Palestinian’s Threaten ‘Bloodshed’ After Trump Promises to Move Israeli Embassy

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A prominent member of Fatah — the militant political organization that governs Palestinian areas of the West Bank under Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — has threatened to target the United States in response to the potential American embassy move from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Jerusalem, its capital city.

“I believe that any American act of stupidity will ignite the Palestinian territories,” Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abu al-Einein said on Alghad TV, in comments translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

The Palestinian official, who serves as an aide to Mahmoud Abbas, added: “We must prepare for a confrontation with the new U.S. administration, which has clearly and audaciously declared that Israel and its settlements are legitimate and legal.”

If President-elect Donald Trump chooses to move the embassy to Jerusalem — which he has pledged to do — both Israel and America “will bear responsibility for the return of the bloodshed in the Palestinian territories,” Abbas threatened.

Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, expects to take up his new post in the Israeli capital.

Sultan Abu al-Einein is well-known for his incitement to terrorist activity. In June, he advised fellow Palestinians, “Every place you find an Israeli, slit his throat,” per Palestinian Media Watch, stressing that killing innocent Jews is an Islamic duty. In 2014, he said that killing Jewish rabbis while they pray is “Allah’s will.”

Fatah, the supposed “moderate” Palestinian organization, has long been associated with terrorist activities. “Fatah” is a reverse acronym of an Arabic phrase meaning “conquest by means of jihad,” and has been responsible for dozens of jihadist attacks over past decades.

The group’s most infamous act of terror occurred during the 1972 Munich Olympics, when its Black September brigade murdered 11 Israeli coaches and athletes at the Summer Games. (For more from the author of “Palestinian’s Threaten ‘Bloodshed’ After Trump Promises to Move Israeli Embassy” please click HERE)

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GOP to Bail out Duplicitous Dems With Sham Anti-UN Resolution

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There is no issue that unites Republicans, divides Democrats, and is easier to message to the American people more than cutting funding to the U.N. and the PLO.

Likewise, there is no better time to harness momentum for those goals and permanently refocus our Middle East priorities than now, as we stand at the cusp of a new GOP government. Yet, Republican leaders are not only shirking from this slam dunk initiative, but they are also giving Democrats cover — a loin cloth — for their duplicity on the issue of Israel.

Despite the sleepy news cycle of the holiday season, the U.N.’s assault on Israel captured the rage of Americans across the country. Here we are suffering from the effects of ubiquitous global jihad, and they want to focus on Jews building some homes in land originally designated and then recaptured (in a defensive war) for the only Jewish state in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the “Palestinians,” comprised of Fatah and Hamas, continue to pursue jihad and elect terrorists as their leaders.

With Trump headed to the White House, Republicans have the public support and the political power to finally right the drifting ship of our Middle East policy and defund the U.N. and PLO terrorists. Conservative members were hoping to pass legislation doing just that.

Instead, House leadership plans to vote on a vacuous resolution objecting to U.N. Resolution 2334 and reaffirming our commitment to “the two-state solution” — a myopic pink unicorn that stands contrary to our national interests, yet has become a religion among the foreign policy establishment.

It would be one thing if this “bipartisan resolution” was the beginning of a broader effort to defund the bad actors and finally move away from the two-state solution nonsense. But there is no evidence leadership plans to move anything meaningful to the House and Senate floors. Consequently, not only does this resolution fail to change policy in a meaningful way, but it also serves as loin cloth legislation to bail out Democrats who are on the wrong side of the American people on this issue.

The resolution (H.Res. 11) — sponsored by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ed Royce, R-Calif., an extremely weak leader on foreign policy — references “the two-state solution” on four occasions. It seems to raise concerns only about creating an Arab “Palestinian” state in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall but not the rest of Judea and Samaria. Also, it calls on our government to “work to facilitate serious, direct negotiations between the parties without preconditions toward a sustainable peace agreement.”

Really? Is this our position as Republicans? Do we not desire to strive for something different than the failed Oslo Accords promoted by Bill Clinton? And with whom exactly are we to “facilitate” negotiations given that the PLO is a terrorist group, pursuant to current law — a law, which Clinton suspended but was never repealed?

Indeed, aside from the Western Wall and a tiny area in Jerusalem, there is no difference between the blueprint laid out in this resolution and John Kerry’s plan.

Clearly, the resolution was drafted by Ranking Member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who is the de facto chairman of the committee, and was designed to get approval from Democrats. Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer, D-Md., is bragging about his support for this resolution. This is reminiscent of when Republicans passed the Corker-Cardin loin cloth bill on Iran, which provided the veneer of congressional oversight of the Iran deal, thereby giving Democrats much-needed cover, but in fact codified Obama’s unilateral execution of a treaty into law.

It’s never worth pursuing bipartisan support unless the bill will actually further a credible agenda in a meaningful way; otherwise, it just gratuitously gives cover to two-faced “pro-Israel” Democrats. In this case, the resolution codifies a wrongheaded foreign policy.

To his credit, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa offered an amendment to strike out any references to a two-state solution, an idea that has long been repudiated. Unfortunately, it was rejected by the Rules Committee.

It’s a time for choosing for these supposed pro-Israel Democrats. They are either with America and Israel, or they are with the far Left and PLO terrorists. It’s not the job of Republicans to obfuscate the irreversible party divide on the issue.

How long halt ye between two opinions? if the LORD [be] God, follow him: but if Baal, [then] follow him.” — Kings 1: 18-19

As for Republicans, why not harness this once-in-a-generation opportunity to end — finally — the foreign policy mistakes of the past. Is it too much to ask that we defund the U.N.? Is cutting off $500 million to PLO terrorists beyond the scope of their agenda? Reforming taxes and entitlements might be a cumbersome issue, but defunding the U.N. and PLO is not. (For more from the author of “GOP to Bail out Duplicitous Dems With Sham Anti-UN Resolution” please click HERE)

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Hypocrite Up-Chuck Schumer Wants to Keep Scalia’s Seat Open Forever

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In a rhetorical about-face that should surprise nobody, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. (F, 2%) has pledged to do everything in his power to block President-elect Donald Trump’s Supreme Court moves going forward.

Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday that he “absolutely” plans to keep Justice Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat open indefinitely.

Barring a new nuclear option, if Sen. Schumer can muster enough Senate votes behind his cause (even though Americans elected a Republican government with the future Supreme Court as a chief election issue), the seat will stay open. The Constitution grants Congress the responsibility to control the size and scope of the courts – something they should do with far more discretion and zeal, mind you.

After all, as I wrote yesterday, this is politics. Obviously, the Senate minority leader’s plan is completely out of step with the American people, but what else can you expect from the Democratic Party these days?

The issue at hand here is the sheer hypocrisy.

Oh, how elections can change things. The Democrats no longer have the prospect of turning the federal high court into a stronger version of the liberal battering ram it has become over the past few decades, and now Sen. Schumer sounds exactly like the same politicians he was telling to “Do your job!” just months ago.

Yes, after months of contorting the intent of the Constitution to sell the idea that it was the job of the Senate GOP to usher Merrick Garland into Scalia’s vacant seat, the minority leader has miraculously rediscovered the Senate’s checking power on the judicial branch – just in time for the new administration.

Democrat obstructionism is sure to be a thorn in the side of everyone who voted for the new president-elect, because the voters didn’t want to see Justice Scalia replaced with a leftist water-carrier. Luckily, Democrats have created enough of a template over the past few months to give the Senate majority all the rhetorical ammo they need for the fights ahead.

Sen. Chuck Schumer’s hypocrisy here is ripe for mockery, and the GOP should give it to him – as H.L. Mencken would put it – good and hard. (For more from the author of “Hypocrite Up-Chuck Schumer Wants to Keep Scalia’s Seat Open Forever” please click HERE)

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Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?

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I have read countless commentaries, many of them by NeverTrump conservatives, on why it is “dangerous” for the Republican party and the American right to embrace Donald Trump’s populist agenda. And on some counts, I agree. Trump’s more ham-handed attempts to “protect” American workers from foreign competition could end up costing more American jobs in the long run. His decision to kick entitlement reform further down the road means that we won’t make Social Security solvent anytime soon. His distrust of U.S. intervention in foreign countries could encourage bad actors on the world scene to fill the power vacuum. There are substantive, prudent arguments to be made about such issues, on a case-by-case basis.

What bothers me isn’t the willingness to stand independent of the GOP’s standard-bearer when the facts seem to point against him. That’s the job of any patriotic citizen who isn’t directly employed by the White House or a political party. Instead, what we ought to question is a largely unspoken assumption that some Trump critics seem to take for granted, namely:

That conservatism is primarily a set of universal ideas, which could apply equally anywhere on earth. We must stand by them even if they seem to directly harm important institutions to which we owe concrete loyalty. That is the cost of being principled.

That was the central argument, I think, of writers like Ross Douthat (and some at National Review) who asserted that a Hillary Clinton victory would be healthier in the long run, because while it gravely harmed churches, the natural family, individual liberty, and national security, at least it would maintain unsullied the purity of conservatism’s principles.

Conservatism was Born, Not Cloned

Let’s remember the origin of the left-right spectrum. It emerged not in a climate-controlled faculty lounge, but in the sweaty halls of the French National Assembly during the tense build-up to the Revolution. Deputies who wanted to tear down the monarchy, dismantle the churc, and put the radically centralized power of the French state in the hands of middle class radicals, grouped themselves together on the left side of the room. On the right were those who supported the monarchy in some form, and those who wished to protect the church.

Yes, you could find abstract political principles which, carefully teased out, might explain the views of each faction. But in fact, they were dividing based not on such abstract arguments, but over a series of concrete, practical questions: Shall we topple the king and guillotine him? Should the state seize my local church’s lands? Or should we retain the monarchy and perhaps reform it? Should we leave the church alone, and perhaps give it more independence from royal power?

Likewise, in 2016 conservative voters — in sharp contrast to the most prominent conservative writers — decided to back a candidate who pledged to protect particular good things that they considered important, rather than abstract principles that line up neatly in a 700-word column.

Most broadly, they wanted to preserve and restore a middle-class America led by tolerant Anglo-Protestant values, which was domestically safe and internationally respected. They asked for the government to concentrate on furthering those goals, and doing whatever was pragmatically necessary to achieve them. If that lines up with the small-government preference of classical liberals, fine. If it encourages other countries to choose tolerant, democratic capitalism, all the better.

But those rather abstract goals ran a distant second or third in the minds of such voters to the concrete, particular promises which Mr. Trump made so effectively. Proof of that fact lies in the otherwise puzzling preference of evangelical voters for Donald Trump over Ted Cruz. (Full disclosure: as a pointy-head myself, I backed Ted Cruz till the end.)

And voters would not be dissuaded by pundits’ arguments that protecting the things they considered vital to a good life for them and their children somehow violated what seemed to them abstract taboos. For instance, when virtually all domestic terrorism — and most terrorism around the world — emerges from orthodox Sunni mosques, voters overwhelmingly (according to polls) backed Donald Trump’s proposed “pause” on Muslim immigration. They were not at all moved by complaints by Speaker Paul Ryan, for instance, that such a policy was un-American, because it somehow impinged on religious freedom. Nor are voters much impressed by libertarians’ arguments that every human being has an absolute right to pick up and move wherever he wants, regardless of national borders.

The same divide between protecting a concrete good and obeying an abstract principle applied to foreign policy. GOP interventionists such as senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for the U.S. to obey some categorical imperative to promote democracy everywhere, all the time, right now, no matter what, by confronting Russia and risking an open conflict in order to protect “moderate rebels” in Syria. Voters rejected candidates such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio who touted this principle, in favor of Donald Trump — who narrowed his eyes and judged that we don’t have a dog in that fight.

Street Corner Conservatism Returns

In the Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti recently touted the 1975 book Street Corner Conservative by former Nixon speechwriter, Bill Gavin. A man ahead of his time (whose book is sadly out of print), Gavin called on conservatives to temper their efforts to work out a perfectly self-consistent ideological program, and focus on defending the concrete goods and particular institutions that mattered to GOP voters. It seems that with this election, Gavin has been vindicated — along with the only major politician who took his advice, his one-time White House colleague Pat Buchanan.

We can’t throw principles out the window. Mindless partisanship and economic populism are in the long run the way you end up with a country like Argentina. Instead, we should re-examine our principles and see if perhaps they are too abstract, if we have slimmed them down too much by cutting off their real-world connections. Perhaps the principles dominant inside the conservative movement became unmoored and needed revision — and voters let us know that in the only way they can. It’s our job to listen to them, and respond with an agenda that defends the Golden Egg of freedom without choking or starving the Goose. (For more from the author of “Did Voters Trash Conservative Principles by Voting for Donald Trump?” please click HERE)

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Why a Little Girl Should Not Be Allowed to Join the Cub Scouts

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The Cub Scouts are now under increasing pressure for refusing to allow an 8-year-old girl, who identifies as a boy, to join their ranks. As reported on a New Jersey website (the child is from Secaucus, NJ), “From the moment he joined, 8-year-old Joe Maldonado eagerly looked forward to camping trips and science projects as a member of the Cub Scouts. But his expectations were dashed after his mother said she received a phone call from a Scouting official who told her that Joe would no longer be allowed to participate because he was born a girl” (my emphasis).

To be more accurate, Jodi (the child’s original name) is no longer allowed to participate because she was not just born a girl. She is a girl, and Cub Scouts are for boys. That’s why CBS News reported that, “Joe’s family says parents of other children had complained.”

Surprise, surprise. They had ample reason to complain, since Cub Scouts are for boys — little boys — and Jodi is a girl — a little girl.

But for Jodi’s mom, this came as a total shock, since, she says, the Cub Scouts were aware of Jodi’s biology and had no problem with initially accepting him. Plus, her mom reports, Jodi was now accepted at school as a boy.

CBS News reporter Errol Barnettasked Jodi’s mother, “As a parent, how do you know that you don’t just have a girl who is a tomboy, and that it’s a transgender issue?”

She replied, “I took a couple years; I didn’t realize it.”

With all respect to Jodi’s mom, there are experts who say that the worst thing a parent can do is accommodate a younger child’s gender confusion, while others would remind us that most kids experiencing gender confusion no longer do so after puberty.

But no, Jodi is Joe, and she/he is sure of it, even at 8. Not only so, but the rest of the world must accept it.When Barnett asked Jodi, “Why did you want to join the Boy Scouts?”, she replied, “Because all of my favorite friends were there.”

And that’s why the Cub Scouts should change their policy and allow girls to join their groups: because a little girl has more boy-friends than girl-friends and because she identifies as a boy.

According to CBS News, “The [Boy Scouts of America] told CBS News it offered the family alternative, co-ed programs for Joe, but Maldonado told us she’s not interested and instead wants an apology for her son.”

No surprise here either. It’s not a matter of working out a practical solution. It’s about the rest of the world changing its policies to accommodate a confused little child.

Of course, the Boy Scouts of America have only themselves to blame, since their accommodation to gay activism has made them as an easy target for trans activism, making their official statement sound quite lame and short-sighted: “No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation. Gender identity isn’t related to sexual orientation.”

Do the Boy Scouts of America really think that they will be able to say yes to gay activism but no to trans activism, that they will be able to dodge the accusation of being homophobes without being nailed with the accusation of being transphobes? Have they not noticed that the acronym LGBT — notice that T at the end! — has been around since the early 1990’s? If you say yes to the LG part, the B part is automatically included and the T part is right behind.

Let’s see how long the Boy Scouts hold out on this one. After all, if the Obama administration was pushing for this kind of acceptance in the schools — with penalties for non-compliance — and if Bruce Jenner being named woman of the year is old hat, why should the Scouts resist? Plus, the already-more-liberal Girl Scouts of America announced a few years back that a boy who identifies as a girl would be welcome in their midst. Social madness indeed.

But the worst thing about this whole story with 8-year-old Jodi is that the media is talking to her as if she was an expert, asking her how she felt about why she was excluded, to which this precious little child can only say, “I don’t know,” sounding sadly baffled. (To watch the actual video clip, along with my commentary, go here.)

To quote little Jodi, “It made me mad. I had a sad face, but I wasn’t crying. I’m way more angry than sad. My identity is a boy. If I was them, I would let every person in the world go in. It’s right to do.”

It’s a great sentiment, but it’s also the lens of an impressionable, still-developing, 8-year-old. When else do we go to little kids for life counsel and direction? And don’t the parents have a responsibility to shield their kids from this kind of attention? Don’t they actually set their children up for further pain and rejection by presenting them to the world as the opposite of who their biology and chromosomes say they are?

Interestingly, when National Geographic recently featured a 9-year-old boy who identifies as a girl on the cover of its “Gender Revolution” issue, I wrote that the magazine was complicit in a form of child abuse. Unknown to me, the American Family Network was sending out the message that, “National Geographic exploits children to further an agenda.”

Also unknown to me, in 2015, Camille Paglia, the controversial academic and social critic, and herself a lesbian, told a Brazilian TV station that, “Nothing … better defines the decadence of the West to the jihadists than our toleration of open homosexuality and this transgender mania now.”

She also said this, “Parents are now encouraged to subject the child to procedures that I think are a form of child abuse. The hormones to slow puberty, actual surgical manipulations, etcetera. I think that this is wrong, that people should wait until they are of an informed age of consent.

She added, “Parents should not be doing this to their children and I think that even in the teenage years is too soon to be making this leap. People change, people grow, and people adapt.”

Further confirmation for this position comes from Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, who also feels that medical facilities that support a child’s transgenderism are engaging in child abuse.

She said that National Geographic is “promoting a political agenda over science and the wellbeing of innocent children” by displaying the young child as the face for their first ever transgender cover.

“Affirming so called transgender children means sterilizing them as young as 11-years-old,” Dr. Cretella told Lifesite News. “Puberty blockers plus cross-sex hormones causes permanent sterility. And biological girls who ‘transition’ to male by taking testosterone may have a double mastectomy at age 16. The life time use of cross-sex hormones also puts these children at risk for stroke, heart disease, diabetes, cancers and more.”

Is this what lies ahead for little Jodi?

I seriously doubt that the Boy Scouts of America will be able to hold their ground against trans activism, but I have no doubt about this: They will one day regret the decisions they made, first caving in to gay activism and then to trans activism.

As for Jodi’s parents, I imagine that they deeply love their child and would do anything to make her happy. Sometimes, though, it’s the job of the parents to do things that make a child unhappy for the moment, knowing that, in the end, it will be for that child’s lifelong happiness.

I look forward to the day when the very real confusion of a little child, which I do not minimize, is not the measure of reality or the arbiter of societal norms. In fact, that day cannot come too soon. (For more from the author of “Why a Little Girl Should Not Be Allowed to Join the Cub Scouts” please click HERE)

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Chip Gaines Responds to 2016 Buzzfeed Controversy in Blog Post Calling for Unity

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House-flipping celebrity Chip Gaines encouraged people to “lovingly disagree” in a blog post on Monday.

“If there is any hope for all of us to move forward, to heal and to grow — we have got to learn to engage people who are different from us with dignity and with love,” Chip wrote.

The blog post appears to refer, at least in part, to the controversy that sprang up in November 2016 after Buzzfeed published an article attacking Antioch Community Church of Waco, Texas and its pastor Jimmy Seibert for taking a “severe, unmoving position” against same-sex marriage. HGTV Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna attend Antioch Community Church and have long been vocal about their Christian faith.

“So are the Gainses against same-sex marriage?” Buzzfeed writer Kate Aurthur asked of the married couple.

Since the teaching that marriage is between one man and one woman is a basic tenet of Evangelical Christianity, and since Chip and Joanna had never spoken about the issue themselves, many criticized Buzzfeed’s piece as a “non-story.”

HGTV responded to the controversy at the time with a statement saying the network doesn’t “discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows,” and moved forward with airing the fourth season of wildly popular Fixer Upper (the November 29 premier garnered 3.4 million views).

Chip and Joanna initially refused to make a statement, with Chip turning to Twitter to request “respect” for Aurthur and tweet about the family’s faith.

In Monday’s blog post, Chip still didn’t address the Buzzfeed article, or same-sex marriage, head-on, writing:

Plenty of folks are sad and scared and angry and there are sound bites being fed to us that seem fueled by judgement, fear and even hatred. Jo and I refuse to be baited into using our influence in a way that will further harm an already hurting world, this is our home. A house divided cannot stand …

Joanna and I have personal convictions. One of them is this: we care about you for the simple fact that you are a person, our neighbor on planet earth. It’s not about what color your skin is, how much money you have in the bank, your political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender, nationality or faith. That’s all fascinating, but it cannot add or take away from the reality that we’re already pulling for you. We are not about to get in the nasty business of throwing stones at each other, don’t ask us to cause we won’t play that way.

Chip went on to say that he and Joanna “feel called to be bridge builders.”

“We want to help initiate conversations between people that don’t think alike,” he wrote. “Listen to me, we do not all have to agree with each other. Disagreement is not the same thing as hate, don’t believe that lie.”

Chip ended his post by asking people to work together.

We propose operating with a love so real and true that you are willing to roll up your sleeves and work alongside the very people that are most unlike you. Fear dissolves in close proximity. Our stereotypes and vain imaginations fall away when we labor side by side. This is how a house gets unified.

Read the full blog post at MagnoliaMarket.com. (For more from the author of “Chip Gaines Responds to 2016 Buzzfeed Controversy in Blog Post Calling for Unity” please click HERE)

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Trump Will Have His Hands Full Fixing LGBT Extremism in the State Department

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It may be a new year, but there’s nothing new about the concerns surrounding the State Department’s liberal activism. While Americans were busy unwrapping presents, conservatives were tearing into something else: Obama’s record on social issues. After eight years of watching the State Department operate as a global base for abortion and sexual activism, most Republicans are ready to get back to the real business of diplomacy. That’s a tough job under normal circumstances, but after two terms of President Obama, the Trump team will have its hands full.

Lately, there have been some who have suggested that (after almost a decade of proving otherwise) the State Department has nothing to do with abortion and sexual politics. Tell that to our friends around the globe, who’ve spent the last eight years trying to dodge this administration’s biggest export: rainbow flags and abortion dollars. Under President Obama, this radical agenda has completely infiltrated the State Department — usually eclipsing the agency’s other vital functions, like defending religious liberty. Obviously, America has a sincere interest in stopping the unjust persecution or targeting of any human being. But what’s happened for the last eight years is not the simple defense of those who are mistreated — it’s the elevation of people around the world based on sexual behavior.

State’s Culture of Extremism: LGBT Issues

While some people are falling for the line that social issues are “irrelevant” to the work of the State Department, the Trump team isn’t buying it. They’re keenly aware of the culture of extremism at the agency — so much so that they’ve requested a detailed list of the ways the office has tried to promote “gender equality.” Late last month, the New York Times reported on the Trump memo, which asked the department to provide, among other things, details on the positions “‘whose primary functions are to promote such issues’ — as well as how much funding was directed to gender-related programs in 2016.” (Read more from “Trump Will Have His Hands Full Fixing LGBT Extremism in the State Department” HERE)

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Trump’s ‘Historic’ Opportunity to Reshape the Federal Courts

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After an election in which the Supreme Court proved to be a deciding factor in how people voted, President-elect Donald Trump has a significant opportunity to reshape the federal judiciary from top to bottom.

In addition to the vacant Supreme Court seat, Trump will inherit at least 103 openings in the lower courts—that is, district and circuit courts. They don’t get the same attention as the top court, but hear many more cases on a variety of issues involving federal law.

The 103 vacancies is nearly double the 54 openings President Barack Obama had upon taking office in 2009.

Another 12 federal judges have announced plans to leave their posts later this year.

While the Supreme Court reviews roughly 75 cases a year, the nation’s 13 regional circuit courts (or federal courts of appeals) heard more than 55,000 cases last year. The Supreme Court accepts 1 percent of the cases submitted to it, so in the great majority of cases, the circuit courts set a legal precedent when they decide appeals.

“If you are a cultural warrior watching for rulings on gay marriage and abortion, the Supreme Court is where you should look, but if you are a business, a taxpayer, an employee involved in a workplace dispute, or someone making a discrimination complaint, the circuit court is often the final word,” Curt Levey, a legal affairs fellow at FreedomWorks, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Conservative groups such as FreedomWorks say they expect Trump to quickly nominate justices to the lower courts, taking advantage of an opportunity given to him after Senate Republicans declined to confirm some of Obama’s judicial nominees the past few years.

Before the last Senate ended its two-year term, 25 of Obama’s court nominees did not get a vote on the floor after the Judiciary Committee approved them, The Washington Post reported.

The nonpartisan Judicial Conference of the United States, a national policymaking body for the federal courts created by Congress, has deemed 41 of the openings to be judicial emergencies, because cases in those jurisdictions are severely backlogged as a result of long-vacant seats.

Though Trump did not talk about the lower court openings on the campaign trail, the circuit courts often serve as a pipeline of judges considered qualified for a Supreme Court appointment. Of the current Supreme Court justices, only Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, did not serve on a U.S. appeals court.

Trump could get additional opportunities to nominate Supreme Court justices, beyond Antonin Scalia’s replacement.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, and Stephen Breyer, 78, both liberals, and Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, considered a swing vote, may choose to retire soon.

District and circuit judges, like Supreme Court justices, serve lifetime appointments unless they retire before they die.

“President-elect Trump realizes this issue gave him the election, that there’s a historic interest in the Supreme Court and the courts in general, and that the public increasingly recognizes the significance of the president’s role in shaping the courts’ composition,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

‘Big Fight’ Ahead

Democrats eager to strike back at Republicans are likely to try to thwart Trump’s effort to name more conservative judges, even if their ability to vote down potential judges is limited.

When Democrats controlled the Senate, they changed the rules to allow for confirmation of all presidential nominees, except for the Supreme Court, by a majority vote. Republicans now have a 52-vote majority.

But Senate leaders usually follow a tradition of considering lower court nominees only if they are supported by both senators representing the state in which the court is situated. Democratic senators are represented in 28 of the 50 states in the new Congress, including large ones such as California, Florida, and New York.

“Trump won’t automatically get who he wants,” Russell Wheeler, an expert on judicial nominations at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. Wheeler added:

The Democrats will put up a big fight and say, ‘There were nominees for these vacancies which were bipartisan and you refused to bring them for a vote when you could have confirmed them in an afternoon.’ It will be the fight over the Scalia vacancy, only multiplied by 100 because there are a lot more players in this.

Obama’s Influence on Federal Courts

Even with Republicans’ resistance to Obama’s nominees in his second term, the outgoing president was able to dramatically reshape the federal judiciary.

In his eight years, Obama ended up with three more judicial confirmations than his Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, 329 to 326.

Today, nine of the 13 circuit courts have a majority of justices appointed by a Democrat, compared to only one when Obama took office.

Wheeler says Trump’s appointments won’t significantly shift these appeals courts because only about 10 percent of the 179 circuit judgeships—17 of them—are vacant.

This is significant because the Supreme Court, experts say, tends to take cases on issues in which the circuit courts split on their rulings. So if more of the courts are liberal-leaning, they likely will be more cohesive in their decisions, and those rulings, without making it to the Supreme Court, would become the law of the land.

According to Wheeler’s research, the Republicans’ challenge today is compounded because the majority of district and circuit court judges who are most likely to retire in the coming years are Republican appointees.

Still, Wheeler predicted that by mid-2020, Republican appointees would hold about half of the 673 district judgeships, compared to the current 34 percent.

In the circuit courts, Wheeler expects Democratic appointees to fall from 51 percent to about 43 percent by mid-2020.

“It’s not insurmountable in four years for Trump to restore the courts almost to what they were before Obama took office,” FreedomWorks’ Levey said. “If he can do that, the chances are conservatives will be in great shape if Trump serves eight years.”

Policy Impact

Legal experts say many of Trump’s policy priorities could be affected by the makeup of the courts.

For example, if Trump fulfills his plans to repeal some Obama administration regulations dealing with issues such as the environment, labor, and energy development, he likely will meet resistance from opposition figures and groups who could challenge his changes in the federal courts.

“In general, what will happen is as the Trump administration and his Cabinet appointees try to pull back, amend, change, or otherwise void regulations issued by the Obama administration in many different areas, you will see a huge number of lawsuits filed by everyone from environmental groups to perhaps state attorneys general to try and stop regulations from being changed or rewritten,” Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Ernest Young, a Duke University law professor focused on the federal courts, said he expects Democrat-led states to respond to Trump’s potential regulatory changes by issuing their own regulations on issues such as climate change and immigration.

If that happens, Young predicts the lower federal courts will see cases involving conflicts between federal and state law.

“Progressive policy experiments at the state level will raise questions about what extent the federal government can shut those down,” Young told The Daily Signal in an interview, adding:

I expect you will see more challenges dealing with the validation of state law—about how easy or hard it is for federal statutes to preempt state law. Some of those may go to the Supreme Court, but the lower courts are critical on issues like that.

(For more from the author of “Trump’s ‘Historic’ Opportunity to Reshape the Federal Courts” please click HERE)

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Don’t Let the Media Confuse You: Obamacare Is a Policy Failure

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Leave it to the media, which spent the latter half of 2016 highlighting how outrageously expensive Obamacare premiums were becoming, to suddenly shift gears in 2017 and stress the health law’s many “pluses.”

Such was the case in a recent interview with Heritage President Jim DeMint, in which CNN anchor Carol Costello suggested that lawmakers would need to preserve the so-called benefits of Obamacare if they repealed it.

In Costello’s words:

For example, this is according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve in Dallas. Preventative care provided by Obamacare … saves money and health care costs overall. In 2015, the cost of health care services increased 0.5 percent. The typical price increase before Obamacare, it was around 3 to 4 percent. Obamacare will lower the deficit by $143 billion over the next 10 years. So, there are pluses to Obamacare. So, how do you keep the pluses and get rid of the minuses?

DeMint shot back that those “facts” could fall “under the category of fake news.” This set Costello off to correct him that the numbers had come from the Congressional Budget Office.

Well, here’s what the Congressional Budget Office actually said about the cost of preventative care in 2009: “Although different types of preventive care have different effects on spending, the evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.”

For Americans paying premiums, this year’s price increases speak for themselves. According to the Obama administration, on the exchanges, the average increase this year in the benchmark plan premium is 25 percent across the 39 states that use the HealthCare.gov platform. Certainly this cannot be considered a “plus,” even by the law’s most zealous supporters.

It is true that the Congressional Budget Office did originally say that the law would reduce the deficit, but that analysis was always based on questionable assumptions and the double-counting of Medicare savings.

Indeed, in 2014, the Senate Budget Committee went back and used the Congressional Budget Office’s same scoring conventions and found that Obamacare would increase the deficit by $131 billion over the next decade.

Although the details of this year’s repeal bill are not yet known, the Congressional Budget Office’s latest score of an Obamacare repeal—based on the reconciliation bill passed by the last Congress, which repealed the law’s major spending provisions and tax increases—was projected to reduce federal deficits by roughly $516 billion over the 2016-2025 period, accounting for the economic benefits that would result.

But on CNN, Costello wasn’t finished. “So, all those 20 million people enrolled in Obamacare, they’re all going broke and it’s not working for any of them?” she asked. Actually, 20 million is a debatable enrollment figure, given that it is based on survey data that can be off by millions of people.

Using actual insurer enrollment data, which is only available through the end of 2015, there was an increase in coverage of only 14 million Americans from 2013 to 2015, with the vast majority (11.7 million) being pushed into Medicaid coverage.

Moreover, the actual net increase in private coverage during this period was only 2.3 million due to a decline in employment-based coverage, which offset the increase in the individual health insurance market.

Furthermore, Costello forgot about all of the people (over 10 million) who purchase coverage in the individual market and receive no Obamacare subsidy. These people have been getting hammered by premium increases caused by Obamacare every year and have to pay the full cost on their own.

Costello asked, “How do you take care of people much better than they’re taken care of now?”

Considering that many Americans are now facing fewer insurer options, higher insurance deductibles, and higher premiums than prior to Obamacare, the need for real cost relief is immense.

The first step in providing relief is to quickly repeal the law and then do the legislative work that will allow for patient-centered reforms. (For more from the author of “Don’t Let the Media Confuse You: Obamacare Is a Policy Failure” please click HERE)

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REINS Act Will Check Executive Overreach, Restore Constitutional Balance

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As a new Congress begins, Republicans have made it clear that regulatory reform is a priority that puts the interest of all Americans first, especially concerning the economy.

It’s been said that sometimes government rules “have gotten out of balance, placing unreasonable burdens on business—burdens that have stifled innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.”

It is in fact President Barack Obama who made that statement in 2011 in his appeal “to strike the right balance” in executive rulemaking.

In an outstanding contradiction to the spirit of these words, the current administration brought our regulatory burden to a bloated $1.88 trillion in 2015—meaning that on average, each U.S. household is bearing an annual economic weight of $15,000. This underscores the reality that unchecked regulations smother business and family finances without distinction.

That’s where the REINS Act comes in.

Federal agencies currently have the power to make “major rules”—ones that have an economic impact of $100 million or more—without the oversight of Congress or the signature of the president. The REINS Act would put in place meaningful checks on agency overreach by requiring congressional approval and the president’s signature for major rules.

Absent these checks, we fall victim to oppressive regulations like the Department of Labor’s overtime rule, which hurts the very people it is trying to help and imposes unworkable burdens on businesses, universities, and employees.

In 2015, the Department of Labor raised the salary threshold under which people are eligible for overtime from $23,660 to $47,476. While the rule seems like it would provide more overtime pay to more people, the economic effect is that it smothers job creators.

With their administrative resources consumed by tracking more information with less flexibility, it turns out that businesses have to cut jobs as a result of the overtime rule. Even if businesses raise salaries above new overtime levels to avoid additional administrative costs, they are still left with less money to pay salaries overall—which means they can support fewer jobs.

As it stands, the Congressional Review Act of 1996 represents the only recourse Congress has for reversing harmful rules without having to scale the great wall of the filibuster. All but one of the joint resolutions of disapproval that Congress has passed under the Congressional Review Act have been vetoed by the president.

As a tool for checking executive overreach, the Congressional Review Act is begging for improvement, which the REINS Act offers by amending the original legislation.

If the overtime rule had been subject to a vote by Congress before it was enacted, as the REINS Act would require, American workers could have been spared the consequences of the heavy-handed and poorly-crafted regulation. Yet support for the REINS Act is not merely practical—it is also constitutional.

Article 1 of the Constitution assigns the responsibility of lawmaking to a House and Senate made up of elected officials, and it does so in order to ensure that the people who are affected by federal laws and regulations have a say in how those rules are made.

Without the balance that the REINS Act offers, Americans and their economy remain subject to the decisions and missteps of unelected bureaucrats, who seem agonizingly unable to “strike the right balance” between helpful and harmful rules.

Executive agency overreach is, at heart, a constitutional issue, and one that the REINS Act remedies in a way that reformers in both parties should be able to support. If made law, this legislation would require agencies to submit their major regulations for congressional approval before they could go into effect, and both chambers would be required to accept or reject the rule within 70 legislative days.

The president’s signature would also be required for any of Congress’ joint resolutions on a major rule to take effect. Agency regulations with economic impacts of under $100 million would remain unaffected by the REINS Act.

The bill is not retroactive, so Republicans haven’t devised it as a way to blot out the actions of a previous administration and the agencies it oversaw. It’s also not unwieldy from a legislative perspective, adding only 50-100 votes to the congressional calendar each year.

What we’ve done is to craft a way to move forward with legislative business and restore accountability to the legislative process while better protecting our economy from suffocating regulations that Americans never voted to enact.

The current president has said balance in federal regulations is necessary, and President-elect Donald Trump has said the REINS Act will help guarantee that balance, promising that he would sign this “major step toward getting our government under control” were the bill to reach his desk.

The REINS Act brings transparency, accountability, and constitutional balance to the branches of government regardless of which party controls those branches, and it returns power to the electorate by making sure that their votes have a voice in major federal rulemaking. (For more from the author of “REINS Act Will Check Executive Overreach, Restore Constitutional Balance” please click HERE)

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