Trump Nominee Not Hindered by Bernie Sanders’ Religious Litmus Test

No thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., President Donald Trump’s pick for the Office of Management and Budget is one step closer to his new job.

After a faith-based grilling that left Sanders red-faced and Americans in shock, Russell Vought’s nomination squeaked out of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by the narrowest of margins, 8-7.

The hearings caught the country’s attention when Sanders made the case that Christians like Vought are unfit for public office—even in jobs that have nothing to do with faith.

While Sanders fired shot after shot at the Office of Management and Budget’s soon-to-be second-in-command, Vought was the picture of poise, explaining that he thinks everyone has inherent dignity, even if they don’t agree with him that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

No thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., President Donald Trump’s pick for the Office of Management and Budget is one step closer to his new job.

After a faith-based grilling that left Sanders red-faced and Americans in shock, Russell Vought’s nomination squeaked out of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee by the narrowest of margins, 8-7.

The hearings caught the country’s attention when Sanders made the case that Christians like Vought are unfit for public office—even in jobs that have nothing to do with faith.

While Sanders fired shot after shot at the Office of Management and Budget’s soon-to-be second-in-command, Vought was the picture of poise, explaining that he thinks everyone has inherent dignity, even if they don’t agree with him that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

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It was a surreal scene for anyone watching, especially since Vought’s convictions—not his qualifications—were Sanders’ main concerns.

Like many in the media who were taken aback, National Review’s Ian Tuttle explains how the left’s religion of non-religion is unfairly influencing politics.

There is a long and stupid tradition of believing that the American right threatens to impose an evangelical Christian theocracy on the United States—that every Republican lawmaker is looking to erect an official church and make women cover their ankles. In reality, it is the proudly irreligious left that has smuggled religious debates back into our politics. It is the unabashedly secular left that has knocked down the ‘wall of separation’ and made the afterlife an immanent political issue.

Fortunately, plenty of others piled on, including the Conservative Action Project (which released this letter demanding that liberals stop their religious intolerance) and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma leader fired back at Sanders’ religious test.

There was some dispute in a different hearing about Russell Vought and his faith and this came up in a budget meeting about is he too much of a Christian to be able to serve. I just want to make a public statement that that’s appalling to me that that became part of the debate at the dais that someone made a statement that because he was strong in his Christian faith he was not qualified to serve.

Article XI of the Constitution says there’s no religious test for any officer of the United States and that shouldn’t even have been a discussion in that committee hearing. I’m glad that wasn’t a discussion or a consideration here, but it is one of the things that we should not evaluate people. He’s in an economics position. It doesn’t matter if he’s Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or no faith at all. We’re faith-neutral. And so I’m grateful that was not an issue for any of us and I would hope that’s not a growing trend for us as a body.

Disclosure: Russ Vought’s wife, Mary Vought, works for The Heritage Foundation, the parent organization of The Daily Signal. Russ Vought was formerly employed by Heritage Action for America, the think tank’s lobbying affiliate.

(For more from the author of “Trump Nominee Not Hindered by Bernie Sanders’ Religious Litmus Test” please click HERE)

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This School Board Leader Tried to Rig a Public Forum in Favor of Transgender Advocates. That’s Unconstitutional.

Stacking the deck at the casino makes for bad feelings among friends.

Things get more serious when you’re a government official stacking the deck at public forums with speakers in favor of your personal political views. That not only makes for bad public policy—it violates the First Amendment.

The Prince William County Virginia School Board convened last Wednesday to vote on a proposed rule that would undermine the principle of student privacy between the sexes. It would have laid the groundwork for opening up sex-specific locker rooms, showers, and other private facilities to members of the opposite sex.

Many parents have legitimate convictions that maleness and femaleness are essential biological, anatomical attributes, and they would like to openly defend the policy of maintaining privacy between the sexes, despite the claims of gender identity advocates.

Nonetheless, before the meeting, Ryan Sawyers, school board chairman, sent a text to the clerk telling her to frontload a list of favored speakers to comment before those who had already signed up.

This violated local school board rules, which say the public is to speak in the order that each citizen contacts the clerk.

This is particularly significant because at Prince William County Public School board meetings, only 10 to 15 people get to speak before the vote, since initial public comment is limited to 30 minutes. Everybody else has to wait until after the vote to make their views known.

But dishing out political leftovers to one’s opponents and frontloading the initial discussion with allies goes beyond violating local school board policy. It’s flatly unconstitutional.

School board meetings must protect viewpoint neutrality to satisfy First Amendment principles of free speech. If a school board chooses to open a forum for public comment, the process of determining who speaks cannot be determined by the viewpoint of the speaker.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit agrees.

In Child Evangelism Fellowship of MD, Inc. v. Montgomery County Public Schools, the majority opinion notes that “‘the state may be justified in reserving [its forum] for certain groups or for the discussion of certain topics,’ subject only to the limitation that its actions must be viewpoint-neutral and reasonable.”

And just last week, the Supreme Court reiterated in Matal v. Tam that government officials cannot “regulate speech in ways that favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others.”

The traditional method of letting people speak in the order they sign up with the clerk is an orderly way to achieve these objectives. But giving the chairman the power to decide who speaks before the vote does not satisfy these criteria.

If the chairman is not bound by a limiting principle, then he has unbridled discretion to determine who can use the coveted 30 minutes of speech. It will be difficult, over time, for him not to hand-pick allies, particularly since he is a Democratic candidate for Congress.

Indeed, the first speaker on the chairman’s list, Danica Roem, is also a political player, a local Democrat recently nominated to run against incumbent Republican Bob Marshall in a Virginia House of Delegates race.

To be clear, after the chairman’s text messages were made public and Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter to Prince William County Public Schools, the chairman did not stick to his original plan on Wednesday night.

But it remains unclear whether the final speaking order came from a new alternative list he created, or whether he reverted back to school board policy and used the original list of speakers, based on the order that local citizens signed up to speak.

That is precisely the problem. In the American system of ordered liberty, government officials don’t have the power to make that choice. They cannot dish out fast passes for the view they like while relegating opposing views to second-class status.

Rather, if officials choose to set up times for public comment, they must set up an orderly process that respects the free speech of all participants.

All voices should equally receive free speech protection, because our Constitution recognizes that when the government plays favorites, everyone’s freedom flounders. (For more from the author of “This School Board Leader Tried to Rig a Public Forum in Favor of Transgender Advocates. That’s Unconstitutional.” please click HERE)

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Feds Break Silence, Try to Explain Why They Didn’t Notify Victims in Secret Non-Prosecution Deal With Child Sex Offender Jeffery Epstein

Federal prosecutors went on the offensive this month, denying allegations that they bowed to pressure from billionaire Palm Beach resident Jeffrey Epstein and his high-priced lawyers at the expense of dozens of teenage girls he sexually abused.

In their first public comment since 2007 — when they negotiated a deal that allowed Epstein to escape federal charges — prosecutors filed hundreds of pages of documents in U.S. District Court, explaining what led to the now infamous non-prosecution agreement that has been decried as “a sweetheart deal.”

Contrary to claims by attorneys representing two of Epstein’s victims in a lawsuit against the federal government, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marie Villafana said she and her superiors were trying to help the traumatized young women when they agreed to let Epstein plead guilty to state prostitution charges.

The now-64-year-old money manager, who spends most of his time on his estate in the Virgin Islands, served 13 months of an 18-month sentence in the Palm Beach County Stockade. He was allowed to leave each day to go to work. . .

In their [pending] lawsuit, the victims’ attorneys, Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell, say [one of the released documents] is evidence of their claim that prosecutors lied to the victims. They also claim that prosecutors never told Epstein’s victims about the plea deal. (Read more from “Feds Break Silence, Try to Explain Why They Didn’t Notify Victims in Secret Non-Prosecution Deal Child Sex Offender Jeffery Epstein” HERE)

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SICK: Bill Cosby Announces Townhalls to Educate Young Girls on Sex Abuse

Bill Cosby will hold a series of town halls to educate young people on sexual assault, his publicists said.

Andrew Wyatt and Ebonee Benson were on “Good Morning Alabama” Wednesday and said Cosby “wants to get back to work” and is planning town halls that could start as early as next month.

“This issue can affect any young person, especially young athletes of today,” Wyatt said. “And they need to know what they’re facing — when they’re hanging out and partying, when they’re doing certain things they shouldn’t be doing.”

The announcement comes less than a week after Cosby’s high-profile trial on charges of aggravated indecent assault ended in a mistrial. The jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision. . .

Cosby, 79, has been accused of sexual assault or misconduct by at least 50 women [and has settled many civil suits alleging his sexual abuse]. (Read more from “SICK: Bill Cosby Announces Townhalls to Educate Young Girls on Sex Abuse” HERE)

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Monopoly of the Fed Ending: Texas Picks Company to Run Bullion Depository

The Texas bullion depository took a major step closer to reality last week when officials formally announced the private vendor that will run the facility. The creation of a state bullion depository in Texas represents a power shift away from the federal government to the state, and it provides a blueprint that could ultimately end the Fed.

Gov. Greg Abbot signed legislation creating the state gold bullion and precious metal depository in June of 2015. The facility will not only provide a secure place for individuals, business, cities, counties, government agencies and even other countries to to store gold and other precious metals, the law also creates a mechanism to facilitate the everyday use of gold and silver in business transactions. In short, a person will be able to deposit gold or silver – and pay other people through electronic means or checks – in sound money.

Last Wednesday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced Austin-based Lone Star Tangible Assets will build and operate the Texas Bullion Depository. Officials say the facility could open as early as next January.

The company will initially run the depository out of its current Austin location, and will build a new vault facility in the Austin area. Hegar said customers will not have to travel to Austin in order to utilize the depository. The plan is to establish a branch-like system.

“We envision a network of licensed and insured depository agents to help Texans sign up for our services,” Hegar told the Texas Tribune.

Tom Smelker will serve as the state’s first Texas Bullion Depository administrator. He is currently the director of Treasury Operations in the Comptroller’s office.

According to an article in the Star-Telegram, state officials want a facility ‘with an e-commerce component that also provides for secure physical storage for Bullion in an existing facility or a newly constructed facility.’ Officials say plans for a depository should include online services that would let customers accept, transfer and withdraw bullion deposits and related fees.

By making gold and silver available for regular, daily transactions by the general public, the new law has the potential for wide-reaching effect. Professor William Greene is an expert on constitutional tender and said in a paper for the Mises Institute that when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve notes, it would effectively nullify the Federal Reserve and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a ‘reverse Gresham’s Law’ effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes).

As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.

University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus called development of a state gold depository a step toward independence.

This is another in a long line of ways to make Texas more self-reliant and less tethered to the federal government. The financial impact is small but the political impact is telling, Many conservatives are interested in returning to the gold standard and circumvent the Federal reserve in whatever small way they can.

The Texas gold depository will create a mechanism to challenge the federal government’s monopoly on money, and provides a blueprint for other states to follow. If the majority of states controlled their own supply of gold, it could conceivably make the Federal Reserve completely irrelevant.

State bullion depositories are one of four steps states can take to help bring down the Fed. (For more from the author of “Monopoly of the Fed Ending: Texas Picks Company to Run Bullion Depository” please click HERE)

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Wall Street Journal Fires Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Having Stake in CIA-Run Company

The Wall Street Journal today announced that it is sacking its chief foreign affairs correspondent, Jay Solomon, related to “ethical lapses” that were revealed in a Tuesday AP expose that revealed Solomon’s substantial ties to an arms dealer and smuggler for the CIA.

The AP investigation focused on Farhad Azima, an Iran-born magnate who had ferried weapons for the CIA, and founded a company, Denx LLC, that was trying to make a deal with the United Arab Emirates on a surveillance scheme intended to spy on Iran.

Solomon had been using Azima as a key source in his reporting for years, and the AP story found Azima offered Solomon a 10% stake in Denx LLC. Among the services Solomon was expected to provide was to secure a meeting with a top UAE official to sell him on the surveillance proposal.

The AP’s investigation doesn’t reveal how far this relationship actually went, and Solomon denied ever intending to have a business relationship at all. He did however admit to “mistakes in my reporting and entered into a world I didn’t understand.”

The Wall Street Journal insists Solomon forfeited their trust and that they were dismayed by his “poor judgement.” (For more from the author of “Wall Street Journal Fires Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for Having Stake in CIA-Run Company” please click HERE)

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Would Baseball Team Have Mocked Tebow’s Religion Had He Been a Muslim?

The Charleston RiverDogs are in the doghouse with baseball fans after they incessantly mocked the Christian faith of Columbia Fireflies outfielder Tim Tebow.

“While we believe that our promotions were poking fun at Mr. Tebow’s celebrity status rather than his religion or baseball career, our intent was not to offend anyone, and for the fact that we did offend, we are sorry,” general manager Dave Echols wrote in a statement to The Post and Courier.

Tebow, a devout Evangelical Christian, was in Charleston last weekend for a three-game series with the minor league ball club. The Fireflies are the Class A affiliate of the New York Mets.

Every time Tebow came to bat, the “Hallelujah Chorus” was played over the public address system. The Riverdogs’ mascot wore eye black inscribed with “John 3:16” and was filmed “Tebowing” on the field.

You might recall during Tebow’s football career at the University of Florida, he would strike a prayerful pose on the sidelines that became known as “Tebowing.” He was roundly criticized by godless liberals for writing “John 3:16” in eye black during his gridiron days. (Read more from “Would Baseball Team Have Mocked Tebow’s Religion Had He Been a Muslim?” HERE)

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Suppressing Puberty to ‘Treat’ Gender Dysphoria. Really?

Who’s for pumping confused kids full of hormones to suppress the onset of their puberty? It’s a common “therapy” given to boys who think they are girls and vice versa.

According to the must-read new paper “Growing Pains: Problems with Puberty Suppression in Treating Gender Dysphoria” by Paul W. Hruz, Lawrence S. Mayer, and Paul R. McHugh in The New Atlantis, puberty suppression “advocates argue that it represents a prudent and ‘fully reversible’ way to give young people with gender dysphoria and their families time to sort out the difficult issues surrounding gender identity.”

Gender dysphoria is the learned name for the mental malady of men thinking they’re women and vice versa.

The Problems With Suppressing Puberty

The problem, as Hruz and the others outline, it is that drugging kids up is a “radical and experimental” procedure “based more on subjective judgments and speculation than on rigorous empirical studies.” The so-called treatment is “being applied in an uncontrolled and unsystematic manner” and is endangering kids.

Worse is that “the claim that puberty-blocking treatments are ‘fully reversible’ is not supported by scientific evidence, and possible side effects include abnormal bone and muscle development, neurological problems, and infertility.”

And worst, “These treatments may make it more likely that patients whose cross-gender identification would not have persisted past childhood will continue to identify as the opposite sex into adulthood.”

Given the faddish and hip nature of transgenderism, where experimentation is increasing, this is no small worry.

As the authors rightly point out, “Children are not fully capable of understanding what it means to be a man or a woman. Most children with gender identity problems eventually come to accept the gender associated with their sex and stop identifying as the opposite sex.” Drugging confused kids or guiding them with “gender-affirming” words transforms what is often a temporary infatuation into a lifelong affliction.

What LGBT Advocates Say

Now some medical groups, such as the Endocrine Society and World Professional Association for Transgender Health, advocate giving kids who are confused about their biology chemicals to slow the onset of puberty. They do this because, they claim, “gender dysphoria ‘rarely desists after the onset of pubertal development’” and because, they claim, “suppression causes no irreversible or harmful changes in physical development and puberty resumes readily if hormonal suppression is stopped.”

Slowing puberty “gives adolescents more time to explore their gender nonconformity” and — and this a big and — the treatment “may facilitate transition [to living as the opposite sex] by preventing the development of sex characteristics that are difficult or impossible to reverse if adolescents continue on to pursue sex reassignment” (brackets original).

In other words, if a boy imagines he is a girl, stopping his testes (and so on) from developing makes it easier for him to pretend he is a girl. That he will ever become a girl (or woman) is, of course, impossible. Stopping a girl who thinks she’s a boy from developing her breasts makes it easier for her to pretend to be a boy, but that she will ever become a boy (or man) is also impossible.

This new “treatment” is also advocated by the “LGBT advocacy group” the Human Rights Campaign, who have partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Osteopathic Pediatricians. They have put out a guide which says “to prevent the consequences of going through a puberty that doesn’t match a transgender child’s identity, healthcare providers may use fully reversible medications that put puberty on hold.”

When “Treatment” Can Actually Cause the Malady

But, say Hruz and the others,

Whether puberty suppression is safe and effective when used for gender dysphoria remains unclear and unsupported by rigorous scientific evidence. … In the case of gender dysphoria, however, we simply do not know what causes a child to identify as the opposite sex, so medical interventions, like puberty suppression, cannot directly address it.

According to the industry standard Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, anywhere from 70% to 97.8% of boys and 50% to 88% of girls snap out of their gender dysphoria. So there seems little justification for chemical intervention.

Even worse, as Hruz et al. say, “The interventions could, in some cases, be harmful, if they lead children whose gender dysphoria may have resolved in adolescence to instead persist in a dysphoric condition.”

In other words, the treatment can cause the very malady it’s said to be curing.

Hormonal Treatments are Not the Answer

The claim that suppressing puberty in patients with gender dysphoria is “fully reversible” is also thin on evidence. “Given how little we understand about gender identity and how it is formed and consolidated, we should be cautious about interfering with the normal process of sexual maturation.”

And there “have been no controlled clinical trials comparing the outcomes of puberty suppression to the outcomes of alternative therapeutic approaches.” Plus, there is evidence from trials in animals that puberty suppression causes direct harm in neurological development.

We frequently hear from neuroscientists that the adolescent brain is too immature to make reliably rational decisions, but we are supposed to expect emotionally troubled adolescents to make decisions about their gender identities and about serious medical treatments at the age of 12 or younger. And we are supposed to expect parents and physicians to evaluate the risks and benefits of puberty suppression, despite the state of ignorance in the scientific community about the nature of gender identity.

It is obvious some kind of treatment is necessary for children suffering from gender dysphoria. “But as scientists struggle to better understand what gender dysphoria is and what causes it,” the authors argue, “it would not seem prudent to embrace hormonal treatments and sex reassignment as the foremost therapeutic tools for treating this condition.” (For more from the author of “Suppressing Puberty to ‘Treat’ Gender Dysphoria. Really?” please click HERE)

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Canadian Charged in US Airport Terror Attack

A Canadian man from Tunisia shouted in Arabic before stabbing a police officer in the neck at a Michigan airport, and referenced people being killed overseas during the attack that’s now being investigated as an act of terrorism, federal and court officials said.

Amor Ftouhi, 49, of Montreal, was immediately taken into custody. A criminal complaint charging him with committing violence at an airport says Ftouhi asked an officer who subdued him why the officer didn’t kill him.

The attack Wednesday at Bishop International Airport in Flint, Michigan, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, but authorities have no indication at this time that the suspect was involved in a “wider plot,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge David Gelios. (Read more from “Canadian Charged in US Airport Terror Attack” HERE)

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Up to 5.7 Million Noncitizens Voted in Past Presidential Elections, Study Finds

As many as 5.7 million noncitizens voted in the 2008 election and potentially more voted in 2016, according to a new study by Just Facts, a New Jersey-based research group, drawing on information from other studies.

The study—based on data compiled from Harvard University’s Cooperative Congressional Election Study, an analysis published in the journal Electoral Studies co-authored by Old Dominion University faculty, and Census data—also provides some support for what then-President-elect Donald Trump tweeted in late November, when he asserted he won the popular vote if the fraudulent votes were deducted. The Just Facts study did not look specifically at 2016.

The study by Just Facts, which identifies its point of view as conservative/libertarian, but says it maintains independent inquiry, determined as few as 594,000 and as many as 5.7 million noncitizens voted in 2008, in the race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Eighty-two percent of noncitizens who admitted to voting in a survey said “I definitely voted” for Obama.

An estimate from 2012, which the study finds to have less complete data, is between 1 million and 3.6 million noncitizens registered to vote or voted, including both the “self declared” and the “database-matched” populations.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Trump by about 2.9 million votes in 2016.

Previously, an Old Dominion University professor’s analysis found that, extrapolating on a more extensive 2014 study, an estimated 800,000 noncitizens voted in the 2016 election—falling well short of enough to affect the popular vote.

James Agresti, president of Just Facts, was cautious about stating whether this would have changed the result of the popular vote in the 2016 election. He concluded it is likely the number of noncitizen voters in the most recent presidential election was higher than eight years ago.

When asked if noncitizen voters changed the popular vote outcome in 2016, he said, “There is a distinct possibility.”

“The 3 million vote margin would be smack in the middle,” Agresti told The Daily Signal. “I don’t want to say it would. There are a lot of uncertainties. It’s possible.”

There are two ways of looking at the noncitizen voting figures for 2012, Agresti said. Based on the Harvard and Census data, between 1 million and 2.6 million noncitizens voted under “self-declared.” However, there are between 1.2 million and 3.6 million “database-matched” noncitizens who voted that year. So the full range is 1 million to 3.6 million. Because of the overlapping information, Agresti is particularly cautious about drawing conclusions here.

“Just Facts does not have all the data needed to calculate inclusive figures for the 2012 election, so these figures are undercounts,” Agresti said.

Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who has written extensively about voter fraud, was not very familiar with Just Facts, but he said if the findings were true, it lends more evidence to a growing problem.

“This is just another indication of how serious the problem may be and why it is even more important to investigate the possibility of noncitizens voting,” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal.

In May, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence to chair the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

The difference between the Just Facts finding and the estimate from Old Dominion University research is likely because of a different methodology, said Jesse Richman, an associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University, who did the aforementioned study that arrived at 800,000 noncitizen votes in the 2016 election.

“My impression is that the differences arise principally from the different assumptions we made about how to treat individuals for whom there was some ambiguity about whether they voted or not, e.g. individuals who said they didn’t vote but had a validated vote, etc.,” Richman told The Daily Signal in an email. “There are a variety of assumptioans one could make about how to treat those individuals, and my general impression is that this is the main thing driving the differences between our results.”

Richman’s figure was based on the 2014 study he co-authored that looked at noncitizen voting in the 2008 and 2010 elections. Richman applied the methodology from the study of those years to arrive at an estimated 800,000 noncitizen voters in 2016. (For more from the author of “Up to 5.7 Million Noncitizens Voted in Past Presidential Elections, Study Finds” please click HERE)

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