This Isn’t Over: SCOTUS May Have Put Its Trans-Bathroom Case on Hold, but More Are to Follow

/0 Comments/in , /by

School administrators trying to set common-sense bathroom safety policies received a temporary respite from the Supreme Court Monday. But the fight is far from over.

The court announced Monday morning that in the case of G.G. vs Gloucester County School Board, the judgment has been vacated and remanded to the Fourth Circuit appeals court in light of the Trump administration’s recent rescinding of the Obama-era transgender bathroom guidance.

The Supreme Court decided that it would not hear the case of biological teenage girl Gavin Grimm, who sued her local Virginia school board to use the boys’ room, citing federal discrimination law under Title IX, the 14th Amendment, and the Obama-era set of administrative guidelines.

A vacate and remand offers the parents and administrators temporary respite from complying with any court orders to the subject, as a vacated decision renders all previous judgement – which sided with Grimm – void, while allowing the competing arguments to be evaluated without Obama’s bureaucratic interpretation in the mix.

“The first duty of school districts is to protect the bodily privacy rights of all of the students who attend their schools and to respect the rights of parents who understandably don’t want their children exposed in intimate changing areas like locker rooms and showers,” reads a statement from Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Kerri Kupec, whose organization represents the school board.

“It only makes sense for the Supreme Court to vacate the 4th Circuit’s earlier decision and instruct it to reconsider this case,” Kupec said. “The 4th Circuit should affirm the plain meaning of Title IX, which protects boys’ and girls’ privacy in locker rooms, showers, and restrooms. School officials should be free to protect their students’ privacy, safety, and dignity without federal government interference.”

This development follows the news that both parties actually wanted to press forward with the case, despite the rollback of the Obama administration edict.

According to SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe, while the parties still wanted the case heard by the high court, they differed on the when. The student’s ACLU legal team wanted the justices to hear the case and rule as planned, while the school board asked for more time.

However, the debate over who sets privacy policies in public schools – judges, bureaucrats, legislators, or educators and parents at the local level – isn’t over.

In addition to the eventual Fourth Circuit decision, there still remains the issue of the plaintiffs in the Sixth Circuit and two lower-level cases that were awaiting a ruling in Gloucester that will now be “coming out of hibernation,” ADF senior counsel Gary McCaleb explained in a phone interview.

Simply, for opponents of unconstitutionally rewriting federal discrimination law, this is more a breather than a win.

At heart, the cases raise the question of which branch writes our laws and further highlights the need for legislative or administrative language clarifying what Title IX actually means.

Title IX is the product of a 1972 law that prohibits schools receiving federal funds from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” While the law was clearly passed by Congress with biological sex in mind, there has been a concerted push from the Left in recent years to redefine that understanding to mean gender (which, of course, is based on thoughts and feelings, rather than science).

As we have previously pointed out at CR, legislation that would analogously redefine sex as gender identity in federal law has already been introduced in multiple congressional sessions, to no avail. Since Democrats have failed to get this sort of legislation through Congress thus far, that effort has now moved to the courtroom with these such cases.

Last year, Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas (F, 58%) introduced a bill aimed at clearing up this confusion once and for all. The Civil Rights Uniformity Act of 2016 would have sought to “prevent the [Obama administration] from unilaterally rewriting Federal civil rights laws,” by barring the executive branch from interpreting Title IX’s provisions on “sex” to mean “gender.”

There may no longer be a soft mandate from the executive branch, but the ongoing nature of these cases shows that the American people have the option to answer this question via Congress, or leave it up to the federal judiciary. (For more from the author of “This Isn’t Over: SCOTUS May Have Put Its Trans-Bathroom Case on Hold, but More Are to Follow” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Let’s Be Honest: Disney Has Been Sexualizing Characters for a Long Time

/0 Comments/in , /by

Ever since Beauty and the Beast director Bill Condon told Attitude magazine that the highly-anticipated Disney remake would feature an “exclusively gay moment,” Christian pundits and parents have been up in arms. Pastor Franklin Graham called for Christians to “watch out!” and “say no to Disney.” LifeSiteNews is sponsoring a petition to tell Disney “that children’s entertainment is no place to promote a harmful sexual political agenda.” This Red State columnist wonders why Disney can’t just keep its “hands off” children’s entertainment. Many people are rallying their Twitter followers to #BoycottDisney.

The list goes on.

For Christians who believe the homosexual lifestyle is something to be delivered from and not celebrated, it is disappointing to see the push for homosexual acceptance reaching into the realm of children’s entertainment. But let’s be honest with ourselves. Disney has long been in the business of sexualizing its movies and characters. They just now expanded their sexualization to include a gay character.

Disney and the Sexualized Princess

Let’s take a quick walk down memory lane.

For years, Disney’s female characters (and especially Disney princesses) were hyper-sexualized (tiny waists, big busts, heavy make-up), from their animation to their look-alike toy products. Disney’s original princess movies also centered nearly exclusively around romance and marriage, even though all of the princesses are only in their teens. Perhaps parents should think about the message it sends their little girls that when they are 16, a man they don’t know will save them with a kiss on the lips (Sleeping Beauty), or that it’s okay to run off with a prince on a magic carpet when they are only 15 (Aladdin), or that they should be the “fairest of them all” when they are only 14 (Snow White). (Speaking of Beauty and the Beast, Belle is only 17.)

To be clear, I don’t think Disney princesses are inherently evil, but I do think that parents should be wary of the message their daughters are receiving when they constantly watch portrayals of teen girls who are hyper-sexualized and focused on Prince Charming.

That’s not to say that many parents haven’t been wary. Many have been complaining about these traditional Disney princess traits for years, with feminists and liberals often leading the way.

A New Kind of Princess

Disney eventually got the message, creating some new Disney princesses that weren’t focused solely on romance, like Merida in Brave and Elsa in Frozen. These movies were a huge breath of fresh air for girls like me, who preferred dressing up as Frodo and conquering Mount Doom to dressing up as Cinderella and going to the ball.

When I saw Brave in 2012 and Frozen in 2013, I can’t tell you how much I wished I’d had those movies — focused on adventure and familial love instead of romance — as a little girl.

Merida would have been my hero with her horse, her weapons and her independent spirit. Even though Frozen contains a romantic subplot, it’s much more realistic; Anna’s infatuation with a prince she just met proves to be unwise and misguided, unlike other Disney movies where young couples jump directly from meeting into happily ever after. In the end Anna falls for a faithful male friend in a sweet, not-in-your-face sort of way.

Bringing Back Romance — With a Twist

LGBTQ pride is currently at the forefront of secular culture. Disney is a secular company. So of course they’re starting to featuring gay characters. This really shouldn’t surprise us.

What should be more concerning is that Disney is willing (or so it seems, from recent events) to swing the spotlight back on romance just so they can celebrate homosexuality on screen. For instance, many liberals have asked Disney to #GiveElsaAGirlfriend in the upcoming sequel, since some thought Elsa’s story in Frozen represented coming out of the closet (I didn’t see it this way, but whatever).

Aside from the fact that putting little girls’ favorite princess in a lesbian relationship would be troubling to Christian parents, what bothers me about #GiveElsaAGirlfriend is that people want to insert main-plot romance into a movie franchise that was perfectly fine without it! Why not make Frozen 2 about Elsa’s adventures as the independent ruler of her kingdom, or another story on the virtues of sibling love and working together? Why make her fall in love at all?

As for Beauty and the Beast, it’s already a romance, and a rather complicated one. There is no need to add another layer, except to have, as the director said, a Disney movie’s first “exclusively gay moment.”

A Better Boycott

Boycotting or petitioning Disney over the presence of gay characters will be largely ineffective. The only way to really change culture is by fulfilling the Great Commission and introducing sinners to Jesus, which must be a neighbor-out, not corporation-down initiative. Franklin Graham suggested that Walt Disney “would be shocked at what has happened to the company that he started.” But Disney has hardly been a paragon of Christian morality in the past, from their hyper-sexualized teenage cartoons to the child actors they’ve graduated into rehab. Collective actions can sometimes make a difference (as it may have with Target) but in general we can’t use boycotts to browbeat secular entities into following our Christian code of conduct when they lack the very foundation for that conduct.

So like it or not, it’s probably best to get used to more gay Disney characters in the near future. I suspect that some (if not much) of the homosexuality portrayed in upcoming Disney films may go over little children’s heads anyway, just like the numerous sexual innuendos placed in Disney films throughout the years (some have supposedly been debunked).

That said, I think there is a better boycott or petition that Christian and non-Christian parents alike can join in when it comes to Disney films. Why not ask Disney to focus less on romance and more on innocent adventures that kids will enjoy? Love, romance and sexuality are delicate subjects that parents themselves should be responsible for broaching with their kids at the right time.

Entertainment shouldn’t be feeding young kids the message that love, sex and romance are what defines them, whether that message comes from a hyper-sexualized 16-year-old princess or a gay man exploring his attractions. (For more from the author of “Let’s Be Honest: Disney Has Been Sexualizing Characters for a Long Time” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Will Trump Act to End Common Core’s Disastrous Math Slump?

/0 Comments/in , /by

The verdict is in on Common Core and it’s bad. International tests towards which Common Core was supposed to be “benchmarked” show that American students’ reading and science scores are stagnant. And math scores are tanking badly. Of the 35 industrialized nations, U..S. students have slipped into the 31st place in math achievement.

“We really are doing a lot worse in math than we are in science and reading,” Peggy Carr, the acting commissioner for the National Center for Education Statistics, told The Hechinger Report. Students across the board in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests are doing worse, from bottom to middle to top performance.

The sharp drop in math performance on the international test confirms the lower scores seen on the United States’ National Assessment on Education Progress, in which both 4th graders and 8th graders posted lower math scores on the 2015 test.

Why the Drop in Math Performance is Not Surprising

To critics of Common Core this should come as no surprise. The “Common Core moms” were repeatedly derided by the experts for noticing the sudden strange collapse in math teaching standards. I first wrote about one such mom, Heather Crossin, in 2013:

In September 2011, Heather suddenly noticed a sharp decline in the math homework her eight-year-old daughter was bringing home from Catholic school. “Instead of many arithmetic problems, the homework would contain only three or four questions, and two of those would be ‘explain your answer,’” Heather told me. “Like, ‘One bridge is 412 feet long and the other bridge is 206 feet long. Which bridge is longer? How do you know?’ She found she could not help her daughter answer the latter question: The “right” answer involved heavy quotation from Common Core language. A program designed to encourage thought had ended up encouraging rote memorization not of math but of scripts about math.

When Heather and other parents complained to the principal — at a private Catholic school mind you — he threw up his hands and said he didn’t like it either but they had to teach to the state test which was now based on Common Core standards. Yet Common Core advocates persist in the Big Lie that national standards leave states free to develop their own curricula. Here’s the truth: If you control the standards you control the curriculum.

Mothers like Heather Crossin were called ignoramuses. They were told that the experts had developed wonderful new standards that were “internationally benchmarked,” that is, that they were the kind of standards countries with high performing math students use. That was also a Big Lie. The one actual mathematician on the board that developed them, Stanford mathematics professor R. James Milgram, rejected the Common Core math standards. Prof. Milgram concluded that the Common Core standards are, as he told the Texas state legislature, “in large measure a political document that … is written at a very low level and does not adequately reflect our current understanding of why the math programs in the high-achieving countries give dramatically better results.”

The education school math education “experts” managed to impose on almost the entire country standards based on untested education theories, not empirical evidence. Most of its advocates probably had no clue. They trusted the “experts” in spite of the fact that such progressive education theories get it wrong time after time. (Remember “whole language” reading wars?)

They should have known better: When most states adopted Common Core the standards had not yet been written. They were buying a pig in a poke. And students are paying the price.

Trump Recognized Common Core’s Problems — At First

Donald Trump, to his credit, acknowledged the problem.

Or at least on the campaign trail he did. He opposed Common Core from the first moment he announced his campaign in June 2015, to the closing argument on his whirlwind tour the day before the election. He used it as a club to beat back Jeb Bush (the leader of the Republican support for Common Core, whose protégé, Betsy DeVos, now heads up the Education Department).

As Breitbart’s Dr. Susan Berry reported, “Numerous reports have observed the presence of Jeb Bush supporters and Obama holdovers in the federal education department. U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos herself was both a generous contributor to and board member of Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE), which promoted Common Core nationwide. Bush himself said of DeVos’s nomination, ‘I’m so excited.’”

Common Core critics are now increasingly concerned that President Trump has gone silent on Common Core.

As Fred Barnes pointed out, “He didn’t mention it … in his hour-long speech to a joint session of Congress. He didn’t repeat his promise to end it in his inaugural address a month ago. And he neglected to cite it in his rousing talk at the Conservative Political Action Conference.”

Trump’s education policy since taking office has been all school choice, with dramatic silence on Common Core. But school choice has little meaning if “common standards” put pressure on virtually every public, charter, and private school to create Common Core curricula, driven by state-imposed standardized tests.

Republicans who originally supported Common Core meant well. They thought they were endorsing high academic standards that would help students learn. That’s why they made a deal with the Obama administration. But now we know the truth.

Will President Trump care enough about the Common Core moms like Heather to deliver on one of his most-frequently repeated campaign promises?

Common Core Re-branded is Still Bad

As Frank Cannon, president of the American Principles Project (where I am a senior fellow) told Breitbart, given the Jeb-heavy cast of his education appointments, “I think it’s important for Trump to personally drive to completion on this promise, as he has on so many other promises.”

There are practical steps that can be taken immediately to ease the federal pressures on states to continue with failed math standards and the curriculum craziness produced by those standards. (Given the failure of Common Core to improve reading and silence standards, states should be free to experiment across the board.)

Jane Robbins, a senior fellow at American Principles Project (see full disclosure above) has been working with state legislatures on what they can do to undo Common Core. She finds the heavy hand of the federal government is still playing an outsize role:

DeVos can ease federal mandates on standards and testing, letting states choose their own standards — that is, ditch Common Core — without fear of federal penalty, and giving them a waiver from testing requirements while they revamp their standards and aligned tests. She should also comb through all 1,061 pages of Every Child Succeeds Act passed in 2015 and push Congress to eliminate its mandates.

“What we can’t have is the components of Common Core and have it be rebranded as something else. We can’t have the testing, we can’t have the lowering of standards that is part of Common Core, we can’t have the one-size-fits-all and pretend because the words Common Core have been removed from the education lexicon, that we removed the content and substance of that,” says Fank Cannon.

Here’s the thing: Unless Trump takes a personal interest in delivering on his campaign promise, nothing in Betsy DeVos’ background as a Bush protégé makes it likely she will act. A good first step would be getting Common Core critics like Prof. Milgram, Sandra Stotsky, Jane Robbins, and Heather Crossin in a room with the President and the Education secretary to share their concerns about what must be done. (For more from the author of “Will Trump Act to End Common Core’s Disastrous Math Slump?” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

U.S. Military Seems More Ready for Motherhood Than Warfare

/0 Comments/in , /by

On the list on touchy hot-button issues, pregnancy in the military is at the top. The branches are loath to disclose the numbers and costs, not to mention the harm to combat readiness.

Richard Pollock recently got the latest numbers for pregnancy on Navy vessels through a Freedom of Information Act request. In 2016 they were up to an all-time high of 16 percent or 3840 women. About 10% of active duty women are pregnant at any given time. The Marines are at the low end of military pregnancies at 8 percent. Yet to be revealed is how much these thousands of pregnancies are costing per year in wasted training, taxpayer dollars and lack of readiness for combat.

A pregnant active-duty female has several options. She may decide to have an abortion, which will be funded by tax-payers. She may decide, as thousands of women do annually, to exit the military before her service contract’s end. She may decide to have the baby, which will be fully funded.

If she’s on ship or overseas deployment, she’ll be sent back to the states at a cost of roughly $30,000, her expensive military and combat training up to that point rendered useless. If she doesn’t opt to leave the military, the duties she can perform will be increasingly limited as the pregnancy progresses so as not to endanger mother or child. Postpartum she’ll have 18 weeks of maternity leave and up to twelve months to return to fitness standards — timelines that were extended in 2016 from nine and six respectively by then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus.

Having made policy of feminist ideology, the U.S. military treats pregnancy as “no different than a broken leg,” so in many cases she won’t be replaced. Rather, her spot in her unit will be held open until she’s again fit for duty, leaving her peers with extra work until her return. That is, if she does return.

Unintended Pregnancies Higher Among Military Women

Of course, pregnancy is nothing like a broken leg, but don’t expect those who are pushing for more females in the ranks to concede such an obvious point. There’s nothing comparable for men that renders them non-deployable. And a broken leg doesn’t come with an eighteen-year child-rearing commitment or a taxpayer-funded abortion. The Navy changed postpartum tours from four months to twelve in 2007, which means overall a pregnant sailor is on limited duty for about 21 months. When she is transferred to shore duty, she pushes out others who may be more qualified for those billets, and often cannot perform the duties required.

What’s more, most are unintended. The rate of unintended pregnancy in the Navy as reported by Stars & Stripes was a stunning 74 percent in 2013 and these numbers are only getting higher. Some claim this is due to lack of access to birth control, but practically every kind of birth control is obtainable by military women, including while deployed. Many are simply choosing not to use it.

According to one 2012 study by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology “[S]urveys of active-duty personnel of reproductive age demonstrate that although 70 to 85 percent were sexually active, nearly 40 percent used no contraception.” The study also found that “women actively serving in the military have lower reported contraception use and higher rates of unintended pregnancy than the general U.S. population.”

According to the Marine Corps’ 2015 combat integration analysis, over a two year period “the number of pregnant lance corporals averaged around 50 per month.This represents 12 percent to 17 percent of medically non-deployable female lance corporals.”

Meanwhile, the Navy Times reports that the Navy is short slightly more than the number of pregnant sailors: “Currently there are 3,898 unfilled billets at sea. …” Policy makers don’t connect the consequences of pushing for more female representation in the ranks and billet shortfalls when many of them become pregnant.

Dangerous Consequences

This greatly harms our readiness to engage our enemies. “Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50 percent more frequently to return to land duty, according to documents obtained from the Navy,” Pollock reports. In 2013 the Globe & Mail reported that “one study of a brigade operating in Iraq found that female soldiers were evacuated at three times the rate of male soldiers — and that 74 percent of them were evacuated for pregnancy-related issues.”

It was the same 3:1 rate, “largely due to pregnancy,” during Desert Shield/Desert Storm according to the 1992 Presidential Commission on Women in the Armed Services. Cohesion built up over months of training, the value of her training and care, and potentially a critical leadership role are all lost, and her peers have to make up her job function. These losses are due to the consequences of consensual behavior (except, of course, in the case of rape). These losses get higher and the readiness gets lower every year.

The Left wants us to pretend that this doesn’t matter. It’s just the cost of doing business with a gender-integrated military. In fact, one of the primary concerns of the heavily feminist Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) was to ensure women are not discriminated against because of pregnancy. Their 2015 report states: “Several formal programs exist to prevent pregnancy-related discrimination and help military women balance their careers with parenthood.” The Air Force even funds a sabbatical program whereby personnel can take one to three years off to have children.

We’re not allowed to acknowledge that pregnancy is antithetical to preparing for and executing warfare, whether it’s combatant ships, combat pilot jobs or ground combat units. But if America knew how much we were spending on pregnancy, prenatal and postpartum care for women who can only serve in a limited capacity for two years, or how much we’re spending to train women who end up leaving the military to have their babies, it might put some things in perspective. For example, early in the Iraq War there were reports of deployed servicemen having to buy their own body armor and protective gear and of inadequately armored vehicles.

Our Marine aircraft are at a mere 30 percent readiness and cuts to training budgets have resulted in fatal flight crashes. Military Times recently reported:

Only three of the Army’s 58 Brigade Combat Teams are ready to fight; 53 percent of Navy aircraft can’t fly; the Air Force is 723 fighter pilots short; and the Marine Corps needs 3,000 more troops. “We’re just flat-out out of money” to address those immediate needs and provide the additional personnel and maintenance funding to plan for the future, Navy Adm. William Moran said…

This is what happens when the top military priority is how the force looks instead of how it functions in wartime. Our priorities have been way out of whack. The new Secretary of Defense James Mattis should take a good hard look at our pitiful state of non-readiness and make changes accordingly. We cannot afford to continue this status quo. Our peer enemies like Iran are doing no such thing. They’re preparing for serious warfare. So should we. (For more from the author of “U.S. Military Seems More Ready for Motherhood Than Warfare” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Obama Audited Billy Graham, so Wiretapping Trump Tower Is Not a Stretch

/0 Comments/in , /by

The Obama Administration engaged in eight years of political payback and heavy-handed bullying that specifically targeted their “political enemies.” They used the Internal Revenue Service to wage an ugly campaign of bullying and intimidation to silence Tea Party groups and Christian ministries.

In 2013 President Obama’s minions sent IRS agents to bully the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. “I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Franklin Graham wrote in a letter to the White House. “This is morally wrong and unethical — indeed some would call it ‘un-American.’”

The BGEA’s only crime against Obama was to urge voters to back candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles. They also supported an effort to support traditional marriage in the state of North Carolina.

I believe the government used the power of the IRS to silence dissent and punish those who refused to comply. They targeted Billy Graham, America’s pastor. Just let that sink in, folks.

So if the Obama Administration went after Billy Graham, it’s not out of the realm of possibility they wiretapped Donald Trump. The Mainstream Media believes such a charge is absurd, but is it really? (Read more from “Obama Audited Billy Graham, so Wiretapping Trump Tower Is Not a Stretch” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

House Republicans Release Text of Obamacare Repeal, Conservatives Call for Action ‘Now’

/0 Comments/in , /by

A key conservative lawmaker is urging Republicans to make good on their promises to repeal Obamacare before they get distracted by other legislative issues.

“We think it is time to repeal it, clean repeal, and replace with market-centered health care [and] patient-centered health care,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said of conservatives and Obamacare in a phone interview Monday with The Daily Signal.

A senior Republican congressional aide told The Daily Signal in an email to expect the text of a “consensus” bill to repeal and replace Obamacare “early this week.” By Monday evening, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his leadership team had posted the language of the bill and talking points online, referring to action made possible by “unified Republican government” under President Donald Trump:

Asked whether he was concerned that repeal of Obamacare might be sidetracked to address upcoming legislative matters such as the debt limit, Jordan told The Daily Signal: “I hope not.”

“Let’s do Obamacare repeal and replace right now,” Jordan, former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said. “Then we can move on to the other issues and deal with tax reform and deal with the budget issues and deal with the debt ceiling issues and all the other things we gotta get to. It could be so simple.”

But Jordan said he is calling for passage of a repeal bill along with “a separate piece of legislation, done at the same time which replaces Obamacare with patient-centered, market-centered, family-centered health care.”

He made a similar point last week on “Fox & Friends”:

Trump has pledged to sign legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare as soon as possible, and increasingly has shown a preference for one bill that does both. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said as much in an interview earlier Monday with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

For procedural reasons amid Democrats’ opposition to undoing Obamacare, however, conservatives such as Jordan see a danger in trying to do both in one bill.

Jordan said Obamacare repeal is a “top priority for the American people,” and he will vote for nothing less than the 2015 repeal bill that was passed by both chambers and vetoed in January 2016 by President Barack Obama.

Other pressing matters that could distract from the Obamacare debate include the debt limit deadline March 16, Judiciary Committee hearings for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, which commence March 20, and the expiration date for the current continuing resolution funding the government, April 28.

On March 16, the ability of the U.S. Treasury “to borrow on the credit of the U.S. government” will expire and Congress either must balance the budget or raise the debt limit.

On April 28, the continuing resolution adopted in December to fund the government will expire. A continuing resolution is a type of appropriations or spending bill that sets money aside for government use.

Congress ought to repeal Obamacare before it turns to other items such as the debt limit, argues Thomas Binion, director of policy outreach at The Heritage Foundation.

“I believe they must address [Obamacare] before moving on to other items for several reasons,” Binion said in an email to The Daily Signal. “The first is that they have to pass appropriations to fund the government by April 28 when the current [continuing resolution] expires. If Obamacare is still the law of the land at that time, Congress will face the impossible choice of whether or not to fund Obamacare.”

In 2013, Republican lawmakers’ refusal to fund Obamacare resulted in a 16-day partial shutdown of the government, Binion noted, and a similar funding battle could occur if lawmakers don’t address Obamacare before April 28.

With Ryan and other House GOP leaders releasing the text of an Obamacare repeal and replace bill Monday evening, Congress may be able to get ahead of the game.

The senior aide noted that several high-level meetings took place Friday and Saturday to finalize the Obamacare legislation, adding:

There was a large staff meeting at the White House Friday led by OMB Director Mulvaney to identify and resolve the few outstanding issues. The health care committees in Congress worked over the weekend with the White House to tie up loose ends and incorporate technical guidance from the administration.

On Saturday, the aide said, Ryan had a conference call that included Mulvaney, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Greg Walden, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, and Andrew Bremberg, an assistant to Trump who directs the Domestic Policy Council.

House and Senate staff worked through Saturday to address unresolved issues. “We are in a very good place right now, and while drafting continues, we anticipate the release of final bill text early this week,” the aide said earlier Monday.

In the House, the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees were tentatively scheduled to vote on the repeal bill this week, followed by a full House vote later this month, The New York Times reported.

AshLee Strong, national press secretary for Ryan, told The Daily Signal that Congress was on the cusp of Obamacare repeal.

“We are now at the culmination of a yearslong process to keep our promise to the American people,” Strong said in an email.

Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America, the lobbying affiliate of The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that despite the slowed progress of Obamacare repeal, it remains the highest priority for conservatives.

“President Trump and congressional leaders understand Obamacare repeal is the first major agenda item, and they have said so publicly,” Holler said. “Even though the repeal effort slowed dramatically over the last month, the expectation remains that Obamacare can and will be repealed.” (For more from the author of “House Republicans Release Text of Obamacare Repeal, Conservatives Call for Action ‘Now'” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Experts Differ on Whether Trump’s New Travel Ban Makes America Safer

/0 Comments/in , /by

President Donald Trump sought to settle legal and political concerns Monday with his revised executive order pausing travel from six countries plagued by terrorism—and temporarily keeping out all refugees.

While the order contains notable revisions—including removing restrictions on Iraq, a crucial counterterrorism partner, and applying restrictions only to prospective new travelers—its intent remains the same.

“The executive order allows for the proper review and establishment of standards to prevent terrorist or criminal infiltration by foreign nationals,” the first sentence reads.

In making the case for the policy, the revised order contains a clause noting about 300 pending FBI counterterror investigations involve individuals who came to the U.S. as refugees.

Government officials declined to say how many of the 300 are from the six countries targeted in the order, or how many are currently refugees or simply were refugees at one time. The administration also did not say whether any of the 300 actually have been charged with a crime.

“As threats to our security continue to evolve and change, common sense dictates we continually re-evaluate and reassess the system we rely upon to protect our country,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a Monday press conference announcing the revised order, where he was joined by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and John Kelly, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

“While no system can be made completely infallible,” Tillerson said, “the American people can have high confidence we are identifying ways to improve the vetting process and keep terrorists from entering our country.”

National security and diplomatic experts credit the Trump administration for changes, but some continue to question the target of the order—foreign nationals from countries already deemed terror threats by the Obama administration and Congress—at a time when recent terrorist attacks against the U.S. have been perpetrated by American citizens or legal residents.

“The Trump administration has taken out all of the things that caused courts to object, which is good news,” said James Jeffrey, U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012 and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration.

“There is nothing illegal or objectionable about it. But the substance of the policy is small potatoes either way,” Jeffrey, who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, added in an interview with The Daily Signal. “There is not much to get excited about and not much in here that will make America safer.”

‘Big Step Forward’

The new order addresses many of the concerns that followed Trump’s announcement of the original directive five weeks ago. Federal courts froze that order, which critics said resulted in confusion and chaos at airports and some labeled a “Muslim ban.”

As the administration evaluates how to enhance vetting procedures, Trump’s new order bars for 90 days the issuance of new visas for citizens and residents of six countries. It also pauses for 120 days resettlement to the U.S. of refugees from anywhere in the world.

Syrian refugees no longer are subject to an indefinite ban, as they were in Trump’s first order.

The 90-day travel restriction applies to Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya, six Muslim-majority and terrorism-prone countries that were contained in the original order.

Jeffrey, like other experts, lauded the Trump administration for removing Iraq from this list, saying doing so “makes a hell of a lot of sense” because Baghdad has a functioning government that is allied with the U.S. to fight the Islamic State, the terrorist group also known as ISIS.

“The deletion of Iraq is a big step forward,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, in an email to The Daily Signal. “Of the remaining governments, most are adversarial, nonexistent/weak, or at best lukewarm in their willingness to work with the United States.”

“Thus there is a certain logic in the list—even if I consider the need for such a list unpersuasive, given where most attacks have originated in the past and given our existing rigorous vetting practices,” O’Hanlon said.

Treating Visa Holders Fairly

When the government lifts the suspension on refugees, the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. will be capped at 50,000 for fiscal year 2017. The U.S. admitted 84,995 refugees in fiscal year 2016, the most since 1999.

The new order takes effect March 16, and does not apply to individuals from the six countries who had valid visas at 5 p.m. ET on Jan. 27. In addition, travelers who hold valid visas and are in transit still will be allowed to enter the U.S.

The order also provides other exceptions not contained in the initial order for travelers from the six countries who are legal permanent residents of the United States, dual nationals who use a passport from another country, and individuals who already have been granted asylum or refu­gee status.

“This revision makes clear that the focus of the order is on dealing with the emerging threat of foreign fighters coming out of the region to the U.S. rather than punishing or ostracizing Muslim peoples,” said James Carafano, a national security expert at The Heritage Foundation.

“It is also notable how the administration has gone out of its way to accommodate current visa holders to ensure they are treated fairly and not penalized by a plan that focused on future threats,” Carafano said.

Facing Complex Challenges

Critics of Trump’s order counter that none of the recent terrorist attacks in the U.S.—from San Bernardino to Orlando—were perpetrated by anyone from the nations listed in the travel ban. Nationals from the countries targeted have killed no one on American soil.

A recent Department of Homeland Security report found that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.”

The Trump administration has fought the findings of that report, which was cited in recent media accounts. The administration argues it was misleading and excluded classified information that would show a more dangerous threat.

“When you look at the six countries subject to the travel ban, they are either amidst a civil war or a state sponsor of terrorism,” Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“From a logical standpoint, it would make sense to have greater scrutiny when looking at immigrants or visitors from these countries,” added Schanzer, who is currently vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “With that said, what we really need is to see an assessment from the intelligence community about those risks, and it’s unclear if we have that here.”

In a briefing with reporters Monday afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the list of six targeted countries could expand if the U.S. government, after reviewing vetting procedures, finds gathering and sharing of information to be unsatisfactory.

‘Crisis Will Continue’

Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security, State Department, Office of National Intelligence, and Justice Department are to develop “uniform screening standards for all immigration programs government-wide.”

Schanzer argued that the United States and other Western countries will continue to confront challenges related to refugee and immigration flows from countries devastated by terrorism unless the U.S. does more to help resolve underlying conflicts.

“We would not be having this flow of refugees and migrants if it were not for several conflicts taking place across the Middle East,” Schanzer said, adding:

We are not trying to solve these conflicts. As long as we are merely managing these conflicts, this crisis will continue. To a certain extent, all of this is a distraction from challenges we face, which boil down to ISIS and the Islamic Republic of Iran wreaking havoc across the Middle East.

(For more from the author of “Experts Differ on Whether Trump’s New Travel Ban Makes America Safer” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Surveillance Allegation Could Trace to Reported Court Order

/0 Comments/in , /by

There isn’t yet a paper trail, but there is a potential press trail to follow on President Donald Trump’s claim of surveillance by the Obama administration. Still, there’s a question about whether this action was illegal and whether the former president directed it—as Trump asserted in a series of tweets Saturday.

The genesis of the wiretapping story seems to be reporting from Heat Street and the BBC that President Barack Obama’s administration sought a FISA court order, named for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to monitor the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia.

“It could be FISA, it could be surveillance. Look, I think [Trump has] made it clear there have been continued reports that have been out there,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Monday. “I think the president made it clear yesterday that he wants Congress to go in and look at this. I think there is substantial reporting out there from other individuals and sources.”

Democrats and the media widely criticized Trump’s Saturday tweets for being posted without evidence.

J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department attorney, said “wiretapping,” could be the wrong term and might distract from actual spying that must have occurred because of the leaked transcripts of former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s conversations.

“[The surveillance] may be from FISA, it may not be. If this is [National Security Agency] intercepts for the transcript without FISA, that would be worse, and leaking to The New York Times would demonstrate an astounding level of ideology in the bureaucracy,” Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

Adams further disagreed with the White House’s demand for a congressional investigation.

“Congress does not have the skill set to do anything about this. If it goes to the House Oversight Committee, it will languish for months,” Adams said. “Trump needs to appoint an acting deputy attorney general with sharp elbows who isn’t afraid of the bureaucracy, not an Obama appointee.”

Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, announced a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA, the Justice Department, and the Treasury Department regarding records related to the investigation of Flynn and his communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

“President Trump is onto something. The Obama-connected wiretapping and illegal leaks of classified material concerning President Trump and Gen. Flynn are a scandal,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a public statement. “Judicial Watch aims to get to the truth about these crimes, and we hope the Trump administration stands with us in the fight for transparency.”

The first report appeared on the website Heat Street, a U.S and U.K. website launched by Louise Mensch, a former member of Parliament who wrote a story in November—one day before the election—that said:

Two separate sources with links to the counterintelligence community have confirmed to Heat Street that the FBI sought, and was granted, a FISA court warrant in October, giving counterintelligence permission to examine the activities of ‘U.S. persons’ in Donald Trump’s campaign with ties to Russia … The first request, which, sources say, named Trump, was denied back in June, but the second was drawn more narrowly and was granted in October after evidence was presented of a server, possibly related to the Trump campaign, and its alleged links to two banks; SVB Bank and Russia’s Alfa Bank.

However, Mensch tweeted that she didn’t use the term “wiretapping” in her piece.

Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” when asked if there was a FISA, “I can deny it … not to my knowledge.”

During the Monday press gaggle, Spicer said regarding Clapper: “I take him at his word that he wasn’t aware [of a FISA order], but that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.”

On another Sunday show, ABC’s “This Week,” former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served in the George W. Bush administration, said it was likely the Trump administration would find that there was surveillance.

“I think he’s right in that there was surveillance and that it was conducted at the behest of the attorney general—at the Justice Department,” Mukasey said. He added, “It means there was some basis to believe that somebody in Trump Tower may have been acting as an agent of the Russians for whatever purpose. Not necessarily the election, but for some purpose.”

Obama gave what seemed to be a denial through a spokesman over the weekend.

“A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with an independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,” spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement. “As part of that practice neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

The Guardian on Jan. 10 also reported a judge rejected the FBI’s request for a FISA warrant in June, but only cited the Heat Street article to confirm an order had been granted.

Still, others reported the court granted the FISA warrant.

On Jan. 12, BBC News reported that a judge rejected the Department of Justice’s first application for a FISA court order in June. The report says the Department of Justice “returned with a more narrowly drawn order in July and were rejected again. Finally, before a new judge, the order was granted, on 15 October, three weeks before Election Day.”

Neither Mr. Trump nor his associates are named in the FISA order, which would only cover foreign citizens or foreign entities—in this case the Russian banks. But ultimately, the investigation is looking for transfers of money from Russia to the United States, each one, if proved, a felony offense.

Talk radio host Mark Levin, a constitutional attorney and former chief of staff to Attorney General Edwin Meese III in the Ronald Reagan administration, cited these and other news reports during an interview Sunday on Fox News.

“The issue isn’t whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign or transition of surrogates; the issue is the extent of it,” Levin said.

The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column gave Trump “Four Pinocchios,” for the surveillance claim, stating: “Even if these media reports are accepted as accurate, neither back up Trump’s claims that Obama ordered the tapping of his phone calls. Moreover, they also do not back up the administration’s revised claim of politically motivated investigations.” (For more from the author of “Trump Surveillance Allegation Could Trace to Reported Court Order” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Professors, Students Demand College Start Fund for Illegal Aliens

/0 Comments/in , /by

Cornell University students hosted a protest to demand the college provide funds for all illegal immigrant students.

The protest, organized by the Cornell Coalition for Inclusive Democracy, drew about 250 students and faculty members, reports Heat Street.

The protesters want the school to provide special funding for all immigrant students, even those not protected by the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order.

“Our endangered community members still lack explicit assurance that the institution that took them in will protect them,” professor Russell Rickford said. “That’s shameful.”

The group also wants Cornell to provide on-campus housing and shelter for immigrant students who have been warned from traveling overseas. It wants the college to fight for legislation that protects illegal immigrants. (Read more from “Professors, Students Demand College Start Fund for Illegal Aliens” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump vs. Deep State: Full-Scale Information War Revealed

/1 Comment/in , /by

By Shepard Ambellas. It appears that the Deep State’s push to oust President Trump and close associates may have backfired to some extent after President Trump revealed on Twitter that outgoing president Barack Obama had previously requested that Trump Tower be wiretapped. However, make no mistake, the powers-that-be have no intentions of stopping now and are in fact suiting up for battle — this is a literal information war and it has gone full-scale. . .

They are trying to create a trail of fake news which they can later use to target popular independent news sources (like Restoring Liberty) which they’ve already deemed to be ‘enemy combatants’ under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In fact, deep state lingo injected into the 2017 NDAA offers provisions for drone strikes on such targets. . .

It all came together for the when U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) announced that the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act legislation was in fact signed into law as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report which is aimed at countering “foreign propaganda and disinformation” . . .

It’s sad to say, but it’s a control war. It’s all about maintaining full control of the helm at all times. It’s a simple as that. That’s all it’s ever been about and that’s all it ever will be about. That’s just how it works. The system was designed a certain way — it can be used or abused and powerful forces have learned how to manipulate it. . .

For decades, through a legacy, the corrupt global elite at the top of the food chain (i.e. the Rothschilds, Rockefelllers, Soros and others) and their prized deep state controllers (i.e. Barack & Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton & Hillary Clinton and others) have salted their most valuable players (i.e. John Podesta, John McCain, Anderson Cooper and others) into every nook and cranny of government and media. Their job is to manage and pull the strings of their M.V.P.s to create a desired narrative just as the man behind the curtain did in the 1939 fantasy adventure film the Wizard of Oz. . .

Trump’s victory was a barn burner. Thus far Donald Trump has played nearly a perfect hand which has cost the elite a good portion of their power and control. They were blindsided. They were so arrogant with their fake news reports and their fake polls leading up to the election that they didn’t even see it coming. They lost — and now they are pissed. (Read more from “Trump vs. Deep State: Full-Scale Information War Revealed” HERE)

__________________________________________

FBI Director Urges Justice Dept. To Reject Trump Claim on Wiretap

By Solange Reyner. FBI Director James Comey on Sunday asked the Justice Department to publicly knock down President Donald Trump’s allegations that former President Barack Obama directed intelligence agencies to wiretap his phones during the presidential election, The New York Times reports.

Comey has said in private that the charges are entirely false and has been working to get the DOJ to reject the claim because “it falsely insinuates that the FBI broke the law,” officials told the Times.

Trump early Saturday, through a series of tweets, accused Obama of ordering wiretaps on his telephones in Trump Tower as part of an investigation into whether his campaign was communicating with the Russian government. He equated the alleged tapping to the Nixon/Watergate scandal and called it “McCarthyism.”

Trump’s aides on Sunday called for a congressional investigation into whether Obama had abused his investigative powers during the 2016 election. (Read more from “FBI Director Urges Justice Dept. To Reject Trump Claim on Wiretap” HERE)

__________________________________________

Levin: Trump a ‘Victim’ of ‘Police-State Tactics’

By Eric Mack. Conservative radio host and constitutional lawyer Mark Levin slammed the Obama administration for its politicized overreach and “police-state tactics,” claiming Sunday morning evidence backing President Donald Trump’s claims Obama spied on him using wiretaps “is overwhelming.”

“This is not about President Trump’s tweeting,” Levin, told “Fox & Friends Sunday.” “This is about the Obama administration spying. And the question is not whether they spied – we know they went to court twice. Who they did spy? Trump transition, Trump surrogates.

“. . . Two separate sources with links to the counter intelligence community have confirmed that the FBI sought and was granted a foreign intelligence surveillance act court [order]. This is spying.” . . .

“Donald Trump is the victim,” Levin told Fox News. “His campaign is the victim. His transition team is the victim. His surrogates are the victim. These are police-state tactics.” (Read more from “Levin: Trump a ‘Victim’ of ‘Police-State Tactics'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.