Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
From a historical perspective, appeasement of tyrannical regimes ended, without exceptions, in personal, national, regional, or global catastrophes. From the expansions of the antediluvian Egyptian and Persian Empires, through the global domination of ancient Rome, the violent confrontations of the Middle Ages as well as the Napoleonic Wars, to the two World Wars of the 20th century, the tactics of engaging in benign diplomatic compromises without a comprehensive strategy of dealing with the core problems of intolerable ambitions by a person or a nation, inevitably resulted in unmitigated violent anarchies.
Presently, NATO and the European Union have to deal with a mini-tyrant among their midst by the name of Viktor Orban, the long-serving Prime Minister of Hungary. Predictably, the leaders of the European Union and successive presidents of the United States of America have made the same Chamberlain’s mistake with Viktor Orban as the then British Prime Minister was guilty of at his meeting with Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, in 1938. In the so-called Munich Agreement, in exchange for Hitler’s promise that if Chamberlain agrees to cede a part of the then Czechoslovakia the so-called Sudetenland to Germany, Nazi Germany shall make no further demands for land in the European continent. Returning to London, the British Prime Minister declared triumphantly: “My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time…Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.” Of course, the rest is history.
Fast forward to the lasting miserable political, economic, social and moral conditions of Hungary under its Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Politically, Hungary has become an unabashedly ethno-fascist tyrannical country without a meaningful opposition. All the media – the printed press, the electronic television stations as well as the overwhelming numbers of social media – are owned and controlled by Viktor Orban and his lackeys, which incessantly spew debilitating regime propaganda. The economy has only few privileged owners, namely, Viktor Orban’s Strohman Lorinc Meszaros, Viktor Orban’s extended family, his closest associates and their Russian and Chinese buddies. Socially, most Hungarians exist in the tyrant’s created vacuum of lies believing that their country is a democracy. In reality, they vegetate within an evil regime that is irredeemably corrupt to its core and have stolen and embezzled everything movable as well as even immovable properties across Hungary. While depicting himself as the only world champion of peace in Europe, under the guise of protecting the Hungarian people from the consequences of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Viktor Orban added to his absolute powers the permanent condition of state of emergency – just to be sure that no one would challenge his tyranny.
Internationally, don’t be mistaken. Viktor Orban has never been a “Friend of the United States of America.” To wit, he has fought against the European Union as well as the United States of America tooth and nail to impose onerous sanctions on the aggressor Russian Federation claiming that “without the latter’s gas and oil deliveries Europe would face political upheavals and economic ruin,” as if the West and not Russia were the culprit. According to Dr. Andras Simonyi, former Ambassador of Hungary to the United States of America and Hungary’s first NATO Ambassador, currently a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center in Washington DC, Viktor Orban’s ranting about “American Imperialism” is akin to the derogatory terms used by the Soviet and like minded Communists during the Cold War. Elaborating on his statement, Viktor Orban told his audience: “Although no one knows it, 2013 was one of the most important years in recent history. That was the year when Americans began fracking.” Moreover, Viktor Orban reasoned that the Americans now have greater energy independence that they intend to use as a foreign policy weapon. The United States has been trying to force Europe into dependence on American energy for years now. The fact that Americans accuse others of doing the same thing should not lead anyone astray. Economic imperialism explains why the United States is currently pressuring European governments to implement sanctions against Russia. Thus spoke a pro-American and pro-European leader of a member state. Also that much for Tucker Carlson’s and Rod Dreher’s incompetent and corrupt interpretations of Viktor Orban’s exemplary “Illiberalism.” Rejecting diversification and wholly supporting dependence on Russian energy as a clever accomplice to Russia’s attempts at dividing the European Union and NATO, is Viktor Orban’s mission.
The invitation to Viktor Orban to speak at the upcoming CPAC meeting in Dallas, Texas, on August 4, 2022, is a huge mistake. There is no good reason to be associated with Orban’s ideology or his world view. Considering the additional fact that in his most recent speech in Romania, he harked back to the eternal ethno-chauvinistic and anti-Semitic slogans of past Hungarian politicians by evilishly meditating on the purity of the Hungarian blood, Viktor Orban sunk to the rhetorical foundations of the ugly and catestrophic history of national socialism.
Indeed, Viktor Orban’s tyrannical “Illiberalism” is highly destructive for NATO as well as the European Union. His success and the inability of any serious opposition to emerge in Hungary is mainly due to the fact that the majority of Hungarians yearn for an authentical strongman who at least verbally is the propagandist of Hungarian independence and the champion of the people in the middle of a global economic crisis and galloping inflation. Clearly, Viktor Orban’s appeal is more emotional than rational. Yet, emotions can lead more frequently than not to destructive policies. For all these reasons, Viktor Orban cannot be stopped domestically. Therefore, for the sake of the future of NATO and the European Union they collectively must marshall their powers to facilitate the timely demise of the newest tyrant of the Free World.
Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The Hungarian joke about the light bulb goes like this: How many Hungarians does it take to change a light bulb? The answer: Two. One to hold the eel, the other to screw in the hovercraft.
This simple joke illustrates the psycho-pathology of most Hungarians. The inability to spot reality and to adapt to the frequent changes in their place and role in history have been ingrained for many centuries in the national mentality of permanent victimhood. Hungarian enthusiasm for this perceived historical injustice has resulted in catastrophic blindness to the power of skewed ideas that gradually have given rise to deep inferiority complexes. Even more destructively, the dual curse of victimhood and inferiority complexes have created a dearth of empathy within the Hungarian communities and also toward the non-Hungarian entities throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Finally, the intersection between victimhood and lack of empathy, has guided the Hungarian national mentality into a vacuum, in which Hungarians have been told that they would remain exceptional if they stay away from mixing with other non-Hungarian peoples.
Having been seen as being irredeemably victimized, the average Hungarian has viewed all the problems as factors that exist outside of his or her control. Consequently, facing individual or collective challenges, Hungarians have tended to blame others for their difficulties, instead of taking matters into their own hands to find solutions. Thus, the importance of the individual with his or her free agency has diminished and the blame-others-game has prompted them to nurture pseudo-real grievances that, in turn, have given birth to unhealthy personal developments within the entire Hungarian political, social and moral cultures.
When liberation came in 1990 from the four-and-a-half-decade of Soviet military occupation, the Hungarian people were unprepared for national independence and democracy. For the overwhelming majority of Hungarians, getting rid of the Soviet Red Army has meant the alluring possibility of an American lifestyle, in which suddenly everybody would own a big house and would have separate cars for every family member parking in the driveway. When these dreams have failed to come to fruition with alacrity, nostalgia for the predictable days of the former Communist dictatorship has emerged in a very powerful manner. The only person who understood his countrymen’s inability to change course was Viktor Orban, a young Communist, immature, yet with a sufficiently aggressive infatuation for power and money. His message since 1998, when he first became prime minister, has been a simple one: Hungary does not need Westernization. On the contrary, Hungarians should not integrate into the Free World. Real Hungarians should revive the past and use it as a foundation for uniting all Hungarians inside and outside today’s Hungary. Under the banner of his self-proclaimed “Illiberalism,” Hungary has become in the last twelve years a non-assimilating, non-integrating and self-segregating member state of the European Union and NATO.
With his fraudulently manufactured two-third majority in the Parliament, he has centralized politics, economy, education and information by cutting everything into miniscule and confusing pieces, leading to humungous lies, unimaginable degrees of corruption as well as fraudulent identity between the inglorious past and the miserable present devoid of a realistic plan for a livable future. In this manner, Viktor Orban has transformed Hungary into a hopeless and unredeemable country in the middle of the European continent.
In his most recent public appearance in the annual Balvanyos Summer Free University and Student Camping Festival in Tusnadfurdo (Romanian: Baile Tusnad), in Romania, Viktor Orban delivered a speech, in which he claimed that the world has become increasingly polarized within Europe and beyond. Criticizing everybody, including the United States of America as well as the European Union, but hypocritically defending the Russian Federation’s illegitimate and terroristic invasion of Ukraine as understandable from the Kremlin’s perspective, he stated that only Hungary wants real peace, while the West in general is guided by greedy and sinister self-interests to continue supporting Ukraine which cannot win against the mighty Russian military. To add insult to his fallacious description of the Russia-Ukraine war and its consequences, he predicted, in the manner of Putin and Lavrov, that the “declining West” would diminish with its values by 2030 and the world will witness a new world order. Having continued in the same vein for an extended period of time, he declared that those who do not agree with him are on the wrong side of history and will be thrown away by the newly emerging world. Then, turning more devilish in his analysis, he launched into a racist tirade that cunningly resembled the language of the 1930s and 1940s in Germany as well as in Hungary. Pleading for the purity of the Hungarian race, which has been the code word of Jew hatred and the subsequent extermination of six million European Jews by the Germans and their allies in Central and Eastern Europe, he intoned stentoriously that his government will never agree to the mixing of the races that has become accepted in the Western part of the continent.
In Viktor Orban’s La La Land, Hungary has only rights but no obligations. In the same speech, he expounded on the debt the world owes Hungary. He assured his listeners that Hungary will demand to be paid in full for all the services that allegedly he and his government provided for the Free World. Meanwhile, Hungary is on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy. Clearly, he must be stopped and reminded of the wise dictum of the late President Ronald Reagan: “We don’t have a trillion dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion dollar debt because we spend too much.”
By • American Liberty
Former senior Trump White House aide Steve Bannon says he will appeal after being found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress over his refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the congressional panel investigating the events of January 6, 2021.
The verdict was not unexpected. Some “Never Trumpers,” like retiring U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) had strong praise for the D.C.-jury that found Bannon guilty. “It’s good. I mean justice, right? You can plead the Fifth if you want in front of our committee, but you can’t ignore a congressional subpoena, or you’ll pay the price,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Others, like Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, think Kinzinger and other “Never Trumpers” are prematurely congratulating themselves over having pushed the issue so far. Interviewed on Newsmax, the noted attorney said the composition of the jury alone was almost certainly enough reason for the conviction to be reversed on appeal.
Dershowitz said the conduct of the trial had raised serious issues. “The only provision of the Constitution, which appears basically twice, is trial by jury in and in front of a fair jury. Number one, he didn’t have a fair jury. Number two, the judge took his defenses away from him,” he said, echoing a claim made by Bannon‘s legal team that the judge’s ruling stripped them of the opportunity to put on an effective defense.
“And all you had to do was say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this man Bannon worked for Trump,’” Dershowitz said. “That’s the end of the case,” which saw Bannon found guilty of criminal contempt of Congress. He’s not the first former administration official to have a congressional contempt citation referred to the U.S. Department of Justice for criminal indictment. Most have not been acted on over the last 50 years, including one involving former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder after he refused to comply with congressional subpoenas seeking information about a DOJ-led undercover operation that armed Mexican drug cartels.
In the trial arising out of Bannon’s November 2021 indictment, prosecutor Molly Gaston argued he “chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law,” according to published reports that appeared Friday. “When it really comes down to it, he did not want to recognize Congress’ authority or play by the government’s rules,” Gaston said. “Our government only works if people show up. It only works if people play by the rules. And it only works if people are held accountable when they do not.”
Bannon could be sentenced to as little as 30 days per count or as much as two years, something Trump opponents hope might scare other potential witnesses who have refused to appear before the panel to change their minds. That, people who have followed the events closely say, is highly unlikely as the most ardent supporters of the former president view the inquiry as nothing more or less than a directed effort to embarrass the former president. They believe most Democrats and some Republicans want Trump left unable to be a candidate in 2024 for the office he lost in 2020.
There’s a lot not to like about the January 6 Committee, including the way it was established and how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to let the chamber’s top Republican, California’s Kevin McCarthy, name who its GOP members would be. From the start, it’s pursued an avenue of inquiry that resembles very much what a high school senior might use when writing a term paper: Come up with the thesis first, look only for evidence to support it, then restate the thesis.
Bannon and others opting not to appear in response to a subpoena are probably right that their cooperation would make them party to a fishing expedition and not from inside the boat. The hook is the panel’s inquiry has been another contemptible effort to get Trump that is an abuse of due process, the separation of powers and the legal system. The idea that Bannon, as Dershowitz suggests, could get a fair hearing before a jury of his peers in Washington, D.C., would be laughable if liberty weren’t on the line. Before anyone brings up the issue of that being a nakedly partisan statement, I say the same thing if California Gov. Gavin Newsom were on trial for criminal violations of his own pandemic lockdown rules in La Jolla or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s husband were defending his liberty in a courtroom in the U.P. for trying to get his boat in the water ahead of time and against the rules by throwing what he thought was his political weight around.
It can be argued, and probably should be, that Pelosi and company are abusing their power as they have accused Trump of abusing his. Rightly or wrongly, he believed reelection had been denied him through dishonest means. There is no forum for settling that claim, at least at the moment, save the court of public opinion, so what alternatives did he have except to call on his supporters to pressure those in charge of key decisions to consider them carefully and to examine all the evidence? Some of them, if they weren’t just anarchists trying to bring the whole system down by taking advantage of the situation, went too far.
That doesn’t eliminate the fact the concerns Trump raised were dismissed while careful consideration was shown to the losing candidate’s claim in 2000, constantly repeated by a fawning media, that elderly Jewish voters in Florida’s Palm Beach County had mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Gore because the ballot was confusing. People actually took that seriously and it was the over-the-threshold to contesting the outcome of the entire election that stopped the presidential transition process dead in its tracks.
Democrats routinely put their thumbs on the political scales but rarely get called on it. When a Republican does it, it’s an immediate constitutional crisis. Nobody wins in that scenario, except the occasional Democrat in a race where the outcome is disputed. The track record on these kinds of investigations is so bad that even if the Jan. 6 panel does find a smoking gun, half the country will never believe it.
There’s a proper way to look into the events of that day, which were uncalled for, horrific and against everything that America stands for, and the Jan. 6 panel isn’t it. Steve Bannon’s not the only one who should have contempt for Congress because of it.
By • Frontiers of Freedom
The United States of America has been passing through an exceptionally complex set of domestic and foreign crises since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 1990s. The main reason for this tragic situation has been America’s inability to formulate a comprehensive strategy for the post-Cold War world. Successive American presidents, starting with George W.H. Bush and culminating in the current occupant of the White House Joseph R. Biden Jr., have collectively displayed a degree of timidity that has prevented them from creating universally acceptable solutions to the rising chaos across the globe.
Indeed, America has been forced to endure these disagreeable experiences because of the inferior qualities of its presidents and their advisors who have been called upon to make great decisions without possessing the indispensable brain powers. The half-baked American military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia’s attempts to again become relevant in international politics in Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria as well as Ukraine, and China’s mounting aggression in Asia, have led to burgeoning abuses of force that, in turn, have resulted in the emergence of tyrannical regimes across the globe, including even within NATO. Thus, without principled domestic and foreign policies, the United States of America has been lost in destructive contradictions, because the sole superpower failed to fulfill the hopes that its promises generated. Universal disappointment has given rise to aggressive hatreds and primordial fears.
From George W.H. Bush to William Jefferson Clinton, the policy of “peace dividend” was sold to the American as well as the international public as a sure panacea against all the past evil of the world. In reality, this so-called remedial policy was ignorant of core American interests, and woefully unsophisticated of the strategies and tactics concerning the real state of affairs abroad. Thus, instead of striving to put in motion policies that should have accomplished positive results for the good of mankind, both former presidents got lost in irreconcilable contradictions. To make matters worse, George W. Bush turned his presidency into an all encompassing convulsion of fear that, in turn, has contaminated the rest of the world. Overwhelmed by the events of 9/11, he lost sight of reality and ended up in paralyzing confusion concerning America’s place and role in the world. His successor Barack Hussein Obama was a universally unmitigated disaster. He did not know where he was, where his country was heading to, or what the future would hold for America and the rest of the world. His campaign promise of “fundamental transformation” created both domestically and internationally a global madness that threw America and the rest of the world into violent political, economic, financial and social upheavals. His successor Donald Donald J. Trump tirelessly fought existing and imaginary demons, mostly within the United States of America. Consequently, throughout his presidency, he was hopelessly mired in the generational struggle between progressive and conservative extremists who all believed that they alone could save America and the world, while actually destroying both. As a result, even his accomplishments turned out to be the ephemeral creations of an ad hoc bundle of policy initiatives.
After more than a quarter century of growing abyss that have threatened to swallow up the world, the American people in 2020 desired a president who would bring real stability to their country and the world by being led by facts and not fallacious ideologies. Proving that noble objectives can be overturned by the vagaries of politics, they and the world have ended up with Joseph R. Biden Jr. His incompetence and even idiocy are not due to his advanced age but to his lack of mental balance as well as the dearth of ability to think constructively. Thus, in spite of his long service in government, President Biden has been ill prepared for the job he presently occupies. Instead of being intelligent he has been the prisoner of self-generated lies. Instead of being courageous he has been prone to be adventurous. Instead of being creative he has always been a tactician and an unconscionable manipulator of vile sentiments. For these reasons, President Biden has never understood that there are three indispensable prerequisites for domestic tranquility and a stable international order: the progressive impartiality of government by the firm support of the people; the elimination of lies and hateful rhetorics from the public domain, including the media; and the unambiguous differentiation between allies and foes. Presently, the immediate threats to the United States of America and the rest of the world come from distant and former semi-empires, namely, Russia, China and partially Iran. All three face major and most likely insoluble domestic problems. They also have to confront the challenge of what foreign policy to follow. Should they acquiesce in the status quo with the United States of America remaining the sole superpower or should they expand freely by even taking up arms against it? Should they form an alliance among themselves and destroy the present world order? Is it an opportune time to take advantage of the confusion in the United States of America and Europe and seize additional territories in Europe and Asia by military force? The most significant conclusion is that these three states and the rest of the world exist in irreconcilable contradictions. Accordingly, the reconstruction of world politics is unavoidable. For the sake of a better world, the United States of America must have a worthy president who does not resemble a pilot without a compass but a driver who already developed a global GPS.
By • Frontiers of Freedom
Historically, Hungary as a political formation had always been ruled by a single tyrant who had been assisted by a small and tightly-knit group of criminal elements strenuously opposed to any reforms or the slightest improvements in the fabric of the existing societies. Consequently, internal stability had been maintained by totalitarian oppression that had generated extreme fear of and blind submission to the tyrant de jour. This eternal constellation of Hungarian political culture has been lost on the member states of the European Union when they decided unanimously to embrace the country as a new member of their organization. To add to the insult of being insufficiently informed to the injury of incompetence, the European Union has to deal with a new Hungarian tyrant who has been the sworn enemy of any democratic form of government.
Personality wise, the reigning tyrant of Hungary Viktor Orban is a duplicitous little weasel. His main motivation has never been of making sense of the world in unbiased terms but the restoration of a cruel and oppressive government at home and illusionary revanchism with respect to Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia and Croatia abroad. Thus, fighting a two-front war against the constitutional democracies of the European Union as well as Hungary’s not so glorious past over the future, Viktor Orban’s so-called “illiberal democracy” smacks of an idiotic allegiance to a destructively tyranical mixture of ethno-fascism and the sham doctrine of the Bolsheviks’ fallacious ideological superiority. His enthusiasm for the one-man rule has yielded a rich harvest for him, his family and his loyal accomplices in robbing Hungary blind of its minuscule wealth. Moreover, his devotion for tyranny has made him dim-witted to the unlawfulness of his absolute powers. Furthermore, his lust for illimitable powers has allowed him to put his nefarious personal interests before the ideas that should have governed the future course of the nation. Finally, too much power has rendered him uncomprehending of the might of mutually beneficial cooperation in international politics. Clearly, trying to balance his domestic and foreign policy corruptions, he has created – wittingly or unwittingly – a considerable mass of dubiety.
Plainly, Hungary never had more than the thinnest layer of precarious internal peace, which had continually been challenged by pervasive corruption and regularly eliminated by rival indigenous as well as foreign tyrants fighting for absolute domination. In this sustained surge of tyrannical assertions, the people had been unable to take hold of any democratic principle, which had been the very negation of individual liberty. Thus, after two lost wars and a brutal Asiatic occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Red Army throughout the 20th century, generation after generation had existed in chains, which again had been a blatant violation of their sovereignty.
The recurring sham elections since 2010, have perpetuated the tyrannical nature of Hungarian political culture. Clearly, Hungarian political history is nothing other than the sad documentation of the people’s endless oppression by a small criminal cabal with an arrogant mentality. Crazed with fear to the point of utter desperation, the current Hungarian tyrant Viktor Orban has resolved to discard any limits to his powers. A Constitution that is nothing but a Stalinist window dressing of his tyranny, a never ending state of emergency allegedly because of the pandemic and Russia’s illegitimate war on Ukraine, a judiciary that is utterly politicized in his favor, an economy that is irredeemably under his exclusive control, and the military as well as police forces that are ready to brutally quell any internal opposition, have become self defeating, and even suicidal instruments of his absolute powers. In foreign policy, senseless opposition to any unified action by the European Union and NATO against the two tyrannical Asian powers, which have been camouflaged by counterfeit national interests, but in reality are solely designed to protect his domestic tyranny and the all pervasive corruption, highlights the illegitimacy and the usurpation of political, economic, financial and social powers in the hands of a single individual. Without a shred of doubt, Viktor Orban is a demolition tyrant and Hungary is speedily becoming a failed state. Unquestionably, neither the European Union nor NATO can tolerate a politically deceased member state. His tyranny has already devastated Hungary. Unless preempted by both organizations, he will surely destroy it because, lacking the instruments of checks and balances, Viktor Orban will maintain his tyranny by oppressive violence. If both organizations were to avoid their own self-destruction, they must act in unison decisively. First, they must declare that they will never tolerate a tyrannical regime in their midst. Second, the vicious circle of official intimidation that has led to paralysis by fear must be broken. Decisions by the European courts must be swift and unambiguous against the intermittent violations of the rule of law by the Hungarian courts. OLAF’s investigations into official corruption by Viktor Orban, his extended family and close associates must be conducted with professional alacrity. Direct fundings to the current Hungarian government must be stopped until a full accounting of the utilization of past funds are cleared from any wrongdoing. The refunding to Hungary can only then begin again. Otherwise, the Hungarian catastrophe will continue to threaten the Free World unabated.
By • RealClear Policy
As the federal government under President Biden continues its attempts to undermine the authority of the states to regulate their own elections — unconstitutional and unprecedented federal actions — states are reasserting their power by passing reforms that will protect the integrity of the electoral process. Louisiana is a national leader on this and should continue its work of making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Election integrity is vital to a healthy democracy because Americans need to have confidence that their votes are protected. A breakdown in any part of ballot protection can weaken this confidence, lead to questions regarding the legitimacy of election outcomes, and create a deeper distrust of government and the men and women who serve in it.
Protecting the vote includes ensuring that ballots are cast securely, privately, and legally. It means making sure that every legally cast ballot is counted — and counted only once. It also means providing for the transparent and timely reporting of election results as well as a meaningful post-election audit system to ferret out any irregularities.
Election officials across the country work diligently behind the scenes to administer free and fair elections with these goals in mind. However, some election integrity measures are in full view of the public, and those measures are vital to public confidence in elections. One such measure is the use of voter ID, an issue Louisiana has addressed head on, requiring voters to prove their identity when casting a ballot.
I spent much of my adult life in Louisiana. There were many instances, because of work or being out of state on Election Day, that I had to vote by mail because I refused to let my vote go uncounted and my voice unheard.
Each time I requested and filled out a mail-in ballot, I had to enter a code from my Louisiana driver’s license to verify my identity to the Secretary of State and the Clerk of Courts. Having to write down that four-digit audit code wasn’t inconvenient or an undue burden on me. It was easy, and it gave me confidence that my ballot was secure.
Activists — both within the federal government and outside it — will try to convince you otherwise. They’ll tell you all kinds of lies about voter ID laws. But here are the facts: Voter ID does not reduce turnout, nor does it have an impact on election outcomes.
Louisiana voters are happy with this requirement. In a recent survey of likely voters in Louisiana conducted by the Center for Excellence in Polling, we found that 68 percent of Louisianans support requiring voters to prove their identity when voting by mail. Our results are consistent with previous nationwide surveys that found increasing support for photo ID requirements for voters.
Now, here’s the kicker that the Left doesn’t want you to know: Support for voter ID crosses party lines. In our survey, we found that 80 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of Independents support requiring voters to prove their identity on a mail-in ballot. But voter ID is not a partisan issue. A majority (52 percent) of Louisiana Democratic voters also support voter ID requirements on mail-in ballots.
As our country attempts to move forward, the Left will continue to use the unique circumstances of the 2020 election as an excuse to push their radical, Washington-focused, top-down election policies on the states. But the states should continue to push back against the federal intrusion into their sovereign responsibility. As Chief Justice Charles Hughes once wrote, this is “necessary in order to enforce the fundamental right” to vote.
Louisiana has long been a leader in making it easy to vote and hard to cheat. It’s a legacy the Pelican State should be proud of, and one the legislature would be wise to continue. Nothing less than our democracy depends on it.
Pre-pandemic trends offer clues of how this might play out across state capitals.
By • Reason Foundation
Public schools are facing massive enrollment declines, with at least 19 states losing 3% or more of their students compared to pre-pandemic levels. New York’s 5.9% plunge is the biggest, and California isn’t too far behind at 4.4%. Because K-12 education funding is tied to student counts in most states, this trend will have major policy implications.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, public education spending was at record levels, averaging $15,656 per pupil in the 2018-19 school year and exceeding $20,000 per pupil in states such as New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Education funding plummeted during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009, but most states had replenished or exceeded their previous inflation-adjusted K-12 spending highs by 2019, thanks to strong economic growth and policymakers’ eagerness to boost funding as state budgets recovered.
At the onset of COVID-19, state lawmakers and school district leaders feared the years of balanced budgets were over, but, thankfully, most dire economic forecasts never materialized. In fact, stronger-than-expected state tax revenue plus $190 billion in federal K-12 relief have left many school districts with more dollars than they can spend. Per-pupil spending growth in states such as New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Texas surpassed 7% in 2020-21 even though the bulk of the federal relief funds remain unspent.
This influx of cash, combined with states’ hold-harmless policies that base school funding on prior year enrollment counts, have largely protected districts’ bottom lines in the face of declining enrollment. For instance, Houston Independent School District lost 12,759 students in 2020-21 — 6.1% of its enrollment — but its total revenue increased by 1.7%, while per-pupil spending jumped by $1,032. It was a similar story for Dallas Independent School District, which lost 5.64% of its students but still got $1,002 more per pupil.
But once federal relief funding expires in 2024, school districts will have to rely on state funding to plug budget holes caused by student losses and sustain long-term commitments made with the one-time funding, such as new hires and salary increases. The billion-dollar question is to what extent state policymakers will continue their hold-harmless policies once federal funding dries up.
Pre-pandemic trends offer clues of how this might play out across state capitals.
Between 2016 and 2019, 30 states had enrollment losses, and eight of them — New Hampshire, Illinois, Mississippi, Vermont, Louisiana, West Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts — saw substantial declines of 2% or more. Of these states, only three (Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia) saw inflation-adjusted cuts in total education revenue, and all increased real per-pupil funding. Notably, Illinois’ enrollment fell by 3.9%, yet its total education budget increased by 8.4% with a $2,158 spike in per-pupil revenue.
Clearly, aggregate education spending doesn’t track neatly with enrollment declines. But revenue is only half of the school finance equation, and the fiscal fate of districts will also depend on how dollars are allocated through state formulas and related policies. Generally, districts lose state funding when enrollment declines, with prominent examples in the last decade including Los Angeles, Detroit, and Baltimore. But pandemic policies have muddied this relationship.
For instance, in the past two years, Texas policymakers have overridden their student-based funding system with various hold-harmless policies that use outdated student counts to fund school districts. Illinois has also already committed to using pre-COVID enrollment counts for funding calculations through at least 2024. Despite having a relatively strong student-centered education funding formula that allocates dollars to schools based on real student needs, policymakers in California are now considering ways to weaken the link between funding and enrollment changes.
But these hold-harmless policies are expensive to maintain and divert resources away from students in districts with steady or increasing enrollment. After all, every dollar spent protecting districts from the fiscal effects of declining enrollment is a dollar not spent supporting students in the schools they attend. If states removed hold-harmless policies, these funds could be spread fairly among all schools, based on the actual number of students they are serving.
While it will be a painful process, states need to acknowledge that school districts losing students should not get more funds to teach fewer kids.
Districts that spend their one-time funding irresponsibly could face an unprecedented fiscal cliff when the money runs out and won’t be able to avoid layoffs, school closures, and other cuts. Rather than wait and see, school districts should get their fiscal houses in order now, while they have flexibility in their budgets.
By • American Liberty
On July 3, 1776 – the Second Continental Congress having the day before enacted a resolution declaring the political ties between United Colonies and Great Britain “totally dissolved” – an excited John Adams, a delegate from the Massachusetts Bay colony wrote a letter to his wife Abigail, then living with their children outside Boston.
Adams was a dour man, given to bouts of depression and known for his generally bleak outlook. He was also one of the finest legal minds in North America, having won an acquittal for the British soldiers accused of perpetrating the Boston Massacre by appealing to the supremacy of the law over the emotion of the moment.
He was, as the other continental delegates learned, not a man to be trifled with. The enthusiasm and hope he expressed in his letter to his wife was, therefore, an uncharacteristic expression of emotion from the man whom no less than Thomas Jefferson would refer to as “The Colossus of Independence.”
The breaking of ties with Great Britain should, Adams wrote, be regarded as the most memorable moment “in the history of America.” It should – and he wrote he believed it would be celebrated by the generations of Americans who would follow – “as the great anniversary festival” to be “solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
It’s easy to see how right he was, now, 250 years later. At the time Adams wrote to Abigail, victory on the field of battle was less than assured. Washington’s Army was on those very days being chased out of New York by the British, splitting the colonies in two. If captured by troops loyal to the crown, any man who had affixed his name to Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration presumed he would be hanged without trial for being a traitor to the King.
Indeed, as history records, several signers who pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” in pursuit of American independence were called upon to pay that bill, in part or in full. Their cause was not an easy one for, in winning, they changed the face of the world.
The enormity of what the founders accomplished is discussed too little today. Not only did they eventually defeat on the battlefield what was then the greatest military power on Earth, they did it through careful, precise, one might even say legal means. Washington was originally sent into the field as a defensive measure, following the British attempt to seize stores and munitions hidden by the colonists at Lexington and Concord. After July 2, 1776, a resolution having been approved by what then passed for the national legislature, the colonists who had declared themselves a new nation believed they were free to pursue a course of their own under a government of their own.
A British friend of mine of longstanding likes to describe the American War for Independence thusly:
A group of Englishmen raised an army to defend their rights as Englishmen against the tyranny imposed by a Hanoverian King using Hession mercenaries to fight his battles for him.
He has a point. The good guys were the ones defending the English notion of rights and the social contract as explained by the leading philosophers of the Enlightenment like John Locke against the tyranny of rules imposed by the old order as represented by King George III, whose father – King George II – was the last British monarch to have been born outside the United Kingdom.
You see this clearly when you parse the Declaration. Everyone knows the familiar phrase like “When in the course of human events,” “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and, most famously, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Too few people these days read the whole thing and understand what it means, which, while the pundit class repeatedly points to the so-called current dangers imperiling American Democracy, might be reassuring.
The Declaration lays out the case for things we now take for granted, like the idea of natural law coming from what Mr. Jefferson ascribed as “Nature’s God.” We take from this the idea that some things are empirically true and “self-evident” without requiring documentation or experimentation to prove it so. It was, for its time, a bold assertion that leads directly to the idea mankind has – or had been given – certain rights which did not come from government and which government could not lawfully, morally prevent us from exercising.
These rights, some of which are enumerated in the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights are the essential building blocks of the world we live in today. We regard those nations who follow us in this regard as friends and allies while those who oppose the idea these rights are free, not given by government (and, therefore, potentially taken away by them) as those which should be regarded warily.
In part, the Declaration leads like an indictment. It is a bill of particulars, and in this, we may see Adams’ influence on Jefferson, describing just how it is “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states.”
As the Declaration puts it, governments “are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” which King George III lost by becoming a tyrant. How did he do this? Let’s look at a few, as put forward in the document:
These are just some of the charges. They are resolute in their presentation and Mr. Jefferson and the other members of the Second Continental Congress were no less firm in explaining the method of redress:
“(W)henever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Then they went further:
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
In sum, the King, having broken “the law of nature and nature’s God” abdicated his authority to lead. It was, therefore, necessary to replace him, not just with another monarch but with a new system grounded in the idea that power ultimately resides with the people. That’s the revolution. It’s not just that America broke free from Great Britain but that all people had – or were destined to in the fullness of time – break free of the rule of those governments whose legitimacy could be contested because they had become tyrannical. That’s what Adams called upon us to revere and solemnize and what we celebrate today.
By • Newsweek
The Biden presidency is a disappointment to Americans. That goes for people who voted for him—who thought he’d do a better job—and people who, even as they voted against him, did not believe he could make as much of a hash of things as he has.
The list of problems is long and growing longer. More COVID-19 cases than there were under Donald Trump. Inflation like we haven’t seen since the Carter years. Rapidly rising interest rates. Shortages. The debacle in Afghanistan. War in Ukraine. It’s no wonder a growing majority of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
According to a new Associated Press-NORC survey, 85 percent of American adults—including more than 7 in 10 Democrats—say the country is not on the right track. Almost two-thirds—60 percent—blame the president for that, with just 39 percent of those participating in the survey saying they approve of his overall presidential leadership. As if that were not bad enough, 69 percent of those surveyed, including 43 percent of the Democrats who responded, rated his handling of the economy “poor.”
Democrats need to face facts. If the president’s age is not an argument against his seeking a second term, his poll numbers are. Support for him has dropped to his predecessor’s level. Trump, at least, benefited from a highly motivated, energized bloc of diehard supporters upon whom he could always count. Biden was always a compromise choice about whom no one was truly enthusiastic.
As of now, the president’s numbers are more likely to get worse than they are to get better. It is much easier, as a friend of mine likes to observe, for his approval rating to fall deeper into the 30s than to get back above 50 percent. This is good news for the Republicans, because it makes it increasingly likely the GOP will win back control of one or both congressional chambers in November, all but guaranteeing the Biden agenda, such as it is, will grind to a full stop.
That may not put the Republicans in charge of the government, but it would effectively make Biden a “lame duck.” He won’t be able to get anything major through and won’t have anything on which to campaign for a second term. Recognizing that, GOP leaders need to be extremely strategic in deciding who they want to run in 2024.
The likely choice, most polls say, is Donald Trump. He’d be the easy winner—in a race against Biden. But what if the Democrats nominate someone else? What if Trump decides not to run? What then? It’s a puzzle, and one that’s not easily solved.
Biden has set the bar so low that it would not be too hard to find a better president among the list of potential GOP nominees—which extends well beyond the list currently being bandied about. The challenge is to find the best president, the one who will right the ship of state the current administration sent headlong into a typhoon.
The GOP needs a nominee who doesn’t just say he or she will put America’s interests first and is on the right side on critical issues like economic growth, taxes and spending, guns, abortion, and school choice, but who has demonstrated leadership on those issues. Someone who has a dynamic vision of the future most all Americans can embrace with enthusiasm.READ MORE
These people do exist. The best candidates to be “the best president” are out there now, in the U.S. Senate and running the red states. In the next campaign, their records will be what matters most. What a candidate says he wants to do needs to be measured against what he’s accomplished—or at least tried to accomplish. That goes for candidates’ record building the party as well. Did they help expand the party and its representation in Congress and the state legislatures? How many Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates did they help? How much money did they help raise for others compared to how much they raised to fuel their own ambitions? Do they adhere to Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”), or do they resort to sharp elbows and cutting remarks against foes who should be considered friends? In short, what kind of leader do Republicans want for the next four, and perhaps eight, years?
The answer is not obvious, even for those who’ve already decided to back Trump again. He accomplished much. It’s fair to say he delivered on his promise to “Make America Great Again”—at least before the lockdowns started. His commitment to keeping his word on judges is directly responsible for the overturning of the constitutionally suspect 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which was bad law no matter which side of the issue you were on.
Trump was right for his time—but is he right for the future? He’ll get a chance to make his case after November if he chooses to run. Whether he does or doesn’t, the others who want the job will get the same chance. The Republicans who are tasked with choosing the candidate in 2024 need to keep their options open and think seriously about who can best get the country where it needs to go. If they want to win, they need to make the candidates come to them.
By • American Liberty
A new media analysis of U.S. voter registration data shows that more than one million voters have reregistered as Republicans over the last year. That number, while dramatic on its own, might just be a glimpse into the changes that are ongoing in the national electorate.
No one will know until the next election whether this high number of voters re-registering as Republicans – and it’s important to note that not every state requires or even allows a voter to select a party affiliation when registering – reflects a changing attitude among the American electorate or an underhanded effort by progressives to interfere in the GOP’s nominating process.
While that sounds conspiratorial, it’s important to note that no less an authority than The New York Times reported Monday that the more Trumpian candidate in the race for the GOP nomination for governor of Illinois – State Sen. Darren Bailey – had seen his campaign’s aspirations boosted “by an unprecedented intervention from (Illinois incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B.) Pritzker and the Pritzker-funded Democratic Governors Association, which has spent nearly $35 million combined” attacking Bailey’s opponent in Tuesday’s GOP primary as being insufficiently conservative.
The voter registration study conducted by two reporters working for the Associated Press using data provided by L2, a political data firm, concluded the 1.7 million voters who changed their party affiliations over the last year constitute a “definite reversal from the period while Trump was in office when Democrats enjoyed a slight edge in the number of party switchers nationwide.”
“Statistical modeling of the data revealed that of the 1.7 million voters over 1 million registered as Republican, while only 630,000 registered as Democrats – a massive shift in new partisan allegiance from the Trump years,” the website Mediate reported in its coverage of the story.
Whether this is a plus for conservatives specifically or the GOP generally has yet to be determined. Looking at the numbers and where they come from, most of the change appears to be happening in the suburbs in battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia that, while typically more conservative than the cities they abut gave a majority of their votes to Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The AP analysis attributed the switch to voters becoming “increasingly concerned about the Democrats’ support in some localities for mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, the party’s inability to quell violent crime, and its frequent focus on racial justice.” Perhaps, although that sounds like the kind of political shorthand a liberal might use to explain what was going on without having to delve into the issue too deeply. There’s indeed been an anti-lockdown component to some primaries already ended – and the prolonged closure of public schools in New Jersey and Virginia may have had a profound impact on the 2021 gubernatorial and state legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia but that’s only part of the story.
What’s notable on the list of factors is what is missing. There’s not a single economic issue on it. Taxes, spending, jobs – issues that voters consistently say are at the top of the list of things they care about – are, in the AP analysis, not driving the shift among voters leaving the Democrats for the GOP.
That’s hard to believe, especially for anyone old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign for president where his consultants posted a sign on the headquarters wall to remind him and themselves that “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The areas where voters are switching also include counties “around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa,” as well as “areas like Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland”. These are all places where Biden’s mismanagement of the economy is hitting home hard. The president may like to brag about the number of jobs he says have been “created” since he took office but, as any reasonable person understands intuitively, most of those are jobs that existed before the lockdowns were imposed and which came back first in states led by GOP governors.
Voters like these are the ones most likely to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, the pain of doing more with less at the supermarket and the challenge of rising interest rates present to existing homeowners and those looking for a new place to live.
In a statement to the AP, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel voiced excitement over the prospect Biden’s blunders will result in her party making significant gains in the next election. The president and the Democrats, she said, “are woefully out of touch with the American people, and that’s why voters are flocking to the Republican Party in droves,” adding she believes “American suburbs will trend red for cycles to come.”
According to the AP, of the roughly 1.7 million Americans who changed their party affiliation over the past 12 months, two-thirds became members of the GOP while the others went the other way. While probably not enough to shift the outcome of a national race these changes, if they are a legitimate reflection of changing voter sentiments and not an effort to ensure conservative nominees are chosen to run in places where a more moderate member of the GOP could easily win, the movement of one million voters who were formerly Democrats, independents or members of third parties into the GOP is significant enough to determine the outcome in contests that may be especially close.
If that’s true, it’s still not likely to make the difference in which party controls either chamber of Congress next January but it could have an impact on the size of the GOP’s margins of majority in the House and Senate, if, as expected, the Republicans take back Congress. This will have an impact on the confirmation of judges and what legislation actually makes it to the president’s desk, it sets up a meaningful contrast between the two parties that will likely influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election no matter who the major party nominees are.
By • National Review
A New York State Supreme Court justice has ruled that a new law allowing 800,000 noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City was unconstitutional. The case will be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest judicial body, but it’s a promising start.
Justice Ralph Porzio noted that the state’s constitution explicitly says only eligible citizens can vote. That can be changed, but only by a vote of the people in a referendum, a move the hyper “woke” city council didn’t dare to embrace when it passed the law allowing green-card holders and work-visa holders the vote last year. They knew noncitizen voting is unpopular — even radical San Francisco voters gave the idea only 54 percent approval in 2016.
There are few limits on how far the woke Left will go to change the rules of voting. In 2019, a majority of House Democrats voted to lower the federal voting age to 16 years, from 18.
The very notion of noncitizen voting is fraught with peril, especially in a big city such as New York. Few experts believe that, in a place where noncitizen voting is allowed, there would be effective enforcement of laws still barring illegal aliens from voting.
In 2016, New York Board of Elections commissioner Alan Schulkin, a Democrat, was videotaped at a party by Project Veritas confirming the existence of voter fraud and decrying the city’s failure to require voter ID. “Certain neighborhoods in particular, they bus people around to vote,” Schulkin said on the tape. “They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site.” Schulkin was promptly forced to resign for speaking his mind by then-mayor Bill de Blasio.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, himself the son of Cuban immigrants, has introduced a bill to prohibit federal funding to states and localities that allow foreigners to vote. “It’s ridiculous that states are allowing foreign citizens to vote,” Rubio says. “However, if states and localities do let those who are not U.S. citizens to vote in elections, they shouldn’t get U.S. citizen taxpayer money.”
I am in favor of having people legally living in this country establish ties to the community and have a say in their governance. As Howard Husock, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, says, “the right way to bring noncitizens into the electoral process at the federal, state, and local levels is old-fashioned: encourage them to become citizens.” It’s not hard for legal residents to go that route — they must have been in the U.S. for five years, pay some fees, and pass a test, given in English, on U.S. institutions.
What is so unfair about the system we have now? The answer is that it doesn’t suit the blatantly political imperatives of the woke Left, and that is a key reason noncitizen voting must be rejected.
By • The Federalist
Attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana filed a motion for preliminary injunction this week demanding a court stop Big Tech companies from colluding with the federal government to inform their political censorship sprees, after the White House has repeatedly bragged about exploiting its relationships with social media companies to suppress information the Biden administration deems “problematic.”
In the motion, Missouri AG Eric Schmitt and Louisiana AG Jeff Landry argue that the Biden administration, in partnership with Meta (formerly Facebook), Twitter, Google’s YouTube, and other Silicon Valley giants, has taken advantage of Big Tech’s grip on the social media platform market to suppress any speech contrary to their chosen narrative
“Freedom of speech is the very bedrock of this great nation, and needs to be protected and preserved. The federal government’s alleged attempts to collude with social media companies to censor free speech should terrify Missourians and Americans alike,” Schmitt said in a statement. “The federal government must be halted from silencing any more Americans, and this motion for preliminary injunction intends to do just that.”
The fed-inspired decision to “shadow-ban, de-platform, de-monetize, de-boost, restrict content access, and suspend many speakers, both temporarily and permanently,” a press release announcing the motion states, has silenced people “from doctors and scientists, to the owner of a conservative radio show, to everyday Americans who dare to voice their opinion in the public sphere.”
As noted by the state attorneys, it was during the height of the government’s panic over Covid-19 that Big Tech censored the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who criticized the bureaucrats calling for continuous national lockdowns. The “extensive social-media censorship on multiple platforms” endured by authors such as Dr. Martin Kulldorff and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya came shortly after emails between then-Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci demanding a “quick and devastating … takedown” of the group’s criticism.
The motion follows a complaint from the state attorneys last month against the Biden administration and other federal officials for engaging in “open and explicit censorship programs” such as the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board.”
“Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation,’” the original petition states.
By • The Federalist
Twitter repeatedly locks the accounts of conservatives who criticize the left’s narrative. When outrage about the Big Tech company’s knack for political censorship bubbles, Twitter occasionally claims it made a mistake. This week, it happened again.
Citing an “error,” Twitter reinstated the account of “Relatable” podcast host Allie Beth Stuckey on Monday night. But that was only after it received backlash for locking the Christian conservative’s account because she criticized Fox News for celebrating a California couple who forced radical transgender ideology on their 14-year-old daughter when she was an infant.
“I’m stunned that Fox News ran a segment celebrating a girl whose parents ‘transitioned’ her into a boy when she was 5 because she apparently told them she was a boy ‘before [she] could talk.’ Absolutely maddening & heartbreaking,” Stuckey’s original tweet stated.
At the time of the suspension, Twitter claimed Stuckey violated its hateful conduct policy.
“You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” a message from Twitter stated.
It was only after Stuckey appealed and several prominent conservatives including Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon tweeted their disgust at Twitter’s decision that the company decided to reverse course on the commentator’s account.
“Just got word from @conservmillen that she’s been locked out for hateful conduct,” Dillon said. “It seems they’ll keep this up until everyone remaining on the platform either agrees with them or censors themselves.”
Stuckey may have won her appeal but Twitter has repeatedly used its sweeping “hateful conduct policy” to deplatform conservatives and even one popular satire account for affirming the realities of the sexes. That’s something even possible Twitter-buyer Elon Musk has noticed.
The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson was indefinitely banned by Twitter in March after he tweeted that Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, is obviously a man despite the corporate media, Big Tech, and the Biden administration’s insistence that he is a “trans woman.” Despite appealing numerous times, Davidson still is not allowed back on Twitter unless he bends a knee to Twitter and deletes his original tweet.
Davidson’s suspension occurred shortly after Twitter locked down the Babylon Bee account for calling a male a man. Similarly, Twitter suspended Babylon Bee Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann for tweeting a joke about Twitter’s subjective user policies. Turning Point USA Founder and President Charlie Kirk and Libs of Tik Tok also suffered suspensions for contradicting the prevailing leftist narrative.
Leaked messages from what appears to be an internal Twitter conversation over Slack show that Twitter employees purposefully target Libs of Tik Tok because they don’t like that the anonymous creator exposes what gender-bending, Trump-hating, racist, groomer leftists have already revealed about themselves online.
Those suspensions were nothing new for Twitter, though. The company’s history of targeting anyone who harms their preferred narrative™ — such as President Donald Trump, Canadian truckers, doctors and scientists discussing the origins of Covid-19, and the New York Post — indicates that Twitter suppressing dissenters is no accident.
Twitter, the platform guilty of election interference, targets conservatives, plain and simple. And any claims the Big Tech company makes of “error” are just a front for their demonstrated goal of silencing influential conservative ideas online.
By • Newsweek
There are a lot of folks who like to watch the NFL on TV. Maybe not as many as there were before the whole kneeling thing started, but it’s still a big number. And many of those probably find it irritating to no end when one of the commentators says something like—and it’s almost inevitable that they will—”It’s all going to come down to which team can put the most points on the board.”
For the people who, like me, make a living writing about politics and elections, the onset of primary season produces for us the same kind of annoyance. It’s maddening when someone who is presented as an expert on the ins and outs of the electoral process says, as you can safely bet someone eventually will, that “it’s all going to come down to turnout.”
There are times when there is a real urge to smack some of these analysts in the face. This is what comes from eliminating high school civics programs and news organizations deciding that those who at one time or another covered local government are now well-suited to explain how and why politicians get elected.
The 2016 presidential election is a perfect example of this phenomenon in practice. Many of the nation’s top political reporters, as well as those in the middle and many of the bottom-feeders, missed what was going on. They bought into the spin that Hillary Clinton‘s election was inevitable. As such, they regarded the October 2016 leak of an audiotape in which Donald Trump could, to put it gently, be heard speaking unflatteringly about women, as a death blow.
Admittedly, in many races and almost any other year, it probably would have been. But the choice between Clinton and Trump was unlike any presented to the voters in some time.
It takes experience in the electoral process to generate the level of sophistication regarding the many nuances in American politics. It takes more than subject-matter expertise to get it right. So many of my colleagues missed it so totally that I—who saw Trump’s chances of getting to the White House growing while Clinton’s were contracting, even after the release of the infamous audiotape—was either onto something or had simply become a cheerleader for whichever candidate the GOP chose to nominate.
The reason I bring this all up is that I now see it happening again. The dominant political media’s obsession with Trump, the candidates he’s endorsed and whether or not they’re winning contested GOP primaries is only a small part of the 2022 midterm election story.
It’s a popular subject because it’s easy to cover and people seem interested in it. It doesn’t, however, tell us much about where the GOP is headed or what’s now happening among the Democrats. The next election, as much as the mainstream media won’t like it, isn’t going to be a referendum on Trump. It’s going to be about President Joe Biden and how the Democrats have run the country for the last two years, even though—and this is something else that’s been overlooked—the GOP is in charge of more states now than at almost any time in history.
The Biden presidency is failing. At least that’s the perception people have. His approval rating, which started in the low- to mid-60s when he took office, has now sunk below 40. That’s not good for him, and it’s not good for his party. Democrats are getting the blame for things that are happening as a result of policies Biden has put in place, as well as for things harmful to the interests of the United States over which he has no direct control. That’s created a positive political environment for the GOP, which has amassed a nearly double-digit lead on the crucial polling question of which party voters want to control Congress after the next election.
How people feel, and why, is what ties all this together. The environment drives turnout and, right now, GOP voters are energized and engaged. A Rasmussen Reports national survey released May 26 found that of the 79% of likely voters who are excited to vote in the midterm election, Republicans led Democrats by an eight-point margin. Among those who said they were “very excited” (49 percent) to vote this fall, the GOP lead grows to 16 points. “These findings are consistent with the generic congressional ballot,” the polling firm said, “where Republicans held a nine-point lead last week.”
The challenge for those writing about elections is to figure out why that is. To be blunt, they need to set aside their personal biases—left and right—long enough to get in touch with what the American voter is thinking, while also abandoning their propensity to judge whether those thoughts are “right” or “wrong.” Only then will they be able to report competently on the contest for control of Congress this fall.
