Steven Crowder Nails the Perfect 4-Letter Word for Bernie Sanders

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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (F, 17%) said a lot of crazy things during Tuesday night’s CNN debate on Obamacare.

But the worst was when he essentially told a small business owner he doesn’t care about her business; he’s going to force her to pay for her employee’s health insurance even if she can’t afford it.

Here’s the highlight from Steven Crowder’s live stream (caution – profanity):

At least Sanders is honest about how he would screw small business to advance his ideology. Most progressives have to lie about that to get elected. (For more from the author of “Steven Crowder Nails the Perfect 4-Letter Word for Bernie Sanders” please click HERE)

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Human Trafficking and Slavery: How Flight Attendants Are Saving Lives Miles in the Air

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A young teenager with greasy blond hair sat on an Alaska Airlines flight. She was disheveled and kept her head down when addressed, refusing to answer. A well-dressed older man sat beside her. He made it clear by controlling conversation with others that he was in charge. The whole situation raised a red flag for a flight attendant named Shelia Fedrick.

Fedrick gave the girl a message instructing her to go to the restroom, where she had left a note on the mirror. The disheveled teen wrote on the note that she needed help. Fedrick’s suspicions confirmed, she quickly informed the pilot, who then called the police. The suspect was arrested when the plane landed on charges of human trafficking.

4 Million Trafficked

The United Nations estimates that 4 million women and children are trafficked each year for prostitution or labor. The human trafficking business brings in about $32 billion per year. The widespread problem involves countries all over the world, including the United States — and flight attendants are on the front line in this battle.

When Sheila Fredrick saved the young woman, she did so on her own. Flight attendants got no official training for how to spot sex traffickers and victims. Now they are instructed on how to spot human traffickers and ways to intervene.

Former airline flight attendant Nancy Rivard founded Airline Ambassadors International (AAI) in 1996 to provide for orphans and vulnerable children. In 2009, AAI began providing human trafficking awareness training at 40 U.S. airports and other airports around the world.

Rivard hopes to teach people to think like Shelia. She had the sense that something just wasn’t right. The contrast between the younger disheveled teen and the well-dressed older man made her stop and think. Other signs to look for, according to Rivard, include someone who:

Is being controlled

Is bruised, battered or underfed

Won’t answer questions or make eye contact

Has few or no personal items

Is unusually submissive to the person accompanying him or her

Can’t get away from the person with them, even to go to the restroom

Doesn’t appear to know where he or she is going

The AAI provides seminars with trainers, some of whom are survivors of human trafficking. The in-depth training seminars are geared toward the travel industry, law enforcement, transportation and universities and institutions that offer tour and travel management classes. AAI’s curriculum has been adopted by the International Tourism Management Institute.

If You See Something …

American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, told The Stream that their flight crews receive training offered by The U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The DHS offers training on spotting human trafficking through the DHS Blue Campaign.

“The training is … part of their flight manual, which is regularly reviewed,” AA Media Relations said. “On our employee portal, we link to DHS training on how employees can spot possible instances of human trafficking.” American Airlines also supports AAI through donations, communications support and pass privileges (donated by employees).

Because of Fedrick’s and Rivard’s experiences, the AAI provides training and also works closely with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign to combat human trafficking and prevent more stories like theirs.

The young girl Fedrick rescued? Fedrick keeps in touch with her. She’s now in college and worries about her exams rather than her exploitation. Fedrick’s motto is now: “If you see something, say something.” (For more from the author of “Human Trafficking and Slavery: How Flight Attendants Are Saving Lives Miles in the Air” please click HERE)

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Please, Please Br’er Democrat, Don’t Throw Me Into That Filibuster Patch!

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It might seem perverse to say so, but pro-lifers should welcome a Democratic filibuster of Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Here’s why:

The Democrats are wounded.

What’s left of the squishy GOP establishment is still in shock at Trump’s historic win.

The media are chasing a dozen different imaginary scandals as Steve Bannon’s apparent strategy of “flooding the zone” with bold initiatives seems to be working.

Every time President Trump lights a candle in the White House, the Left is throwing a tantrum and shouting “Reichstag fire!”

We have a nominee who is manifestly qualified, to fill the seat of a deceased, highly respected conservative.

A filibuster now would be so obviously partisan and absurd that it would be easy to justify trashing the filibuster forever.

And that is what we need to do, if we are serious about overturning Roe v. Wade, and removing the Supreme Court as a weapon of leftist rule by decree on every crucial social and Constitutional issue.

The Real Fight is the Next Supreme Court Opening

We conservatives are in a strong position now. In a year or two, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg or another justice finally retires, the balance of power will be different. And the stakes will be infinitely higher. The next SCOTUS nominee won’t just serve to restore the Court’s balance to what it was when it issued the outrageous pile of sophistries that was Obergefell v. Hodges. The next vote could tip it.

So next time, the Left will fight a justice like Gorsuch with the fury of a thousand suns, as the war chests of Planned Parenthood are flooded with money from George Soros and other pro-abortion philanthropists, from Warren Buffet to Bill Gates and beyond. Expect the United Nations and the European Union to issue statements. Because if abortion extremism — in all 50 states, for nine months of pregnancy, for any reason — falls in the United States, it’s in deep trouble all across the world. Expect every demon in Hell to weigh in with his opinion.

If the filibuster still exists when we have to fight that battle, count on a few squishy GOP senators (who don’t really want to overturn Roe v. Wade anyway, in their heart of hearts) to “reluctantly” side with the Democrats. And we’ll end up with some Republican version of Merrick Garland, or worse.

The Supreme Court is the Death Star of the Left

Unless President Trump betrays us, the next judge he chooses, if confirmed, will shift the balance on the Court, giving constitutionalists the votes to strike down a long series of badly decided, lawless precedents that have stymied us for decades, and left liberals free to keep “pushing the envelope” on one outrageous innovation after another. Essentially, up till now, when the left couldn’t win at the ballot box (as it couldn’t win in most states on same-sex “marriage”), it would call in the courts like a napalm strike on a Vietnamese village. Then we would be left helpless, and the left could get busy in its next assault on normalcy, private property, Western culture, or the family. Rinse and repeat.

You need to have been alive in 1980 to fully realize what a sick, miserable game of bait-and-switch we pro-lifers have been subjected to. That’s the year our triumphant, pro-life president — the first president to take such a stand, in the teeth of a pro-choice-led GOP — threw away his first SCOTUS nomination on the unknown quantity that was Sandra Day O’Connor, to keep a pointless campaign promise that some (doubtless pro-choice) consultant convinced him to make, to appoint a woman. Having swept the Senate that year, Reagan could have picked a really worthwhile woman of course — such as Phyllis Schlafly, a brilliant attorney who had just saved the Constitution from the indignity of the Equal Rights Amendment.

But no, we got a squish-center “moderate” Republican instead, and by the time the next opening came, we had lost the Senate — giving the Democrats the chance to rip off the veil of civility and smear Robert Bork. When pro-abortion Republicans-in-name-only such as Arlen Specter sided with the Democrats, Reagan lost that battle and was talked into appointing … Anthony Kennedy!

Yes, the man who would go on to write the infamous “Humpty-Dumpty” opinion on Casey v. Planned Parenthood, which said that it’s essential to American Constitutional freedom that we be able to pull our definitions of morality, meaning, life and the universe out of any bodily orifice. To appreciate how outrageous a betrayal that appointment turned out to be, imagine how Democrats would have reacted if one of Bill Clinton’s or Obama’s appointees issued a majority opinion against abortion, citing Thomas Aquinas on Natural Law.

Stop Nominating Useless Bench Warmers

The threat of the Democrats’ “Borking” a genuinely pro-life, Constitutional conservative nominee via filibuster — a non-Constitutional, purely procedural trick whereby a judge required 60 votes for confirmation instead of 51 — was enough, on those occasions and in the case of David Souter, to drive Republican presidents to waste the crucial choice of a Supreme Court nominee on someone entirely useless.

Oh, they may have issued a few opinions on antitrust law or … something that weren’t as bad as a Democrat’s pick would have been. But on the crucial issues on which our culture and law really turn, they let themselves be guided by the left-wing superstition of a “living Constitution.” What that actually boils down to is simply this: The Supreme Court will serve not to interpret what the words of the Constitution really mean, but instead will act as a perpetual, unelected and unaccountable Constitutional Convention — rewriting the core principles of our jurisprudence as five lawyers see fit, and imposing them on the voters by decree. Any SCOTUS appointee who won’t unmask that power grab, which vitiates democracy, is useless. We might as well nominate a mannequin.

Play to Win or Stop Pretending You’re Pro-Life

Meanwhile, right up till 2016, the Republicans in the Senate have been a supine, timid, sniveling pack of sycophants who would have confirmed a ham sandwich if President Obama had nominated it. Hence they exerted exactly zero moderating influence on the Democrats’ choices of justices. So the fight over the direction of the Supreme Court, and hence of the effective meaning of the U.S. Constitution, has been as rigged up till now as a Harlem Globetrotters game — where our team turned out and went through the motions, obeying a strict set of rules that the other side boldly ignored, since they were playing to win.

It’s time we did the same. And with Trump we have the chance, at last. Any “pro-life” senator who claims that the judicial filibuster is some hallowed legislative tradition essential to preserving the rights of the minority and defending our democratic system against extremism — fill in more high-school civics class boilerplate blather here — is in fact telling you something quite different. He is revealing that he’s not serious, that he doesn’t really want to stop five unelected liberals appointed for life from making all our important laws. He isn’t a pro-lifer or a conservative. He just plays one on TV — in campaign commercials every six years or so. (For more from the author of “Please, Please Br’er Democrat, Don’t Throw Me Into That Filibuster Patch!” please click HERE)

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Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?

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A curious little skirmish happened last week that illustrated how reactionary and unreasonable things are out there right now.

President Trump reportedly wants his staff to look professional and “pulled together” at all times. And he had the nerve to ask the ladies to dress … “like women.” Gasp!

Womankind everywhere arose and took to the Twitterverse to show their outrage over such an insult! Women sent photos of themselves in every manner of professional dress under the hashtag #DressLikeaWoman in order to put the President in his place.

For my money, this is a perfect example of women overreacting, getting offended by something benign, and becoming defensive for no reason.

No one expects the female police officer to wear anything other than the uniform, just like a male police officer. No one expects the female surgeon not to wear surgical scrubs. No one expects a woman on a construction site to wear a skirt and stilettos rather than jeans and steel-toed boots. No one thinks the female soldier wears a different uniform than the men wear. Common sense, people, please.

When a job requires a specific uniform then no one expects the ladies to be dressed differently. Surely, we can all be adult enough to acknowledge that President Trump understands this, and it has nothing at all to do with his specific request. In the White House setting, a certain decorum can and should be expected, and professional dress is part of the package. It’s reasonable to ask the ladies to dress in a professional manner befitting a lady.

Men and Women Are … Different

But what’s all the fuss about anyway? If there is nothing specific about dressing “like a woman” then why does Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner bother to wear a dress these days? Why does he not continue to wear a shirt and tie and loafers? Why did he change his fashion, if it has no bearing on his supposed new gender?

Our society is trying frantically to have everything every which way all at once. And it doesn’t work. Either there is no way of dressing that is unique to the ladies, or there is. If there is, then a man wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a lady, and a lady wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, dress like a man. And if that’s the case, then there must be something unique about being either a man or a woman. There must be a distinction. Everyone celebrating “Caitlyn” is unwittingly conceding that men and women are recognizably different.

Try as we might to erase the line, we still see the difference, and we still act on it. We think and act and live according to that difference. Because that’s sane. It’s healthy and normal and good. Men and women ARE different! That’s a primary feature of the human design, not a bug. It’s not a problem to be solved, or an unfortunate obstacle to be overcome. It’s a beautiful thing to be celebrated and honored.

This #DressLikeAWoman brouhaha is women fighting the wrong fight. This is what annoys me about so many modern women. Rather than get huffy over what it might mean to “dress like a woman,” let’s defend the fact that there is such a thing as a woman, and that a man is not one! After all, if anyone can be either/or or neither/none on any given day, then what does it matter what anyone’s wearing?

I still live on planet Sanity, where men and women do indeed exist, and where they are indeed distinct and separate, and where that’s a wonderful thing. On planet Sanity, the ladies do indeed glory in lovely, feminine fashions while at the same time donning the same uniforms, scrubs and job-specific clothing that the gentlemen wear, when that’s what is required for the job. The gentlemen still get to be gentlemen, and the ladies still get to be ladies, and everyone still gets to do their jobs. Common sense reigns. It’s beautiful.

Protest This

But I digress. How many of the women who got their Tweeters in a twist over this “dress like women” business have paid money to be “entertained” by Fifty Shades of Grey? How many of those women oohed and aahed because Christian Grey was so sexy and rich and complicated that they just forgot they were watching him assault a woman under the guise of romance? How many of those women consume the garbage coming out of Hollywood that constantly treats women like objects for gratification? Rap stars are allowed to call women “bit**es” and “hoes” and shout about every crude sex act, and it’s just art and entertainment and people gobble it up. If you want to protest something, protest this.

Or this: millions of girls in this world are still genitally mutilated by a truly oppressive and violent societal code that does not consider them people with human rights.

Or this: the growing sex trafficking that steals little girls and enslaves them in the most horrifying way imaginable.

Asking the women who work in the White House to dress professionally, like women? That doesn’t even deserve a blip on the radar. American women need to stop overreacting to trivialities and save their indignation for subjects that deserve it. (For more from the author of “Women Protesting President Trump’s Request to Dress ‘Like a Woman’: Are They Serious?” please click HERE)

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Planned Parenthood Sets ‘Abortion Quotas’, Rewards Clinics With Pizza Parties

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The latest video in Live Action’s new investigative series of Planned Parenthood reveals the company rewards its centers with pizza parties for meeting abortion sales quotas – and institutes a “corrective action plan” when they don’t.

“Every center had a goal for how many abortions were done,” Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood manager, explains in the video. “And centers that didn’t do abortions like mine that were family planning clinics had a goal for the number of abortion referrals.

“And it was on this big grid, and if we hit our goal, our line was green. If we were five percent under, it was yellow. If we were 10 percent under, it was red. That’s when we needed to have a corrective action plan – why we didn’t hit the goal, what we’re gonna do differently next time.”

This video, “Planned Parenthood’s Abortion Quotas,” is the fourth in Live Action’s series “Abortion Corporation.” The series has shown Planned Parenthood employees admitting its name is “deceptive” because they don’t promote parenting.

“Ultrasounds for Killing, Not Care at Planned Parenthood” and the accompanying testimony “Planned Parenthood Managers: Ultrasounds for Abortions, Not Care” highlight how Planned Parenthood will only do ultrasounds as part of an abortion – not for women who want to keep their babies. “The Prenatal Care Deception” shows Planned Parenthoods nationwide denying women prenatal care because they “specialize” in abortions. (Read more from “Planned Parenthood Sets ‘Abortion Quotas’, Rewards Clinics With Pizza Parties” HERE)

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Majority of Democrats Consider Christianity as Violent as Islam

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Nearly 66 percent of Democrats believe that while Islam is dangerous, Christianity is just as bad.

This trusting attitude towards Islam is revealed in a new CBS poll. According to the poll of more than 1,000 adults, about seven in 10 Democrats believe that Christianity, Judaism, Mormonism, et al, encourage just as much violence as Islam . . .

Republicans, meanwhile, have a much chillier view of Islam–63 percent saying Islam is more violent than other religions and only two percent calling Islam less violent than other faiths.

This survey comes following 17 years of attacks on Americans inspired by Islamic ideology, including: the 9/11 attacks in 2001; the San Bernardino, California, shooting that left 14 dead, the Pulse Nightclub attack in Orlando that killed 50, as well as attacks in Paris and Nice, France in the last two years. (Read more from “Majority of Democrats Consider Christianity as Violent as Islam” HERE)

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Frank Gaffney Applauds Trump Administration for Moving Towards Terrorist Designation for Muslim Brotherhood

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Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said it was an “incredibly important step” for the Trump administration to consider formally designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

“I hope he’ll do it, and I hope he’ll do it soon,” Gaffney said. “The reason simply being that the Muslim Brotherhood, in many ways, is the leading edge of the global jihad movement worldwide. It’s gotten a pass, in particular in American administrations of both Republican and Democratic stripes since 9/11, I’m sorry to say, by virtue of the fact that they putatively eschewed violence as a means of accomplishing the end-state they seek – which is the imposition of this barbaric totalitarian ideology or doctrine or program. Call it what you will; they call it sharia.”

Gaffney added that the Brotherhood seeks to impose sharia law “worldwide, not just on Muslims, but non-Muslims alike.”

“The truth of the matter is that they do not eschew violence,” he contended. “They use it where they believe they can effectively. One prime example, of course, is their Palestinian franchise known as Hamas. But the idea that we’re going to somehow get along with – let alone do what the Obama administration did in particular: empower, legitimate, fund, even arm the Muslim Brotherhood, in the case of its time and power in Egypt – is simply madness.”

“I’m very heartened that the president has seemingly taken stock of this outfit, recognizes that they are a sharia supremacist program that, in fact, has provided sort of the ideological impetus behind all of the other jihadist enterprises around the world, even of the Shiite stripe. They’ve been motivators and inspiration, and in some cases actually contributed materially to them. So the same objectives of al-Qaeda, of the Islamic State, of Boko Haram, and so on, are being practiced and espoused and sought by the Muslim Brotherhood. They’ll just use stealth and subversion, including in countries like ours, where they don’t feel they’re strong enough to use violence. They should be designated as a terrorist organization for all those reasons, and I hope will be,” he said. (Read more from “Frank Gaffney Applauds Trump Administration for Moving Towards Terrorist Designation for Muslim Brotherhood” HERE)

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Senate Confirms Jeff Sessions as Attorney General

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The Senate voted 52-47 Wednesday night to confirm Jeff Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator and former federal prosecutor, as the nation’s 84th attorney general.

Only one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, joined Republicans in confirming Sessions, who voted “present.”

Sessions, a Republican representing Alabama in the Senate since 1997, will take over a Justice Department that conservatives see as tainted by political corruption during the Obama administration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lauded President Donald Trump’s choice:

Senate Democrats who opposed their colleague’s nomination succeeded in delaying a Judiciary Committee vote while continuing to attack his character. Their tactics ultimately failed to deter Sessions’ confirmation by the full Senate, where Republicans have 52 seats.

During debate Tuesday night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., accused Sessions, 70, of trying to “chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens” when he was a U.S. attorney in Alabama.

The Senate subsequently voted to prohibit Warren from speaking for the remainder of the debate because she had broken a rule against “impugning” a fellow member of the Senate. Among her tweets after the vote:

During his legal career, supporters said, Sessions actually worked to desegregate schools in Alabama and brought criminal charges against Ku Klux Klan members. Blacks who worked with and for Sessions rallied to his defense and disputed 30-year-old allegations.

Before representing Alabama in the Senate, Sessions served as the state’s attorney general for two years and as a federal prosecutor there for 12 years. In 1986, the Senate rejected President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Sessions to a federal judgeship after liberal opponents such as the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused him of racism.

Trump announced Sessions as his choice to lead the Department of Justice in November, stating: “It is an honor to nominate U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general of the United States. … He is a world-class legal mind and considered a truly great attorney general and U.S. attorney in the state of Alabama.”

Christian Adams, a former Justice Department lawyer who is president and general counsel of Public Interest Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm that works to protect the integrity of elections, told The Daily Signal that Sessions will fight for equal justice under the law.

“Finally, the United States will again have an attorney general that stands for all of the law—not just what he agrees with,” Adams said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal, adding:

Sessions has an immense task before him. He will inherit a department filled with employees that have dedicated their careers to prioritizing ideological advancement over equal enforcement of law. Despite this, I am wholly confident that Jeff Sessions is the right man for the job.

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal and legislative organization, said he is excited about the fresh perspective Sessions will bring to the job. In a statement provided to The Daily Signal, Sekulow said:

After eight years of a Justice Department that was deeply politicized and incapable of doing its job, I am truly delighted that Attorney General Sessions will be at the helm of one of the most critical departments in our government.

In contrast to the one Senate Democrat who voted for Sessions, 10 Republicans voted to confirm his immediate predecessor, Loretta Lynch, and 19 voted to confirm President Barack Obama’s first attorney general, Eric Holder, in 2009.

Sessions long has supported enforcing and reforming immigration law, and he backed Trump’s proposal to build a wall at the border with Mexico.

During the Republican presidential primary, Sessions was the first senator and one of the only members of Congress to endorse Trump.

He was a member of major Senate committees, including Judiciary, Budget, and Armed Services.

(For more from the author of “Senate Confirms Jeff Sessions as Attorney General” please click HERE)

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Dakota Access Pipeline Easement Marks a New Day for US Energy

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The final easement granted on Wednesday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the Dakota Access pipeline project sent a clear signal to our nation: Infrastructure development is once again a priority.

Last November, America chose a president who campaigned on rebuilding America’s infrastructure, encouraging energy development, and championing job creation. Now, only weeks into his administration, President Donald Trump’s actions have matched his campaign promises.

Four days after his inauguration, the president signed an executive order for expedited approval of the Dakota Access pipeline easement. Two weeks later, the easement has been granted.

This stands in stark contrast to the actions of President Barack Obama, whose disregard for the rule of law last fall halted the completion of the legally permitted Dakota Access pipeline.

This sent a chilling message to the private industries that finance, develop, and complete all required regulatory reviews to build roads, bridges, transmission lines, pipelines, wind farms, and water lines.

The message was that when top government officials and lawless mobs decide to obstruct a legally permitted pipeline project that is more than 90 percent complete, no infrastructure project is safe.

Few people outside North Dakota can comprehend the chaos this conflict brought to my state. It became a cause célèbre, bringing thousands of political activists, anti-oil extremists, and movie stars to an area south of Bismarck where they illegally camped on federal land.

These protestors damaged bridges and construction equipment, burned tires, threatened law enforcement and area residents, and blocked progress on the pipeline’s construction.

Except for a few hundred still in the area, these protesters are mostly gone.

Yet today, the nearby Standing Rock Sioux members and state and county crews are feverishly cleaning up the mess of personal belongings, trash, and human waste they left behind—an estimated 250 truckloads that must be hauled to the Bismarck landfill.

They are hoping to beat next month’s spring thaw on the floodplain where they camped, so that the trash left behind by these “water protectors” doesn’t pollute the Missouri River.

There is a poignant and absurd irony about this situation. Those claiming to be the true protectors of land and water turned out to be the only threat to the environment.

With the easement to finish the Dakota Access pipeline now granted, it’s time to get to work and finish this $3.7 billion private project that will deliver as many as 570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois.

This important piece of energy infrastructure will enhance America’s energy security and put Americans back to work.

I am grateful for the president’s commitment to projects like this that are so vital to our nation.

It sends a strong signal of a new era of cooperation between the federal government and private businesses that are committed to moving our nation forward with new critical infrastructure creating greater job opportunities for Americans. (For more from the author of “Dakota Access Pipeline Easement Marks a New Day for US Energy” please click HERE)

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Last-Minute Lawyer Faulted for ‘Poor Job’ Defending Trump’s Immigration Order

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The lawyer who argued the case for President Donald Trump’s executive order designed to bar terrorists from entering the country is the target of sharp criticism for his performance Tuesday night before a federal appeals court.

“I’m not sure I’m convincing the court,’’ August E. Flentje says.

Flentje, a career Justice Department lawyer, took the case after two top lawyers in the Trump administration recused themselves.

“I’m not sure I’m convincing the court,’’ Flentje said out loud at one point in arguing for the executive order temporarily restricting travel to the U.S. from seven terrorism-prone nations.

During the Obama administration, then-Attorney General Eric Holder honored Flentje for helping to draft the legal case for same-sex marriage and for terrorism suspects being held in the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which the administration sought to close.

When the three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals pressed Flentje for evidence connecting the seven countries to terrorism, he said, “These proceedings have been moving quite fast, and we’re doing the best we can.”

He said the government hadn’t included all the evidence yet. He cited some Somalis in the United States who he said were connected to the al-Shabab terrorist group.

Judge Michelle Friedland asked, “Can you point us to where in the record you are referring?”

Flentje responded: “It is not in the record.”

Flentje delivered a weak argument that likely could affect the outcome of the case, said Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

“It was a very poor job. It’s the worst presentation I can recall seeing by a Justice Department attorney,” von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department lawyer, told The Daily Signal.

Justice Department spokeswoman Nicole A. Navas said the department wanted to avoid any conflicts of interest after the former employer of two top Trump administration lawyers filed a brief on behalf of opponents in the suit against the president’s executive order.

The acting solicitor general and acting assistant attorney general “have refrained from signing this brief, out of an abundance of caution, in light of a last-minute filing of an amicus brief by their former law firm,” Navas told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement.

“The department has no additional comment than what was stated in the government’s brief,” she added on the question of why Flentje argued the case in one of the nation’s most liberal circuits.

A federal judge in Seattle on Friday placed a temporary restraining order, or TRO, on enforcement of the week-old executive order. It put a nationwide pause on carrying out the order.

Flentje’s job Tuesday night was to make the legal case for Trump’s order on vetting immigrants from seven Middle Eastern countries that have been terrorism hot spots.

“There was a lot of back and forth in that entire argument,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday in response to a question on Flentje’s presentation and whether Trump was concerned about it.

“I think he did what he had to do to, represent the president’s case and represent the administration’s case on the TRO,” Spicer said of Flentje before adding of Trump:

He feels very confident on the merits. That’s where his focus has been. So I’m not concerned.

I think the president’s main concern has been … making sure that an executive order that was lawfully executed and [went] through the entire process—remember, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Compliance vetted this order and deemed it was legal. So we can follow this entire process to be sure it was done correctly, constitutionally, legally.

Washington state, later joined by Minnesota, challenged Trump’s executive order, arguing it would harm their states’ tax bases and businesses.

A U.S. district judge in Seattle did not rule on the merits of the case, but determined Washington state had standing and issued the temporary restraining order on the executive order. Now, the appeals court is deciding only on the restraining order and not, for now, the actual executive order.

Flentje started work at the Justice Department about 19 years ago, under President Bill Clinton. He continued under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Noel Francisco, the acting solicitor general, and Chad Readler, acting assistant attorney general, initially were going to represent the Trump administration.

Their decisions to remove their names from the most recent brief and from the case itself came after their former employer, the Jones Day law firm, filed an amicus brief against Trump’s executive order. Jones Day also filed a brief seeking to remove the two lawyers from the case, contending their involvement represented a conflict.

Flentje, the special counsel to the assistant attorney general, then became the highest-ranking Justice Department attorney to handle the case.

Interestingly, Jones Day was associated with both the Trump presidential campaign and the Trump transition team. The new president named a former Jones Day lawyer, Don McGahn, as White House counsel, the legal news site Above the Law noted.

The person filing the brief against Trump’s executive order now could pose ethical questions since the Jones Day firm has had such close ties to Trump in the past, von Spakovsky said.

“The opposing brief of the executive order is a very serious conflict,” von Spakovsky said.

In 2013, Holder issued the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service to a team, including Flentje, that made the legal case that the Defense of Marriage Act, a Clinton-era law recognizing marriage as the union of a man and woman, was not constitutional.

In 2010, Holder’s Justice Department honored Flentje and other lawyers with the Attorney General’s Award for Excellence in Furthering the Interests of U.S. National Security. The award was for their work on 240 appeals involving detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects.

(For more from the author of “Last-Minute Lawyer Faulted for ‘Poor Job’ Defending Trump’s Immigration Order” please click HERE)

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