Commentary: Obama’s Intel Czar Rigged 2016 and 2020 Debates Against Trump

James Clapper

Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that “the Russian government” was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign’s email system.

On Oct. 7, 2016 – just two days before the presidential debate between Trump and Clinton – Clapper issued the unprecedented intelligence advisory with Obama’s personal blessing. It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media — that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.

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Commentary: Court Threatens First Amendment Rights of Tennessee Star After Release of Covenant School Shooting Documents

Judge I'Ashea L. Myles

The editor-in-chief and publisher of The Tennessee Star was ordered to appear in court last week and threatened with charges of contempt after his newspaper reported on an anonymously leaked collection of documents authored by Nashville mass shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale. Michael Patrick Leahy was joined by his attorneys in court on Monday for a “show-cause hearing,” where the journalist was asked by Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles to demonstrate why his outlet’s reporting does not subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.

On March 27, 2023, Hale (born Audrey Elizabeth Hale) entered the Covenant School armed with three semiautomatic guns and murdered six people, including three 9-year-old children. Hale, who was eventually shot and killed by police in the school, was a transgender man and former student at Covenant who harbored extremist sentiments on race, gender, and politics. The massacre remains the deadliest mass shooting in Tennessee history.

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Commentary: Geopolitics and Demand Growth Underpin Need for Commonsense Energy Policies

Oil rig

The U.S. energy sector finds itself in a precarious position. Increasing geopolitical volatility and strong energy demand forecasts could spell trouble domestically in the future. The U.S. needs to stop hamstringing American energy companies and invest in the nation’s infrastructure, such as pipelines, processing, and production.

If we have learned anything in the last two and a half years, it’s that the U.S.’ energy industry is not free from geopolitical chaos globally. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Houthi’s attacks in Yemen backed by Iran and turmoil in the Middle East have very real repercussions for the average American. We may not be as intensely intertwined with those realities as our European allies, but energy is a global market with implications for domestic prices, supply, and demand. While different events can affect prices at home, there are steps the administration can take to protect our energy sector.

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Commentary: Biden Gun Regulations Don’t Affect Mass Shootings

Shooting Range

President Biden is making gun control a central part of his reelection campaign. In a new ad, Biden says that Trump did “nothing” when children were “gunned down in classrooms,” innocent people “killed in church,” and others “massacred at a concert.”

The Biden campaign is referring to shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas; and an outdoor concert in Las Vegas. In four years, there were 18 mass shootings that occurred in public places and that did not transpire during another crime such as robbery or selling drugs. (A “mass killing” is defined by criminologists as involving four or more fatalities, not counting the shooter.)

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Commentary: Nashville Shooter’s Manifesto Released Despite FBI Resistance

The 2023 Nashville Covenant School murders understandably received massive news coverage when they occurred. The fight over obtaining the murderer’s diary also received news attention. But when “nearly four dozen pages” of the murderer’s diary were finally released last week, the mainstream media completely ignored it. It turns out that behind the scenes, the FBI had fought hard against the diary’s release. Some Covenant School parents also opposed releasing the diary because it would force families to re-live the nightmare. The Tennessee Star’s parent company, Star News Digital Media, successfully filed two lawsuits to obtain the diary.

Five days after the release of the diary, with the exception of the New York Post, which is a national news outlet, the news coverage was limited to seven other conservative outlets such as The Daily Wire and Newsbusters.

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Commentary: Fossil Fuels Are the Best-Kept Secret in Our World Today

Oil Platform

Apparently, you can litigate anything these days, and it’s gotten far more insidious than suing McDonald’s over hot coffee being, you know, hot. A new climate activist group called Our Children’s Trust is suing state and federal government agencies on behalf of individual children, claiming that fossil fuel regulators are negligently ruining their future.

That children should feel entitled to come of age under a specific set of favorable environmental and political circumstances — and to demand punishment for individuals they disagree with — isn’t just a testament to the egocentrism dominating the 21st Century. It also exposes our culture’s deeply warped understanding of climate science, which, surprisingly to many of us, actually shows global warming has no meaningful negative effects on our lives or our environment.

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Commentary: Searching for the Truth About the Raid at Mar-a-Lago

Mar-A-Lago

Top officials at the Department of Justice are downplaying recently disclosed documents showing FBI agents were authorized to use deadly force during their 2022 raid of Donald Trump’s Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Responding to Trump’s claim that “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau was following “standard operating procedure” as it executed a search warrant on Aug. 8, 2022, regarding classified material that the former president was holding at Mar-a-Lago.

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Commentary: Americans Must Criticize Our Corrupt Courts

In the wake of his conviction in a New York court, President Trump has complained that the process was rigged against him, that the whole proceeding was a corrupt effort to persecute him with a view to influencing the 2024 presidential election. In response, many of his opponents have criticized him for undermining public confidence in our system of criminal justice and thus harming our democracy—a criticism that has been magnified by many in the media.

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Commentary: Hunter in Jaws of Same Justice System President Biden Defended

President Biden stepped off Marine One, walked across the tarmac of the Delaware Air National Guard base, and embraced his son Hunter, a convicted felon.

Tuesday marks the first time in American history that a child of a sitting president was convicted of a crime. The news complicates life for Biden ahead of an election and sent the first family into a hasty and literal retreat. The president had been slated to remain at the White House. After the conviction, he traveled instead to his Wilmington estate.

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Commentary: Biden’s Problems Are the Real Threats

Joe Biden

Democratic analysts don’t seem to understand why the all-out legal assault on President Donald Trump isn’t working. It’s because they keep talking among themselves and not with the American people.

The American people don’t live and work in the New York-Washington political-media-government bubble. If reporters and analysts listened to Americans, as we do at America’s New Majority Project, they would learn how decisive the choice between President Joe Biden or President Trump is. They would also see how difficult, if not impossible, it will be for President Biden to get easily re-elected.

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Commentary: The CFPB Attacks the Credit Card Rewards Programs Consumers Want

Consumer using a credit card

Unsurprisingly, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recent report on Credit Card Rewards is dismissive of programs that are popular with tens of millions of American households. However, its objections manifest the same sort of deceptive advertising and hiding of details that it complains are characteristic of credit card rewards, and the data in its report does not match the conclusions its director, Rohit Chopra, has made in his statement about the report as well as his testimony before Congress on the issue.

The CFPB’s press release announcing the Credit Cards Rewards: Issue Spotlight report denigrated rewards programs, alleging that “Consumers tell the CFPB that rewards are often devalued or denied even after program terms are met;” that “Consumers who carry revolving balances often pay far more in interest and fees than they get back on rewards;” and that “Credit card companies often use rewards programs as a ‘bait and switch’ by burying terms in vague language or fine print.”

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Analysis: RCM/TIPP Economic Index Slumps Again

The RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, a leading gauge of consumer sentiment, dropped sharply 3.1 percent in June to 40.5. Since September 2021, the index has remained in negative territory for 34 consecutive months. June’s reading of 40.5 is 17.6 percent lower than the historic average of 49.2.

Optimism among investors edged up 0.4 percent from 46.3 in May to 46.5 in June, while it slumped by 6.0 percent among non-investors, from 40.1 in May to 37.7 in June.

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Commentary: The WHO Pandemic Treaty Is Deja Vu All over Again

WHO Meeting

One would be hard-pressed to find many Americans today who look back at the pandemic with fondness or admiration for the way in which our government – including our public health officials – responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. The mistakes made were legion, the cost mind-blowing, and the misconduct even worse. Indeed, Anthony Fauci, the very face of the pandemic for most Americans, seems to have embodied a contempt for integrity in government. His record-keeping practices and aversion to congressional and public oversight were the epitome of bureaucratic arrogance.

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Commentary: The Consequences of Delaying Offshore Oil and Gas Lease Sales

Offshore oil rig

Offshore drilling has been a cornerstone of global energy production since the 1800s, fueling the American way of life and powering the global economy. From the early days of “on-water-drilling” to the advancement of the fixed platform units of today, offshore drilling has consistently contributed around 30 percent of global oil production. In the U.S., supply on federal offshore lands in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for approximately 15 percent of total crude oil production.

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Commentary: Republicans Vow to Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction

Donald Trump

by Philip Wegmann   Spurred by the volcanic temper of their base, Republicans are now preparing to scorch the earth in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s conviction, potentially setting off a chain reaction that could fundamentally alter the American political system entirely. No one knows exactly how far they will go in their response. What is clear is that conservatives have no patience for President Biden’s argument Friday morning that justice was served in Manhattan, that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” They see the conviction instead as unprecedented “lawfare” meant to interfere with the coming election and, some say, an unprecedented response is now in order. “The good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed,” senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller told RealClearPolitics without offering exact details. Rep. Mike Collins, meanwhile, was explicit. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” the Georgia Republican said Thursday, floating the idea that Republicans should begin using the courts to pursue their political enemies. “Hillary Clinton’s campaign-funded Steele dossier is a good start,” Collins continued, referencing how the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign misreported their spending on the…

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Dangerous Natural Gas Game

Joe Biden

If the devil is in the details, bureaucracy is hell on earth. Though terrain familiar to the Biden administration, Republicans must prepare to navigate it.

Witness the debacle over liquefied natural gas exports, wherein the White House, by “pausing” most new approvals, has catapulted the energy security of key U.S. allies straight into the buzzsaw of its climate ambitions. (The category of exports that will continue to be authorized is tiny.) The Department of Energy claims that a multifactor impact study due in early 2025 is required to determine whether and how the moratorium will be lifted.

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Commentary: Stanford, Silicon Valley, and the Rise of the Censorship Industrial Complex

This summer the Supreme Court will rule on a case involving what a district court called perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech” ever inflicted on the American people. In Murthy v. Missouri, plaintiffs ranging from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to epidemiologists from Harvard and Stanford allege that the federal government violated the First Amendment by working with outside groups and social media platforms to surveil, flag, and quash dissenting speech – characterizing it as mis-, dis- and mal-information – on issues ranging from COVID-19 to election integrity.

The case has helped shine a light on a sprawling network of government agencies and connected NGOs that critics describe as a censorship industrial complex. That the U.S. government might aggressively clamp down on protected speech, and, certainly at the scale of millions of social media posts, may constitute a recent development. Reporting by RCI and other outlets – including Racket News’ new “Censorship Files” series, and continuing installments of the “Twitter Files” series to which it, Public, and others have contributed – and congressional probes continue to reveal the substantial breadth and depth of contemporary efforts to quell speech that authorities deem dangerous. But the roots of what some have dubbed the censorship industrial complex stretch back decades, born of an alliance between government, business, and academia that Democrat Sen. William Fulbright termed the “military-industrial-academic-complex” – building on President Eisenhower’s formulation – in a 1967 speech.

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Oversight Panel Investigates Secret Service ‘DEI’ Practices

Secret Service

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has launched an investigation into potential vulnerabilities in the Secret Service’s ability to protect President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Donald Trump and their families after an incident last month raised new concerns about the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring decisions and vetting process.

Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the panel, sent Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle a letter Thursday requesting an agency briefing on the matter by June 13.

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Commentary: Despite Warnings, Biden Admin Finalizes Rule That Could Cripple Many Offshore Oil Companies

Offshore Oil Platform

In June 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed a rule that would require stricter financial assurance standards for oil companies operating in the Outer Continental Shelf. This costly rule became final on April 15, 2024, but in the 10 months since its initial proposal, BOEM did nothing to alleviate concerns for smaller companies that comprise of 76 percent of oil and gas operators in the Gulf. As a result, many of these companies could be forced out of business by extreme and unnecessary costs from this rule. The situation threatens an estimated 36,000 jobs, more than $570 million in federal government royalties, and $9.9 billion from our GDP.

Records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show private meetings between Interior officials and representatives of the major oil companies as they cooperated on this rule. If you think that’s strange, you’re not alone. President Biden made clear in his campaign that he wanted to end oil and gas production on public lands. It’s baffling that Big Oil – among the administration’s most, if not the most, maligned businesses – would stand on the same side with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club who praised the rule. But needless government intervention makes strange bedfellows. Big Oil must think it won’t miss the small competitors the rule will drive from the market.

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Commentary: OpenAI and Political Bias in Silicon Valley

ChatGPT app on a smartphone

AI-powered image generators were back in the news earlier this year, this time for their propensity to create historically inaccurate and ethically questionable imagery. These recent missteps reinforced that, far from being the independent thinking machines of science fiction, AI models merely mimic what they’ve seen on the web, and the heavy hand of their creators artificially steers them toward certain kinds of representations. What can we learn from how OpenAI’s image generator created a series of images about Democratic and Republican causes and voters last December?

OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 service, with its built-in image generator DALL-E, was asked to create an image representative of the Democratic Party (shown below). Asked to explain the image and its underlying details, ChatGPT explained that the scene is set in a “bustling urban environment [that] symbolizes progress and innovation . . . cities are often seen as hubs of cultural diversity and technological advancement, aligning with the Democratic Party’s focus on forward-thinking policies and modernization.” The image, ChatGPT continued, “features a diverse group of individuals of various ages, ethnicities, and genders. This diversity represents inclusivity and unity, key values of the Democratic Party,” along with the themes of “social justice, civil rights, and addressing climate change.”

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Commentary: Building the Global Nuclear Energy Order Book

Power Plant

The outlook for nuclear power is bright on the world stage. Global demand for clean nuclear energy is higher than we have ever seen. The U.S. and 20 allied nations pledged to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050 at COP28, and a multinational survey reaffirmed last year — the world wants new nuclear. 

In Washington, D.C., bipartisan support for nuclear energy has never been greater. Propelled by the House passing the ADVANCE Act 393-13 this month and momentum for passage in the Senate, Congress deserves some credit this year for working to help speed up the deployment of next-generation reactors, fueling hope for an American future powered by clean energy. 

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Commentary: Trump’s Trials Don’t Hurt Him in the Polls

Donald Trump at Rally

Donald Trump is out on bail in four jurisdictions facing dozens of felony charges and it does not seem to affect his ratings in the surveys. Many people wonder why.

First of all, let me assure you that Donald Trump is not made of Teflon. Rather, he is probably the most polarizing politician on earth right now. While he does have a very enthusiastic base, a majority of Americans in almost every poll have an unfavorable opinion about him. So it’s not that the various attacks, scandals, allegations, and bad press he has faced ever since he has entered politics have not affected his ratings. They have. Remember that even on the day when he won the presidential election back in 2016, he was the most negatively seen winning presidential candidate in history.

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Commentary: Most U.S. Population Growth Last Year Occurred Outside of Largest Cities

There are 124 cities with a population over 200,000 in the U.S. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population estimates for last year, over 90 percent of the U.S. population growth last year took place outside of its 124 largest cities. About a third of those cities lost population last year.  The total growth in the population of cities with over 200,000 residents grew by .23 percent, less than half of what the U.S. grew last year.

Roughly a third of those that lost population were located in New York and California. The three largest cities in the U.S., New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all lost population again in 2023. Between the three cities, over 700,000 people have left since the 2020 census. New York is by far the biggest loser at 546,000. That is about 6.2 percent of its 2020 population.

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Commentary: The Most Important Trait for Yale’s Next President Is Courage

Yale University campus

On August 31, 2023, Yale’s 23rd president, Peter Salovey, announced he would be stepping down. Since this announcement, much has transpired in the world of American higher education: the resignation of Harvard and UPenn presidents, the creation of campus encampments nationwide, and the cancelation of commencements at Columbia and USC. These developments point to an American higher education system that is malfunctioning. The breakdown we are witnessing at Yale’s peer institutions will continue until leaders are chosen for their courage to apply wisdom to divisive issues.

America’s Founders understood the importance of higher education. Of all his great accomplishments, only three made it onto Thomas Jefferson’s headstone: Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the father of the University of Virginia. Jefferson knew that America’s ability to be great and good – UVA’s motto – depended on the presence of high-functioning universities. America’s first polymath, Ben Franklin, famously said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” Framers like Franklin and Jefferson understood the value of academic pursuits, and their example lit a spark that motivated generations of Americans to pursue higher education.

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Commentary: Billionaires Funding Protests Donate Millions to House Dems

George Soros

For President Biden and congressional Democrats, the fierce party division over the campus protests and the war in Gaza is full of warning signs during the 2024 election year. The unrest is unlikely to stop when universities break for the summer; protesters are pledging to disrupt the August Democratic National Convention planned to be held in Chicago. 

Most House Democrats have been reticent on the antisemitic protests and encampments roiling college graduations this month, while a handful have vocally defended or even celebrated the student protests as displays of protected free speech. 

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Commentary: Milgram in the Modern Day and the Psychology of Antisemitism in Higher Ed

Palestinian Protesters

Mere days after Columbia’s president testified the university was doing “everything it can” against antisemitism, extremist protestors took over the campus, threatening and attacking Jewish students, encouraging others to become “martyrs” like the Hamas terrorists who committed the Oct. 7 massacre, and calling for Oct. 7 to become “every day” for Jews worldwide. After Jewish community leaders called for Jewish students to leave Columbia, President Shafik moved all classes online.

Now, similar antisemitic extremism is spreading to other campuses, including Harvard, the University of Southern California, Yale, and Princeton. The police are getting involved. The protests are being praised by Iran’s Ayatollah and even Hamas.

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Commentary: Biden’s Punitive, Anti-Growth Tax Proposals

President Joe Biden

President Biden’s 2025 budget proposal provides a salient reminder that he is no moderate, despite his attempts to position himself as one.

Biden’s tax proposals would effectively increase the top federal marginal tax rate on long-term capital gains to 44.6%, a record high since the tax was enacted in the 1920s. As a result, taxes paid on long-term capital gains would reach levels above 50% in some states after accounting for state capital gains taxes. Biden also proposed increasing the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28% and presented a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains for individuals whose net worth exceeds $100 million.

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Commentary: DHS’ Secrecy About ‘Disinformation’ Regulation Docs

Nina Jankowicz

Nearly two years after Nina Jankowicz briefly led the Disinformation Governance Board at the Department of Homeland Security, she’s launched an organization demanding transparency and the public release of documents about the public debate on disinformation. An interesting move, likely without true transparency in mind.

My organization, Americans for Prosperity Foundation, has spent the same two years fighting DHS for documents on the federal board Jankowicz managed. We’re filing a second lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to fight continued government stonewalling of our requests. Thus far, DHS has refused to provide unredacted versions of documents that outline its purported authorities to regulate disinformation. Nor will the agency release more information about its work on misinformation related to “irregular migration” and “Ukraine” before the board was disbanded in August 2022.

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Commentary: Typically, That General Is Removed

General Kenneth F. McKenzie

by Stuart Scheller   Do general officers have an obligation to publicly tell the truth? I have an interesting perspective on this question. Currently, the Marine Corps teaches my story at the E-8 seminar (senior enlisted school). If you remember, I was the Marine officer who, via video, made a plea for accountability from military leaders who purposely abandoned Bagram airbase, American citizens and American military sacrifices. Shortly thereafter, I was fired, placed in solitary confinement and kicked out of the military short of my retirement. My story is not used to discuss leadership failures and operational mistakes during the Afghan withdrawal, but as a case study on why not to publicly criticize leadership. Military culture clearly signals: Making leadership look bad is far more dangerous than obediently failing. To date, not a single military leader assumes accountability for their failures at the end of Afghanistan. CNN recently published an article titled, “New evidence challenges the Pentagon’s account of a horrific attack as the US withdrew from Afghanistan.” It offers new video evidence and first-hand accounts of a significant gunfight following the suicide bomb attack in Kabul, during the American withdrawal. The article illustrates more facts contradicting the current political administration, and,…

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Commentary: Five Ways Campus Turmoil Hurts Democrats and America

Campus protesters

Higher education is sinking lower and lower. That’s bad news for our country, which has benefited enormously from having the world’s best system of higher education. And it’s bad news for Democrats, who face a tight election. Their party is closely tied to education at all levels, especially at elite universities. It is the party of experts, after all, and the party of the left. Universities are both. Moreover, since the Democrats control the Executive Branch, the public holds them primarily accountable for ensuring social order. Their failures are obvious to the average voter. That’s bound to hurt Democratic Party candidates in November.

Parents with children in college or expected to matriculate soon have every right to expect their kids can learn in peace, hear diverse viewpoints, and speak freely without threats, intimidation, or indoctrination. That’s true whether the parents are Jewish or not. Decent Americans won’t tolerate threats against Jewish students any more than they would tolerate them against blacks, Muslims, Christians, or Asian Americans. Yet they now see those threats against Jewish students every day, and, at many universities, they don’t see administrators standing up for their rights.

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Commentary: Unredactions Reveal Early White House Involvement in Trump Documents Case

Stern Su Trump

Top Biden administration officials worked with the National Archives to develop Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump involving the former president’s alleged mishandling of classified material, according to recently unsealed court documents in the case pending in southern Florida.

More than 300 pages of newly unredacted exhibits, containing emails and other correspondence related to the early stages of the hunt for presidential papers, challenge public statements by Joe Biden about what he knew and when he knew it regarding the case against his political rival.

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Commentary: Abortion Once Again at Forefront of Election

The prevailing belief in the Democratic Party is that abortion will again be a potent issue against Republicans in this year’s election cycle just as it was in 2022 – and that this time it will not just cost the GOP gaining the majority in the U.S. Senate, but also give Democrats the upper hand in retaining the presidency and winning back the House.

Abortion rights put the brakes on the Republicans’ chances in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years; a decision that transformed American politics that year, benefiting Democrats who were on their way to a bruising midterm election defeat.

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Commentary: The World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty Ignores COVID Policy Mistakes

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is urging the U.S. and 193 other governments to commit next month to a new global treaty to prevent and manage future pandemics. Current estimates suggest over $31 billion per year will be needed to fund its obligations, a cost most lower income countries cannot afford. But that isn’t the only reason to oppose it. Validating this treaty is a vote for the disastrous policies of the Covid years. Rather than taking time for deep reflection and serious reform, those pushing the pandemic treaty are set on ignoring and institutionalizing the WHO’s mistakes.

From the Spring of 2020, many experts warned that the panic begun in Wuhan’s unprecedented lockdown would cause wide-ranging damage—and indeed they did. School closures deprived a generation of children—especially poor children—of access to basic education. Businesses were shuttered. Vaccine and mask mandates made public health an authoritarian exercise of power devoid of science. Border quarantines promulgated the idea that the rest of the world is unclean.  

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Commentary: Voters Aren’t Buying What Shapiro Is Selling

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro

As inflation persists, Pennsylvania voters are rejecting increased government spending, according to new polling data released by the Commonwealth Foundation.

Inflation and the rising cost of living remain Pennsylvanians’ chief concerns. With more than two-thirds of voters saying that high prices are eating away at their standard of living, it’s no wonder that a plurality reports their family is worse off than two years ago.

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Commentary: Immunity for Me but Not for Thee

Former President Donald Trump

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office?” That is the question the Supreme Court will answer when it hears oral argument in Trump v. U.S. on April 25, 2024.

Legacy media and the ladies of “The View” nearly lost their collective minds when the Court agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the D.C. Circuit’s decision denying him immunity for his actions surrounding the events of Jan. 6, 2021. However, even Jack Smith, the Special Counsel prosecuting the case, argued that it was of “imperative public importance” that the Court resolve the immunity question before trial.

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Commentary: Secret Service Scuffle Prompts DEI, Vetting Scrutiny

Secret Service Agent standing in front of The White House

An incident involving a physical attack by a female Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris is raising questions about whether the agency had thoroughly vetted her during her hiring and whether an ongoing push to increase the numbers of women in the service and boost overall workforce staff played a role in her selection.

The Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris was removed from her duties Wednesday after physically attacking the commanding agent in charge and other agents trying to subdue her, according to an agency spokesman and knowledgeable Secret Service sources.

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Commentary: To Appease Environmentalists, the FTC Will Cripple U.S. Energy

FTC Chair Lina Khan

In the movie The Perfect Storm, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg are among the crew of a boat off the Northeast coast that is caught in the convergence of multiple powerful storms. The combination of tempests ultimately takes down the craft and its crew. We should all hope one of our nation’s most vital industries doesn’t succumb in similar fashion as it is caught in a perfect storm of ideological rigidity, bureaucratic arrogance, and regulatory overreach.

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Commentary: The Discovery of Aliens Will Probably Be… Unsatisfying

Michael L. Wong

There are a least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, our home galaxy. And there could be trillions of planets! That leaves a lot of potential real estate for extraterrestrials.

Let’s optimistically assume that we’ll one day find aliens. How might that happen? Maybe it will be like in the movies! They’ll visit Earth with their faster-than-light starships, hopefully coming in peace, like the Vulcans from Star Trek or the squid-like beings in Arrival.

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Commentary: NPR Scandal Should Kill Taxpayer-Funded Broadcasting

NPR Building

“I don’t want any yes-men around me,” said Sam Goldwyn, the Hollywood producer famed for his movies and malapropisms. “I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.” The brass at National Public Radio must have heard Sam, but they add a slight amendment. We want only “yes-men” (they/them) and will boot anyone who dares to dissent.

Lest there be any doubt, NPR just proved it by suspending, without pay, the staffer who exposed the pervasive problems there. He dared to write publicly that that National Public Radio was uniformly ideological, deeply committed to its strident left-wing views, and determined to exclude any alternatives. For saying that out loud, they cut off Uri Berliner’s paycheck for five days. It’s their way of saying, “Thank you for your feedback.” Q.E.D.

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Commentary: President Biden Must Not Encourage Illegal Mass Migration from Haiti

Haitians on Boat

“It’s better to be the United States’ enemy than its friend.” Foreign officials tell me this is their perception under the Biden Administration, which has a strange habit of appeasing our adversaries while holding our allies to impossible standards. It’s bad foreign policy, plain and simple. Moreover, it’s encouraging chaos in our region.

Just look at what’s happening in the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean nation is facing extraordinary migratory pressure from neighboring Haiti, which has all but collapsed into anarchy. President Luis Abinader has made it clear he will protect Dominican sovereignty by enforcing deportations. Yet the Biden Administration, influenced by radical left-wing groups like Amnesty International, is pushing him to accept three million Haitians at any moment.

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Commentary: Uncomfortable Facts About Why Fatal Police Shootings Aren’t Declining

Police arresting suspects

When Dexter Reed died in a shootout with Chicago police on March 21, the incident was quickly grafted onto a narrative that began in 2014 after a policeman killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. – namely, that the U.S. faces an epidemic of violence by unbridled cops who do not believe black lives matter. “Killing of Dexter Reed raises questions about Chicago police reform. ‘The message is, go in guns blazing,'” blared a headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.

Reed’s death joins a long list of police shootings that have received wide media coverage and political scrutiny – especially those involving African Americans. Over the years, many police departments embraced reforms, including the use of bodycams, to document incidents – an effort bolstered by a public eager to use smartphones to record the behavior of cops. In 2015, the Washington Post created a database logging every person shot dead by police in the U.S.

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Commentary: Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed

Eric Ciaramella

The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.

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Taxpayers will Subsidize Democrat Boots on the Ground This Election

People casting their votes

Progressives are using legal loopholes and the power of the federal government to maximize Democrat votes in the 2024 election at taxpayers’ expense, RealClearInvestigations has found.

The methods include voter registration and mobilization campaigns by ostensibly nonpartisan charities that target Democrats using demographic data as proxies, and the Biden administration’s unprecedented demand that every federal agency “consider ways to expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.”

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Commentary: Third Largest Teachers’ Union Faces Demise of Its Own Making

United Teachers of Dade

In a frantic attempt to preserve its monopoly over the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, attorneys for the union currently representing the district’s 24,000-plus teachers and support staff are relying on a strategy that has the potential to backfire and leave its members without workplace representation altogether.

On March 18, United Teachers of Dade (UTD), using an argument that would invalidate its own petition, asked a hearing officer with Florida’s Public Employee Relations Commission (PERC) to reject a competing union’s bid to participate in a forthcoming election to determine the bargaining representative for the South Florida educators.

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Commentary: The Unattainable American Dream

American flag waving in front of house

Get married, have children, buy a house, and live comfortably on a single income. Not very long ago, that path was the reality, the norm, for the great American middle class.

But America has gone backward in this regard, and struggling citizens know it all too well. Experiencing the kinds of lives enjoyed by our parents and grandparents has become impossible for most Americans, leading to widespread disenchantment and a palpable loss of patriotism and confidence in America.

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