A Republican congressman is speaking out about how the Chinese Communist Party is influencing U.S. classrooms.

“Well, they come in, and they sort of soft-pedal their propaganda, but yet, they also whitewash history by eliminating Taiwan,” says Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s early childhood, elementary, and secondary education subcommittee.

“You can’t talk about Taiwan. You can’t talk about Tiananmen Square. You can’t talk about the Uyghurs. You can’t talk about Tibet, the Dalai Lama—all these things that they are influencing and really trying to grasp the young minds of young students to say how great China is,” adds Bean, who was elected to Congress last November.

Bean joins today’s episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss a hearing his subcommittee held Tuesday, “Academic Freedom Under Attack: Loosening the CCP’s Grip on America’s Classrooms”; the Confucius Classrooms located throughout the U.S.; and what’s at stake if the U.S. isn’t able to counter the communist regime’s influence in American classrooms.

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

Samantha Aschieris: Today I have the honor of welcoming Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida’s 4th Congressional District to “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Rep. Bean was elected to Congress in 2022 and is the chairman of the subcommittee on early childhood, elementary, and secondary education. Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

Rep. Aaron Bean: Samantha, what an honor it is to be here in your studio.

Aschieris: Of course. Now, earlier this week on Tuesday, your subcommittee held a hearing titled “Academic Freedom Under Attack: Loosening the CCP’s Grip on America’s Classrooms.” In your opening remarks, you said that the influence of the Chinese Communist Party is rampant in America’s classrooms and that over 500 K-12 schools across the United States have allowed the CCP to establish itself in their halls under the guise of Confucius Classrooms. First and foremost, tell us a little bit more about Confucius Classrooms.

Bean: So, first of all, China has been aggressively maneuvering itself in the world for decades. And I like to tell everybody, I think America has first woken up to the aggressive nature of the Communist Chinese Party. The wake-up call came in the form of a Chinese spy balloon and now Americans are waking up.

So this conversation and study came from a report from a group called Parents Defending Education. They found 143 of what’s called Confucius Institutes, which some, it’s under the guise, the disguise is it’s a goodwill move by China to put a cultural center. They give money, they give volunteers to teach the language and the culture. But what we’ve discovered, it’s just a front to spread propaganda by the Communist Chinese Party.

Aschieris: Can you speak more to between this report and what we heard at the hearing on Tuesday, how the CCP is influencing our classrooms?

Bean: Well, they come in and they soft-pedal their propaganda, but yet, they also whitewash history by eliminating Taiwan. You can’t talk about Taiwan. You can’t talk about Tiananmen Square. You can’t talk about the Uyghurs. You can’t talk about Tibet, the Dalai Lama. All these things that they are influencing and really trying to grasp the young minds of young students to say how great China is.

So we are raising that alarm. We’re raising the red flag, really, to let everybody know this is happening and schools need to be aware of what’s going on.

Aschieris: Just regarding the conversation, we’ve had Nicole Neily, actually, who was a witness on Tuesday on the show before to talk about the report that you referenced, “Little Red Classrooms.” Why was it important for you to not only host this hearing but also bring attention to this issue?

Bean: Well, let’s call Nicole Neily what she is. She’s a fireball, a fireball for freedom. She stood courageously to say, “This is happening, America. Let’s wake up.” Because we just ignore it. So many people ignore it. It’s important to know.

She also has flagged—it’s a red flag, by the way, so let’s be clear what that is as well. A red flag on, they’re really focused on schools surrounding our military bases. So they’re focused on kids, the sons and daughters of our service men and women, at these bases. So they know exactly what they’re doing.

People like Nicole Neily and Parents Defending Education have, I guess, raised that flag and said, “This is happening America. We all need to be aware of it. Schools need to be aware of it.”

I’m going to tell you the biggest shocker. The biggest shocker for me—you were there. You were there, Samantha. You were there and you watched the hearing. I guess I’m a naive new congressman. I’ve been there nine months now. We came in and there is a lot of fighting between parties and I keep thinking, “What issue, what issue is going to bring us together?”

Whenever our committee was two days ago, I would’ve bet the farm that this issue, China invading America through our classrooms, you know what? This is going to be the issue that brings parties together. Shocker. They were on the other side. Democrats seem to excuse it or say it’s Asian American racism. They ignore the problem and how we want to welcome culture and how important it is to learn the language.

So this is not the issue that brought the parties together. So thank goodness there were a lot of folks like Dr. Virginia Foxx who stood up for freedom, Lisa McLean, Burgess Owens, so many other patriots. Mary Miller stood up and said that we need to call the Chinese what they are, propagandists trying to take the minds of American youth.

Aschieris: You just brought up the military bases with these Confucius Classrooms surrounding them. I think, if I’m remembering correctly, at least in the “Little Red Classrooms” report, there were 20 that they were able to identify around the military bases. In terms of what you were talking about in your opening statement with the 500 K-12 schools, where are some of those located throughout the country?

Bean: They’re in 34 states. So you think, if you’re listening in, there’s a great chance that your state has one or two in them.

To call attention to it—Oklahoma had a handful. We heard from Ryan Walker yesterday, who’s one of the senior leaders in education in Oklahoma, that they started having a requirement that if you’re accepting money from foreign influences, particularly China, then everyone needs to know it, and he’s had success with reporting requirements.

That’s something that we need to study going forward to make sure that maybe that’s an option to prevent, or at least let everybody know this is what’s happening.

Aschieris: Absolutely. Something I also wanted to highlight from the hearing that you talked about were the risks associated with Confucius Classrooms. You talked about how they’re threatening America’s national geopolitical and academic interests. First and foremost, let’s talk about national security. What are the risks associated with Confucius Classrooms in relation to national security?

Bean: Well, we’re allowing our enemy—and let’s be clear, China is moving as an adversary. They are making strategic moves around the globe to thwart American influence. They’re buying up mining rights in Africa and South America, these countries to dominate a lot of the rare earth minerals that are the future of our production. They know exactly what they’re doing, and so we need to wake up.

They’re promoting apps like TikTok that record and spy on our young people and everybody that is on those types of platforms. So all this information can and perhaps could be used against us and maneuvers going forward, as they’re getting aggressive and they’re maneuvering. So that is definitely a national concern for us.

Aschieris: Also, just to continue on with geopolitical interests, if you could speak more to that?

Bean: Well, we just need to be aware. They told us when this Chinese spy balloon, the administration said, “Oh, don’t be alarmed.” First of all, it was a weather balloon. Then it was just simply off course. Then it was just following the winds, but yet it always seemed to hover over our military bases and just long enough to take multiple pictures. In Montana for some of our missile sites, I think it circled more than three times to make sure it got the clear pictures. Only when it left airspace did we shoot it down.

We were told, Samantha, we were told, “Don’t worry. They’re not recording. They’re not taking pictures. They’re not doing anything.” They were. Oh, we were told, “Don’t worry. They’re not transmitting in real time.” They were.

So this administration, and that’s another discussion of why they didn’t shoot down the spy balloon immediately, are they compromised? That’s another conversation, too. It certainly has raised America’s attention that China is not a friend.

Aschieris: Then just finally, academic interests, if you could expand on this and just walk us through what you talked about on Tuesday’s hearing with regard to academic interests?

Bean: Well, they want to rewrite history. China wants to rewrite history and China wants to whitewash history. We want to be clear today, and so your listeners know, we are not trying to be at war with the Chinese people. We’re not trying to push back against the rich culture of China. But it’s the government. The government is the one that’s actively being aggressive and trying to, as all the things we mentioned that you can’t talk about Taiwan and Tiananmen Square.

We heard Rep. Brandon Williams from New York who was in China at the time Tiananmen Square went down and he also has a great story to tell of how that went down. Now, that’s erased from history if you’re in China, because we know they’re not about freedom. They’re about control. Our heart aches for the 1.4 billion people that are under the control of tyranny and repression.

So that’s something that we’re standing up to. That’s something that we’re raising the red flag to, and hopefully the hearing brought attention.

Samantha, I think we’re already at a success. If you and this podcast are spreading that message, we’re raising the flag that everybody needs to know that China needs to be watched. They’re an aggressor, they’re not our friend, they’re an agitator, and we need to put them in a corner.

Aschieris: What’s at stake if we aren’t able, in the United States, to counter this influence of the Chinese Communist Party in our own classrooms?

Bean: It’s only going to grow. Their influence is only going to grow. Another topic on another podcast, we can talk about their infiltration of higher ed, of the universities that have accepted money from the Communist Chinese Party. What happens there? They continue to spread their influence.

They also, Samantha, they steal our stuff. They steal our technology. We’ve had hearings on college campuses how they come in and they’ll have a donor that will give this college money, but they always want to focus it on the computer lab or on the quantum physics department or whatnot. They get their hooks into that technology, and whatever comes out, they steal it.

So we’re also telling universities that they need to be keenly aware that China’s on the move. We just don’t need to sell out for money. We need to be aware that this is going to have long-term impacts on our country if we’re not aware of it.

Aschieris: Absolutely. Congressman, just before we go, what are the next steps? We have this hearing on Tuesday. We had the witnesses come forward, with regard to the “Little Red Classrooms” report. What happens now?

Bean: I think we’re going to look at legislation just to have reporting requirements, that everybody that’s accepted money from foreign influence needs to report it. It needs to be widely known who’s doing what and what they’re up to, and then really examine China who’s been aggressively doing this. So we need to let everybody know that they’re out there, they’re on the prowl, and so we need to be aware.

So maybe, I don’t know, in the coming months, this is something that will be introduced. Dr. Foxx has talked about it, our committee has talked about it, and hopefully we’ll have a product. We’ve got work to do, because I’ve already mentioned there were people in our committee that refuse to acknowledge that this is even a problem.

Aschieris: With that, I just wanted to give you opportunity, final thoughts. If there’s anything, key takeaways that you want our audience members to know about Confucius Classrooms and the work that your subcommittee is doing.

Bean: You’ve got a lot of people that want to keep our country free and strong and to be aware that there are countries, bad actors that want to harm us as a country. And so I think you’ve got a lot of patriots in Congress that are working to do that.

I want to thank you. That committee, Samantha, you get credit for sticking around. That was a very long committee. We heard from a lot of people. For you to stick with us and then to talk about it on this podcast is certainly appreciated and to be commended.

Aschieris: Of course. Well, we appreciate you coming into the studio. It’s such an important topic that we will certainly be continuing to follow. Congressman Aaron Bean of Florida’s 4th congressional District, thanks so much for joining us.

Bean: Thanks, Samantha. Have a great day.

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Not all illegal aliens are entering the U.S. along the southern or northern border, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.  

Over the past year, “more than 200,000 people from four countries” used a direct-flight parole program to enter the country illegally, says Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the think tank devoted to researching immigration issues.  

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA, Bensman learned of the government’s “CBP One” mobile application parole program, which “permits inadmissible aliens to make an appointment to fly directly to airports in the interior of the United States, bypassing the border altogether.”  

The Biden administration introduced the CBP One mobile app to illegal aliens as a way to schedule an appoints at a port of entry and be paroled into the interior of the United States.

President Joe Biden said the program was part of an effort to form “lawful pathways” for illegal aliens to enter the country and seek asylum. Illegal border crossings between ports of entry at the southern border appeared to decline in June as more illegal aliens presented themselves at a port of entry.  

But, according to Bensman’s findings, migrants also are presenting themselves at ports within the interior of the country.

One of the “least noticed, mysterious, and potentially the most controversial of the new rechanneling programs that use the CBP One app allows migrants to take commercial passenger flights from foreign countries straight to their American cities of choice, flying right over the border—and even over Mexico,” Bensman said.  

Through the CBP One app, “Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, and Colombians … [can] request ‘advance travel authorizations,’” Bensman said, and fly “directly into U.S. airports, where U.S. Customs officers parole them into the nation, sight unseen, and in numbers publicly unknown.” 

The documents obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies, he said, show that “between late October 2022 and mid-September 2023, the administration approved a total of 221,456 Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, and Nicaraguans for ‘travel mode: air’ into still-unspecified interior U.S. ports.”  

The illegal aliens are required to pay for their own flight into the U.S.  

Details of the Biden administration’s flight program for illegal aliens come as U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters with illegal limmigrants along the U.S. border with Mexico are nearing record highs and the administration is granting Venezuelan illegal aliens “temporary protected status.”

The change protects hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who were in America before July 31 from deportation, and makes it easier for them to gain U.S. work permits.  

“Temporary protected status provides individuals already present in the United States with protection from removal when the conditions in their home country prevent their safe return,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday in a written statement.  

The Biden administration is “granting them the protection that the law provides,” Mayorkas said. “However, it is critical that Venezuelans understand that those who have arrived here after July 31, 2023, are not eligible for such protection, and instead will be removed when they are found to not have a legal basis to stay.” 

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 460,000 Venezuelan illegal aliens on America’s borders since the start of the Biden administration.  

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The COVID-19 pandemic is over, but vaccine mandates imposed by colleges and universities are not. Now a Virginia congressman has introduced a bill to withhold federal funds from institutions of higher education that require vaccinations against the disease.  

President Joe Biden declared the pandemic over in ending the public health emergency May 11. Despite this, nearly 100 colleges and universities currently require students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 for the 2023-2024 school year.  

Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., is the sponsor of a bill that would block federal funding to colleges and universities that impose COVID-19 vaccine mandates on students or staff. He calls it the No Vaccine Mandates in Higher Education Act.

“Taxpayer dollars should not flow to entities that coerce people into taking a COVID-19 shot,” Good said in a press release. “My legislation is an important effort in safeguarding personal freedoms and ensuring educational institutions prioritize instructing students and preparing them for the workforce.”  

Good’s move follows action by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, who on Sept. 14 banned state and local government officials from instituting COVID-19 vaccine mandates.  

Biden has not banned vaccine mandates at the federal level, despite ending the public health emergency. His leading challenger for the 2024 Democratic nomination for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently has been questioning the far Left’s pro-vaccine position by talking about medical freedom.  

During a May appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Kennedy opposed mandates for emergency-use authorized vaccines, including those for COVID-19. Such vaccines, Kennedy argued, have not undergone the typical trial period of five to 10 years, in which vaccines are determined to be safe for widespread public distribution. 

Research shows that vaccinations can negatively affect the health of individuals. One example is the incidence of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart, among young men in their teens or early 20s who received mRNA vaccines during the pandemic.  

Athough the COVID-19 vaccines have been distributed only with emergency authorization, and their long-term health effects have not been studied, as of June only 18 states require that medical and religious exemptions be offered when vaccines are mandated. 

Restricting federal funding for colleges and universities that violate Americans’ medical freedom is a necessary step, Good said of his bill.  

“All Americans have a fundamental right to make medical decisions for themselves, and schools across the country need to respect that,” he said. 

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The infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party into America’s education system, specifically into public grade schools, has sparked outrage from small towns to Capitol Hill. 

Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, addressed the House Education Committee on Tuesday about this alarming issue to lay out her organization’s investigative work to expose the CCP’s invasive actions.

Parents Defending Education has been at the forefront, consistently unearthing evidence of China’s interference in the American public education system. Neily urged congressional lawmakers to act immediately, saying the threat also is a matter of national security.

The CCP’s influence in American classrooms is pervasive and deeply ingrained. The Chinese government’s connection with K-12 schools in the United States materializes in the form of funding, teacher exchanges, and pro-communist curriculum. 

Such programs often are presented under the guise of cultural exchange or language learning opportunities, making them seem innocuous. However, the underlying intent is to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda and indoctrinate American students with its ideology.

Programs called Confucius Institutes and Confucius Classrooms are among the main vehicles for the CCP’s infiltration of American schools, and they operate in both secondary and higher education. These institutions, funded by the Chinese government, aim to teach Chinese language and culture. However, critics say they are a tool for spreading Chinese propaganda and restricting academic freedom.

Neily pointed out the disturbing nature of the Confucius programs in her testimony before the House Committee on Education, saying:

What this might look like in practice, however, is troubling: In the 2017 documentary “In the Name of Confucius,” a student at the University of Michigan sings an opera at a Confucius Institute concert about how Chairman Mao [Zedong] “nurture[s] the people on this land”—no small slap in the face to the families of the estimated 23-40 million Chinese citizens who died on Zedong’s watch during the Great China Famine.

Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars since 2009, told my Daily Signal colleague Samantha Aschieris that following sharp criticism of the pro-communist content coming out of the Confucius programs, China and school districts have begun changing the names of the programs to avoid detection.

“The institutes had an institutional structure that made them fairly easy to spot,” Wood said of the Chinese programs, adding:

The Confucius Classrooms don’t have a single name for them. They go under many different names, and the schools that have them are being very cagey about what they are and what they’re doing.

The CCP’s influence isn’t limited to “regular” public schools. It has made its way into some of the top science and technology high schools in the country. 

Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and Kentucky’s Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science have received millions from the Chinese government. These affiliations allow the Chinese government to influence the curriculum and teaching methodologies in these prestigious institutions.

Neily referenced interviews with former school officials who recalled that Chinese donors sought access to “look under the hood” at “floor plans, lesson plans, and student research projects—some of which were completed in conjunction with federal agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”

Communist China’s influence in American schools is tied closely to its global “Belt and Road” initiative, which aims to enhance China’s global influence through policy infrastructure, technology, and education grants, loans, and “staff exchanges.” Confucius Institutes and Classrooms have been lauded as vital forces for international cooperation under the Belt and Road initiative.

Teacher exchange programs via China’s various “influence initiatives” place Chinese nationals in American classrooms to instill Maoist ideology in students. 

This isn’t a far-fetched accusation or baseless conjecture. Beijing openly admits in teacher seminars that this process is expected of all Chinese nationals in U.S. classrooms.

Neily appeared to trouble members of the House Education Committee with detailed accounts of Chinese nationals who overtly shoved CCP ideology into public schools in Delaware, Virginia, and Kentucky.

Research by Parents Defending Education, or PDE, also shows a greater concentration of “staff exchanges” involving Chinese nationals near U.S. military installations, Neily said, possibly giving the CCP “access to data about the children of military personnel.”

Neily requested that Congress begin immediate investigations into China’s education initiatives in America. She suggested that “it would be a constructive use of the FBI’s investigative power to research China’s influence in American education, so that action can be taken to monitor programs still in existence and perhaps determine the extent of the damage that has been wrought to date.”

She then quipped:

This seems like it might be a better use of the bureau’s finite resources than investigating school board parents, which to this day remains part of its purview because Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s Oct. 4, 2021, memo on that topic has never been retracted, and accordingly, remains in effect.”

In a written statement to The Daily Signal, Neily explained why she believes China’s influence on American education is such a crucial threat to national security: 

PDE’s work on Confucius Classrooms shows a pattern and practice of foreign involvement in school systems across our country. We believe formal investigations into the scope and impact of these programs at the local, state, and federal level are acutely needed—and we hope policymakers will rise to the occasion. Vigilance and transparency are critical, and we will continue to both monitor and investigate leads that are sent to our team.

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Only 11 Republican senators voted against President Joe Biden’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after many conservatives raised concerns about critical race theory and other woke ideas and policies invading the military. 

The Senate confirmed Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown to the nation’s top military position Wednesday, despite critics who cited Brown’s past statements about the miliary’s need for more diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI.  

“With the U.S. military experiencing crisis levels of low recruitment, a number of Gen. Brown’s past statements and actions raised concerns that, as the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, he would prioritize the woke DEI priorities of the Biden administration over merit-based criteria,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement. 

Besides Johnson, the other Republican “no” votes on Brown were from Sens. Mike Braun of Indiana; Ted Cruz of exas; Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt of Missouri; Mike Le of Utah; Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming; Marco Rubio of Florida; Tommy Tuberville of Alabama; and J.D. Vance of Ohio.

Brown signed on to an August 2022 memo from senior Air Force and Space Force leadership calling for a more diverse set of officers. In addition to Brown, the memo was signed by Space Force Gen. John W. Raymond, chief of space operations; Secretary of the Air Force Gen. Frank Kendall; and Undersecretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones. 

Still, Brown’s nomination by Biden cleared the Senate Armed Services Committee with a unanimous vote, and Senate Republican have pointed to reassurances that Brown made during his confirmation hearing in July. 

Sen. Ted Budd, R-N.C., was among GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee to ask Brown about the DEI memo.

“The goal there was to actually outreach to broader aspects across the nation and show them the opportunity to join the force,” Brown, who is black, told Budd during the hearing. “What the memo also says is there’s a goal to allow those young people to understand what those opportunities are, but to get selected to come into the academy, ROTC, or any other program, it’s merit based.”

In July, the American Accountability Foundation, a government watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Office of the Air Force Inspector General, citing past comments suggesting that, as the top official in the Air Force, Brown hired and promoted based on racial considerations. 

Examples in the complaint include a 2021 interview in People magazine that quotes Brown as saying that “we’ve got to closely manage our diverse populations.”

An article in The Washington Post, also from 2021, quotes Brown as saying: “The other thing that we have to do is ensure that we have diversity on the [military advisory] boards, but also diversity on the candidate list.” 

The complaint to the Air Force’s inspector general also quotes an interview with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2020, when Brown flatly said, “I hire for diversity.” He also said: “I purposely build my office, my front office, and my team with diverse” backgrounds.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin heralded Brown’s Senate confirmation. 

“He will be a tremendous leader of our joint force and I look forward to working with him in his new capacity,” Austin, who also is black, said in a written statement. “I also want to thank Gen. [Mark] Milley, his wife Hollyanne and the entire Milley family for their selfless, decades-long service to this nation.”

Brown will succeed Milley, an Army general who has been chairman of the Joint Chiefs since October 2019 and also has been accused of undermining readiness with woke policies.

Brown’s confirmation was part of a Senate procedural contest. Tuberville, among the 11 who voted no, has placed a hold on more than 300 military promotions until the Pentagon stops paying for employee and family travel for abortion. 

For seven months, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., complained that the holds interfered with military readiness. As majority leader, Schumer had the power to bring the promotions to the Senate floor for a vote. But the New York Democrat refused to allow any votes until Tuberville dropped his hold on the officers nominated for promotion.

Tuberville called Schumer’s bluff and announced plans Tuesday to force a vote on the commandant of the Marine Corps. On Wednesday, Schumer brought three military nominations to the floor.  

“He wasn’t going to do it. I forced his hand,” Tuberville told Fox News. “He blinked. And [Schumer] knows now. … We taught Schumer how to go back to the floor and actually bring someone to the floor to vote and confirm them.”

Schumer’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on this report.

Under questioning from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, Brown said he wouldn’t allow the military to become political. 

“The first thing I would do is set a personal example: I would remain nonpartisan, nonpolitical in how I approach the position of chairman if confirmed,” Brown told Ernst during his confirmation hearing. “And I would set that same expectation throughout the force: We need to stay out of politics and stay nonpartisan, nonpolitical.” 

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Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch, 92, announced on Thursday he is stepping down as chair of Fox Corporation and executive chairman of News Corp, Fox News has reported. 

Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, will become chairman of both companies as the elder Murdoch transitions out of the roles in November.

“I am truly proud of what we have achieved collectively through the decades, and I owe much to my colleagues, whose contributions to our success have sometimes been unseen outside the company but are deeply appreciated by me,” Murdoch wrote in a letter to colleagues.

“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change. But the time is right for me to take on different roles, knowing that we have truly talented teams and a passionate, principled leader in Lachlan who will become sole chairman of both companies,” he said. 

Murdoch also said he was in good health and that his family remains committed to the cause of freedom of speech and thought.

“I congratulate my father on his remarkable 70-year career,” said Lachlan Murdoch. “We thank him for his vision, his pioneering spirit, his steadfast determination, and the enduring legacy he leaves to the companies he founded and countless people he has impacted.”  

According to Fox News, Rupert Murdoch’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch, ran News Limited, an Australian public corporation, until 1954, when his father handed it down to him when he was in his mid-20s. After that, Rupert Murdoch bought Australian newspapers and then went internationally, eventually buying and creating several U.K. and U.S. newspapers, magazines, television assets, and Twentieth Century Fox.

FOX broadcasting was launched in 1986. Today, Fox News Channel has surpassed all other cable news networks and has become the most-watched cable news network for the past 30 months, according to ratings data compiled by Nielsen.

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The Biden administration apparently wants to transform the United States into a poorly managed economic zone.

It’s hard to conclude otherwise amid the latest mayhem at the southern border.

When border-crossing numbers briefly dipped during the summer, legacy media outlets were eager to declare the crisis overblown. One opinion writer in The New York Times declared that if you’re hearing about the border, “someone is trying to scare you.”

We were supposed to ignore the years of evidence and millions of illegal border crossings under President Joe Biden and pretend that this was all no big deal. It was a temporary, two-year blip and nothing more. The “Big Guy” has it all under control.

That mild reprieve was short-lived. Now, the situation is worse than ever.

As Fox News border reporter Bill Melugin said it’s a “free-for-all” in Eagle Pass, Texas, right now as thousands of Venezuelans are crossing the border en masse.

The numbers are truly astounding.

The Biden administration has repeatedly demonstrated that it’s not only fine with that, but they will also do anything to ensure that the situation continues.

The White House created a visa program for illegal immigrants that allows them to stay in the country if they find a “sponsor” to support them. But the sponsor can be another illegal alien. Yes, really.

That’s why it’s fair to say that we have a completely open border. Even in the case where illegal immigrants are apprehended, the administration has pulled the plug on every tool that would allow the government to quickly deport them.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is effectively acting as a rogue prosecutor on the national level.

Maybe we should do something about that.

Count on the administration to do petty things to keep the border open, too.

Texas authorities put up razor wire around the border point at Eagle Pass. The Border Patrol—obviously under direction from the Biden administration—cut it down, according to Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Biden and company have gone out of their way to demonstrate their contempt for U.S. law and anyone who would dare question whether we should accept this mass invasion as legitimate.

Texas started busing illegal immigrants to “sanctuary cities” such as New York and Chicago, and the administration reportedly now has threatened to implement a “remain in Texas” policy to keep illegal immigrants from leaving the state.

Texas still votes Republican, so the Left wants to hold the state’s metaphorical head under water until that changes, it seems.

What’s happening at the border is indefensible. Biden has shown no inclination toward getting the problem under control. 

The administration sent 800 troops to the border to deal with the latest surge. That’s good, I suppose. But when the administration combines that with arbitrarily granting work permits to nearly half a million illegal immigrants, this seems like putting a miniature Band-Aid on the stump of a severed limb. It’s more insulting than helpful.

When Biden made a speech at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday—a mile from the Roosevelt Hotel, where illegal immigrants are being housed en masse—he spoke about Ukraine and climate change, but said nothing about the border.

We have to assume at this point that the chaos is intentional. Help is most definitely not on the way.

Facilities and hospitals on the border are overrun, state and city budgets are going bust, and even sanctuary cities are in a panic. But don’t expect the White House to repurpose the message of “15 days to stop the spread.”

It’s more like “15 months to end America as we know it.”

The American people, who overwhelmingly see the border situation as a “major problem,” have simply been ignored. The Biden administration doesn’t care or respect what you think.

This is the most acute crisis facing the country today, and our toothless Caesar bears responsibility. The legacy media are uninterested in holding Biden accountable, left-wing pundits continue to insist that resistance to the immigration tidal wave is racist, and the country looks weak and helpless on the international stage.

With the online discussion about how men think about the Roman Empire all the time, maybe it’s because they are looking for reasons for why great civilizations fall and wondering whether we’re next.

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The post Biden’s Worsening Border Crisis Is an Attack on Self-Government appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Calls for Congress to defund the Biden administration’s open-border operations and to enact real border security measures gained steam this week. With a week of funding left in the federal fiscal year, the House is considering attaching most of the Secure the Border Act to a continuing resolution package to fund the government.

After the bill passed the House in May, many had written it off as dead on arrival in the Senate. Yet the Senate nearly passed the legislation in June, with every present Republican voting in favor, aside from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Now, Sen. Ted Cruz is leading 26 original Republican co-sponsors to introduce the Senate companion of the House bill.

Also called the Secure the Border Act, the Senate bill combines closing known loopholes that illegal aliens, cartels, and the Biden administration exploit. It applies consequences for illegal immigration with previously successful policies; increases Customs and Border Protection resources for true border security and enforcement; and authorizes the defunding of the nongovernmental organization industrial complex that the Biden administration pays to receive, process, transport, shelter, counsel, and give social services to the millions of illegal aliens coming to the U.S.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by mass paroling tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens into the U.S. each month, based on nationality, providing them at least two years of “temporary status” and giving them immediate work authorization.

Congress intended immigration parole to be a rarely used humanitarian tool to temporarily bring an alien who lacks the time to get a visa into the U.S. for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” The Senate bill would expressly narrow parole to end Mr. Mayorkas’ abuses.

The left has also built an illegal immigration system on the backs of unaccompanied alien children. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act became law in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. The law introduced by the California Democrat inexplicably treats unaccompanied children from Mexico and Canada different than unaccompanied children from the rest of the world. It requires the former to be returned home and the latter to remain in the U.S. while providing them several immigration benefits.

This has predictably resulted in soaring numbers of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. from noncontiguous countries. During the Biden administration alone, 400,000 such children have come to the U.S. after Mayorkas publicly stated multiple times he would not turn back unaccompanied alien children. Today’s unaccompanied children then become tomorrow’s “Dreamers” for whom the Left demands green cards because they entered the U.S. as children, which the Left perversely enticed.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services recklessly turns these unaccompanied children over to illegal aliens and other unvetted “sponsors” and acknowledges losing at least 85,000 unaccompanied children. 

The New York Times has reported on such children being forced into sex trafficking and put into dangerous child labor conditions that were outlawed nearly a century ago. The Senate bill would end the disparate treatment of unaccompanied children based on nationality and return them to their families.

A third aspect of our immigration law that Mayorkas has burned down is asylum. After encouraging the millions of illegal aliens coming to the U.S. to apply for asylum to give them unfettered access to America, declaring them all “asylum-seekers,” and claiming they are persecuted by global climate change, poverty, and general violence (none of which are actual legal grounds for asylum), our asylum system is consumed by fraud and is unrecognizable from what was originally intended.

The Senate legislation would restore asylum integrity by requiring migrants to seek protection in the first safe country they enter rather than country-shop to get to the U.S., raising the “credible fear” standard that an alien at our border must meet to match the standard that an asylum applicant must meet.

This provision would also clarify the persecution eligibility ground of “membership in a particular social group,” which the left grossly abuses, to exclude climate change, domestic abuse, and other conditions that have nothing to do with social groups or membership.

It’s obvious that the Biden administration’s claim that its so-called lawful pathways have reduced illegal immigration is erroneous. Customs and Border Protection agents are apprehending over 8,000 illegal aliens between the ports and thousands more at the ports each day. The chaos is visible at our border, and the pipeline continues all the way down to the Darien Gap in Panama, thanks to this administration.

Responsible senators need to uphold their oath of office and protect this country. The kind of policy tools contained in the Secure the Border Act can help us end this self-destruction. The Senate nearly passed the Secure the Border Act, including mandatory E-Verify, in June.

With current conditions along the border and Americans suffering from the volumes of people, drugs, and costs, the need for the Senate to act couldn’t be more acute. Biden’s arson of America must end.

Originally published by The Washington Times

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The top election official in New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the nation’s first presidential primary, announced that he would consider banning former President Donald Trump from the ballot one day after a George Washington University law professor suggested that he call a special panel to make the determination.

The same official kept lawmakers in suspense about his pending decision on Trump’s access to the New Hampshire ballot, according to emails and other communications obtained by The Daily Signal. 

New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan, a Republican, decided against blocking Trump’s ballot access even as many Democrats and liberal groups insisted that a clause in the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from being president and pressured election officials like him across the country to act. 

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bans anyone who participated in an insurrection from holding certain federal offices. Although other top state election officials across the country also face pressure on the ballot access issue, New Hampshire plays a coveted role in the election of presidents. 

Under New Hampshire’s public records law, The Daily Signal obtained almost 1,200 pages of documents from the New Hampshire secretary of state’s office regarding deliberations on whether to bar Trump from the state’s primary ballot–and potentially the general election ballot. 

The documents obtained by The Daily Signal include law review articles, news accounts, and hundreds of emails from across the United States. The email response overwhelmingly was opposed to blocking Trump’s ballot access, but many urged Scanlan to cite the 14th Amendment to prevent Trump from running in New Hampshire. 

With no conviction on a charge of insurrection, Trump has a right to due process before a state could remove him from the ballot, argued John Banzhaf, a public interest law professor at George Washington University. The next day, a joint press release by 

Banzhaf sent a memo to Scanlan on Aug. 28, with a copy to New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, also a Republican. The two GOP officials announced the next day they were reviewing the matter.

A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office told The Daily Signal that Banzhaf’s legal analysis was unsolicited. Asked about any correlation, since it arrived a day before the joint press release announcing a review, the spokesperson said, “None.”

In his legal analysis, Banzhaf wrote, referring to Trump:

With all due respect to my learned colleagues on both sides of the debate (NO, he can’t be listed vs. YES, he can be listed), I believe that neither suggested interpretation is correct, and that the correct interpretation of Section 3—based upon its clear language—requires that your decision depend upon the evidence adduced at an adjudicatory hearing providing due process for Trump.

GWU’s Banzhaf said New Hampshire should hold a civil “adjudicatory proceeding” where accusers could provide evidence that Trump engaged in an insurrection and Trump, through legal counsel, could present a defense. 

“The reason why you cannot lawfully remove his name from the ballot in the absence of an adjudicatory due process hearing is that the Fourteenth Amendment provides that ‘nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,’” Banzhaf’s legal analysis says.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment reads: 

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Trump has alleged that his 2020 reelection loss to former Vice President Joe Biden was the result of a “stolen” election and challenged the outcome. 

In recent weeks, the 45th president has been indicted on federal conspiracy charges in Washington, D.C., and on state racketeering charges in Georgia. Both indictments allege that Trump broke the law in challenging the election outcome. 

Neither indictment alleges that Trump engaged in insurrection. The Democrat-controlled House impeached Trump in January 2021 for incitement to insurrection, but the Senate acquitted him after a trial.

Banzhaf’s analysis continues: “In summary, I would most respectfully suggest that Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] requires Trump’s disqualification, but only if there is proof, presented in an adjudicatory legal proceeding during which Trump is entitled to due process, which establishes that he did in fact engage in insurrection.”

The day after GWU’s Banzhaf submitted the memo, on Aug. 29, Scanlan and Formella issued a joint press release announcing that both of their offices were “carefully” reviewing the legal question. It reads:

Both the Secretary of State’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office are aware of public discourse regarding

the potential applicability of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to

the upcoming presidential election cycle, including misinformation asserting or implying that the Secretary of

State’s Office has already taken a position on or is seeking to take certain action with respect to Donald Trump’s candidacy for the Republican National Convention’s nomination for president in the 2024 United States Presidential Election.

In an Aug. 31 press release, GWU’s Banzhaf promoted the need for an “adjudicative due process hearing” in New Hampshire to determine whether Trump could remain on the ballot. 

On Sept. 5, state Rep. Sandra Panek, a Republican, wrote in an email to Scanlan, the secretary of state: “The citizens of NH clearly see this is a weaponization of our judicial system.”

Panek also wrote: “Trump has NOT been charged with engaging in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.” 

The state lawmaker added: “I have faith that you will be able to see through all of this. This is the type of weaponization that a Banana Republic engages in.”

Scanlan didn’t reply to Panek that he had yet to decide, only that he hadn’t “stated” his position. 

“Sandra, thank you for your email. I have not yet stated what my position will be,” the New Hampshire secretary of state wrote Sept. 5. “But I have been reviewing the Article 14 issue, and expect to make a statement within a week or so. Lawsuits have been threatened on both sides of the issue, so I want to make sure my reasoning is sound.”

As a nudge, the next day Panek sent Scanlan a copy of an op-ed by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, that appeared that same day in The Wall Street Journal under the headline: “I Can’t Keep Trump Off the Ballot.” Voters should decide, Raffensperger argued in the op-ed. 

“Here’s a good article from The Wall Street Journal,” Panek wrote to Scanlan. “The Georgia SOS [secretary of state] states why he won’t keep Trump off the ballot. I like his reasoning. I’m sure you will agree.”

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The federal government reached an ominous milestone Sept. 15 as the gross national debt exceeded $33 trillion—or more than $57,000 per household.

The debt increased by $1.5 trillion in just 15 weeks due to rising spending and declining revenue.

That’s understandably concerning, especially at a time of rising interest rates and elevated inflation. Higher interest rates on a growing debt have caused a hard spike in federal interest payments, eating into the budget and dragging on the economy.

However, the worst may be yet to come. Imbalances in major benefit programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, mean that the federal government faces unfunded liabilities of more than $75 trillion.

With senators ignoring this reality by planning to spend billions of additional dollars on boondoggles, and the Biden administration all but lighting tax dollars on fire to appease climate activists, it seems that few in Washington are interested in fiscal sanity.

 >>>Related: “The Road to Inflation: How an Unprecedented Federal Spending Spree Created Economic Turmoil”

Fortunately, the House Budget Committee has released a budget that could help turn things around.

Led by Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the committee’s new “Reverse the Curse” plan offers many things for Americans to cheer. It:

• Ambitiously seeks a balanced budget within a decade.
• Eliminates or overhauls dozens of wasteful and unnecessary federal programs, and proposes efficiency reforms for Medicare.
• Builds from the House-passed Limit, Save, Grow Act, which creates spending caps.
• Significantly reduces projected interest payments on the national debt by quickly reducing annual deficits.
• Stops the IRS hiring spree in its tracks.
• Retains pro-growth tax rates.

This is a strong contrast to the year’s irresponsible budget from President Joe Biden, which included:

• Runaway spending that would hit $10 trillion in 2033 alone.
• $4.7 trillion in tax hikes.
• Debt growing faster than the economy, even with the tax hikes, meaning the Biden budget is unsustainable on its own terms.
• Big increases for leftist institutions, such as the federal Department of Education, while ignoring the crisis on the border.

Another important factor in the House Budget Committee’s plan is facilitating stronger economic growth.

Restraining the regulatory state and cutting red tape would encourage more private investment, driving new jobs and innovations. That would help draw people from welfare programs and into the workforce, further reducing spending.

Also, growing the economy reduces the relative burden of existing debt.

In contrast, Biden’s Big Government plan would keep the economy mired in taxes, political slush funds, and an unleashed regulatory state that seeks to strangle America’s energy sector.

Arrington’s plan has tremendous potential. However, the Budget Committee faces many limitations.

First, Senate Democrats and the Biden administration are united in opposition to a policy agenda that reduces Washington’s stranglehold over the country. As such, most of the important work will likely have to wait until at least 2025.

Second, while the budget plan is an important collection of policy principles, the Budget Committee has a relatively small jurisdiction. Most of the work must be done by authorizing committees, which are often more comfortable with handouts and bureaucracies than with seeking bold reforms.

Accordingly, to truly “reverse the curse” and put the budget plan into action, the American public needs to make it clear that they will no longer tolerate Washington’s swampy status quo.

The last time that Congress made meaningful spending cuts was in the wake of the tea party movement, which not only sent many energetic conservatives to the House and Senate, but also pressured centrist members to do the right thing.

A similar (and more sustained) reckoning is needed to accomplish the ambitious plan laid out by the House Budget Committee.

It won’t be easy to steer the federal government to an affordable future, but the alternative of runaway debt, interest payments, and inflationary pressures would mean nothing less than the death of the American dream.

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Attorney General Merrick Garland declined to say Wednesday whether Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, should have pardoned a father who was arrested in 2021 when he tried to defend his daughter during a local school board meeting.

Youngkin pardoned Scott Smith, who was arrested during a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board on June 22, 2021, where he intended to comment on the mishandling of his daughter’s sexual assault in a school restroom the previous September.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, asked Garland whether Youngkin was correct to grant the pardon as he questioned the attorney general during a House Judiciary Committee hearing called “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice.”

“I don’t know the facts of the case, so I’m not in a position …” Garland said, before being cut off by Roy.

In 2021, the National School Boards Association cited Smith’s arrest in a letter to Garland. Shortly afterward, Garland issued an Oct. 4, 2021, memo calling on the FBI to “use its authority” against those who threaten public school officials.

The 2021 sexual assault of Smith’s daughter occurred inside a girl’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School by a male student who was wearing a skirt.

“We righted a wrong. He should’ve never been prosecuted here,” Youngkin said of Smith on “Fox News Sunday” when announcing the pardon.

“This was a dad standing up for his daughter, and just to remind everyone, his daughter had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a school and no one was doing anything about it.”

This report originally was pubished by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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A rare thing happened Tuesday in Washington, D.C.

Sanity prevailed.

On Sept. 19, very quietly, the Pentagon reversed its asinine gender-neutral pronoun rule for certain award citations that my colleague Dakota Wood and I exposed on Sept. 1. Without any fanfare—no doubt in an attempt to put this entire sordid affair behind it—the Pentagon simply posted “Change 6” to the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards.

But for The Heritage Foundation exposing this issue of wokeness on steroids, all military awards and citations would have required the androgynous, grammatically incorrect pronoun “themself” instead of the standard “himself” or “herself.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

This seemingly minor policy change was and is emblematic of deeper issues within the Pentagon affecting lethality, unit cohesion, recruitment, and retention.

Let’s rewind the tape.

On Aug. 7, during the summer doldrums, the Pentagon quietly published a change to the Manual of Military Decorations and Awards for the six most prestigious joint service awards. Change 5 required the use of “gender neutral” pronouns for the six awards.

In the last week of August, the Office of the Secretary of Defense returned the draft citation for the end-of-tour award for none other than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff himself, four-star Army Gen. Mark Milley.

It turned out that because of Change 5, Milley’s citation as drafted needed to be fixed; it had to use the pronoun “themself” instead of “him.” 

Change 5 included draft language for awards, such as this (emphasis added):

Superior Meritorious Service (e.g., PCS and Retirement awards): (Rank) First M. Last, Jr., United States (Military Service), distinguished themself by superior meritorious service in a position of significant responsibility as (position and duty assignment), from (month year) to (month year).

In late August, a source in the Pentagon told us about this outrageous incident.

On Sept. 1, we broke the news on this story.

That same day, Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., a former U.S. Marine intelligence officer, tweeted his objection to Change 5.

On Sept. 8, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote a public letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, which both poked fun at the Pentagon’s misguided priorities and demanded answers to some very legitimate questions.

Cotton addressed the letter “Dear Mr. Secretary,” with the footnote reading, “If I may be so bold as to assume your ‘preferred gender.’” The senator’s use of humor is appropriate, as the new policy would be laughable if it weren’t such a damning indictment of the state of the Pentagon’s leadership.

He went on to inquire about the origins of the policy, asking:

1. Did you personally approve the change? If not, when did you learn of it?
2. Under the new change, can service members request the use of the male or female pronoun on their award citations and at promotion and retirement ceremonies? How will those requests be treated?
3. What other official documentation with DOD requires gender-neutral language?

Cotton demanded answers to his questions by Sept. 15.

On Sept. 12, a Pentagon spokesperson told a news outlet that the Department of Defense wanted to “clarify” that Change 5 “would not prevent” the use of the pronouns “himself” or “herself.”

On Sept. 15, we blasted the Pentagon again in another article, noting that the “clarification” only made matters worse, as it confirmed that the default pronoun was “themself.” In addition to the questions Cotton asked, which had not been answered as of his Sept. 15 deadline, we posed some of our own:

1. To whom would service members need to submit a request for gendered pronouns to be used in their award ceremony? Can those requests be denied?
2. Who decided to keep Change 5 and issue a clarification? Did the secretary of defense approve of keeping Change 5?
3. Were there any communications between the White House, or those acting on behalf of the White House, in advance of this change being implemented in the first place? If so, what were those communications, with whom, and when?
4. Did the chairman or vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff approve of Change 5? If so, when? If not, why was the change made nonetheless?

Instead of answering Cotton’s questions or ours, the Pentagon simply issued Change 6, retracting “themself” and the requirement that joint awards use “gender neutral” language and reinserted the correct pronouns “himself” and “herself.”

As we stated in our last article, the Pentagon did this on purpose. It only reversed course because we exposed it.

Cotton, in an exclusive to The Daily Signal, said, “This was no mistake—the administration has been trying to woke-ify the military since Joe Biden took office. They got caught this time and reversed course, but the Department of Defense should never have adopted this absurd left-wing terminology in the first place.”

Turns out that in this case, Justice Louis Brandeis was right when he said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

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Last week, my wife asked me, “How often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

Her question didn’t come out of nowhere. TikTok might be a minefield of Chinese cyberthreats, but it has birthed a trend in which women ask men how often they contemplate the glory that was Rome. The trend took off because wives were surprised to hear their husbands say they think about the Roman Empire every day or a number of times a week.

I told my wife I probably think about the Roman Empire once a day, and I understand why my fellow men gladly confess that we’re obsessed with the creation of Caesar Augustus.

I studied Latin for years in middle school, high school, and college, so I may think about the Roman Empire more than my fellow men, but I think I can help shine light on ancient Rome’s appeal for a modern audience.

Naturally, historians told The New York Times and The Washington Post that men think about the Roman Empire in part because ancient Rome was rather patriarchal.

Kevin Feeny, a faculty fellow at New York University who teaches an introductory class on Roman history, told The New York Times that ancient Roman society was “extremely, extremely patriarchal.” He estimated that enrollment in his class is about 60% male.

“Ancient Rome was, of course, patriarchal and violent,” Lewis Webb, a historian of ancient Rome at Oxford University, told The Washington Post. “But it was also a diverse place: There were numerous forms of masculinity, women could have agency and power, and there were multiple gender expressions and identities, as well as various sexualities.”

In elite Roman society, men did have ultimate social power. The paterfamilias (father of the family) infamously had the authority of life and death over others in the household. Of course, that didn’t translate to very much power for his sons. Scholars often note that the lower classes were more egalitarian between the sexes.

Yet, modern men aren’t secretly pining for the “good old days,” when women supposedly had to do whatever we asked. We aren’t looking to turn back the clock.

Modern men don’t want to go back to a time when many of them would have been slaves, when they would have drunk large amounts of lead in the water transferred by aqueducts, and when they had to wait for snow from the mountains if they wanted a cold drink.

We know that life wasn’t exactly hunky-dory in first century Rome, where tenements built too close together often went down in flames, and oppressed people, such as the Jews, faced extermination when they raised concerns about high taxes.

No, the reason we think so much about Rome has a lot more to do with its glory, the expansion of its empire, and the tremendous impact it had on Western civilization.

Hollywood keeps returning to the Roman Empire for a reason.

So many films about ancient Rome have left a lasting impression on me, from “Ben-Hur” (1959) to “Cleopatra” (1963) to “Gladiator” (2000) to “Spartacus” (both the 1960 film and the 2010-2013 television series). Men who have watched any one of these historical<<sted historic>> films have a visceral understanding of “the glory of Rome,” the military might that conquered the Mediterranean world and the order Rome imposed upon it through brute force.

Men need not pine for the days of Rome to admire the masculinity of leaders, such as Julius Caesar and Scipio Africanus. Historians, teachers, and filmmakers present Roman men as the noble exemplars of masculinity (even if the truth may have been more complicated), and we naturally look up to them. Who among us doesn’t want to stand tall like Russell Crowe’s Maximus in “Gladiator,” proclaiming bold truths in the face of the emperor?

I have also had the pleasure of visiting some of the great monuments of Rome, from the Coliseum to the Roman Forum to the fantastic ruins at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Ephesus. What kind of civilization could build these cities and monuments that lasted thousands of years?

These films and these ruins breathe life into an ancient civilization whose western half officially collapsed more than 1,500 years ago. They testify about a warlike people who nonetheless pioneered many of the inventions that bring order to our lives today—from official roads measured in miles to aqueducts that provided running water to a flourishing literary scene that preserved so much knowledge for posterity.

Of course, any mention of these marvels just skims the surface of Rome’s tremendous impact on the modern world. The American Founders intently studied Roman history—along with that of the Greek city-states and the later Italian city-states—when crafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Architects have consciously echoed Roman designs for millennia. The ancient Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius inspired many ideas in science, such as the idea that all matter is made up of atoms.

Slave rebellions throughout history took inspiration from the doomed gladiator-turned-freedom-fighter Spartacus. (Even Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., echoed Spartacus on the Senate floor, albeit rather poorly.)

Of course, the Romans were infamously brutal—though the Assyrians gave them a run for their money. Rome expanded by conquest, and the legions weren’t exactly nice about it. This wasn’t new for the ancient world: From the days of Akkad to rulers like Rameses II, Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, and Alexander the Great, empires spread by conquest, leaving death, destruction and slavery in their wake.

Woe to the city that refused to pay tribute.

While the Assyrians distinguished themselves by impaling people on stakes, the Romans invented a new form of torturous execution; you might say it was excruciating. Before the cross became a religious symbol, the Romans used it to kill their slaves and enemies. They hung the victims up, naked, in a position that slowly suffocated them. They perfected a recipe for embarrassment, pain and despair.

In this context, an obscure carpenter from Nazareth, born in the early days of the Roman Empire, launched a new faith that dominated the world. The message of Jesus Christ spread on Roman roads, on the lips of an apostle who proudly identified himself as a Roman citizen, and to the very heart of the empire.

The Roman Catholic Church has transformed the Roman Empire’s influence time and time again. Catholic priests brought Christianity to the far reaches of the empire, like Britain and Germany. The pope crowned the Holy Roman Emperor and Napoleon Bonaparte, who set himself up as a modern version of the Roman emperors. The Catholic Church fostered the first universities, sent missionaries throughout the world, and preserved much ancient knowledge.

As a Protestant, I admire very much about the Catholic Church without embracing all its tenets. I have memorized the “Our Father” in Latin, and I love reading the Vulgate. While I remain skeptical of many Catholic claims, I have long thought Protestants too often dismiss the contributions of our Roman Catholic brethren.

Rome’s influences are not all positive. Christians must never forget that Romans put the early martyrs to death in the Coliseum. Rome’s engines of war required a steady fuel of conquest, slavery, and exploitation.

Many of us think about the Roman Empire in the context of its decline and fall. Many of the warning signs that Rome was about to fall—unfettered migration, decadent elites, high national debt, the very “multiple gender expressions and identities” that historian Webb mentioned—have strong echoes in our own time.

The United States isn’t exactly an empire, but it seems to have the same problems Rome faced, and ancient Roman premonitions of doom did ultimately come to pass. Many of the men who think about Rome once a day are wondering whether the U.S. will go the way of ancient Rome and are hoping to find ways to prevent that.

Sure, Rome isn’t the only ancient empire Americans should consider. We should also think about the Athenian Empire, the Achaemenid Persian Empire (which arguably created the idea of religious freedom and paid to restore the Jewish Temple under Cyrus), the empires that popped up after Alexander the Great’s conquest (particularly the Seleucid Empire that oppressed the Jews and inspired the Maccabean Revolt), the Aztec and Incan empires, and more.

I’m a history buff, so I’m interested in more empires than most, but those five are a great start for those interested in empires other than Rome.

Perhaps the more salient question isn’t “Why do you think about the Roman Empire daily?” but rather, “How could you not?”

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The post Why Do Men Think About the Roman Empire? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As the cost of living continues to rise in America, many families are struggling to make ends meet.

Inflation and wage stagnation have made it increasingly difficult for everyday Americans to keep up with the rising costs of necessities, such as housing, gas, health care and food. The severity of this issue is affecting millions of hardworking Americans looking for relief amid economic uncertainty.

“Over the last three decades, American families have experienced a rise in the costs of many necessities that has made it difficult for them to attain economic security,” said a 2021 brief by the Council of Economic Advisers. “Researchers estimate, for example, that 80% of families saw the share of budgets dedicated to spending on needs such as housing and health care increase by more than 7 percentage points between 1984 and 2014, potentially crowding out spending on other categories, like leisure, longer-term investments in education, and saving for retirement.”

Inflation has also played a significant role in the rising cost of living. In July, consumer prices were 3.2% higher than the year before. This has increased the cost of goods and services, making it more difficult for families to afford their basic needs.

Wage stagnation has further compounded this issue.

“Since the early 1970s, the hourly inflation-adjusted wages received by the typical worker have barely risen, growing only 0.2 percent per year,” according to a 2017 Harvard Business Review report. This means that while the cost of living has continued to rise, wages have not kept pace, leaving many families struggling to make ends meet, and it’s even worse for those who live in large cities.

The impact of these economic trends on everyday Americans cannot be overstated. A recent Primerica survey found that three-quarters of middle-income Americans said their earnings aren’t enough to pay for their cost of living. Many are cutting back on expenses, such as restaurants and takeout meals, while others are skipping upgrades to their phones and other technology because of inflation.

The rising cost of living affects millions of Americans, making it increasingly difficult for them to attain economic security. It is time for policymakers to take action to address this issue and ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to thrive.

The burden of the rising cost of living falls disproportionately on vulnerable populations. Low-income families, in particular, are grappling with the harsh reality of choosing between essentials, such as rent and health care. The lack of affordable housing options and the soaring costs of medical treatment have turned these decisions into impossible dilemmas.

Children growing up in such circumstances often face limited access to proper nutrition and quality education, hampering their chances of breaking the cycle of poverty, and often leading to a life of drugs, crime or a combination of both.

However, it’s not just younger Americans who are feeling the wrath of today’s cost of living; it’s also our nation’s senior citizens on fixed incomes. Today’s seniors are finding it increasingly challenging to cover their medical expenses and maintain a decent standard of living, eroding their retirement savings at an alarming rate.

The geographical disparities in the cost of living further exacerbate the issue. While inflation and stagnant wages affect everyone, those living in metropolitan areas face even greater financial strains due to the inflated costs of housing, transportation and other necessities. The dream of city life, once synonymous with opportunities and advancement, is now accompanied by the harsh reality of financial stress and the constant struggle to make ends meet.

This phenomenon also has wider societal implications, as the diversity and dynamism that urban areas bring to the cultural landscape are threatened when only a privileged few can afford to partake in them fully.

The current state of affairs demands a multifaceted approach from policymakers, community leaders and businesses alike. Policies aimed at boosting affordable housing initiatives, wages that keep pace with inflation, and health care can significantly alleviate the challenges faced by American families. Investments in education and workforce development are equally crucial, as they empower individuals with the skills needed to secure higher-paying jobs and navigate the evolving economic landscape.

Additionally, fostering an environment that encourages entrepreneurship and innovation can create new avenues for economic growth and job creation, potentially counteracting some of the negative effects of the rising cost of living.

The rising cost of living is a pressing concern that demands immediate attention. It is a multifaceted issue rooted in factors such as inflation, wage stagnation and the lack of affordable resources. The impact is far-reaching, affecting families across income levels and geographical locations. Addressing this challenge requires a comprehensive approach that includes policy reforms, investments in education and health care, and efforts to stimulate economic growth.

By working collectively toward a more equitable and sustainable economic landscape, America can ensure that all its citizens have the opportunity to thrive and lead dignified lives.

COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM

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 post Rising Cost of Living Is an Underreported Story Affecting Everyday Americans  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections is housing a man who raped his own daughter in a women’s prison because he said he identifies as a woman himself — and the DOC is refusing to offer any kind of insight or explanation on the matter.

Mark Campbell is currently incarcerated in Taycheedah Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, inmate records show. He is a registered sex offender convicted of first-degree sexual assault of a child.

That child was his own 10-year-old daughter, court documents allege.

Born in 1971, Campbell is currently 52 years old, weighs 225 pounds, and stands at 5 feet 9 inches, according to the DOC inmate locator.

Under Campbell’s listed “sex,” the Wisconsin DOC states in bold, “FEMALE.” The department has not responded to many requests for comment from The Daily Signal.

Mark Campbell

DOC photographs of Campbell depict him with long brown hair. He appears to be wearing makeup, including large quantities of eyeliner and blush. The DOC does not include former photos of Campbell, but a 2020 news report from the Milwaukee Journal includes a DOC mugshot of Campbell sans makeup.

Court documents allege that Campbell would sexually assault his daughter while her little brother was home and that “her little brother would sometimes come into the room while the sexual assault was occurring.”

Campbell first requested transgender surgery to attempt to become a woman in 2013, according to a Wisconsin outlet, but the DOC denied his request at the time. In 2016 he filed a lawsuit accusing Department of Corrections officials of being indifferent to his medical needs by not allowing him to get so-called sex change surgery, the publication reported.

The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2019 that the DOC officials couldn’t have anticipated that denying such a surgery to Campbell would violate his rights.

However, in December 2020, a federal judge ruled that Wisconsin must offer Campbell taxpayer-funded transition surgery and move him to a women’s prison while awaiting that surgery.

“The rights of transgender persons and sex reassignment surgery remain politically controversial, even outside the prison context,” U.S. District Judge James Peterson said in his ruling at the time. “And some members of the public are outraged at any effort to improve the health and well being of inmates. But the true public interest lies in alleviating needless suffering by those who are dependent on the government for their care.”

“I decline to impose any further prerequisites on Campbell’s sex reassignment surgery,” Peterson added, using female pronouns for the inmate: “She has waited long enough.”

The DOC housed Campbell in men’s prisons until August 2022, according to the inmate locator. In August 2022, authorities moved him to Taycheedah Correctional Institution, which “provides female inmates with a safe and secure environment that is gender-responsive,” according to the prison’s website.

Republican Wisconsin state Rep. Janel Brandtjen told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that she finds it “outrageous” that taxpayers were likely forced to pay for Campbell’s transition, calling Campbell’s placement an “injustice” to the female members of the facility.

“It’s incomprehensible that this is where we are in the justice system, that deviants now get to pretend they are a different sex so they can manipulate women within the women’s prison,” said Brandtjen, a member of the state Corrections committee. “And we’ve seen this happen in the UK and other facilities.”

“It really does leave you at a loss for words,” she said. “It’s disgusting.” 

“As legislators, we will pursue every option that we can to have our female inmates safe and to stop this horrendous misuse of taxpayer money and abuse of the justice system,” the Wisconsin state legislator added.

Over Half of Trans-Identifying Prisoners Committed Sex Crimes

Since Aug. 21, Wisconsin DOC Deputy Director of Communications Kevin Hoffman has failed to provide The Daily Signal with information on Campbell’s whereabouts or on how many biologically male inmates are housed in female prisons.

Guidance from the DOC dated April 2018 states that “inmates may self-identify as transgender or intersex at intake or at any other time during an incarceration” and that “all sites are approved for transgender and intersex inmates” except six facilities: Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution, Gordon Correctional Center, McNaughton Correctional Center, Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility, Flambeau Correctional Center and St. Croix Correctional Center.

“Facility and housing assignments shall be made on a case-by-case basis, considering the inmate’s health and safety as well as potential programming, management and security concerns,” the guidance notes. “An inmate’s own views regarding safety shall be given careful consideration.”

If an inmate has undergone an attempted transgender transition surgery, that inmate will likely be placed in a facility consistent with the “reassignment treatment,” the guidance states. In other words, if a man undergoes attempted sex change surgery to look like a woman, he will be housed with women.

“For the purposes of facility placement, self-inflicted genital mutilation does not constitute sexual reassignment surgery and does not qualify an inmate for placement in a different facility.

The Daily Signal previously reported that a little more than half of the men housed in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities who identify as transgender women have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse.

The revelation comes from records obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through an April 2022 public records request. The Oversight Project sought information on biologically male inmates seeking transfers to female prisons by saying they identified as transgender females. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

Of the 161 biological men who are housed in Wisconsin Department of Corrections facilities who self-reported as transgender, 81 (50.3%) have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse as of late July. The prisoners may have been convicted of additional offenses for their current incarceration periods that are not sex offenses, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections noted.

Inmates convicted of sex offenses may have committed crimes including sexual exploitation of a child, sexual exploitation by a therapist, forced viewing of a sexual act, rape, sexual intercourse without consent, incest, sexual intercourse with a child, indecent behavior with a child, enticing a child, and more.

This isn’t the first story of its kind. The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in April 2021 that a two-time baby killer had requested to be transferred to a women’s prison where his baby mama was housed. Forty-six-year-old Jessica M. Hann, formerly known as Jason Michael Hann, underwent a state-funded gender transition before transferring to the Central California Women’s Facility under the name “Jessica.”

He is currently housed there on death row, inmate records show.

Strip Searches by Biological Men?

Wisconsin state Rep. Ty Bodden introduced legislation earlier this year that would require people conducting strip searches on a prisoner to be the same sex as the prisoner unless that search is conducted “due to exigent circumstances.”

That legislation defines sex as “a person’s sex at birth, as being male or female, according to distinct reproductive roles as manifested by sex and reproductive organ anatomy, chromosomal makeup, and endogenous hormone profiles.”

Bodden told The Daily Signal that the inspiration for the bill traces back to his experience working in the Wisconsin DOC, where he observed guards who were in the process of attempting to transition to another gender performing strip searches on members of the opposite sex.

Such searches are very thorough and invasive. Bodden’s legislation defines strip search as “a search in which a probationer’s genitals, pubic area, buttock, or anus, or a female probationer’s breast, is uncovered and either is exposed to view or is touched by a person conducting the search.”

“Unless exigent circumstances require an immediate search, no person may conduct a strip search on a probationer subject to this subsection unless the person conducting the strip search is of the same sex,” the legislation says.

“It is unfortunate that we need to define ‘sex’ in statute when it comes to inmate placement and inmate strip searches,” Bodden told The Daily Signal. “Biological men should not conduct strip searches on women, and biological men should not be housed with female inmates, and vice versa. This is common sense.”

The DOC did not immediately address The Daily Signal’s request for comment about men who identify as women performing strip searches on female prison inmates.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post Confirmed: Man Who Raped His 10-Year-Old Daughter Housed With Female Prison Inmates appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Americans are justifiably unhappy with the state of the economy.

The inflation figures for August took a turn for the worse—meaning, families have now lost $5,100 in purchasing power since President Joe Biden entered the White House.

In addition to the burden of inflation, rising interest rates are making home mortgages unaffordable, pushing the American dream out of reach for millions.

While month-to-month economic numbers tell part of the story, a new report from The Heritage Foundation explains how Washington’s reckless spending pushed the economy to this tipping point. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

The special report, “The Road to Inflation: How an Unprecedented Federal Spending Spree Created Economic Turmoil,” reveals that Congress passed an astonishing $7.5 trillion in new spending between 2020 and 2022—or more than $57,000 per household.

Pushing such an unprecedented amount of deficit spending had predictable consequences.

>>>Read the full report here: “The Road to Inflation”

At a time when supply chains were strained by the COVID-19 pandemic and harmful government-imposed lockdowns, throwing more money at a lower volume of goods and services could only drive prices up.

It would be one thing if the spending spree had been made up of good investments. Unfortunately, most of the initiatives were poorly designed, based on faulty economic reasoning and/or motivated by political opportunism.

The following are just four of the areas where the federal government misused trillions of dollars in taxpayer resources during the spending spree:

Welfare Expansion Causes World Record Fraud

At the start of the pandemic, Congress expanded eligibility and increased payments for the unemployment insurance program.

At the time, it was easy to predict that this would have negative consequences, incentivizing workers to actively seek joblessness or otherwise game the system to maximize their handouts.

Incredibly, even the most cynical analysis underestimated just how big a problem would result from this welfare expansion.

A combination of individual scammers and organized crime rings using identity fraud bilked the federal government for at least $100 billion, with upper-end estimates of $350 billion to $400 billion.

To put that in perspective, the Bernie Madoff scheme that generated extensive media coverage and numerous documentaries was worth $65 billion. (Naturally, the press is less interested in publicizing fraud enabled by a welfare program.)

Slush Funds for State, Local Governments

In addition to increased federal payments for mass transit, education, and Medicaid, the spending spree included a whopping $500 billion in few-strings-attached handouts to state and local governments.

The first batch of this money, $150 billion, was approved as protection against potential tax revenue declines at the start of the pandemic. However, it soon became clear that most areas were not experiencing a tax decline, and the total amount of revenue loss was much smaller than expected.

Despite that reality, Democrats passed an additional $350 billion in slushy funds.

Since there was no revenue gap, state and local governments blew through their second round of handouts with inflationary check-cutting, record-setting levels of corporate welfare, bailing out government-owned golf courses, tax credits for Hollywood studios, promoting tourism, special bonuses for government employees, and much more.

As with the unemployment insurance fraud, we will never know the total amount of money wasted on “relief” payments to state and local governments.

Teachers Unions Held Schools Hostage

Perhaps the most infuriating part of the spending spree took place in early 2021.

Amid a raging debate about reopening schools, with children receiving substandard educations, teachers unions were pressing to keep schools closed. That was part of a pressure campaign to give government-run K-12 schools a massive federal handout.

The Biden administration kowtowed to teachers unions, and it was later revealed that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention colluded with union officials on school-reopening guidance to help stack the deck.

In the end, Democrats approved $123 billion for public K-12 schools, rewarding the unions for holding schools hostage.

Since there was no pandemic-related need for such a huge amount of money, much of it went toward hiring sprees and raises for school employees.

Regrettably, the obscure nature of how funds were distributed means that we will likely never know what public schools did with that windfall.

Business Support Program Defrauded

The Paycheck Protection Program, passed early in the pandemic, was designed to help businesses keep employees on the payroll during the lockdown-driven economic downturn.

However, the $835 billion program—with Congress intending to get money out the door quickly—suffered from a lack of guardrails. Hundreds of billions of dollars in spending were flagged for review. There were hundreds of billions of dollars in improper payments, and the volume of fraud overwhelmed the system.

While some violators (such as a man who used the program to buy a $57,000 Pokémon card) were caught, countless others got away scot-free.

Conclusion

In the wake of the spending spree, the national debt is now more than $33 trillion, or an average of $253,000 per household.

Ignoring the dangers of such an incomprehensible amount of debt, and ignoring the ongoing damage that elevated inflation is having on family finances, many in Washington are still determined to keep the federal gravy train rolling.

• The pending set of appropriations bills are loaded with pork, including goodies for left-wing activist groups and frivolous recreational projects.
• These bills also contain tens of billions in fraudulent budget gimmicks that hide spending.
• Several other measures that would or could increase spending are also looming on the horizon, including the so-called farm bill (where most of the money goes to welfare programs), and supplemental appropriations that would throw tens of billions more at Ukraine and to leftist nonprofits that encourage illegal immigration.

It’s crucial for the American public to be on guard against politicians whose default response to most problems is to throw other people’s money around.

That has been a bad habit for many years, but now it has turned into a chronic addiction the country can’t afford.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post 4 Ways Washington’s Spending Spree Caused Inflation With Trillions in Waste, Fraud appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Sen. JD Vance, a former Marine, accused the Biden administration of politicizing the U.S. military, creating a recruiting crisis that is jeopardizing its readiness and warfighting capabilities.

“There’s a reason why we have, frankly, a crisis in recruitment in the all-volunteer military—the first time we’ve had a recruitment crisis, really, since the end of the Vietnam War,” Vance, R-Ohio, said Wednesday. “I think it’s because the perception among a lot of people who would otherwise enlist is that the military has become politicized.”

Three branches of the U.S. military—the Army, Navy, and Air Force—are on track to miss their 2023 recruiting goals.

Appearing at an Axios event in Washington, Vance defended Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who has delayed the promotions of more than 300 military officers in a dispute over the Pentagon’s controversial taxpayer-funded abortion policy.

“The military cannot be an arm of either administration’s social policy. There’s a law that says abortions will not be publicly funded and the Biden administration is circumventing that law in a way that destroys credibility in the military,” said Vance, who enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps after high school and later served in the Iraq War.

Tuberville began blocking the promotions in March, arguing the Defense Department policy was unlawfully implemented without congressional approval. He’s vowed to not release his “hold” on the promotions until the policy is revoked.

The Pentagon’s policy provides three weeks of taxpayer-funded paid leave and reimbursement of travel expenses for military personnel and dependents who are seeking abortions. An estimate from the Rand Corp. predicts the number of abortions in the military eligible for taxpayer-covered expenses would skyrocket from 20 to more than 4,000 each year. 

Even though Tuberville has objected to “unanimous consent”—the Senate process of rubber-stamping an entire bloc of nominees without a recorded vote—he said on numerous occasions that Democrats could proceed with individual votes for each military officer’s promotion.

“Let’s vote on them,” Vance told Axios reporter Hope King. “Tuberville can’t prevent them from getting on [a nominee]—all he’s doing is forcing a vote on each one. I think it’s reasonable to say we should evaluate these guys one by one.”

As a result of Tuberville’s delay, military officers who would have otherwise escaped much scrutiny are now being carefully examined for their radical views on issues ranging critical race theory to COVID mandates.

The standoff took a new turn Tuesday when Tuberville secured the backing of at least 16 other rank-and-file senators to force a vote on Gen. Eric Smith’s promotion to Marine Corps commandant. Vance was among the senators who signed Tuberville’s cloture petition.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who had previously refused to bring any nominee to the floor, changed course Wednesday.

>>> Schumer Folds in Abortion Military Battle Ahead of Tuberville’s Planned Procedural Maneuver

Hours later, the Senate confirmed Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Eleven senators voted against Brown’s confirmation, including Tuberville and Vance. Conservatives strongly opposed Brown’s promotion over concerns ranging from his leadership of the U.S. Air Force to his embrace of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the military.

The Senate is expected to vote Thursday on the promotion of Gen. Randy A. George to be the U.S. Army’s chief of staff.

Speaking in the Senate chamber Wednesday, Tuberville said he remained steadfastly opposed to the Pentagon’s abortion policy and wouldn’t relent until it’s reversed.

“My hold is still in place. The hold will remain in place as long as the Pentagon’s illegal abortion policy remains in place,” Tuberville said. “If the Pentagon lifts the policy, then I will lift my hold. It’s as easy as that.”

The post JD Vance Blames Biden for ‘Politicized’ Military, Supports Tuberville’s Stand appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As an Eagle Scout, I feel a debt to the Boy Scouts of America, but I also think the BSA abandoned its defining values by embracing transgender ideology. Both the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of the USA have embraced far-left social agendas that alienate many of the young families who form their natural constituencies.

I sat down Wednesday with Patti Garibay, founder and executive director of American Heritage Girls, the leading scouting alternative to the Girl Scouts. She founded American Heritage Girls back in 1995, after she realized that the Girl Scouts were promoting homosexuality and abortion.

While the Girl Scouts had begun moving in that direction during the 1970s, Garibay said, it really hit her in 1993 when the Girl Scouts removed an oath to God from the Girl Scout Promise.

“Well, when you kick God out of a character-development program, what are you going to set the stone on? It’s going to be the shifting sands of cultural winds, and that can be crazy,” she said.

“They have come out of the closet with this,” Garibay added. She mentioned a “Pride patch” with a “very enticing” rainbow and a “Camp Culture Code that tells campers and leaders that you have to use the proper pronouns of whoever the camp counselor might be.”

“I’ll tell you, they are manipulating our kids,” she said. “I believe it’s indoctrination.”

She tried to reform the Girl Scouts from within, but eventually realized she needed to start a separate organization. “Sometimes, we can’t just curse the darkness. We have to light a candle, and we’ve got to start to be part of the solution, rather than the problem,” she said.

American Heritage Girls grew and grew, and it even partnered with the Boy Scouts of America from 2009 to 2013. Garibay lamented that the Boy Scouts changed its policy to allow openly homosexual scouts in 2013, even though the Boy Scouts had won a historic Supreme Court case in 2000 (Boy Scouts of America v. Dale) in which the BSA argued that homosexual conduct was inconsistent with the values it was attempting to instill in young men.

Garibay said that she helped a group of men launch Trail Life USA, a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts.

While American Heritage Girls is an explicitly Christian organization, it does allow Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish girls to join, so long as they believe in God.

“The girls do all kinds of fun things,” Garibay explained. “They go camping. They serve in the community. They learn about citizenship and government so that they can be good citizens one day. They also learn about badges. We have over 330 badges that the girls can earn, and these are life skills.”

The organization also defends America’s heritage.

“With American Heritage Girls, what we’re training the girls to understand is the Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded,” she said. Her organization is bringing back the “basic tenets of America” that are “not being taught in the public schools” or on social media.

Garibay also mentioned resources that American Heritage Girls puts out to help equip families to instill a biblical worldview in their children, and to innoculate them against the lies of transgender identity.

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

Tyler O’Neil: This is Tyler O’Neil, managing editor at The Daily Signal. I am honored to be joined by Patti Garibay, who is the founder and executive director of American Heritage Girls. So glad to have you with me.

Patti Garibay: It’s a pleasure to be with you, Tyler. Thanks for having me.

O’Neil: So, Patti, I just want to talk a little bit about why American Heritage Girls exists, what it is. A lot of people are very familiar with the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, but they may not know that there are more, shall we say, faithful options out there to the original animating spirit of both of those scouting groups.

Garibay: Oh, I love the way you said that, Tyler, the emanating spirit. Yes. We are a Christ-centered character development program that serves girls ages 5 to 18. We come alongside the church who says, “I want this program for youth. I want it for the girls in our community, in our church. We want to have something that they’re doing life together, that they have excellent models and mentors in the adult volunteers, and we also want them to be able to be prepared, the girls, for influencing the next generation.” And I think that’s very important to today’s culture.

O’Neil: It’s interesting, I am an Eagle Scout myself, and I’ve been really disheartened to see the way that the Boy Scouts have been going in this past decade. But why did American Heritage Girls start back in 1995? And I think there’s a partnership with Trail Life USA. Would you talk briefly about the issues that led to these new organizations?

Garibay: Yes, absolutely. A matter of fact, the Girl Scouts USA had been going in the wrong direction, but little to my knowledge, as a serving leader. So this was hidden in many ways. It had been going on since the ’70s. I learned about in 1993. And that’s when the Girl Scouts changed the Girl Scout promise to no longer mandate an oath to God.

Well, when you kick God out of a character development program, what are you going to set the stone on? It’s going to be the shifting sands of cultural winds. And that can be crazy.

And so we’ve lost all of that really stable foundation that Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of Girl Scouts, had set. And I started to wonder, “Why would they do this?” So then there became a time of research and development, and I started to uncover crazy things that the Girl Scouts were standing for.

And again, this is back in the early ’90s. They were very much pro-abortion at that time, very much pro-homosexuality. And they were teaching the kids and indoctrinating them with this curricula through the girl handbooks and even through their magazines and all the other things that accompany.

So that was something I was trying to change. I thought that a voice of reason would set them straight, that they had opened a Pandora’s box that they did not realize they opened. Well, they fully knew. And so that year and a half of fighting and trying to self-correct the Girl Scouts USA and being accused of being Don Quixote, fighting windmills, I finally gave up and realized that the Lord was really calling me to do something different. And that was to start something new.

And sometimes we can’t just curse the darkness, we have to light a candle, and we’ve got to start to be part of the solution rather than the problem. And I think that’s where the populace comes together, and we as parents say, “We care enough about our kids that we’re going to do something new and different that will help them and their peers.”

Now, I just thought this would just be a little gig for my daughter that would last four years and we call it a day and I get on with my life, right? Well, here we are 28 years later. My daughter is not only a leader, but my granddaughter is now in American Heritage Girls. But that’s what God does when he calls you.

O’Neil: Yeah. You mentioned the support of abortion, homosexuality back in the ’90s. If I remember rightly, that was when the homosexual movement NAMBLA was around. And I think they might still exist, but they’re nowhere near what they used to be. How have you seen those issues percolate and continue and arguably worsen in the past few decades?

Garibay: I cannot believe. They’ve come out of the closet with this—as I mentioned, the agenda was hidden from me as a leader. I wasn’t just a leader of one troop but three troops. And I was also a delegate, so I bled green. So I should have known some of this stuff rather than finding it out on the evening news.

But since then, they have come out of the closet with this. Matter of fact, there’s a Pride patch for the girls to be able to earn. There’s also a Camp Culture Code that tells the campers and the leaders that you have to use the proper pronouns of whoever that camp counselor might be, whether it be—we’re not even allowed to say male or female, according to this Camp Culture Code.

And here’s the thing, MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, gave the Girl Scouts a record donation, the largest in their history, of $85 million. And this was for them to use for [diversity, equity, and inclusion] purposes. So here we have it right there in the Camp Culture Code. We have it also in the curriculum and these Pride patches.

And the thing that bothers me the most, Tyler, about the Pride patch is, I remember, as a Girl Scout leader, the girls would choose their badges by its design, honestly. The girls like to wear pretty things. Well, that rainbow is very enticing on that Pride patch.

So I’ll tell you, they are manipulating our kids. I believe it’s indoctrination. And I still believe there’s a lot of families that don’t understand it because they really love the tradition of the Trefoil rather than the truth of what’s going on in that trefoiled organization.

O’Neil: Yeah, I think that’s powerful, the way you said that. Also, you had a relationship with the Boy Scouts, which I didn’t know about. I’m an Eagle Scout, I got it back in 2007, I believe. But seeing the Boy Scouts and their recent changes, what was your relationship with them? How did that break down? And did you ever imagine that American Heritage Girls would be competing with the Boy Scouts for Girl Scouts, right?

Garibay: Or even for the Boy Scouts to be competing with the Girl Scouts. But it is a crazy world.

Well, here’s the thing. We were blessed by a memorandum of understanding with the Boy Scouts of America. And imagine, you’re feeling your ship has come in. The greatest scouting organization in the world wanted to partner with American Heritage Girls. And that allowed us a lot of enjoyment from weeks at Philmont to open camps to trainings, to national committee meetings and being in Irving a lot.

Well, those were great years, 2009. And then in 2013, we had to end that relationship because in those national committee meetings, we started to hear about what was going to go on as far as their membership standards, that they were going to ignore the Dale hearing, the Dale decision that happened in Supreme Court about them being able to stand for morally straight, and they were going to change that definition and allow for homosexuals to be part of the Boy Scouts of America.

And this was greatly disturbing. And so our members said, “What are you going to do about this? Are you going to create American Heritage Boys? That seems like a logical thing.” And pro-family groups were coming around us to help us with this idea of developing a boys organization.

But our board of directors felt it very strongly that we were not called to start a boys organization. We’re not boys. Boys and girls are different. That we were to resource and to provide all the things that I wish someone had come alongside me to provide. And that’s intellectual property and finances and all the things on how to run a Christ-centered scout-like ministry.

And that’s basically what we did. And in 2013, helped to develop Trail Life USA, which is now flourishing across the nation in all 50 states, and really enjoying being able to minister to kids and to boys in the way that scout methods work well.

O’Neil: Yeah. And would you give us just a tease of what American Heritage Girls’—I don’t know if you would say scout oath, the scout law? Those are the things that I grew up with. Reverence was always a big one. What is the American Heritage Girls and the Trail Life USA version?

Garibay: Well, for the Trail Life USA, I’m not sure, honestly, because we are close, but we’re bookends. But for us, it’s our oath. It’s an American Heritage Girl Oath, and the girls hold up four fingers to represent each part of that oath. “I promise to love God, cherish my family, honor my country, and serve in my community.”

Our tagline is faith, service, and fun. If it’s not fun, the kids aren’t going to come. But faith is central to what we do. This is not about girl power, it is about the Holy Spirit’s power in the girl. And so everything stems from the relativity and the relevance of Scripture and why that’s important for everyday life and how to do life together.

The girls do all kinds of fun things. They go camping, they serve in the community, they learn about citizenship and government so that they can be good citizens one day. They also learn about badges. And we have over 330 badges that the girls can earn. And these are life skills. And we have story upon story where a girl has earned a badge and it ultimately became her vocation.

I like to use the word vocation versus career because I do believe that that needs to be a vocal calling from the Lord. And that’s where we’re in our sweet spots, when we are in his will, even with our selection of “career.” So the girls learn all of that.

And you can come in at 5 to 18 anytime. It’s a glide path to get into the program. You don’t have to start at 5 and end at 18. It’s in and out.

And the girls are able to understand leadership. They learn public speaking. They learn how to be gritty, but with grace. A matter of fact, that’s the title of our leadership curriculum, Girls Rooted in Truth With Grace.

So we know truth, but if we’re bombastic or rude, it’s not going to be heard. But if we do it with grace, like Jesus did, we’re going to be able to be heard. And that’s really our ultimate goal, is for the girls to know who they are and whose they are, that their identity in Christ, and that there is a reason to celebrate being a girl.

O’Neil: So how do you speak to a culture? I’ve been covering the Southern Poverty Law Center for a while. They’re an organization that loves to brand any conservative, we like to joke, “If you’re to the right of Karl Marx,” but they’ll put you on a hate map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.

And thankfully, they haven’t attacked you yet, but some of Heritage’s allies, people like Family Research Council who had a mass shooting attempted, an attempted terrorist attack against them. But I think the SPLC is just the tip of the spear. I wrote a book about it. But they’re just the tip of the spear.

We see this demonization of anybody who disagrees, particularly with the LGBT agenda, sometimes with critical race theory, saying, “You’re anti-history, you’re anti-love, you’re all these things.” How does American Heritage Girls speak to the culture in that time and equip girls to live in such a hostile environment?

Garibay: It is truly a hostile environment, and girls have to own their own faith, and they have to also know apologetics enough to understand why they believe what they believe so that they can be in these debate-like situations. Well, today there’s not even debate, unfortunately. It’s cancel culture. So what does that feel like?

So we are focusing a lot right now on social emotional health. With the statistics that are coming out of the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and all kinds of U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, we are seeing all-time-high mental health issues for girls, particularly adolescent girls. The suicide rates are over 50% what they were pre-COVID. And this is in the emergency room. So this is real stuff. It’s not just ideation. It is girls trying to kill themselves.

And this is a desperation for hopelessness, and they feel like they’re helpless as well. So American Heritage Girls helps them to understand that God loves them, that their identity is beyond rubies, it is so worthwhile. And let’s help us discover your purpose and your talents and how God has wired you to be.

We’re back to labels, Tyler. It doesn’t have to be in a labeled box, but rather the Lord has created us each uniquely, so no one’s the same. It always blows my mind how unique we all are. And we teach the girls that. And we not only teach them that, but they live it because they’re doing life together, they’re failing forward together.

They have these adult mentors that are speaking into them, which I think every kid needs. They need great parents, but they need a great church, and they need a whole bunch of great adults around them because there’s not enough arrows in the quiver today.

So we are teaching these girls through a lot of fun activities. They don’t even know what’s happening, honestly. But at the end of the day when they come out of the program, I can’t tell you how many alumna I’ve met in this city of Washington, D.C., where we’re at today, that are alumna from HG and said, “I was in that. Now look what I’m doing. I want to influence for the next generation.” It’s very cool.

O’Neil: Yeah, no, that’s inspiring. You’re an explicitly Christian organization, but it’s interesting, there are a lot of potential pitfalls, there’s strengths and weaknesses. Obviously, I’m a Christian. I think that it’s very important for us to stand for biblical truth. But you also reach across some interesting aisles. You were telling me that Protestants and Catholics, very much welcomed.

How has American Heritage Girls navigated some of those issues of doctrine, some of those disagreements, and stood for the Gospel in this interesting culture we have today?

Garibay: It’s so important that we major on the majors. What do we have alike rather than focusing on the differences? And I think that’s a big problem in today’s society and that’s why cancel culture has cropped up. We’re only looking at the differences rather than the likenesses that we have in humanity itself.

We are all human. We should all respect one another. So the key to all of this is respect. And American Heritage Girls respects faith traditions.

So if you are a practicing Catholic and you need to leave camp to go to Mass on Sunday morning, that is respected. If you need to do whatever you’re doing on a Wednesday night because you happen to have Wednesday night programs at your Protestant church, that is respected.

So we talk about the main thing. And the main thing for us is that Jesus Christ is our savior, and we need him in order … to get into heaven. We don’t earn heaven, but to be able to know that we have eternal life.

And that understanding is the main thing. So let’s talk about the main thing, offer on the main thing, rather than just get into the details. And what’s really cool about it is that the girls talk. A lot of our troops are mixed troops in that there’s Catholics and Protestants, and they talk about the different attributes of their faith. What is wrong with talking about and learning? I just don’t understand what’s going on today.

Back in my day, they were called rap sessions, and we learned the most about what the world was like and about, through rap sessions, and that was talking. And now it’s just, “Let’s cancel it,” or, “They’re not in my aisle. I’m not going to—” We don’t do that.

American Heritage Girls really embraces how Jesus was. Jesus was not a person that—he separated sin from truth, but he also was very accepting and said, “Sin no more.” That “We love you. I love you, my Father loves you, but sin no more.” That’s the key thing.

O’Neil: Yeah. That’s well said.

I also think American Heritage Girls, those two terms, American heritage, how do you stand by and teach American heritage in a culture that often views it negatively? And do you go further?

I’m a Hillsdale grad, so I like the American heritage and the Western heritage, and I think we can’t really understand where we are if we don’t see that line from ancient Greece, ancient Israel, through Rome, through the scholastics, through the Founders.

So how do you equip girls? How does that American heritage play into the programming?

Garibay: We all have a heritage. We have a family heritage, a national heritage, a spiritual heritage. It’s not just one heritage. But with American Heritage Girls, what we’re training the girls to understand is Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded.

And that includes talking about what—our Founders weren’t perfect. They were people, just like us. And you and I are not perfect. And that’s why we need Christ, to be able to help us reach that area and to be able to enter the holy gates of heaven.

But here’s the thing, I think it’s so important that we understand that this was based on the most beautiful gospel of equality, of understanding that each person is uniquely hewn in their mother’s womb, which we are unabashedly pro-life.

A matter of fact, this year our program year theme, and we have one every year, is called Woven. And it’s talking about being woven in your mother’s womb. And this past week on our birthday, 28 years, we celebrated it by giving gifts of service throughout the country to pregnancy care centers.

So that is a big distinguishing factor for American Heritage Girls and where we were founded from the Girl Scouts USA. But these kind of basic, I would say, tenants of America, they are being brought back through American Heritage Girls. Because they’re not being taught in the public schools, they’re not being taught in social media. They might be taught in the homeschool environment, but we want to undergird that as well, for them to understand not that America is perfect, but that America has great potential because of the Holy Spirit’s power in it.

O’Neil: Yeah. I think some of the most inspiring stories we’ve been seeing recently are where people who are not Christian are standing up to some of this insanity of the woke Left. You have Muslims in Montgomery County and some that I know who are outraged at the LGBT indoctrination. You have many religiously conservative Jews, Orthodox in particular, who are standing up.

American Heritage Girls is a Christian organization. And as a Christian I understand, and it’s important to stand for, when you’re a Christian organization, to stand for the Gospel. Is there an opening for those who are conservative who want to raise their girls in this kind of tradition, who might not be Christian, might be Hindu, but vaguely, like Vikram Goswami, Hindu but vaguely monotheistic? What sort of relationship do you have with non-Christians?

Garibay: Well, really, girl members, girl membership is open to anyone that believes in God. All right? So we have served girls that are Jewish and Muslim. Their parents are not really part of the mentoring process because we are explicitly Christ-centered.

However, they’ve put their daughters in for that very reason, where they want something because this society is so void of what’s right and wrong. And girls need this. And I believe the mental health crisis is a result of not knowing the confusion that exists today.

When you live in confusion, it becomes desperate, you become desperate, and you become hopeless. And so having these parameters, the backyard with a fence, is very helpful to humanity. We’re wired that way. We need to know right and wrong. So there are some families that have chosen American Heritage Girls, but we are who we are, and we’re explicitly, unabashedly Christ-centered.

O’Neil: Yeah. No, that’s a strong stance and good question—or good answer. Sorry.

Garibay: That’s a very good question.

O’Neil: But yeah, I want to hear more about the resources that you mentioned to me earlier. You’re trying to equip families to address these really complicated issues of gender and other things. Would you talk about those resources that American Heritage Girls has put out?

Garibay: I really would love to. Out of bad situations, oftentimes great things come, right? And so during 2019, 2020, you can imagine, it was COVID, all the churches were closed. We partner with churches. So American Heritage Girls literally wasn’t in operation. So we had to pivot and do a whole lot of online programming to continue to engage girls because they were still forming over the years. Their childhood was not stopped, it was continued. A matter of fact, they needed us more than ever.

So what we felt the Lord calling us to is something called raising godly girls. And it was a gift to the nation, I call it.

What we’ve done is we’ve developed some wonderful resources for parents to deal with the issues confronting today’s girls. And we even have a one-minute radio program that’s aired on 1,400 Christian radio stations across the nation. More keep coming on because they love this.

What it is, it’s an issue confronting today’s girl, a scriptural antidote, and then a call to action for the family, all within 60 seconds. And then we go and we blog on these, we go deeper on that.

And then some of these issues we’ve gone really deep and developed free e-books for families to be able to access on our website, americanheritagegirls.org. And you’re able to see, right on the pop-up, “Would you like to download the free e-book?”

Here’s the titles that we have, Tyler. “Raising Godly Girls: Guide to Fear and Anxiety,” which helps with the mental health issue, which is really confronting girls. Fifty percent have said that they are very, very lonely. And loneliness is the first indicator to suicidal ideation. So you’ve got to watch that.

When your kids are lonely, they need friends. And a great place to go is American Heritage Girls troops because they have like-minded friends and they are there to help them.

No. 2, “Raising Godly Girls: Guide to Gender and Identity.” Yes, we stepped in that big controversial issue. But it needs to because it’s affecting girls more than anyone and anything right now.

Girls typically will enter into that and they will exit. Guys tend to stay into that situation a little longer. But we need to help the girls to understand again what that is and also how to manage emotions, because so much of that is around how I feel rather than really who I am. So we’ve mixed our feelings and our identity very much so in this whole issue of gender identity and confusion.

And then thirdly, what I believe is the antidote to all of this is for our remnant of Christians to understand a biblical worldview, because yes, the Lord has something to say on this and all issues. We need to look for it and we need to understand that there is—this is an eternal word of God. It’s not just for a certain time in Israel. That’s not the case. It’s timeless, the word of God. And how do we bring that into today’s talks?

And with the Barna research that’s gone on that has said that so few Christian parents even have a biblical worldview, how in the world are our kids? The trickle-down effect is very minimal. So we’re trying to bring that back. And that e-book is really helpful.

It’s OK, parents, if you don’t feel like you have a strong biblical worldview. And by the way, if you go to summit.org, you can take a test and learn about how good is your biblical worldview. I was surprised to see I just barely scored 90, and I thought I was pretty strong in this. So you might be surprised. But check it out, and then you’ll be able to say, “You know what, kiddos? I can grow too in this.”

And that is OK because the kids love to know that you’re vulnerable. And they’ll approach you more when they know that you’re going to be real with them and say, “Let’s learn together.” And that’s really what these books do. What shall I say? They’re preventative in that, “Let’s have that discussion first before somebody else does.” And that’s so important to parenting. So those are wonderful resources, I think, for all your listeners.

O’Neil: Well, what have you seen is the most effective response? Because I think gender ideology is a tremendous threat to, as you’re talking about, mental health, but on all sorts of levels, because we see these detransitioners who come out. And they’ve scarred their bodies, they’ve changed their bodies in horrific ways to resemble the opposite sex, without ever making it there. And then we see the potential of people abusing the system.

I think those who truly identify as transgender are probably not doing so just to win sports competitions or just to invade girls’ bathrooms. But there’s still a chance that people will abuse that. And in Loudoun County, Virginia, we saw a young man who claimed to identify as transgender go and rape a girl in a girls’ restroom.

And there are ways, perhaps, that you can engage with this. But I think, at the end of the day, we have to stand on the truth. And the truth is humans are male and female.

And we got to have the highest of compassion for anybody who struggles with these things. But what have you seen in that messaging, that girls resonate with, that people actually listen to, that somebody who may have found some resources online and is starting to think, “Oh, I might be transgender,” what actually pierces that fog?

Garibay: One key word you said was online, all right? That is where the grooming is occurring. And when you do the check boxes to see the kid that’s going to be most, what shall I say, potential bait for this situation, It’s the one that tends to maybe be on the spectrum for autism, very highly intelligent oftentimes, and very engaged in social media. And that grooming is where it’s happening.

And so first of all, talk about social media to your kiddos, particularly the girls. And we know about the—[Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg even did the study himself on Instagram and the dangers of it and how it affects girls. So talk about these things. Limit it.

You are still the parent. And you probably are paying for that cellphone, right? So don’t forget that the girls have no rights to these cellphones. This is something that you’ve given them, so you can control it.

Get into their online life. Online life is really scary. You wouldn’t send your kid off to senior prom and not talk to them about senior prom situations. Right? You would ready them. Why are we allowing our kids to be online without any supervision and afraid to be the bad parent or the helicopter parent because you’re checking to see where your daughters have been online? Well, if you’re not doing that, you’re just playing stupid. All right? You need to be there.

So I think all of this is prevention from that. So limit that time on social media so the grooming cannot occur.

And when those messages do come on, talk about emotions and the power of emotions, particularly during adolescence. That’s when these kids are usually going through these surgeries—15-year-old boys making decisions that they’re girls is absolutely absurd. … Look at the physiology of it all and the hormonal rush and all the crazy things that are happening. Yeah, it’s scary. Adolescence is scary. Doesn’t mean you’re in the wrong body. It means adolescence is scary. Let’s get back to basics here.

So I think that having those discussions, and that’s what we love to do, is to equip parents. And then when parents are serving in American Heritage Girls, they’re learning all of this stuff. It’s part of our trainings, it’s part of our help for them. And so they just become better parents and volunteers.

O’Neil: Yeah. Well, I think addressing, having a firm root on identity really strengthens that. Well, I think we should probably wrap up. It’s been fantastic. Where can Americans find American Heritage Girls? I think you mentioned the website for the e-books. How can we follow you, hear about the important work you’re doing?

Garibay: Right? I just spoke about social media, but we are on social media. You can see us on Facebook and Instagram. But in addition, our website is just a plethora of information, Americanheritagegirls.org. You can find out how to find a troop for your daughter, how to start a troop at your church, which is really the legacy we’d love to see.

So many troops have long waiting lists. Parents are desperate for this. They really want something that’s wholesome and good for their kids, and they want friends for their kids, particularly girls. They’re wired for friendship. And they need that, and they’re lonelier than ever. So check us out and let us know how we can help you as a parent, and your church, to be able to grow in the love of God and to help the next generation be what they need to be.

O’Neil: Wow. Thank you so much, Patti, and best of luck with what you’re doing.

Garibay: Thank you.

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Virginia mom Merianne Jensen became a voice for parental rights and common sense when she asked a simple question during a local school board meeting in 2022. 

“If masks work, why don’t they?” Jensen asked the school board in Prince William County, Virginia.

A video of the incident went viral, launching Jensen into the position to be a voice for parents who are fighting back against radical leftist policies targeting children. 

But the push to promote this leftist ideology no longer occurs only in the schools, but also may be found in doctor’s offices, the mother says.  

On Sunday, Jensen wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she recently took her 14-year-old to the doctor and noted that “halfway through the doctor asks me to leave.”

Jensen wrote that she refused, and the doctor “proceeded to ask if there were any questions about gender identity.”

“Nope. I stopped it right there,” she wrote. 

“We cannot continue to fuel this madness,” Jensen also wrote on X. “Fight it. Don’t let your child fall prey to a manufactured identity crisis. It ends with us, or it continues to lay claim to more children until the family and our children literally become unrecognizable. Don’t fall for the love narrative. This is a political path that only leads to pain and suffering for everyone involved. Especially the child.”

Jensen joins the “Problematic Women” podcast to share her unexpected rise to fame after she spoke out at a school board meeting and to talk about what parents can do to guard their kids from the Left’s harmful agenda. 

Also on today’s show, we have the story of two California teachers who are fighting back against a policy that would force them to lie to parents of children struggling with their gender identities. And Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, takes steps to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act.

Listen to the podcast below:

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

The post WARNING: ‘Don’t Let Your Child Fall Prey to a Manufactured Identity Crisis’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.

———————————————————-

As the Biden Border Crisis rages on, the administration has made up its own bogus visa program to let hundreds of thousands of aliens illegally cross into the U.S. and remain indefinitely—as long as they have sponsors here willing to “support” them. Shockingly, those sponsors can include other illegal aliens.

In January, Texas and 19 other states sued the Department of Homeland Security complaining that:

DHS … under the false pretense of preventing aliens from unlawfully crossing the border between the ports of entry, has effectively created a new visa program—without the formalities of legislation from Congress—by announcing that it will permit up to 360,000 aliens annually from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV) to be “paroled” into the United States for two years or longer and with eligibility for employment authorization.

“Parole” in immigration law gives the secretary of Homeland Security the authority to let foreigners enter the U.S. on a very temporary basis when they don’t have time to get a visa through the proper channels. Congress intended for parole to be very limited, such as when a foreign national’s testimony was crucial in an important trial.

The 20 states claim that the Biden administration’s mass parole of inadmissible aliens into the U.S. “fails each of the law’s three limiting factors” in that it is (1) not case-by-case, (2) not for urgent humanitarian reasons, and (3) advances no significant public benefit. The states specify their “substantial, irreparable harms” include millions of dollars in uncompensated education, health care, and social service costs.

To make its Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela parole program appear to be a less obvious drain on taxpayers, DHS requires an applying alien to have a sponsor in the U.S. who commits to providing financial and other support for the duration of the parole. Incredibly, sponsors can include not only U.S. citizens and permanent residents, but also asylees, refugees, people with Temporary Protected Status—and even other parolees!

Even more absurdly, it allows beneficiaries of “deferred action” or “deferred enforced departure”—aliens illegally here in the United States—to be sponsors. These temporary “deferred” categories are given to foreign nationals whom our government should be prosecuting for being here illegally or who have deportation orders that the Biden administration refuses to enforce.

Adding sponsorship to parole just puts unenforceable lipstick on a prime pig of a program. To match aspiring illegal immigrants—sorry, “parolees,” according to the administration—with willing sponsors, DHS has created an online portal called Welcome Connect.

The Welcome Connect home page allows only Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Ukrainians, and Venezuelans to participate, but more will likely come as the Biden administration diverts DHS from its legal purpose of protecting the border and managing legal immigration into being a service provider for illegal immigrants.

Welcome Connect resembles a dating website, matching parolees and sponsors—just check out this video that walks both aspiring parolees and sponsors through the process. Each is asked to put in various information, though none of it is verified.

A sample on the “Connections” page shows Jean, a 53-year-old married man in New York. He is willing to sponsor people (the drop-down menu goes up to “5+”) of all genders, but not pets. (Yes, the drop-down menu also allows parole applicants to list their pets, and—scandalously—sponsors can pick from “Only male” and “Only Female” as well as “All Genders.”)

In the example, Jean looks at a list of parole applicants and picks “Ana,” a 45-year-old “transgender” person. Ana or Jean can “request to connect” and begin negotiations. If things aren’t working out with Ana, Jean can flirt with up to five other applicants, who, in turn, can converse with up to seven sponsors.

The site advises applicants that sponsors cannot “require money … threaten to harm you … or require that you work … or have sex with them.” Because the Biden administration wouldn’t want any illegal immigrants exploited, would they?

“What are a sponsor’s financial obligations?” is a frequently asked question and reasonable for a sponsor to ask before taking responsibility for a “family” of five or more adults, five or more children, and assorted pets. The answer is not precise: “There is no amount you must dedicate to sponsorship,” though “you and your group should plan to raise at least $3,000 for each person sponsored,” the site says.

Welcome Connect then advises that “sponsorship carries with it some basic financial responsibilities” and that sponsors will sign a Declaration of Financial Support form, in which they assure the U.S. government that, if needed, “you will support the beneficiaries you seek to sponsor for the duration of their parole.”

But if this sounds almost like an actual responsibility or even a commitment, sponsors needn’t worry—“the Declaration of Financial Support is not legally binding in most cases.” Even if it was, as I’ve written before, immigration support affidavits are worthless and never enforced.

And if this sponsorship process appears like a mockery of our immigration laws, it is—just like the parole program of which it is part.

Biden has taken parole—a small loophole in immigration law—and treated it like a Grand Canyon down which to send a river of bogus programs that mock congressional intent.

What we have now are two immigration systems: First, there is the legal, official, historical visa system, in which foreigners who want to come to the U.S. pay for a visa application, fill out comprehensive forms, have an interview with a U.S. consular officer in an embassy overseas, are vetted through U.S. databases for criminal histories or terrorist associations, certify that they are not carrying a transmissible disease and are not indigent, and supply genuine identification documents and biometrics. After all that, they either get a visa or fail to qualify, based on U.S. immigration law.

The second system is Biden’s parallel universe of parole programs, juiced up to levels even the most ardent immigration advocate would not have dreamt of a few years ago. Parole applicants aren’t required to pay any fees, produce genuine identity confirmation, complete an interview, prove physical health, or prove that they have the ability to support themselves to enter the United States.

Furthermore, their cases for seeking parole can utterly lack merit, but they will be admitted anyway and, if present processing times are any indication, will be able to stay indefinitely.

To top everything off and completely undermine the credibility of the programs, DHS “did not explain or analyze how they would remove from the United States aliens paroled through the program after the end of any period of authorized parole,” as Texas and the other states also complain in their lawsuit.

The reason for that is simple: Biden’s DHS doesn’t have a plan because they have no intention of removing anyone. These parole programs, which the Biden people call “lawful pathways,” are simply a brazen, unconstitutional usurpation of Congress’ prerogative to control immigration and instead open the border for unfettered migration.

The longer Congress lets them get away with it, the more harm is done to both the rule of law and the separation of powers in the United States.  

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