

“Students for Life will be providing security for Autumn on campus for the near future until we can be sure that she is safe here,” said Hawkins. “And we will be demanding that VCU invite me and Isabel back to hold an event that is safe for all to attend.”   

Currently, VCU’s policy on the use of event space says that the school “recognizes that the free expression of ideas and open inquiry are essential in fulfilling its academic mission by embracing rigorous open discourse, argumentation, speaking, listening, learning and the exploration of ideas.” 

This was not the first time Antifa had protested Hawkins, but this instance was the most violent yet, according to Students for Life.  

According to Whittington, VCU police detained Students for Life team members and pro-life students while Antifa and the transgender activists were dispersed. VCU’s campus police did not respond when The Daily Signal reached out for a comment.  

“Silencing the peaceful people because of fear of the loud and violent makes us all less safe,” said Hawkins. “We will be back to ensure that free speech truly exists at VCU.”    

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A transgender Tennessee mass shooter this week executed three adults and three nine-year-old children at a Nashville private Christian school.

Supposedly, she left behind her a manifesto justifying her mass killing. As of this writing, law enforcement officials have declined to make the document public.

Yet in about a nanosecond after the news was disclosed, the left-wing activist machine kicked in, led by politicians, entertainers, and the media.

Three predictable themes surfaced.

• The first was led by none other than President Joe Biden. He lectured that guns were the cause of the mass deaths, not the free will of a psychopathic killer.

Few noted that the shooter illegally purchased firearms by hiding her documented record of emotional disorders.

• Second, America was told that it would serve no purpose to publish the shooter’s manifesto. Apparently, this exception to the usual practice was due to fears her manifesto would hurt the transgender cause.

• Third, some in the activist media claimed that, while such killing was regrettable, it was also understandable, given supposed Christian, conservative America’s intolerance of transgender people. In our sick society, the targeted victims became the political victimizers.

Did the transgender shooter anticipate that violence for her “correct” cause would be either contextualized or blamed on the weapon rather than she who used it?

Likewise, at about the same time, a transgender activist entered the Texas Legislature and physically fought with the sergeant-of-arms.

Just days after the Nashville shooting, a trans advocacy group decided neither to cancel, nor to change the name of, its long-planned “Trans Day of Vengeance” protest in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

It was recently disclosed that federal authorities did little or nothing last year when pro-abortion mobs traveled to the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices, yelling and disrupting their neighborhoods.

That mobbing was in clear violation of federal laws prohibiting protesters from swarming the homes of justices to influence their opinions. Yet, mysteriously, Attorney General Merrick Garland demurred from prosecuting the lawbreakers or beefing up security.

Amid this environment of general chaos, a would-be assassin of Justice Brett Kavanaugh turned up near the justice’s home, but was persuaded by his own sister to surrender.

In March 2020, then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had all but called for violence against the justices, when he threatened two by name before an angry pro-abortion crowd protesting at the doors to the court:

I want to tell you [Justice Neil] Gorsuch; I want to tell you Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

What did Schumer mean by “whirlwind,” “pay the price” and “what hit you”?

On a recent episode of ABC’s “The View,” octogenarian actress Jane Fonda reentered controversy by boasting that women were not going to retreat on abortion rights. And if their marching and protesting were not enough, Fonda smirked, “Well, I’ve thought of murder.”

Recently, Wayne State professor Steven Shaviro posted his views on free speech on campus: “Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.”

Shaviro apparently was referring to the mob at Stanford Law School that shouted down 5th U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, who had been invited to speak by the campus Federalist Society. Students prevented him from delivering his lecture, apparently for his past refusal to acknowledge the pronouns of a convicted pedophile.

Among the many obscene taunts that were leveled at the judge by Stanford’s future lawyers, one law-school protester shouted that he hoped Duncan’s daughters would be raped.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; House Majority Leader Steven Scalise, R-La.; and former Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin have all been the target of vicious, politically driven physical attacks.

Most Americans decried the illegal entry into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by protesting Trump supporters. Over 1,000 have been charged, or are in prison, with hundreds more facing indictment.

Yet none in the Capitol were armed. And the only ones to die violently that day were among the protesters themselves.

No so in the summer 2020. Then the vast majority of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa-led violent protesters who rioted, burned, and looted for 120 days—injuring 1,500 police officers and causing over 35 deaths—were either not arrested or released.

For that matter, what do Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, Kathy Griffin, George Lopez, Moby, Rosie O’Donnell, Mickey Rourke, and Larry Wilmore all have in common? At one time or another, they alluded to various ways of imagining former President Donald Trump’s violent death.

What do Joe Biden; Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.; and Robert De Niro have in common? They all bragged of their desire to physically assault or beat up Trump.

For the radical Left, ideology exempts its political violence. The result for everyone else is an open season and the end of deterrence—and frightening days ahead.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Friday against Norfolk Southern Corp., owner of the 50-car train that derailed almost two months ago in East Palestine, Ohio. 

The complaint in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, filed on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency, seeks penalties for what it says was the unlawful discharge of pollutants, oil, and hazardous substances under the Clean Water Act. 

The Justice Department also is asking for a declaratory judgment on liability for past and future costs under a law called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act.

Specifically, the lawsuit asks for $64,618 per day for every violation of the Clean Water Act. The government also seeks fines of $55,808 per day or $2,231 per barrel of hazardous substance.

The complaint comes almost two months after the Feb. 3 train derailment, during which East Palestine residents, elected officials, and others heavily criticized the federal government’s response. It also arrives the same week that train derailments occurred in North Dakota and Minnesota. 

“When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, it released toxins into the air, soil, and water, endangering the health and safety of people in surrounding communities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a public statement. “With this complaint, the Justice Department and the EPA are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community.” 

A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern didn’t directly address the complaint when asked about it by The Daily Signal, but noted that the company had completed more than 595 air monitoring tests, cleaned 87 homes and numerous facilities, and committed about $28 million to the community. 

“Our job right now is to make progress every day cleaning up the site, assisting residents whose lives were impacted by the derailment, and investing in the future of East Palestine and the surrounding areas,” Norfolk Southern’s senior communications manager, Connor Spielmaker, said in an email responding to an inquiry about the federal government’s court case.

“We are working with urgency, at the direction of the U.S. EPA, and making daily progress,” Spielmaker said. “That remains our focus and we’ll keep working until we make it right.”

The derailment in the Ohio town of 4,700 residents occurred while the train was carrying hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, butyl acrylate, isobutylene, and benzene residue. 

Officials evacuated residents whose homes are near the derailment site, which is close to the Pennsylvania state line. 

On Feb. 5, two days after the derailment, Norfolk Southern did a controlled burn of five rail cars containing vinyl chloride. This resulted in additional releases, according to the Justice Department and EPA. About 9.2 million gallons of wastewater and an estimated 12,932 tons of contaminated soils and solids were shipped off-site, the federal agencies said. 

“From the very beginning, I pledged to the people of East Palestine that EPA would hold Norfolk Southern fully accountable for jeopardizing the community’s health and safety,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a public statement. 

“No community should have to go through what East Palestine residents have faced,” Regan said. “With today’s action, we are once more delivering on our commitment to ensure Norfolk Southern cleans up the mess they made and pays for the damage they have inflicted as we work to ensure this community can feel safe at home again.”

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Much remains unknown about the criminal charges being brought against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow Cully Stimson says. 

“The indictment is sealed, which means it hasn’t been released to the public,” Stimson says. “We don’t know when it will be unsealed. We’ve also seen news reports that there’ll be an arraignment on Tuesday of next week.”

According to some news reports, there may be “up to 30-some charges in this indictment,” the Heritage legal fellow says. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges. News of his indictment broke Thursday evening following a monthslong investigation led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat. 

“Alvin Bragg is a Soros-bought-and-paid-for rogue prosecutor,” says Stimson, also deputy director of Heritage’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. “He has refused to prosecute entire categories of misdemeanors in his jurisdiction. He’s watered down most felonies to misdemeanors. So it takes a lot of chutzpah to indict somebody for essentially a scrivener or bookkeeping error for an alleged incident that occurred almost a decade ago.”

Stimson joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what is likely to happen next and what Trump’s legal team is likely doing as it waits for the details of the indictment.

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Virginia Allen: We are joined by a Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, Cully Stimson. Cully, welcome back to the show.

Cully Stimson: Thanks for having me.

Allen: Let’s get right into this. What do we know about the charges that former President Donald Trump is facing?

Stimson: Well, what we know is that there are news reports and Donald Trump’s own defense attorneys indicating that the grand jury has indicted him. The indictment is sealed, which means it hasn’t been released to the public. We don’t know when it will be unsealed. We’ve also seen news reports that there’ll be an arraignment on Tuesday of next week. We don’t know what’s in this indictment, what the gravamen of the offense is in this indictment.

We’ve heard that there may be up to 30 some charges in this indictment. And we don’t know whether the governor of Florida is going to cooperate with the extradition request, although that would be a decision that the former president could make to say, “Look, I’ll waive extradition and I’ll show up to be arraigned whenever the arraignment is.”

Allen: I want to talk a little bit more about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a moment and his comments. But what is likely going to play out here? Are we going to see Trump in handcuffs and put behind bars?

Stimson: I think it’s really important not to get ahead of the facts and the story here. “We don’t know what we don’t know,” to quote my old boss, [the late Defense Secretary] Don Rumsfeld. In a typical case, and this is not a typical case, where it’s a misdemeanor or low level felony, somebody’s not going to be put in handcuffs, there’s not going to be a perp walk.

It’s happening right now as we speak across this country, people being charged with misdemeanors. The rubicon that’s been crossed, however, is indicting a former president. Whether it’s a misdemeanor or felony, that is a huge deal, and that will have ramifications down the road for this president who’s currently in office, former presidents and future presidents, and it’s a really bad precedent.

Allen: Cully, in your career, you’ve indicted in dozens of cases. Can you explain the difference between an indictment versus actually proving someone as being guilty of certain crimes?

Stimson: Sure. In the states where most of the crimes are prosecuted, the DA has, depending on the state law, the ability to either take a case to a grand jury, which is a secret proceeding, there’s no judge and there’s no defense attorney, and ask them to consider handing down an indictment on certain charges. And the standard is probable cause, that’s it. It’s a low standard. So you hear the expression, Virginia, you can indict a ham sandwich; you always hear that expression. You can’t indict a ham sandwich, it has to be a person.

But secondly, there’s a huge gap evidence-wise between, and proof-wise between, getting to probable cause at an indictment and then pulling together and marshaling all the evidence and bringing the witnesses to trial and having them testify consistent with what you believe the evidence is to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

So probable cause is a low level; beyond a reasonable doubt means you are firmly convinced that the evidence points to this person and he or she is guilty. And so there are a lot of cases that fall apart between indictment and a verdict.

The ethical standards of prosecutors, either at the state or federal level, is you should not bring a case, even to a grand jury, unless you have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits at trial. So if you think it’s a loser, you don’t take it to a grand jury. Now, there may be reasons you want to take a case to a grand jury, like for example, it’s pretty routine if a police officer is involved in a fatal shooting, some jurisdictions will take the police officers, if there’s a question as to his criminal culpability, to a grand jury.

And if the grand jury refuses to indict, that means no bills; you hear that expression, “no bills in the indictment.” Well, then. that’s the end of it. But here, we don’t know what charges are under this indictment. We don’t know if there is a failure of proof from indictment to a trial, if there ultimately is a trial. And so I just don’t think we should get too far out ahead of this until we see the actual language in the indictment.

Allen: Let’s loop back to talking about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for a few moments. So shortly after the news broke, Gov. DeSantis tweeted out that he would not extradite Trump from Florida. What does that mean for this case moving forward, and specifically for Alvin Bragg, who’s been leading this investigation of Trump?

Stimson: What that really means is that it’s now in Trump’s court. If Trump just wants to agree to show up in New York next week or whenever the arraignment is, that’s the end of it. But if Trump says, “You know what? No, you can’t force me to leave Florida.”

And the governor, whoever the governor is, right now it’s Gov. DeSantis, says: “You know what? We’re not going to cooperate with the extradition request from New York.” Ultimately, he will be extradited. There’s no real legal grounds, I think, for them not to ultimately.

Because it would go to a judge, a state court judge, the New York prosecutor would have to show up in the state court in Florida and argue, “Look, there’s nothing within the four corners of this indictment that is seems untoward. You can’t look underneath the indictment to test the quality of the evidence.”

And if a state court judge is going to find herself in the position of saying, “Well, I’m not allowed to look under the four corners of the indictment or question the veracity of the witnesses, and therefore Mr. Trump, I’m inclined to grant the extradition request.”

Trump may decide to appeal to an appeals court. They may ultimately go to the Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, unless there’s a defect in the indictment or in the extradition request itself, he’s going to end up in a New York court.

Allen: So it sounds like, if anything, it would just drag the process out longer?

Stimson: Right, right. And there may be tactical and strategic reasons from the defense to do that. A governor is the chief law enforcement officer of that state, and the governor can either agree to cooperate or not cooperate, but at the end of the day, unless there’s a defect in the indictment or in the extradition request itself, almost every single extradition request ultimately is granted or is carried out.

Allen: Looking at what we know about what this grand jury, the information that they were looking at and District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump, what do you make of this whole investigation?

Stimson: Well, first off, we have a whole chapter in our upcoming book on rogue prosecutors about Alvin Bragg; he’s one of the eight prosecutors we talk about. Alvin Bragg is a Soros-bought-and-paid-for rogue prosecutor. He has refused to prosecute entire categories of misdemeanors in his jurisdiction. He’s watered down most felonies to misdemeanors. So it takes a lot of chutzpah to indict somebody for essentially a scrivener or bookkeeping error for an alleged incident that occurred almost a decade ago.

But the theory, as we understand it from public reports, and we won’t know, Virginia, until we actually read the words in the indictment, but let’s just go with the stuff that’s out in the public domain. [The theory] is that Donald Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen engaged in a legal settlement with Stormy Daniels and paid her money consistent with that legal settlement so she would not air a prior relationship of some sort with … Donald Trump, back in 2006, I think. And legal settlements happen all the time. It happens in Congress, it happens in the media, it happens in corporations. I mean, people engage in legal settlements every day.

And later on the Justice Department investigated, and so did the Federal Election Commission investigate whether or not that $130,000 in that legal settlement was actually an illegal campaign donation that should have been reported on his campaign related finance reports as he was running for president. And they open the investigation and both the Justice Department and the FEC closed those investigations without taking any action. So there were no federal crimes or offenses alleged.

The theory here is that even though the entity that has the job of looking to see whether there’s a federal election fraud or campaign-related finance lack of disclosure, even though they waived off on it, at the state level, he should have kept better bookkeeping. And therefore that’s a state misdemeanor, and they’re trying to turn this state misdemeanor into a state felony.

And so I’m going to be really interested in reading the language of how they get from A to B to C in this, because essentially it’s a bookkeeping theory, that he should have reported on his state business records a bookkeeping numerical number of $130,000 and somehow that violated state law.

Now when you have 30-some charges, maybe there are other things out there related to other aspects of the Trump legal business organizations, so we just don’t know what else is there. But if the whole focus of this indictment is on this bookkeeping error … And by the way, the state has no jurisdiction to look into presidential or federal office holders or candidates’ money payments. A state can look at state office holders or state candidates, but the federal stuff that happened at the federal level, the stuff that happened with his presidential run, the state has no say in that. And especially when the federal government and the FEC waived off on that.

Allen: So why do you think Alvin Bragg is pursuing this? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but a term that you’ve sort of coined is rogue prosecutor, and you’ve done so much work on rogue prosecutors [and] you mentioned your forthcoming book. What do we know about Alvin Bragg’s possible motives here? And if he is an individual who has said, “I am not going to prosecute certain misdemeanor crimes in the name of equity, in the name of social justice,” why is he prosecuting this one?

Stimson: No clue. And yes, [Heritage Foundation legal fellow] Zack Smith and I, my co-author in our book and all of our scholarship for the last three years, coined the term rogue prosecutor. But you can’t really get into the mind of why Alvin Bragg decided to do this. And by the way, he, Alvin Bragg, hired a former federal prosecutor who did white-collar crime from the Southern District of New York in the U.S. Attorney’s Office into his office specifically to investigate Trump and this bookkeeping-scrivener error and this payment to Stormy Daniels under this legal settlement.

And when Alvin Bragg had some skepticism about bringing these charges, this person quit in a pique of anger. And he wrote a book that came out in February [“People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account”] a tell-all book explaining why Alvin Bragg should have indicted Trump. Well, obviously if the stories are true, Alvin Bragg has had a change of heart and now he has brought the indictment. We don’t know if any additional evidence has been developed during the grand jury process.

So it looks, at least from this book and from the news reports, that Alvin Bragg had some skepticism, as he should have, about indicting him in the first place for this bookkeeping error. Again, if that’s the gravamen of the offense and that’s it, charged 30 some different ways, that’s going to be a tough lift. And even The Washington Post and The New York Times, as [Meese Center Director] John Malcolm and a couple other colleagues at Heritage have written in The Daily Signal … I hope your listeners look at The Daily Signal article called “The Indictment of Donald Trump: The Players and the Cards They’re Playing,” which came out last night. It is hard to understand how they can sort of turn this bookkeeping-scrivener error into a felony offense.

Allen: What is the timeline, the likely timeline that we’re looking at here? I know there’s a lot of factors that could make things go longer, but in all likelihood, how soon do you think it’s going to be before we learn the details of the charges brought against Trump?

Stimson: So the order of march typically would be: You notify the defense attorney that the person’s been indicted; apparently that’s happened. Second, you notify the defense attorney that the arraignment has been scheduled for X date in the future; apparently that’s next Tuesday. We’ll see whether that turns out to be the case.

Typically, a defendant will just show up for the arraignment. Now if [Trump] wants to honor the extradition request and just go to New York, that’s it. He’ll be arraigned on Tuesday and arraignment takes five minutes, and that’s it. And then the case is set forth. The judge will set a motions calendar and then the judge will set a trial date in the future, probably six months or more down the road, and there’ll be motions and pretrial motions between that.

That said, if Trump says, “I’m not going to go to New York; you got to force me,” and he wants to drag this out, and the governor is going to honor the defendant’s skepticism and not automatically grant the extradition request, that could drag out for a few weeks in Florida courts.

Allen: What are the possible outcomes? What’s the best outcome for Trump, and what’s the worst outcome for Trump?

Stimson: Well, I’m not going to talk about the political good or bad outcomes, because I’m just the legal beagle here, and I’m just going to give you the legal answer. Obviously, the best outcome is for him not to have been indicted. Now that the indictment has been handed down, the next-best possibility would be that they withdraw the indictment, which they could do. The likelihood is probably small.

The next-best outcome would be that the arraignment takes place, pretrial motions happen, and one of the motions is a motion to dismiss the indictment and the judge grants the motion to dismiss the indictment. The next-best outcome would be they chip away at some of the charges or most of the charges during the pretrial motions that will take place in the next weeks and months. So that it boils it down to just a few charges.

And of course, the next [outcome] would be he goes to trial, and at the halfway point of the trial, after the government’s finished putting on their case in chief, the judge grants a motion to dismiss the charges. Because at the halfway point of a trial, even though the judge has to view [it in] the light most favorable to the government, the judge can take the case away from the jury at the halfway point.

And then the final best outcome would be for him to go through the whole trial and then to be acquitted. So there’s a lot of off-ramps along the way, and we have no clue as to how this is going to play out.

Allen: If you were one of Trump’s lawyers, what would you be doing right now?

Stimson: Well, I’d be waiting to see what the indictment says. And I’d be telling everyone else to calm down and take a deep breath. And then I would make sure that the political types who advise him do whatever the political types do. I don’t play in that world, but as the lawyer, you have to be cool, calm, and collected. You have to be forthright, honest, and direct with your client. You have to explain that we don’t know what we don’t know.

And then you have to decide, as a matter of course, whether you’re going to try to fight the extradition, pluses and minuses, or whether you’re not going to fight the extradition, pluses and minuses. And assuming he does not fight the extradition, what he would come to expect during the arraignment and during the pretrial process, et cetera.

Of course, Donald Trump is a sophisticated person. He’s had lots of lawsuits he’s been involved in, either as the plaintiff or defendant, throughout his whole career. His sister’s a federal judge, and so he’s a pretty sophisticated client. But still, it’s important as the lawyer to explain to your client what the future looks like legally.

Allen: Cully Stimson, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. And for all of our listeners, if you want to hear more from Cully, if you want to read his writing, his reporting, you can do so at heritage.org as well as The Daily Signal. Cully, thank you for your time today and your expertise on this.

Stimson: Thanks for having me.

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Three critics of China are at the center of a bomb-threat hoax plot thought to be the work of the Chinese government, according to an Axios investigation.

One of the targets is Bob Fu, the founder and president of ChinaAid, which describes itself as “an international nonprofit Christian human rights organization committed to promoting religious freedom and the rule of law in China.”

Fu experienced the oppressive nature of the Chinese Communist Party as a Christian living in China. Fu and his wife “were imprisoned for two months for ‘illegal evangelism’ in 1996,” according to his ChinaAid biography.

Since October, “anonymous perpetrators booked and paid for dozens of expensive rooms at luxury hotels in at least six countries–the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Hong Kong and Macau in China, and the U.S,” Axios reported.

Unknown perpetrators used the personal information of Su Yutong, a Radio Free Asia reporter living in Germany; Wang Jingyu, a U.S. resident living in the Netherlands, and Fu, who lives in the U.S., to book the hotel rooms without the three knowing, Axios reported. 

“The perpetrators then called in at least 14 fake bomb threats to some of those hotels, falsely identifying themselves as these people, resulting in police investigations and even the brief detention of one of the activists, according to Axios interviews with Su, Wang, and Fu, and statements provided to Axios by police and hotel staff,” the outlet reported.

“What amazes me is that they use these tactics with such unscrupulousness in Germany, the United States, and other democracies as they do in China,” Su, who fled to Germany in 2010, told Axios. “When victims report crimes, democracies sometimes treat cases as ordinary cases of harassment, threats, and I hope democracies will link these cases to the [Chinese Communist Party’s] cross-border repression.”

“ChinaAid continues to stand by Bob and his fight for freedom in China,” Jonathan Dingler, communications director for ChinaAid, told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement. “We advise global leaders to take note of the Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to silence dissenting voices.”

The JW Marriot Essex House hotel in New York as well as a Houston hotel called Fu about the bomb threats made in his name, Axios reported.

“The only reason they want to use these tactics is to silence my voice,” Fu told the outlet Voice of America.

Fu noted that he was concerned about his safety and that of his family, and “wanted the U.S. Justice Department to investigate,” VOA reported.

“I took a lot of comfort that they targeted me, in the sense that they target me because I must have done something really right,” Fu told VOA.

Bryan Burack, a senior policy adviser focusing on China and the Indo-Pacific at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, weighed in on the story.

“These dangerous hoaxes are the result of years of failure to impose costs on the CCP for transnational repression and the silencing of dissent abroad,” Burack told The Daily Signal in a statement.

“From organizing anti-Tibet protests and harassing Uyghurs and Hong Kongers on U.S. soil, to silencing criticism of China on U.S. college campuses, to opening secret police stations in U.S. cities, the CCP has been engaged in malicious activities abroad for too long, with too few consequences,” Burack said. He added:

These bomb-threat hoaxes are yet another malevolent tactic deployed by the CCP. We have made some progress in raising awareness about these tactics and getting federal authorities and law enforcement to focus on the threat, but as the bomb-threat hoaxes show, there’s a lot more work to be done.

Law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Macau and Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Germany are investigating the fake bomb threats, Axios reported.

“Any form of foreign interference is utterly unacceptable,” the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Axios. “Every person in the Netherlands should be safe and feel safe, free from intimidation from regimes abroad. In case there are signs of unwanted interference, we will bring this up very firmly in bilateral contacts, and take action where necessary.”

WATCH: “Bob Fu’s Story”

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As March and Women’s History Month draw to a close, it’s worth taking a moment to ponder a rhetorical question posed earlier this month by the website SelfRelianceCentral.com: “Why Do Democrats Despise Women?” 

That’s not political hyperbole. It’s a serious—and legitimate—question.  

How else can one explain why elected Democrats nearly unanimously oppose efforts at the state level to prohibit gender-confused biological boys and men who “identify” as girls and women from competing in interscholastic and other athletic events against biological females?  

Forget climate change. These Democrats are the true science deniers—deniers of biological reality, genetics, and XX/XY chromosome science—and they apparently have no qualms about transgender “women” (aka biological males) hijacking girls’ and women’s sports and beating them at their own games. 

If real girls and women have to be deprived of athletic accolades and awards—trophies, prize money, and scholarships—to advance the transgender agenda, so be it, they seem to be saying. A website, the Family Research Council’s WashingtonStand.com, on March 27 updated its ongoing tally, reporting that “there have been over 30 separate girls’ and women’s sports titles that have been won by biological males (or have included biological men as part of a winning women’s team) in the last 19 years, with the trend accelerating exponentially in the past three years.” 

So, where’s the outrage—particularly among Democratic women, in and out of Congress—about this disgraceful commandeering of girls and women’s athletics by faux females?  

There isn’t any, as far as we can tell. To the contrary, Pennsylvania Democratic state Rep. La’Tasha Mayes unsuccessfully sought to pressure the University of Pittsburgh to cancel a March 27 speaking appearance by Riley Gaines (a real woman) at the school. Invited by the campus chapter of Turning Point USA, Gaines—a 12-time NCAA All-American swimmer, but who lost races to trans swimmer Lia (aka William) Thomas—has been highly critical of the intersex athletic interlopers. 

In that same vein, why won’t elected Democratic women speak out against those same trans “women” invading girls’ and women’s private spaces, from restrooms to locker rooms? If you’re female and you object to sharing those intimate facilities with “women” splaying male genitalia, you—not they—are the problem, it seems. 

Last year marked the 50^th anniversary of the 1972 passage of Title IX, which was intended to level the athletic playing field for girls and women, but Title IX apparently has been swept into the dustbin of history with Democrats’ silent acquiescence. 

To add insult to injury, the Biden administration is seeking to amend Title IX through administrative rulemaking to have it prohibit not only discrimination on the basis of sex, but also on the basis of gender identity. That would be an end run around Congress, which is highly unlikely to agree to that change. It’s also certain to face legal challenges. 

Democrats’ silence also was deafening when President Joe Biden’s White House on March 8 hosted an International Women’s Day event that honored a “group of 11 extraordinary women from around the world who are working to build a brighter future for all.” One of the 11 honorees was actually a biological male.  

But perhaps the most appalling example of all came a year ago last week on March 22, 2022, at federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing, when Biden’s Supreme Court justice-to-be couldn’t or wouldn’t answer Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s basic biology question: “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” To which Jackson responded, “I can’t. … I’m not a biologist.”  

None of the 16 Democratic women in the Senate criticized Jackson’s answer, much less voted against her elevation to the Supreme Court, where cases involving these issues will surely be argued, likely sooner rather than later. 

“Silence is assent,” the Left used to tell us in other protest contexts, so Democrats’ failure to object to any of this is effectively assent to the fraudulent construct of transgender “women” (an estimated .003% of the population) with its concomitant dissing of real females (51%). 

That’s just the price of the transgender cultural revolution that radical leftist Democrats—apparently including self-loathing biological women, perhaps suffering from a bizarre form of Stockholm syndrome—are fighting at every turn to impose.  

It all serves to underscore what a difference a decade makes. Remember when, after the GOP won back control of Congress in the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats began dishonestly accusing Republicans of waging a “war on women” because of pro-life legislation they were proposing?

By contrast, what the Democrats are doing now constitutes a real war on women, and if it weren’t for squeamish country club Republicans with an aversion to the social issues and their overpaid, underachieving campaign consultants who seem to think marginal tax rates are the “be all, end all” of campaign issues, Democrats could be made to pay a steep price at the polls for despising women.

Originally published at WashingtonTimes.com

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America’s largest Christian university announced a new president and chancellor Friday, more than two years after then-President Jerry Falwell, Jr. resigned amid scandal.

The board of trustees for Liberty University, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, unanimously appointed Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Dondi E. Costin, Ph.D., to serve as the institution’s sixth president and Pastor Jonathan Falwell to serve as its third chancellor. Falwell, the son of the school’s founder, Jerry Falwell Sr., and brother of Jerry Falwell Jr., previously served on the board.

“As one whose life and ministry have been profoundly shaped by Liberty University, I can think of no educational institution with more global impact than my two-time alma mater,” Costin, who earned two master’s degrees from the prominent Christian college during his military career, said in a statement. “I am beyond grateful to the Board for entrusting me with this extraordinary opportunity.”

“Vickey and I look forward to locking arms with the Liberty family as we honor the University’s past and drive toward its future,” he said, referring to his wife of more than 33 years. “With God’s help and for His glory, the very best days of our great University are still ahead of us.”

Costin, who most recently served as president of Charleston Southern University, obtained the rank of major general with the U.S. Air Force during 32 years of commissioned service. During that time, he represented the Liberty Baptist Fellowship as an endorsed chaplain, completing his military career at the Pentagon as Air Force chief of chaplains. In that role, he served as senior pastor to more than 664,000 service members in the U.S. and overseas and led 2,000 chaplains and chaplain assistants. His military decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star Medal.

Jonathan Falwell, the new chancellor, will remain senior pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church while serving at Liberty, like his father, Jerry Falwell, Sr., did.

“With this transition we are recommitting our institution to its founding, and singular, mission:
Training Champions for Christ,” the new chancellor said. “I look forward to serving alongside our exceptionally qualified new president to impact more lives than ever before with Christ-centered education.”

Liberty University is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The trustees evaluated nearly 100 credible candidates over eight months for the presidential position, working with CarterBaldwin Executive Search, a recruiting firm. Jerry Prevo, a member of the board, served as president between Falwell Jr.’s resignation and Costin’s term.

“The combination of President Costin and Chancellor Falwell not only bring the gravitas and experience necessary to lead the University exceptionally well, but with perfect cultural alignment,” Board Chairman Tim Lee said. “They will ensure Liberty University remains focused entirely on Training Champions for Christ to impact the world in every vocation.”

Liberty has served as a bulwark for evangelical Christianity and the conservative movement in America. Jerry Falwell, Sr. proved instrumental in launching the Christian Right. Critics later faulted his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s, extremely close association with Donald Trump amid the Access Hollywood scandal in 2016, but that relationship enabled Liberty to impact the Trump administration.

Republicans have long flocked to Liberty to speak, and the university has hosted then-President George H.W. Bush; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; George W. Bush; then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; then-President Trump; and then-Vice President Mike Pence, among others.

In October 2022, Liberty convened more than 630 U.S. and African CEOs, political figures, and faith leaders to network and promote joint business opportunities for U.S. companies and African nations. Strengthening such ties may weaken the Chinese Communist Party’s influence on the continent.

Falwell Jr. resigned in August 2020 after Giancarlo Granda, a young Miami pool boy who became his business partner, said he had a years-long sexual relationship with Falwell Jr.’s wife, Becki Falwell. Granda claimed Falwell Jr. would participate as a voyeur.

Falwell Jr.’s leadership saw a massive expansion in the student body at Liberty and brought the university economic success.

Liberty University sued Falwell Jr. in 2021 for withholding details of the affair from the school while he negotiated his lucrative retirement package. Earlier this month, Falwell Jr. sued the school for withholding those retirement funds.

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There is a fine line between stretched truth and outright lies. In a series of recent congressional hearings, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas seems to have found that line and pitched his tent on it. 

Mayorkas gave revealing testifimony Wednesday before both the Senate Appropriations Committee and a House Appropriations subcommittee.

Such hearings tend to go like this: Senators or representatives in the same party as the testifying executive branch official ask tough questions such as: “Sir, thank you for all your hard work. Just how awesome are you, and how excellent is your agency?”

Then it’s the turn of the opposing party, who may ask real questions seeking to hold the official to account.

Mayorkas’ two-fer testimony Wednesday was right in line with expectations. But if you listened to it all, the naked truth came out.

First, Mayorkas avoids definitions. When asked by Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., what an “assault weapon” is, on the reasonable premise that if you’re going to ban something, you first need to define it, Mayorkas dithered, hedged, and dodged

In the House hearing, Mayorkas tried again to defend his redefinition of the term “border security.”

Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, contrasted the testimony of Border Patrol Chief Raoul Ortiz with that of Mayorkas. With “a total of 6 million encounters along the southwest border,” Cloud asked, “do you still maintain today that our border is secure?”

I don’t have room to print Mayorkas’ entire answer here. It didn’t ever approach the “yes or no” that Cloud asked for.

Instead, President Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary stood by his earlier attempts to redefine a secure border as “maximizing the resources we have to deliver the most effective results.”

Mayorkas’ entire performance reminded me of the “five rules of dodgeball” from the classic movie comedy “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.”

More important than his definition-dodging, Mayorkas revealed in the two hearings the utter empty shell that is Biden’s stated plan for border security, while unwittingly laying out the real six-pillar plan.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., asked Mayorkas what will happen when the Biden administration gets its wish and is allowed to stop using Title 42, the public health law, to expel migrants before they can join the endless queue of supposed asylum-seekers inside our country.

Britt cited projections by the Department of Homeland Security that the daily numbers of illegal aliens attempting to enter the country, most often simply by surrendering to the Border Patrol between ports of entry, would climb to 12,000 or more after May 11 when U.S. agents stop applying Title 42.

“Is there a plan in place currently?” Britt asked.

Mayorkas claimed that his agency’s post-Title 42 plan was his old September 2021 “Six Pillars” plan, which, as I have previously commented, is delusional. The truth is, there is no real plan other than to double down on process, parole, and punt.

Britt then asked: “What are you doing to deal with the 600,000 … migrants who have come over and have been paroled into the United States?”

Mayorkas, who had testified a day earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee, answered that “with respect to individuals who have been paroled into the United States … they are, they should be in immigration proceedings, and if their claims succeed, then they are provided relief [asylum] under our laws. If their claims fail, uh, then they will be issued an order of removal and we will seek to remove them from the United States.”

That, folks, is the Biden administration’s big lie on immigration. Mayorkas and other officials are inviting, allowing, and assisting millions of aliens to cross into the United States on the pretext that they are genuine asylum-seekers.

In truth, even Biden’s DHS admits in a proposed rule that these migrants are unlikely to get asylum, and that they will enjoy “a lengthy stay in the United States, regardless of the merit of an individual’s case” because of backlogs in immigration processing, a situation that “risks driving even more migration.”  

Ignore Mayorkas’ stated six pillars. Here is the real plan.

Pillar 1: The Biden administration blames the massive incursion of foreign illegal immigrants toward the United States on vague world events, as if  this were some unique moment in history instead of a predictable outcome when consequences for illegal entry are removed.

Pillar 2: Administration officials shamelessly abuse a limited immigration parole power to allow most who show up at the border to enter, on the pretext that they will later claim (and merit) asylum.

Pillar 3:  Officials don’t detain illegals, but instead pay for their transportation anywhere in the U.S. and allow them to work and claim education and public benefits for two years, with almost certain renewal.

Pillar 4: Officials give the migrants a piece of paper (a “Notice to Appear” in court or “Report to ICE”) that, assuming they cooperate, may put them into removal proceedings but not until years in the future.

Pillar 5: They punt them into a backlog for immigration courts that is now over 2.1 million cases, a 62% increase since Biden took office. The courts are closing only half as many cases as are opened every month, and that number was 92,000 in January alone.

Pillar 6: Finally, thanks to a deliberately underfunded and overwhelmed asylum process, the millions of migrants placed into the pipeline are going nowhere else anytime soon, if ever. Mayorkas already has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement to avoid going after routine law-breaking illegal aliens, and DHS is reducing enforcement budgets and targets over the next two years. As a result, deportations by ICE are pathetically low.

What Mayorkas’ real six-pillar plan accomplishes is a de facto amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, and counting. This plan builds up a political pressure cooker through sheer numbers in an attempt to strong-arm Congress into another disastrous and unfair legislative amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Just like with other pressing national issues, the Biden administration’s answer to tough problems is not to seek compromise in Congress to pass laws as the Constitution intended. It is to stretch the meaning of the law and attempt regulatory overreach to achieve its ideological goals at all costs, hoping that accountability is a long way away.

The latest Mayorkas hearings are shining a necessary light on the farce that is Biden’s immigration policy. Congress now needs to see its mandate through and enforce accountability by impeaching Mayorkas and forcing the Department of Homeland Security to do its job:  Enforce all immigration laws on the books, not just the ones the political bosses approve of.

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As senators head home for a two-week Easter recess, one Republican finds himself enemy No. 1 of Democrats.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is playing hardball with the Biden administration over the Defense Department’s expansive new abortion policy. On three occasions, Tuberville has objected to his Democrat colleagues’ attempts to approve 184 promotions for military generals and flag officers. The latest showdown took place Wednesday.

>>> ‘I Will Stay Here Until Hell Freezes Over’: Senator Pushes Pentagon to Reverse Abortion Policy

This time, however, Tuberville had several Republican colleagues in his corner, starting with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who joined him on the Senate floor to refute the Democrats’ attacks.

“I’m here to stand in support of my friend and colleague from Alabama,” Lee said. “He stands in opposition, legitimate objections which I share, to the Department of Defense’s plan to use federal funds to facilitate the performance of abortions.”

Lee added, “Let this be a message for Secretary [Lloyd] Austin: If you want to make the laws, run for Congress, but you can’t legislate from the E-ring at the Pentagon. You cannot do that. Until then, stand down, and leave the lawmaking to lawmakers.”

>>> Tuberville: I’ll Continue to Block Biden’s Nominees Until Pentagon Stops Facilitating Taxpayer-Funded Abortions

Although no other Republicans spoke on the Senate floor Wednesday, several have expressed outrage at the Pentagon’s policy, which provides three weeks of paid leave and reimbursement of travel expenses for military personnel and dependents who are seeking an abortion.

The Pentagon’s new policy could lead to a massive increase in the annual number of abortions from approximately 20 to more than 4,000, according to an estimate from a Rand Corp. study.

“The Pentagon should not be mobilized against the unborn. The Department of Defense exists to defend life, not destroy it,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said upon introducing legislation with 35 co-sponsors to terminate the abortion policy.

>>> Majority of GOP Senators Back Plan to End Pentagon’s Abortion Policies

Others have praised Tuberville directly for refusing to budge.

“I support him,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., told Politico.

“I think he’s right in his concern for what the department is doing because we have never agreed to fund abortions in the past,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told The Hill.

“Until these policies are rescinded, I’m going to also have to consider holds against DOD nominees in solidarity with my colleagues,” Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., declared.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told Townhall: “The Biden Administration is exploiting the United States military to pursue their radical abortion agenda. Republicans must hold the line. At a time when our military is struggling to fill its ranks and replenish weapons stockpiles, our national security resources and American tax dollars should not be used to pay for service members and their dependents to travel to get abortions. Senator Tuberville is standing up for what is right, and I am proud to support him in his efforts against this illegal policy.”

And while other GOP senators didn’t explicitly endorse Tuberville’s tactics, they have voiced outrage at the Biden administration for politicizing the U.S. military and putting taxpayers on the hook for abortions.

“[The] Pentagon’s policy using taxpayer dollars to pay for the travel expenses for service members seeking an abortion is wrong and illegal and should be reversed,” Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., told Townhall. “I hope the administration is working closely with Sen. Tuberville to resolve this issue.”

“I agree [with Tuberville] that the Department of Defense’s policy is atrocious, and it is a departure from decades long understanding of federal public policy,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune, R-S.D., added.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said: “President Biden is doing everything possible to preserve the practice of murdering unborn Americans, including using our military as an abortion travel agency. We cannot allow these crazy, left-wing priorities to erode our military.”

Beginning in 1980 with passage of the Hyde Amendment, named for then-Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., Congress has restricted use of federal funding to pay for abortions. Lawmakers have placed Hyde-like restrictions on funds available to the Defense Department as well.

Taxpayers favor such protections, too. A survey in January conducted by the Marist Poll and commissioned by the Knights of Columbus revealed that 54% of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

The Biden administration has taken several steps to expand abortion access throughout the federal government since the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

In response to the court’s overturning Roe v. Wade, the Defense Department issued its Oct. 20 memorandum, “Ensuring Access to Reproductive Health Care,” promising easier access to abortion for U.S. military personnel.

The Pentagon outlined its next steps Feb. 16, allowing service members to have an abortion without being docked leave and also grant travel and transportation allowances to individuals who don’t live in an area with an abortion provider.

With the 100-member Senate so narrowly divided, and several lawmakers absent for health reasons, Democrats would prefer to approve the 184 pending military appointments and promotions as a group. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., could bring each nominee to the floor individually.

Instead, Schumer and others have made false accusations that Tuberville is jeopardizing national security.

Austin asserted Tuesday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that “Not approving the recommendations for promotions actually creates a ripple effect through the force that makes us far less ready than we need to be.”

But as Austin digs in and the Biden administration pursues a more expansive abortion agenda, pro-life conservatives are speaking out.

>>> Grassroots Army Backs Senator’s Effort to Overturn Pentagon Abortion Policies

Earlier this month, CatholicVote spearheaded a coalition letter with 23 leaders who represent millions of grassroots conservatives. Signatories include Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation; Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America; Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council; Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life Action; Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center; Paul Teller, executive director of Advancing American Freedom; and others. (The Daily Signal is the media outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

In addition to conservative leaders, Tuberville is also gaining support among members of the U.S. House.

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When it comes to President Joe Biden’s energy policies, he has earned “an F,” says Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont.

Rosendale is one of 221 Republicans who voted Thursday in support of a bill, HR 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act. The vote was 225-204 with four Democrats joining the Republican majority and one GOP member voting against it.

The legislation, which passed in the House, would “lower energy costs by increasing American energy production, exports, infrastructure, and critical minerals processing, by promoting transparency, accountability, permitting, and production of American resources, and by improving water quality certification and energy projects, and for other purposes,” according to the bill’s text.  

Rosendale and Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain what is included in the bill and to discuss how Biden’s handling of America’s energy resources has affected the economy and even U.S. national security.

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Virginia Allen: We are joined today by Congressman [Matt] Rosendale. Congressman, thank you so much for your time today.

Rep. Matt Rosendale: Great to be here with you, Virginia. Thanks for having me on.

Allen: Something that every American wants is lower energy costs. We all want to be paying less for gas, less for our heating at home. Now, right now Congress is considering HR 1. Tell us what exactly this bill is and how it would actually help to lower energy costs across America.

Rosendale: So, I think we really can look at a three-prong operation here. One, we’re going to make sure that our mining operations can be permitted faster. We’ve got a lot of critical minerals located across the country. We have discovered that we are far too dependent on China and other adversaries, foreign adversaries, to produce those minerals. So we’re going to increase our own domestic production.

The next thing is that we have to get our domestic energy production increased as well. The Biden administration has reduced it by nearly about 2 million barrels a day, crude oil. And that is not only hurtful to our economy, it’s driving the inflation rates up even higher, but it also puts us in a position where our foreign adversaries can take advantage of us as well, puts us in a national security risk.

And then that’s the third prong of it, is to increase the pipelines and the refinery capacity that we have here domestically, make sure that we put the permits in place to allow that to happen.

And again, that not only helps us and to reduce our inflation, get our energy costs down, and increase our national security position, but also puts us in a position to help our allies overseas with exports so that they are not reliant upon foreign adversaries as well.

Allen: Talk a little bit more about how this bill would help other countries. And what’s the message—if Congress passes HR 1, President Joe Biden signs it, what message does that send to China?

Rosendale: Well, it starts turning things back around.

We saw the Biden administration, as soon as they took office, that they were closing down our domestic energy production by cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. They lifted the economic sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which empowered and enriched Russia.

And so what this will do is send a signal across the world that we are ramping up our domestic energy production and that we are going to help our allies. And one of the most strong ways that we can help our allies is to make sure that they have access to low-cost energy as well.

Allen: Now, some Democrats are claiming that this bill is just a giveaway to big oil companies. What’s your response to that?

Rosendale: I visited a wind farm 30 miles north of Miles City that would not have been possible if not for a $30 million subsidy that was provided by the Green New Deal provisions of the Biden administration.

What they call support is really just making reasonable fees that were in place before the Biden administration. And so there’s no handouts, there’s no gimmes or subsidies involved in this legislation. What it does is it gets government out of the way and just reduces the bureaucratic red tape that producers need to go through in order to access our domestic energy.

Allen: When you consider President Joe Biden’s energy policies over the last few years since he took office, what grade would you give him for those policies?

Rosendale: It’s not just me, it’s the country, they gave him an F, and that’s because he eliminated the production of just about 2 million barrels a day of crude oil. And when you take that out of the marketplace, it drives cost up. It’s a very simple policy of supply and demand.

And the cost of energy is on a global market. And when you take that much production out of the equation and the demand stays about the same or increases, then the cost is going to go up.

And this has not only hurt our economy and drove inflation cost up, but again, it has compromised our national security as well, putting us in a position where we had to start tapping into a strategic petroleum reserve.

Allen: If we can get to a point where we are significantly energy-independent, what does that change in America? What will that mean for the American people, for our economy?

Rosendale: So, it changes the entire dynamic of how we look at things. What it will do is help to bring down the cost of inflation, which drives—it’s basically a tax on every single product that you purchase, from your groceries to your pharmaceuticals to the new automobile. It drives the cost of everything up.

And so it will also put us in a position where we are not reliant upon foreign adversaries for energy, which puts us in a much stronger position from a national security standpoint.

So it will improve the economy, it will strengthen our national security, and then put us in a stronger position as we go around the globe and start making negotiations, whether they are trade agreements or otherwise.

Allen: How likely do you think it is that HR 1 actually becomes the law of the land and we take a step toward becoming more energy-independent as Americans?

Rosendale: I think that it’s going to pass through the House very easily. When it goes over to the Senate, I still think that it will probably pass because you have several very vulnerable senators on the Democrat side that are facing difficult elections coming up. So I think that they’re just going to go ahead and vote for it.

And then it will land on the president’s desk, and he’s going to have to make a decision about whether he’s going to stand with the people of America or whether he’s going to stand with the tyrants and our adversaries around the world.

Allen: Congressman, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it.

Rosendale: Thanks, Virginia.

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Democrats took to Twitter Thursday night to respond to former President Donald Trump’s indictment. A Manhattan grand jury’s decision to indict Trump marks the first time a former U.S. president has faced criminal charges.  

The charges against the 45th U.S. president revolve around supposed hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg led the investigation.   

“No one is above the law. Now do the rest of his crimes,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., tweeted.  

“The Grand Jury has acted upon the facts and the law,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence. Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Donald Trump is subject to the same laws as every American. He will be able to avail himself of the legal system and a jury, not politics, to determine his fate according to the facts and the law.”

“The indictment of a former president is unprecedented,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. “But so too is the unlawful conduct in which Trump has been engaged. A nation of laws must hold the rich and powerful accountable, even when they hold high office. Especially when they do. To do otherwise is not democracy.”  

“SO Trump finally got indicted!,” Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said. “I predicted he would and I predicted that Stormy Daniels would get him! Sometimes justice works!”

“The news of Trump’s indictment is a testament to one of the most fundamental ideals of our country: no one is above the law – not even presidents,” Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tweeted.

Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., reacted to Trump’s indictment writing, “Our democracy rests on the rule of law. When someone—no matter how powerful they are—is suspected of a criminal act, our justice system investigates, charges, and convicts them in accordance with due process.”

Omar went on to say she hopes her fellow congressional members join her in “supporting justice and accountability—regardless of party—for the sake of our democracy.”

“I have faith in our legal system to handle former President Trump’s case without interference and with the seriousness it deserves,” Rep. Rob Menendez, D-N.J., wrote on Twitter. “As the legal process plays out, we must continue to focus on doing the work of the American people. And that is exactly what Democrats will do.”

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., tweeted, “Our independent, impartial judicial system is the cornerstone of our democracy. Nothing Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy can do can change that.”

Nadler’s comments were in response to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeting “Outrageous,” after the news broke of Trump’s indictment.

“Our justice system has an obligation to pursue the facts & law wherever they lead,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., tweeted. “Former President Trump will have the same rights as any criminal defendant & the justice system will presume him innocent until proven guilty.”

“While there are many unknowns, we know a few things to be true,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said in a Twitter thread, adding the “Manhattan District Attorney must be allowed to continue his investigation without interference. Any attempt to undermine this process is contrary to the rule of law; and [p]olitical violence or threats of violence cannot be tolerated.”

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The post Democrats React to Trump’s Indictment appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Throwing a former president in jail is bananas. If that happens, we’ll certainly look a lot more like a banana republic.

On Thursday evening, a Manhattan grand jury indicted former President Donald Trump on charges related to hush money payments made to pornographic performer Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election. Though the details have yet to be released, the case against Trump seems murky at best. It really feels like they wanted to find something, anything to give them an excuse to arrest Trump.

This news marks the first time in American history that a former president has been criminally indicted.

Are we really going to put a former president—who is now currently running for president–in jail over an embarrassing but convoluted paperwork situation?

One presidential candidate, the socialist Eugene V. Debs, made a presidential bid from a jail cell. The third-party candidate had been charged with sedition by the Woodrow Wilson administration in World War I for urging people to ditch the draft in a public speech. Whatever can be said of Debs, it was hardly a proud moment for the country.

Debs was quickly pardoned by Republican President Warren G. Harding who campaigned for a return to “normalcy” and actually meant it, unlike the current commander-in-chief.

For those on the Left who openly support the Trump indictment, one of the go to lines has been that “nobody is above the law!”

Is that so?

That would make slightly more sense if the man prosecuting the case wasn’t Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The George Soros-connected district attorney became infamous for a day one memo highlighting how under his leadership, many serious crimes wouldn’t be prosecuted. The list included “resisting arrest, fare beating, prostitution, and trespassing.”

Bragg backed off a bit from that memo once the story went national, but his tenure has nevertheless been filled with cases of going so soft on crime that he should be doing commercials for Charmin toilet paper. He’s significantly reduced charges in grand larceny cases and he’s given light slaps on the wrist to notorious gangbangers with mile long rap sheets.

“Since taking office on Jan. 1, Bragg has downgraded 52% of felony cases to misdemeanors–compared to 39% in all of 2019,” reported the New York Post. “Between 2013 and 2020, under District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., the percentage of cases the office downgraded had never exceeded 40%, according to data made public by the DA’s office.”

In New York, almost everyone is above the law. Everyone but Trump, apparently.

It couldn’t be clearer that Bragg’s case is almost entirely politically motivated. I’d guess that most people who support the indictment likely know this too. That they are for it anyway says a lot about the current political climate.

This is quite clearly the direction left-wing thought is going in America. The people on the “wrong side of history,”—at this point most Republicans and conservative-leaning people—are the real criminals, the real enemies. Murderers, thieves, and gangsters are merely products of our racist, unjust system, you see.

Remember when President Joe Biden gave his angry, red speech yelling about how “MAGA Republicans” are a threat to democracy? What better way to show that than to put the original MAGA Republican in jail.

Now, Trump hasn’t gone to jail yet. It’s hard to see Bragg’s trial being much more than farce. This whole circus will certainly win him some fans among leftists in Manhattan, so maybe that’s all he wants here.

But one way or another this is a terrible moment for the country.

Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have been chippy lately, but DeSantis nevertheless explained why this indictment is so disturbing. He also announced that his state would not assist an extradition request from New York.

Jailing political opposition on shaky charges is the kind of thing we expect from corrupt dictatorships. It’s a precedent that tends to repeat itself, as it has in places like Haiti, where cycles of coup and repression become so common as to be expected.

So, what will be the result of Bragg’s decision to indict? The message he’s sending isn’t that “nobody is above the law,” it’s that the “law” is out to get you if you disagree with the regime, whether you are guilty or not.

That’s a dark road to embark on. We are approaching a Rubicon that will be very hard to uncross once the die is cast and criminally charging political opponents is normalized.

People will begin to give up on self-government, they’ll assume that electoral defeat means tyranny or worse. They’ll resort to bullets over ballots. A dictator who protects you and jails your enemies will be seen as the lesser of two evils.

We don’t want to live in that nightmare.

Is this the moment our American republic became a banana republic? Maybe not quite. But the clownish Manhattan district attorney and his left-wing cheerleaders are doing their best to bring us to that pathetic end.

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The post Trump Indictment Brings Us Closer to Becoming a Banana Republic appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The widely reported indictment of former President Donald Trump by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, headed by Alvin Bragg, doesn’t come as a surprise.  

That lack of surprise, though, isn’t because he’s necessarily guilty of any crimes. Like anyone else accused of a crime, Trump is deemed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by legal and competent evidence. 

The lack of surprise stems from the fact that it’s clear he’s been the target of potential prosecution by politically ambitious local district attorneys in New York and Georgia—and by a politicized federal Justice Department—for some time.

Recently, New York Attorney General Letitia James spearheaded a civil investigation into the Trump Organization and many of its business dealings, while the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, led by then-D.A. Cy Vance, ran a parallel criminal investigation.

Under Vance’s successor, Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg ultimately pled guilty to a tax fraud scheme, and he provided testimony against the Trump Organization, which itself was convicted of participating in that scheme.

Indictment Not Yet Released

Trump himself, though, faced no personal liability in those investigations. Now, however, Bragg, the current Manhattan DA, who came into office touting liberal nonprosecution policies, has apparently charged Trump with alleged crimes.  While the indictment itself has not been released, we know that the investigation focused on what has been labeled as “hush money” payments to adult film star Stephanie Clifford, who goes by the name Stormy Daniels.

Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump, which he has denied. Prosecutors allege that in the final days of his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump paid her $130,000 in hush money through his then-attorney/fixer Michael Cohen and reimbursed Cohen via monthly payments from his company for legal and other services that were not provided.

Cohen ultimately pled guilty to several federal offenses, including perjury and three relatively minor (when compared with the other charges to which he pled guilty) campaign finance charges related to those payments.  

With respect to the campaign finance charges, in essence, the government’s theory was that when Cohen made the initial payment to Daniels, he was doing so “in order to influence the 2016 presidential election” and was, therefore, making a campaign donation in excess of the legal limit, for which he was ultimately reimbursed.

The government also claimed, and Cohen admitted, that Cohen arranged an additional $150,000 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate, who also claimed to have had an affair with Trump. Cohen is alleged to have arranged this payment from David Pecker, a friend of Trump’s who, at the time, was the CEO of American Media Inc. and the publisher of The National Enquirer, as part of a “catch and kill” scheme to buy the exclusive rights to McDougal’s story in order to ensure that it would never get published. 

Federal prosecutors granted immunity to Pecker in exchange for his cooperation, and it has been reported that Pecker testified twice before the grand jury in connection with Bragg’s investigation. The National Enquirer, however, paid a $187,500 fine to the Federal Election Commission after the FEC concluded that the $150,000 payment was an illegal corporate campaign contribution that had been arranged in coordination with people with the Trump campaign, including Cohen.

At the time of his sentencing, Cohen stated that he “acted in coordination with and at the direction of” Trump when he made and arranged those payments.

Shoehorning Allegations Into a Prosecution

Bragg, it seems, is trying to shoehorn those allegations into a prosecution against Trump for several New York state crimes. Essentially, Bragg is trying to elevate a New York state misdemeanor case for falsifying business records (under Article 175 of the New York Penal Code) related to the hush money payments to a state felony offense by alleging that Trump acted with an “intent to defraud” by making misleading entries in the company’s business records in order to cover up another crime—in this case, the alleged federal campaign finance violation committed by Cohen to assist the Trump campaign. 

As one of us explained in a 2018 article, “Those claiming that this settlement with Stormy Daniels was a campaign-related expense and a violation of campaign finance law don’t have much of a leg to stand on.” 

It’s also worth noting that neither the Federal Election Commission, nor the U.S. Justice Department, which are responsible for enforcing federal campaign finance laws, thought this settlement payment violated federal campaign finance laws.  In fact, the Justice Department considered the matter, but ultimately closed its investigation without bringing any charges against Trump.

So did the FEC, when it closed its investigation without any finding of wrongdoing.

The Washington Post said that it “would be unusual for a state prosecutor to use an alleged violation of a federal law, rather than of a state campaign finance law, as grounds to elevate a false-paperwork case from a misdemeanor to a felony.” (Bear in mind that New York state campaign finance laws do not apply to a federal candidate running for the presidency or for Congress.)

And even The New York Times admits that the “case against the former president hinges on an untested and therefore risky legal theory involving a complex interplay of laws, all amounting to a low-level felony.”

Bragg’s case is also not helped by the recent testimony of Robert Costello, Cohen’s former legal adviser. Costello told Fox News that he told the grand jury that Cohen, who would be Bragg’s chief witness on the supposed federal campaign finance violation, is a “serial liar.”

Appealing to Bragg’s Base

Bragg’s pursuit of this case stands in stark contrast to his pledge not to prosecute many other crimes and cases—even violent crimes. Still, it’s not surprising since by filing these charges, Bragg will immediately become a political rock star to some on the Left. 

In terms of federal authorities, we know that special counsel Jack Smith, a career prosecutor who most recently prosecuted war crimes at The Hague, is investigating potential crimes allegedly committed by Trump related to the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the retention of classified documents after he left office.

While the Justice Department doesn’t comment on pending investigations, we do know that in relation to the Jan. 6 investigation, Smith has seized cellphones and other evidence from Trump advisers and has issued subpoenas for a number of Trump allies, attorneys, and administration officials to appear in front of a grand jury.

Some, such as former Vice President Mike Pence and Trump  attorney Evan Corcoran, are fighting the subpoenas based on the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution, attorney-client privilege, and other privileges.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta

Like the federal investigation, the Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, a Democrat, has focused on Trump’s conduct in the aftermath of the 2020 election. And like the federal investigation, she compelled a number of Trump allies and officials to appear before a special grand jury to give testimony. 

At one point, a state court judge barred Willis from targeting a state senator, now the lieutenant governor, after she held a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent, who was running as a candidate for the same office.

That incident is revealing about what might be Willis’ true motivations.

We don’t know much about what evidence this special grand jury collected. Grand jury proceedings, by their nature, are secret, or at least should be. However, we did get a glimpse of what could be coming when the special grand jury’s forewoman gave a series of bizarre interviews hinting that it  had recommended indicting multiple people.

Under Georgia law, though, a different grand jury would decide which, if any, indictments to return. Likely charges would include conspiracy to commit election fraud (§21-2-603 of the Georgia Code) or soliciting others to commit election fraud (§21-2-604 of the Georgia Code).

Racketeering?

It has also been rumored that Trump might be charged with violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act (§16-14-4 of the Georgia Code). 

Although modeled after the federal RICO statute, which was created to help combat traditional organized crime, the Georgia statute is significantly broader. For example, while the federal statute requires proof of continuity and an enterprise, the Georgia statute can be used to prosecute individuals who violate (including attempting or conspiring to violate) two or more of the 42 specifically delineated federal and state crimes (which are classified as “racketeering activity” and listed in §16-14-3) over a relatively short period of time “in furtherance of one or more incidents, schemes, or transactions that have the same or similar intent, results, accomplices, victims or methods of commission or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated incidents.” 

In other words, the two criminal acts have to be part of a pattern of behavior—not isolated acts—done with the same intent, to achieve a common result, or that have other distinguishing, interrelated characteristics.

A conviction under the Georgia RICO statute carries a potential penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $25,000 or three times the amount of any financial gain, whichever is greater.

The genesis of this investigation was an hourlong telephone call that transpired on Jan. 2, 2021, primarily between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Others on the call were Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, three other Trump attorneys (Cleta Mitchell, Alex Kaufman, and Kurt Hilbert), and Raffensperger’s general counsel, Ryan Germany.

That ‘Perfect’ Call

The accusations against Trump include directing Raffensperger to “find” votes for him in order to overturn the results of the election in that state. While the call was not “perfect,” as Trump claims, it’s also not at all clear from the transcript of that call that Trump was doing any such thing. 

If anything, it appears as though Trump was telling Raffensperger that all Trump’s attorneys had to do was “find” a sufficient number of votes in order to get the results overturned by a judge in one of the many pending cases that his lawyers had already filed in that state that contested the validity of the election and claimed that fraudulent votes had been submitted and that all of the legitimate ballots cast had not been properly counted.

Trump might also be charged with lying—what the media has labeled “The Big Lie”—about the fact that the election was stolen. It’s not enough, however, to prove that Trump was wrong when he claimed that the election in Georgia (and elsewhere) had been stolen. Georgia prosecutors would have to prove that he knew he was wrong at the time and was, therefore, lying. 

While it’s clear that there were many people even within his administration who did not believe the election had been stolen and who were telling Trump that, it’s equally clear that there were other individuals that Trump trusted who were telling him that the election was stolen and that they would ultimately be able to prove that in court and in the court of public opinion.

By relying on the latter group rather than the former, Trump might have been wrong, perhaps egregiously so, but that doesn’t mean that he was lying when he made those claims in the immediate aftermath of the election, or even today. 

Even though an indictment has not yet been returned, Trump’s attorney is already fighting back, having filed a lengthy document seeking to quash the special grand jury’s report, disqualify the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office from any further involvement, and preclude any prosecuting office from using any of the evidence that was presented to the special grand jury.

Also deeply troubling is the fact that some of the people who have been designated as “targets” by Willis are local Republican Party activists who served as alternate or contingent electors—who opponents have labeled “fake” electors—for Trump. 

The idea of alternate electors isn’t new. It happened in 1876 and 1960, when the outcome of particular states’ presidential vote remained unclear. A slate of electors for each candidate met, cast their ballots for their preferred candidate, and waited for the dispute to be resolved. 

In the 1960 election, the votes of the alternate slate of electors from Hawaii who cast their votes for John Kennedy ultimately had their votes counted, even though the governor of Hawaii initially certified the votes that had been cast by electors voting for Richard Nixon.

In 2000, then-Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, suggested that then-Vice President Al Gore designate a slate of contingent electors who would vote in Florida while litigation in the aftermath of that election was ongoing in that state. If a slate of electors didn’t cast their ballots for Gore on the date prescribed by federal law, Gore wouldn’t have a remedy even if he eventually won his electoral challenge. Gore decided to concede on Dec. 13, five days before the electors met to officially cast their votes.

Dangerous Precedent

Were any of the alternate electors or Mink indicted for attempting to obstruct an election? Of course not. Only now, when these alternate electors—who opponents have labeled “fake” electors—cast their ballots for Trump have they been subjected to potential criminal liability. 

That’s a dangerous precedent to set.

Party activists should be allowed—indeed, encouraged—to participate in the hurly-burly of the political process without having to worry about the criminal law being weaponized against them.

Moreover, under §21-2-172 of the Georgia Code, the authority to choose electors is given to the “state party or body chairperson of such political party,” so members of the state Republican Party and its chairman appear to have been acting in compliance with state law in selecting a group of contingent electors as a backup in case any of the election contests were successful in court. Ditto for the candidate and campaign for which those electors cast their ballots.

A judge disqualified Willis from continuing her investigation into one of the alternate electors because she had hosted a fundraiser for his political opponent. As one of us previously wrote, “Think about that: She hosted a fundraiser for someone who was running against an individual whom she had already publicly labeled as a target of a criminal investigation that she was conducting.”

This is all, of course, completely unprecedented. Never before has a former president, much less one who is currently running to regain his old office, been charged with a crime. 

While we must wait to see what evidence prosecutors have marshaled to support their charges, it seems clear that the only reason Trump was the focus of these investigation in the first place is because of who he is—not necessarily because of the severity of any violations. 

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised Thursday evening to hold Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accountable for his role in indicting former President Donald Trump.

“Alvin Bragg has irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” McCarthy said in a statement Thursday. “As he routinely frees violent criminals to terrorize the public, he weaponized our sacred system of justice against President Donald Trump.”

“The American people will not tolerate this injustice, and the House of Representatives will hold Alvin Bragg and his unprecedented abuse of power to account,” the house speaker promised.

The charges against Trump revolve around supposed hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels prior to the 2016 presidential election. Bragg led the investigation and on Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed the charges under seal.

Trump is expected to be asked to surrender to authorities in the coming days. The details of the charges remain unknown for now.  

“This is Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history,” the former president said in a statement slamming the indictment Thursday evening. “From the time I came down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, and even before I was sworn in as your President of the United States, the Radical Left Democrats – the enemy of the hard-working men and women of this Country – have been engaged in a Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement.”

A slew of Republican lawmakers similarly reacted to the news on Thursday, expressing outrage and condemning the move as political persecution.

“Tonight’s indictment of Donald Trump isn’t about the law,” warned Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. “It’s about power. Raw power. It’s the Democrat Party telling the nation they will stop at nothing to control the outcome of the next presidential election. It is an assault on our democracy, pure and simple.”

“Impeach Biden,” said Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “He’s given us every reason and the family banking records and more are giving us receipts. But now that the gloves are off.. Prosecute any and all crimes. Enough of this witch hunt bullshit.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas emphasized that the “Democrat Party’s hatred for Donald Trump knows no bounds.”

“The ‘substance’ of this political persecution is utter garbage,” he said. “This is completely unprecedented and is a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”

Florida Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna slammed the news as “an attack on every American.” Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan called it “outrageous.”

“President Donald Trump always fought for us,” said Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. “He puts the American people above corrupt interests. For that reason alone, the powerful will never stop coming for him. A majority of Americans know Alvin Bragg’s witch hunt is a politically motivated prosecution. I continue to stand with President Trump as he has always stood with us.”

Trump also emphasized that this has never before happened in United States history.

“The Democrats have cheated countless times over the decades, including spying on my campaign, but weaponizing our justice system to punish a political opponent, who just so happens to be a President of the United States and by far the leading Republican candidate for President, has never happened before,” he said. “Ever.”

The former president also heavily criticized Bragg, saying that he was “hand-picked and funded by George Soros.”

“Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave taking over New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work, ignoring the murders and burglaries and assaults he should be focused on,” Trump said. “This is how Bragg spends his time!”

“I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” he added. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Following news of the indictment, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called the move “un-American” and announced that he would not assist in extraditing Trump.

“The weaponization of the legal system to advance a political agenda turns the rule of law on its head,” he said. “It is un-American. The Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney has consistently bent the law to downgrade felonies and to excuse criminal misconduct. Yet, now he is stretching the law to target a political opponent.”

“Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue with this Soros-backed Manhattan prosecutor and his political agenda,” he added.

Virginia Allen contributed to this report.

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Over 20 House conservatives have requested legislation to prevent government agencies from discriminating against American citizens based on their religion.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, led fellow House Republicans in signing a letter last week to three colleagues requesting that House appropriators add language to legislation to prohibit the federal government “from taking any discriminatory action against a person, wholly or partially, on the basis that such person speaks, or acts, in accordance with a sincerely held religious belief, or moral conviction, that marriage is, or should be recognized as, a union of one man and one woman.”

The lawmakers add:

Without this language, we fear that the federal government will begin to systematically discriminate against religious schools, faith-based organizations, and other non-profits by barring their participation in federal programs, and removing their tax-exempt status, for their views on marriage.

“Americans should be free to believe that marriage is between one man and one woman without fear of the government penalizing or even prosecuting them,” Roy said in a prepared statement. “Sadly, dozens of Americans have been silenced or pressured to back down in high-profile cases, and thousands, perhaps millions, more have been silenced or intimidated by these examples.”

The letter from Roy and the other lawmakers, dated March 24, is addressed to Reps. Kay Granger, R-Texas; Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.; and Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., all of whom are involved in crafting a budget for three major Cabinet-level departments: Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.

Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, also expressed the need for legislation to address this issue.

“The many Americans who hold to a traditional understanding of marriage deserve to have their First Amendment rights upheld,” Nance said in a prepared statement. “Congressman Chip Roy has called for appropriators to include language to protect these Americans’ rights. We need the ‘Roy Amendment,’ much like we continue to need the Hyde and Weldon Amendments that protect Americans and taxpayer dollars from abuse.”

Congress’ Hyde and Weldon amendments both are intended to prevent taxpayers’ money from funding abortions.

The First Amendment protects religious freedom, among other freedoms. However, federal agencies nevertheless have targeted Americans, in some cases specifically for their traditional religious views. 

One such case happened recently: In 2019, Christians Engaged applied for nonprofit status. The Texas-based nonprofit says it was created to “awaken, motivate, educate, and empower ordinary believers in Jesus Christ.” 

The IRS took 18 months before sending the Christian organization a rejection letter saying that it “engage[s] in prohibited political campaign intervention” and “operate[s] for a substantial non-exempt private purpose and for the private interests of the [Republican] party.”

The IRS also said in its rejection letter to Christians Engaged that “[B]ible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican] Party and candidates.”

In the rejection latter, Stephen A. Martin, the IRS’ exempt organizations director, wrote:

Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental, including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations.

The Federalist Society concluded that this decision by the IRS was a “blatant violation of the Constitution and the IRS’s own “regulations.”

“By denying Christians Engaged’s application, the IRS effectively said that a Christian group doesn’t have the right to speak out in the public square on public issues,” Joshua D. Holdenried, vice president and executive director of Napa Legal Institute, wrote for the New York Post. “If the founders of Christians Engaged wanted to prove their organization isn’t Republican, the IRS essentially said they would have to renounce God.”

In a 2021 letter, Roy and other House lawmakers requested that the IRS review the case and terminate staff members who were involved in the reasoning that led to the rejection of nonprofit status for Christians Engaged.

The letter noted that if the IRS broadly used this interpretation of the law, “it would jeopardize the tax-exempt status of thousands of Christian churches across the country.”The IRS eventually reversed its decision and granted tax-exempt status to Christians Engaged.

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