White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement

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By Michael Wilner and Tamara Zieve. The Trump Administration defended its decision to omit any mention of Jews or antisemitism from its statement marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, noting that Jews were not the only victims of Nazi slaughter.

“Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered,” Hope Hicks, a communications aide for the president, said in a comment to CNN. In his statement, Donald Trump vowed to stand up against the forces of evil as president.

“It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust,” the US president said in the statement.

“It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

The omission drew ire from the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tweeted that it was “Puzzling and troubling @WhiteHouse #Holocaust- MemorialDaystmt has no mention of Jews. GOP and Dem. presidents have done so in the past.” (Read more from “White House Defends Omission of Jews from Holocaust Statement” HERE)

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German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel

By Benjamin Weinthal. Muslim students of Arab and Turkish origin protested participation in an International Holocaust Remembrance Day event in Germany, while their high school’s administration showed understanding for their criticism of Israel.

“Some Muslims students said they would not participate in the event,” said Florian Beer, a teacher at the school in the city of Gelsenkirchen in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Der Westen newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Holocaust remembrance event was part of a global commemoration in which participants take selfie photographs along with a sign saying “I Remember“ or “We Remember.“ A blackboard at the school was defaced with the sentence: “F*** Israel, free Palestine.” The school was not able to identify the perpetrator.

Dr. Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Friday, “Muslims students are greatest in need of Holocaust education, so it would be unfortunate if they were excused from those activities.”

Zuroff, who is Wiesenthal’s chief Nazi-hunter, added, “Given that Holocaust consciousness is a central idea of civic identity in the Federal Republic, it is doubly important for families that come from countries with deep antisemitic traditions and no knowledge of the Holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry.” (Read more from “German Muslim Students Protest Holocaust Remembrance, Attack Israel” HERE)

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Are Trump Voters Heretics?

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Stephen Mattson, writing last week in Sojourners Magazine, raised a passionate warning for white evangelicals, saying that while we sing worship songs about keeping “eyes above the waves,” we’ve elected a president who rejects refugees who have passed through those same waves. We’re “refusing shelter and opportunity to some of the world’s most helpless and oppressed people,” he adds.

Our hypocrisy is thick and rancid, says Mattson. Whereas Christ has called us to aid “the poor, oppressed, maligned, mistreated, sick, and those most in need of help,” conservative policies instead encourage “xenophobia, misogyny, racism, hatred, corruption and fear.”

And who did we just vote for? Blogger Zack Hunt notes that during the campaign, Trump declared his “personal motto is ‘eye for an eye.’” He admitted that he never asked for forgiveness, he “pathologically lied,” he spoke of his own daughter in a creepy way and he bragged about sexually assaulting women — among other un-Christ-like behavior.

Late in the primaries I wrote a little e-book entitled The Trump Bible: Why No Christian Should Vote for Donald Trump. (And echoed some of my arguments here.) After Clinton became the only alternative, I lacked the heart to promote that booklet. But I sympathize with my liberal brothers and sisters. Witnessing so many fellow Christians’ glee at Trump’s election must be, for them, like getting on a bus and finding your fellow passengers wearing prison uniforms and sporting tattoos of Las Vegas show girls. “What? Did I catch the right bus?”

But before our liberal brothers and sisters in Christ jump off the bus, let us try to understand one another better.

Not Most Christians’ First Choice

First, liberals should know that Donald Trump was not the first choice for most conservative Christians.

In the month before the election, I drove around the United States speaking about a book I had more heart to promote (Jesus is No Myth). Over and over again I heard, “I am deeply concerned about Trump’s character. But Hillary is just as dishonest and even more crooked. And I cannot support someone who willingly allows the deaths of unborn children.”

Christians on the left and the right agree it is a Christian’s duty to care for “the least of these.” Many feel this must begin with the unborn.

Christianity Isn’t Such a Failure After All

Second, there is reason to believe American Christianity has not utterly failed when it comes to following the example of Jesus.

In his book Who Really Cares, sociologist Arthur Brooks points out that devout American believers, left and right, tend to give about the same amount to charity, more than three times more than those who seldom attend religious services. Committed believers even give far more blood than nonbelievers. And Americans are vastly more personally forthcoming with funds than Europeans. So has American Christianity failed? Not at making Americans Christians among the most generous people in the world. (Tom Gilson gives examples from his own church, here — and I see evidence of the same in every church where I speak.)

Who Is Our Neighbor?

But what about refugees drowning beneath waves while we sing songs?

Right and Left do face one another across a deep philosophical divide. Our assumptions about economics, just warfare, and even human nature often seem starkly at odds. Yet our common agreed starting point should be “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

How does that apply, say, to Trump’s partial ban on immigrants from some Muslim countries?

Liberals may understandably reply:

“When asked ‘Who is my neighbor?’ Jesus told of a ‘Good Samaritan.’ He could have been talking about Syrian refugees! How dense can ‘Christians’ be not to see that nationalistic conservatives are the Pharisees who ‘pass by on the other side,’ voting for a man who denies entrance to needy and abused refugees!”

But a Trump supporter could respond with equal heat:

“Did the Good Samaritan take the mugging victim into his own home? What if he had a daughter, and this traveler had a bad reputation with women? Safe zones — which Senator McCain called for — would be a closer parallel to the inn. After all, not even the early Church allowed people who failed to share its values to join.

“And shouldn’t we also show compassion for blue collar workers whose jobs are put at risk, for women in England and Germany who have been abused by immigrants, or for the victims at the Boston Marathon? Peace and prosperity have been insured for the past 70 years by a strong America holding largely to Judeo-Christian values. That may change, if America accepts all Muslims who wish to come.”

Wisdom Regarding Islam

Loving Middle Eastern Muslims is certainly part of Jesus’ calling. But his first command also includes loving God with our minds. This means acting with wisdom as well as compassion. If we are to love Muslims, we must honestly recognize the nature of the ideology to which they subscribe.

Islam is an inherently aggressive belief system whose pretensions are as universal as those of communism. Islamic law prescribes death for those who convert out. As historian Bernard Lewis notes, Islam has never birthed movements for the liberation of women, slaves or unbelievers.

Building Fences Can Be an Act of Love

Love sometimes means building fences. A cell is a community of chemicals protected by a cell wall. An organ is a co-op of cells protected by a membrane. A body is a community of organs inside skin. Families and schools are protected by walls, locks and fences.

Nations also define themselves in part by rivers, mountains and Great Walls. Yes, love may emerge in rich ways at higher levels of organization, but the integrity of the community must also be guarded, by means of membrane, skin, skulls, brick, Homeland Security, the FBI.

I have welcomed foreigners to America, but in one case endangered loved ones in the process, through failing to understand how much culture and religion matter, especially in treatment of women. Nothing bad came of that error (involving a young Muslim man), thankfully, because our trust remained guarded.

Jesus said “Love God, love your neighbors as yourself.” He did not promise that understanding how best to do so would be easy, or that everyone would agree on the same solutions.

So let followers of Christ dialogue in humility, wisdom and genuine compassion. Let’s recognize the complexities of life. And let’s not indulge ourselves in any form of easy self-righteousness towards those with whom we disagree. (For more from the author of “Are Trump Voters Heretics?” please click HERE)

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The Media Play the Numbers Game, and Somehow Conservatives Always Lose

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“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” Trump’s press spokesman said on Friday, a claim he repeated it on Saturday. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period,” Sean Spicer told a very skeptical press.

He based the estimate in part upon the number of people recorded riding D.C. public transit on Friday. He erroneously compared the total number of riders that day with half-day numbers from Obama’s inauguration.

Spicer retracted his statement later, but the mainstream media pounced on him for what was likely an honest mistake, and gleefully ran with their own misleading analysis of the numbers. Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer on Meet the Press, “You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.” This just further incensed the media, with some outlets calling for Spicer to resign.

Why Does This Matter?

Why does this matter? Politicians and the press always fight about these things. It matters as an example of the larger problem: the vast attention the media places on favored events while ignoring others, in order to make the former appear more prominent than they really are.

So what about the inauguration crowd? Crowd size estimates were all over the board, in part because the U.S. Park Service no longer provides official numbers. The consensus seems to be there were about 900,000 people at Trump’s inauguration. An estimated 1.7 million attended Obama’s first inauguration, which the press was quick to point out.

But the press left out some important differences. Most important, millions watched the inauguration on TV and streaming media — probably millions in Russia alone.

Content delivery network Akamai reported that the inauguration was the largest, single live news event the company had ever hosted. It peaked at 8.7 Tbps (terabytes per second) during Trump’s speech. Obama’s first inauguration peaked at only 1.1 Tbps. In other words, about eight times more people watched Trump’s inauguration over streaming media than had watched Obama’s.

Media Tries to Make In-Person Attendance the Story

Instead of acknowledging the huge numbers that watched the inauguration over streaming media, the press honed in on the numbers of people who physically attended the event. Reporters jumped on Spicer’s mistake and tried to make that the story.

Media outlets also ran photos from earlier in the day, before the crowd was fullest. In these pictures, large stretches of white tarp stood out, exaggerating the effect of the empty spaces.

The media chose the worst comparison possible. Barack Obama’s first inauguration was the inauguration of the first black president. That was always going to draw a huge crowd. And Washington, D.C., is a heavily Democratic area. Trump drew just 4.1 percent of the vote in Washington D.C. and lost the surrounding states of Maryland and Virginia. How many Trump voters from Michigan or Missouri can get to the capital as easily as a Washington, D.C., Democrat can take the Metro?

Further, the media left out the fact that many people chose not to attend the inauguration for reasons that weren’t a factor at Obama’s first inauguration. Some stayed away to avoid the violent protesters, who increased the crowding and caused long security lines. May people reported not being able to get into the secure area at all thanks to protesters. Some chose not to attend because the weather, which was intermittent rain (the weather was clear for Obama’s first inauguration).

The Inauguration and the Women’s March

The first Obama inauguration wasn’t the only comparison the mainstream media made to try to make Trump look bad. Reporters claimed that the numbers for the Women’s March on Saturday, which reportedly attracted 500,000, surpassed the numbers at the inauguration.

That was clearly untrue. There were 250,000 official tickets issued for Trump’s inauguration, but another 650,000 people showed up to watch from the Mall. That’s 900,000, which is almost twice as many as 500,000.

Several factors inflated the attendence at the Women’s March. It benefited from all the liberals who had already made non-refundable flights and hotel reservations for the inauguration, expecting Hillary Clinton to win. It benefited from being in such a liberal area. And unlike the inauguration, which took place on a weekday, the Women’s March was on Saturday when most people were not working.

Furthermore, how many people watched the Women’s March from beginning to end? Did it grip people all over the country the way the inauguration gripped them?

Here’s one more revealing comparison. Newsbusters found that the Women’s March received 129 times more coverage than the annual March for Life, which also takes place on the Mall.

The pro-life rally has crowds of up to 650,000 (in 2013) and hundreds of thousands march every yer. Yet ABC, CBS and NBC devoted just 35 seconds to covering the 2016 March for Life, while spending an hour and 15 minutes this year on the Women’s March. (This year the mainstream media is finally covering the March. Maybe Trump pushed them?)

It Doesn’t Matter Anyway

It really doesn’t matter how many people watched or attended the inauguration. Conway summed it up best on Meet the Press, “I don’t think, ultimately, presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they’re judged by their accomplishments.”

More people may have attended Obama’s first inauguration, but he left office with one of the lowest average approval ratings of any post-World War II president, with his signature achievement, Obamacare, set to be dismantled. (For more from the author of “The Media Play the Numbers Game, and Somehow Conservatives Always Lose” please click HERE)

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Trump Refugee Order Balances Security and Compassion

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Read any commentary on the just signed executive order on visa and refugee vetting from several countries in the Middle East and odds are the assessment will tell you more about the writer’s politics than be an analysis of the order.

I confess: I have a perspective as well. Mine comes from working on the presidential team on both foreign policy and homeland security from after the Republican convention up to the inauguration. I can’t share the detailed workings of the team. But what I can share, having worked on the issues, is what I believe guided the work.

And it all started with making America safe.

Not campaign promises, anger at any religion, or prejudice of any kind impacted our thinking on the transition team. What we were worried about were future threats.

As the space for the Islamic State, or ISIS, gets squeezed in the Middle East, the remains of the tens of thousands of foreign fighters will have to flow somewhere. Every nation, not just the U.S., believes they are most likely to flow to the countries cited in the order. That fact, and only that fact, is why those countries are included on the list. Indeed, when it comes to visa vetting, that’s why the European Union has restrictions that are comparable to the United States.

The reason why we all worry is because, from those countries, foreign fighters could well try to flow to the West, principally by using visas or posing as refugees. When they get to the West, they could carry out terrorist acts. We know that because they already have—specifically in Western Europe.

They haven’t come to the U.S.—yet. Right now, our primary threat is Islamist-related terror plots that are organized by terrorists who are already here.

What this administration is doing is making sure we are ready for the next wave of terrorism as well—the outflow of terrorists from the countries of conflict where the foreign fighters are likely to go first.

There are already cries that the precautions are unfair—creating hardships. Fair enough, but terrorists attacks (like those at the Bataclan in France by the followers of ISIS) create unbearable hardships as well—and the government has the responsibility to find the right balance between security and compassion for its citizens as well as consider how U.S. actions impact others around the world.

One area where the order tries to get that balance right is to ensure future refugee processing prioritizes addressing the plight of religious minorities. That is particularly crucial in the Middle East where the remnants of the region’s Christian communities are under severe threat.

Worldwide persecutions against Christian minorities have been rising for four straight years. It’s particularly problematic in the Middle East. The administration is making an extra effort to address that crisis.

While critics will continue to demonize the administration’s policies because they don’t fit their politics, Americans who crave a foreign policy that prioritizes American interests, puts a compassionate face on statecraft that reflects our values, and acts responsibly will find much to respect in the order. (For more from the author of “Trump Refugee Order Balances Security and Compassion” please click HERE)

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Republicans Express Doubts over Obamacare ‘Repeal and Replace’ Plan

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Some Republican lawmakers are beginning to have doubts about the GOP’s plans to repeal and replace Obamacare, they revealed in a closed-door gathering Thursday in Philadelphia.

But those lawmakers find themselves at odds with conservatives who have for years pushed for repeal of the Affordable Care Act—as well as the top Republican in the House.

“We have to repeal it,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said of Obamacare in an interview with The Daily Signal. “That’s what we told voters we’re going to do, and we have to repeal all of it. Every mandate. Every regulation.”

The Washington Post reported Friday that some Republicans appeared to be wavering over how to follow through on their long-held promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The Post obtained a recording of a session on health care held Thursday at House and Senate Republicans’ joint retreat at the Loews Philadelphia Hotel.

Some lawmakers in the meeting expressed concerns over tackling major issues accompanying repeal of the health care law, including how to craft a replacement plan in a timely manner and whether to include a measure to defund Planned Parenthood in the repeal legislation.

Reps. Tom McClintock of California, John Faso of New York, and Tom MacArthur of New Jersey were among those The Post identified on the recording.

Despite their hesitations, however, House Speaker Paul Ryan reaffirmed the GOP’s commitment to rolling back the health care law this year.

“We have to move quickly because we’re in the midst of collapse [of the health care law],” Ryan said during an event Friday organized by Politico.

“We have a moral obligation to fix this problem. Period,” he said.

In a meeting with fellow Republicans in Philadelphia, Ryan mapped out a timeline for repealing and replacing the health care law. He told lawmakers that Congress would pass the bill repealing Obamacare by March or April.

Republicans initially planned to pass a repeal bill shortly after President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

That legislation—passed through a budget tool called reconciliation—also would include parts of a replacement.

For years, conservatives such as Jordan, who previously chaired the roughly 40-member House Freedom Caucus, have made a target of Obamacare—which Congress passed in 2010 without a single Republican vote.

Now that Republicans have the numbers to successfully repeal the health care law, Jordan is calling for Congress to move quickly.

“I want to do it as soon as we possibly can, because I start from the very fundamental premise that health care will be better and cost less when Obamacare is gone,” the Ohio Republican said. “So let’s get rid of it as quickly as we can.”

Despite a commitment to repealing Obamacare in coming weeks, some Republicans are skeptical that ending taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, should be included in that action.

That provision was part of the bill Republicans sent to President Barack Obama’s desk early last year to roll back major provisions of Obamacare.

Obama vetoed that bill. But with Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, conservatives are pushing for the new repeal bill to at a minimum mirror the legislation passed last year.

Ryan said earlier this month that the House will include Planned Parenthood’s defunding in the budget reconciliation bill the chamber takes up this year.

And conservative lawmakers are urging the House speaker to follow through on that pledge.

“The repeal should include the Planned Parenthood defund language as well because, for goodness sake, that was in the bill we put on President Obama’s desk,” Jordan told The Daily Signal. “Are we going to put something less on President Trump’s desk than what we put on President Obama’s desk?”

“Of course the Planned Parenthood funding should be dealt with in that bill,” he said. (For more from the author of “Republicans Express Doubts over Obamacare ‘Repeal and Replace’ Plan” please click HERE)

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Trump Takes the First Step in Restoring the US Military

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On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an exceptionally important executive order initiating both the beginning of the rebuilding of the U.S. armed forces and the fulfillment of a campaign promise.

Because he signed this order on the same day he signed the order on immigration it hasn’t yet gotten the attention it deserves. That’s a shame.

The order, titled “Rebuilding the U.S. Armed Forces,” has not yet been officially posted to the White House website. But a draft of the order, accompanied by news reports, gives us enough details to be able to assess it.

The order directs Secretary of Defense James Mattis to conduct a 30-day review of the readiness of the armed forces to assess their ability to conduct the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS, and other forms of radical Islamic terrorism, as well as near peer competitors and regional adversaries.

This review is critically needed. The Heritage Foundation has been vocal in calling for such a review based on our independent assessment of the U.S. military.

The Heritage 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength assessed our overall military capability as “marginal, trending towards weak” because of many years of budget cuts and overuse. Our assessment found that the U.S. Army today is the smallest it has been since the start of World War II; the Navy is the smallest it has been since World War I; and the Air Force suffers from crippling shortages of pilots and maintenance personnel. For example, the average age of the Air Force’s planes is 27 years old.

For too long the nation, and the president, has neglected the state of military readiness in favor of other priorities.

This 30-day review will allow the defense secretary and the president to establish the facts and determine the necessary priorities for the rebuilding of the military.

The order also calls for a review to “reduce commitments not directly related to the highest priority operations to make resources available for training and maintenance.” This is also overdue.

As described in the Heritage’s “Blueprint for Balance,” the Department of Defense spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on programs not directly related to military readiness such as non-military-related medical research, sustainable energy programs, and junior ROTC programs. Although there won’t be enough resources identified just through cuts and efficiencies to fix the Pentagon’s readiness problems, every little bit helps.

Perhaps most significantly, the order directs Mattis and the director of the Office of Budget and Management to develop both a new request for emergency funding for fiscal year 2017 and to revise the still-to-be-released budget request for 2018 to provide the increased funding needed to begin the rebuilding of the military.

That direction aligns with recommendations from both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. McCain and Thornberry, the chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, respectively, both have a clear-eyed view of the critical state of the U.S. military and have written persuasively on the need for additional defense funding.

Obtaining additional funding for defense will require some difficult negotiations within Congress and with the White House, but the need is so critical that failure to succeed is not a viable option.

Congress and the administration will need to establish concrete and measurable objectives for the rebuilding of our military so that the American taxpayer can be assured that every dollar applied to defense results in an improvement.

Finally, the executive order calls for a new nuclear posture and missile defense reviews, two critical defense areas that have both suffered considerably under the Obama administration. Heritage has been consistent and vocal in pointing out the need for new reviews and increased investment of our nation’s nuclear and missile defense domains.

Could all of these actions been undertaken without a presidential executive order? Certainly. But by signing this order, Trump has sent an unambiguous signal across his administration that the rebuilding of our military is one of his top priorities. Given the threats our nation faces today to its national interests, this sends exactly the right signal to both our allies and potential adversaries. (For more from the author of “Trump Takes the First Step in Restoring the US Military” please click HERE)

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13 of Trump’s Cabinet Nominees Await Senate Approval, Leaving Agencies Without a Leader

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President Donald Trump moved at a blistering pace to fulfill several campaign promises during his first week in the White House. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, however, 13 of his Cabinet nominees continue to wait for confirmation votes.

Obama had 11 of his 15 Cabinet secretaries in place after his first week. Trump has two.

Trump begins his second week with the same number of Cabinet secretaries as last week: two. That number should at least double by Tuesday after the Senate votes to confirm Rex Tillerson for secretary of state and Elaine Chao for secretary of transportation.

The slow pace of confirmations is delaying Trump’s ability to implement his agenda, several former administration officials told The Daily Signal.

It’s also a sharp contrast from President Barack Obama’s early days. Trump’s Democrat predecessor had 11 of his 15 Cabinet secretaries in place after his first week (including Robert Gates, who remained as defense secretary from the prior administration).

Five of the past six presidents—Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama—had nearly their entire Cabinet installed by their second week in the White House. President George H.W. Bush faced delays, but he had the advantage of retaining three of Reagan’s Cabinet secretaries.

This week’s planned confirmation votes on Tillerson and Chao, coupled with committee action on several other nominees, should generate some movement after the GOP-controlled Senate made little progress last week. (See list at bottom for this week’s schedule.)

Last week, Republicans left town for a three-day retreat in Philadelphia, but they did confirm two non-Cabinet officials: Mike Pompeo to lead the CIA and Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. On Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, the Senate approved James Mattis for defense secretary and John Kelly for homeland security secretary.

Democrats have vowed to mount a fight against at least eight of Trump’s nominees, including Tillerson. Due to a rules change that Democrats made in 2013 while they were in the majority, however, they lack the votes to ultimately defeat Trump’s nominees. It now takes a simple majority to confirm nominees, and Republicans control 52 seats compared to the Democrats’ 48. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer still can employ delaying tactics, though.

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Such delays could stall the Trump administration’s ability to implement policies or carry out executive orders, said Don Devine, director of the Office of Personnel Management under Reagan.

“This is a president who wants change, and he has got to get his nominees confirmed as soon as possible if he is going to get that change,” Devine told The Daily Signal.

Continuity of government is usually not a problem, but implementing the president’s agenda is, said Becky Norton Dunlop, the Ronald Reagan distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Dunlop served in the Reagan administration at the White House, Justice Department, and Interior Department.

“From the standpoint of taking control of the government, it’s important for the president to employ people to act,” Dunlop told The Daily Signal.

Most of Trump’s nominees ultimately will be confirmed, Dunlop said. She said this is just an effort by Schumer, D-N.Y., to curb their effectiveness. The minority leader knows that the longer it takes for Trump’s nominees to win Senate approval, the later they’ll start implementing the new president’s agenda.

“This is a way to damage these nominees that might have a more conservative agenda under President Trump and discourage them from moving forward aggressively,” Dunlop said.

For example, Tom Price, the Georgia congressman who Trump nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, will play a crucial role when it comes to dismantling Obamacare.

One of Trump’s first actions directed his administration to rework the health care law’s numerous regulations. But without a secretary in place, there’s no one leading the charge at the agency.

Price, like Tillerson, is on Schumer’s list of eight nominees who Democrats oppose. The others include Betsy DeVos for education secretary, Steve Mnuchin for treasury secretary, Andrew Puzder as labor secretary, and Jeff Sessions for attorney general. Schumer’s list also includes Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency and Mick Mulvaney for the Office of Management and Budget, although they aren’t part of the Cabinet.

The remaining unconfirmed Cabinet nominees include Ben Carson for housing and urban development secretary, Rick Perry for energy secretary, Sonny Perdue for agriculture secretary, Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary, David Shulkin for veterans affairs secretary, and Ryan Zinke for interior secretary.

Republicans were in the Senate minority in 2009 when many of Obama’s nominees won quick confirmation without obstruction or delay. In fact, nine of Obama’s nominees were approved by voice vote, meaning Republicans didn’t even request a roll-call tally.

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Despite having 57 Democrat senators on Jan. 20, 2009, Obama’s final Cabinet secretary wasn’t confirmed until April 28 of that year. Two of his picks for commerce secretary withdrew, as did former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, whom Obama picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

The vacancy hampered the health agency when the swine flu outbreak occurred, recalled Tevi Troy, who served as a deputy secretary at HHS during the George W. Bush administration.

“It is a problem because these agencies are not able to be totally effective without a secretary at the top of the agency giving direction to assistant secretaries for the entire agency,” Troy told The Daily Signal.

During the interim period before a Cabinet secretary is confirmed, the acting agency head could be either a career employee or a political appointee designated by the previous administration. Either way, the White House designates someone to work with the acting secretary during the interim.

“The tradition has been that in the first day or the first week, a lot of nominees are confirmed,” Troy said. “My view is that if a nominee is both ethical and qualified, then the Senate should defer to the president’s choice for a Cabinet nominee.”

Schedule for Week of Jan. 30

Monday: Senate confirmation vote for Rex Tillerson, secretary of state; Senate Finance Committee vote on Steven Mnuchin’s nomination for treasury secretary

Tuesday: Senate confirmation vote for Elaine Chao, secretary of transportation; Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Jeff Sessions’ nomination for attorney general; Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee vote on Ryan Zinke for interior secretary and Rick Perry for energy secretary

Wednesday: Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee vote on Mick Mulvaney for director of the Office of Management and Budget (Mulvaney also needs approval from the Senate Budget Committee) (For more from the author of “13 of Trump’s Cabinet Nominees Await Senate Approval, Leaving Agencies Without a Leader” please click HERE)

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Chief Justice Roy Moore’s Lonely Fight against Judicial Tyranny

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[Editor’s note: if you want to help Roy Moore in his fight against judicial tyranny, radical gay activists, and agents of the Southern Poverty Law Center, please go HERE]

U.S. federal courts have aggressively attacked state sovereignty over the past several decades. Whether it was this week’s decision on Texas’s simple voter ID law, numerous recent orders trumping local laws with “transgender” rights, 2015’s radical homosexual marriage opinion, or even the more distant Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, States’ rights are in a full and prolonged retreat.

Why? No elected leaders seem interested in taking a real stand to push back against judicial tyranny. No one, that is, save Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Many remember Justice Moore as the “Ten Commandments Judge” who defied a federal judge’s order in 2003 to remove a massive granite replica of the commandments from the rotunda of Alabama’s judicial building. Elected Chief Justice by the citizens of Alabama two years before, Moore argued that the federal order was unlawful, infringing on his State’s sovereign rights. He also maintained that “to acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics.” But Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary – composed mostly of lawyers – didn’t buy it and promptly removed the chief justice from office.

Fast forward to 2012. Roy Moore ran for Chief Justice once again and, much to the surprise of the media and political elites, first defeated the incumbent Republican in the primary and then went on to win the general election against a Democrat who had outspent him 6 to 1. The Establishment was mortified.

It wasn’t too long before Chief Justice Moore was embroiled in controversy again. This time, the catalyst was the US Supreme Court’s outrageous Obergefell decision which purportedly forced every State in the union to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals. Justice Moore felt this horrendously reasoned decision – literally based on feelings rather than any legal precedent – threatened the democratic fabric of the nation (prior to federal court action on marriage, most States had resoundingly rejected attacks on the institution of marriage. By the time of the Obergefell decision, only 11 States had voluntarily passed laws legalizing homosexual marriage).

Honoring his oaths to the US Constitution and Constitution of the State of Alabama, West Point graduate Roy Moore believed he was duty-bound to resist a decision that Justice Antonin Scalia disparaged as being equivalent to “the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie” and “lacking even a thin veneer of law.”

Perhaps in the most inflammatory language the US Supreme Court has ever seen from one of its own justices, Scalia also attacked the lawless decision for robbing “the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

Chief Justice Moore agreed. Although he did not call for revolution, he did issue an order as the chief administrative officer of the Alabama courts to judicial officers responsible for marriage licenses explaining that the US Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision had not trumped state law. On the first page of this administrative order, Justice Moore quoted from prior decisions of the United States and Alabama Supreme Courts regarding marriage:

In 1885 the Supreme Court of the United States described marriage as “the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.” Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 15, 45. The Alabama Supreme Court similarly stated that “‘[T]he relation of marriage is founded on the will of God, and the nature of man; and it is the foundation of all moral improvement, and all true happiness.'” Goodrich v. Goodrich, 44 Ala. 670, 675 (1870).

Justice Moore then cited recent federal appellate and district cases which recognized Obergefell did not directly invalidate state marriage laws in all 50 states. Given this precedence, and since Alabama was not a party to Obergefell, Chief Justice Moore ordered that “Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to the Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment or the Alabama Marriage Protection Act.”

The left was incensed. David Cohen, president of the infamous hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center (the same group whose follower attempted to slaughter Christians in an attack on the Family Research Council’s DC headquarters), made a complaint to Alabama’s Judicial Inquiry Commission. The Commission then tried to convince the State’s attorney general to draw up charges against Chief Justice Moore, but he refused. Unbelievably, the Commission then hired the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ex-director to draft charges against the Chief Justice. In a subsequent four-hour show trial, the lawyer-dominated “jury” then convicted Chief Justice Moore of violating the Canons of Judicial Ethics because of his response to the US Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. He was suspended without pay until the end of his term of office.

Chief Justice Moore appealed this de facto termination of his judgeship. In support of his appeal, the United States Justice Foundation has filed briefing attacking the justice’s unlawful removal from office (USJF also came to the Chief Justice’s aid in an earlier 2015 case where he sued by a group of homosexuals). USJF noted in its brief that “no one can deny the revolutionary nature of the Obergefell decision” and that its lawlessness was revealed by the fact none of the five US Supreme Court justices who supported it “even bothered to respond to a single point expressed by any one of the four dissenters.”

Attacking the decision as “the product of a naked vote of the political will of a bare majority,” USJF went on to observe that marriage has always been viewed by the courts “as exclusively within the jurisdictions of the states.” The lack of legal justification for the decision was transparent in Justice Kennedy’s repeated statements that “new insights and societal understandings” supported striking down state laws on marriage. USJF noted that these statements proved that Justice Kennedy

knew that there was no original or textual basis for his decision in the U.S. Constitution; that he was not interpreting, but rather imposing his will on the U.S. Constitution; that in doing so he was elevating the power of the majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices above the text of the Constitution; that he was usurping the People’s right to govern themselves by setting out permanent rules in a written constitution; that he was usurping the People’s right to amend their Constitution pursuant to the provisions of Article V; … that he was instituting an era of the rule of man over the rule of law; … and that he was usurping the role of states — as well as the legislative function — to impose on them a new law of domestic relations.

In other words, this was no run-of-the-mill-decision that legal minds could reasonably disagree on. It was a tyrannical, unconstitutional grab for power likely unprecedented in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Given Chief Justice Moore’s courageous resistance to this lawlessness, he should have been championed – rather than terminated – as Alabama’s top judge.

With your help, USJF will continue to fight this battle on behalf of Roy Moore and will join in other fights critical to returning our institutions to the Rule of Law. Please partner with USJF by donating HERE. Your gifts are tax deductible.

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A Powerful Week Under a Pro-Life President

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During my bus ride to the March for Life this morning, I found myself gratefully reflecting on the good work the pro-life movement has been doing over the past week.

Only days after the conclusion of Barack’s Obama’s presidency, we are witnessing an unprecedented barrage of pro-life activity in Washington D.C. Despite being a very recent convert on the pro-life issue, Trump may be presiding over the most energetically pro-life White House since Roe v Wade.

Let’s look at the week leading up to the March for Life, one day at a time.

This Week of Life and Hope

On Sunday, the 44th anniversary of Roe v Wade, NBC News reported that “a Trump administration official” told the network it was “a shame that the March for Life, which estimates the same number of marchers” as the pro-abortion Women’s March, “will not get anywhere near the same amount of coverage that this march got – and those pro-life members were NOT welcome at the Women’s March.”

On Monday, President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy, cutting off American taxpayer funding for abortions abroad. In a fuming press release, leading abortion provider Marie Stopes International reacted to Trump’s decision by providing some stats that are music to pro-life ears: “In 2017, USAID funding would have helped us reach 1.5 million women in some of the poorest, most underserved countries in the world.” (Read between the lines: That’s 1.5 million poor women whose children MSI won’t be able to abort.)

On Tuesday, the House voted 238-183 for H.R. 7, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2017, which would make the Hyde Amendment permanent law, ending all federal funding of abortion and banning the use of Obamacare subsidies to obtain insurance coverage for abortions. The new legislation has yet to pass through the Senate, but the White House made a point of boosting its chances with a public promise: “The Administration strongly supports H.R. 7. … If the President were presented with H.R. 7 in its present form, he will sign the bill.”

Also on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer mentioned the March for Life to the White House press pool on national television, promising that the pro-life cause was “very important” to the president, and that there would be a “heavy administration presence” at the March.

On Wednesday, President Trump shamed the press to its face for the deliberate, yearly media blackout of the March for life. In a conversation with the President, ABC News interviewer David Muir seemed to be aiming for a “gotcha” moment when he confronted Trump for supposedly not paying enough attention to the pro-abortion Women’s March that occurred in Washington D.C. the previous week.

“Could you hear them from the White House?” asked Muir.

“No, I couldn’t hear them but, the crowds were large,” the president replied, “but you’re gonna have a large crowd on Friday too, which is mostly pro-life people.”

Muir visibly tensed up.

“You’re gonna have a lot of people coming Friday,” Trump continued breezily, “and I will say this, and I didn’t realize this, but I was told, you will have a very large crowd of people, I don’t know as large or larger, some people said it’s going to be larger, pro-life people. And, they say the press doesn’t cover them.”

“I don’t want to compare crowd sizes,” Muir said, before trying to change the topic. “No, you shouldn’t,” Trump interjected, and repeated the complaint: “but let me just tell you, what they do say is that the press doesn’t cover them.”

On Thursday, President Trump again drew attention to the March for Life, and again embarrassed the press by calling out the obvious bias of refusing to cover it. This time, his comments had the advantage of coming during the nationally televised GOP Retreat in Philadelphia.

“By the way on Friday, a lot of people are going to be showing up to Washington,” the president said in what seemed to be an extemporaneous aside in the middle of his address.

Lot of people. You know the press never gives them the credit that they deserve. They’ll have three hundred-, four hundred-, five hundred-, six hundred-thousand people—you won’t even read about it. When other people show up, you read bigtime about it. Right? So it’s not fair, but … nothing fair about the media.

On Friday, of course all of this culminated in the national March for Life in Washington D.C., the largest annual human rights march in the world, with tens of thousands attending every year, often despite harsh winter weather conditions. The Washington Post — but not its headline writers — described this year’s assembly as “massive.”

“This is a new day, a new dawn for life,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

Not only was Conway a featured speaker, but for the first time a sitting vice president addressed the March for Life. In his beautiful, gentle speech Mike Pence declared, “Life is winning again in America.”

Later, as I marched, I was disappointed (if not surprised) at how few network news organizations were present. But unlike in past years, the White House not only took notice of the March, but publicly took note of its plight as a worthy human rights event purposely stifled by the powerful and the press.

“1000s gathered in DC to stand up for life & adoption and @CNN refers to them as ‘demonstrators’ #MarchForLife,” tweeted White House spokesmn Sean Spicer.

President Trump himself weighed in, tweeting, “The #MarchForLife is so important. To all of you marching — you have my full support!”

Later, in an interview with CBN News, the President spoke of his imminent Supreme Court nomination. “Evangelicals, Christians will love my pick and we’ll be represented very, very fairly.”

Beyond the March for Life

There is still much to be done for the pro-life cause in 2017, but it can’t be denied we are off to a hopeful start. Pro-life Americans should all look to President Trump and the Republican majorities in the halls of power, reminding them continually of the commitments we fully expect them to deliver on, including the defunding of Planned Parenthood, and the nomination of a pro-life Supreme Court Justice, which Trump promises to announce next Thursday.

Again, this amount of pro-life advocacy from the White House is unprecedented, and inspires a lot of hope for the pro-life cause. In fact, if we keep up our efforts and President Donald Trump continues to keep his promises, 2017 will be the pro-life movement’s most successful year to date. (For more from the author of “A Powerful Week Under a Pro-Life President” please click HERE)

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Don’t Forget: WE Are the Checks and Balances on Trump’s Executive Actions

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In his first few days in office, President Donald Trump has attacked the presidency with gusto, issuing a slew of executive actions on everything from a federal hiring freeze to the long promised border wall. Maybe he is eager to prove himself effective, maybe he wants to get started fulfilling campaign promises, or maybe this kind of energy will be typical of his administration even after the new starts to wear off. It’s impossible to say.

So far, the response from the Right has largely been to cheer for the new president. Many on the Right have applauded his zeal to get things done, especially things that conservatives have been asking for so long. After all, easing the burden of Obamacare is certainly important, and the hiring freeze is well within the rights of the executive branch as well as a much needed check on the size of government.

But before we engage in too public jubilation, I would advise conservatives and libertarians to be a bit more circumspect in their praise. The danger of hypocrisy, and of turning into the mirror image of our ideological opponents, is a real one.

Barack Obama was routinely criticized by the Right for his executive overreach and apparent contempt for Congress. His “I’ve got a pen and a phone” comment sent chills down the spine of anyone who valued limited government. He started wars without congressional approval, acted unilaterally on immigration enforcement, and frequently used regulations in place of laws to push forward his agenda. Conservatives howled and liberals sat smugly silent, pleased that “their guy” was doing whatever it took to get around that obstructionist “party of no” in the minority.

Now the situation is reversed. Democrats are in the minority, and are freaking out about Trump’s executive actions. Republicans, on the whole, have either been silent or celebratory, as Trump uses the power of the executive branch to move his agenda forward.

So what’s wrong with that? Politics is all about getting your agenda passed by any means necessary, and resisting that of your opponents, right? Maybe for some people, but there is at least a large share of conservatives and libertarians who operate under a principled belief that too much government power is dangerous, regardless of who happens to be in office. Giving the executive branch unchecked authority may work out well some of the time, but that can come back to bite you when the other side inevitably regains power, as Democrats are learning now.

The founders very specifically created a system with built in checks and balances, a separation of powers, a process by which no one branch of government — much less one person — could do too much damage before the others would rein him in. This is the process that led to America becoming the world’s greatest success story, creating previously unheard of wealth and freedom for its people. This process matters. It could even be argued that it matters more than results, because once the process collapses, there’s nothing to stand in the way of tyranny and oppression, as we see in other undemocratic countries the world over.

This process is what allowed Republicans to block Obama’s Supreme Court nomination, something almost all conservatives will agree was a good thing. Without it, we’d have Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court right now, with who knows what consequences for the laws of the country. But you can bet that when Trump names his own nominee, and Democrats try to resist, a lot of the same people who cheered Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (F, 40%) for blocking Garland will change their tune, calling for the Senate to change its rules and approve the nominee with a simple majority. This is shortsighted thinking.

Not all of Trump’s actions so far have been overreach. Some are well within his purview, and I must admit that I’m pleased with some (though certainly not all) of the policies. For example, putting temporary freeze on hiring within the executive branch is constitutional, and appropriate to be addressed by the chief executive. However, demanding that the Keystone pipeline be built with only U.S. made steel is something that Congress should be responsible for, not the president. Once Trump gets into the habit of having everything he wants, with no resistance from Congress, the courts, or the people, there will be nothing to stop him from legislating from the White House.

You can’t have it both ways. Either you believe in limited government, or you don’t. That belief shouldn’t change with the inhabitant of the White House, or else it’s no true belief at all. (For more from the author of “Don’t Forget: WE Are the Checks and Balances on Trump’s Executive Actions” please click HERE)

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