(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump clapped back at former FBI Director James Comey‘s claim that a damning report by the Department of Justice’s inspector general had exonerated him.
The report, released Thursday, said Comey had violated FBI policy and his own employment agreement repeatedly when he purloined classified memos of his meetings with the president and shared them with a friend at Columbia University who then leaked them to The New York Times.
Trump’s firing of Comey in May 2017—coinciding with the leaking of the memos—helped trigger the two-year, $30-some-million Mueller investigation into Russian collusion, which earlier this year concluded that Trump had not conspired with the Kremlin.
Perhaps never in the history of our Country has someone been more thoroughly disgraced and excoriated than James Comey in the just released Inspector General’s Report. He should be ashamed of himself!
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham echoed the president in her official statement, saying Comey “disgraced himself and his office to further a personal political agenda,” Fox News reported.
The report stopped short of saying Comey had criminally leaked classified information and declined to recommend charges against him, but many speculate that an ongoing DOJ investigation by special prosecutor John Durham is the most likely avenue for holding accountable Comey and a rogue’s gallery of corrupt, partisan subordinates who ran the agency during the Obama administration.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been working closely with Durham on his case and has recently relayed information after closing his own investigations into figures like ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok.
After falsely claiming on Twitter that the report cleared his name—which some in the media seemed to repeat without examining the actual report—Comey also took a swipe at Trump.
And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.
Many other Republican leaders in Congress and elsewhere responded to the report though indicating that the release may be just the beginning of Comey’s troubles.
This is the first of what I expect will be several more ugly and damning rebukes of senior DOJ and FBI officials regarding their actions and biases toward the Trump campaign of 2016.
‘I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice…’
James Comey/IMAGE: YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A damning report released Thursday by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office found that disgraced former FBI Director James Comey repeatedly violated agency policy, but it declined to recommend charges against him.
“We conclude that Comey’s retention, handling, and dissemination of certain Memos violated Department and FBI policies, and his FBI Employment Agreement,” the report stated unequivocally.
The probe related to memos Comey kept of his meetings with President Donald Trump in the early days of the administration, while Trump sought to gauge Comey’s loyalty and trustworthiness.
As their public rift deepened over uncorroborated claims of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, Comey was eventually fired in May 2017.
However, the circumstances surrounding Comey’s firing and the leaking of his memos to the media helped trigger the special counsel investigation by Robert Mueller, which lasted nearly two years at a cost estimated to be around $30 million.
Comey later acknowledged that it was his intent to force such an investigation by leaking the memos.
Subsequent disclosures revealed that the FBI had been conducting its own Trump investigation based on the now-debunked information contained in the Steele Dossier, which was commissioned by the campaign of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The agency used that investigation as a pretense to wiretap and spy on Trump campaign officials.
Following Thursday’s release of the IG report, Comey immediately went into spin mode, claiming on Twitter that it was an exoneration by cherry-picking the minute detail that he had leaked memos to a friend who then leaked them to the press, rather than sharing them directly.
He misleadingly suggested that the memos contained no classified information, contrary to the actual findings that “much of the content of the Memos was directly tied to FBI investigative activities.”
DOJ IG “found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.” I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.
Comey also took a victory lap over the decision not to file charges, and used the opportunity to attack Trump.
And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.
The odd reaction seemed to reinforce for many that something was amiss in Comey’s warped version of the facts and to validate the questions raised about his character.
“[T]he former FBI Director seems to have read a different report than the one released Thursday,” noted BizPac Review.
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said the extent of Comey’s moral depravity reached absurd levels.
“To call James Comey a clown, would be offensive to the carnival community,” Gosar said.
Comey likely remains under investigation by the DOJ in a related probe led by special prosecutor John Durham.
However, some doubted that either of the top FBI officials—nor others implicated in the Russia scandal—would face any serious criminal consequences due to the highly politicized nature of the case.
A prior IG investigation into former FBI counterintelligence chief Peter Strzok concluded with a determination that he violated the law by leaking information to the press, but it also declined to file criminal charges.
Several GOP members who previously had led congressional oversight investigations into the conspiracy reacted to the IG release.
“The Inspector General’s report is a stunning and unprecedented rebuke of a former Director of the FBI,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Graham said he expected “several more ugly and damning rebukes” to follow suit.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee, called it a “disappointing reminder” of partisanship touching on the highest ranks to destroy public trust and faith in law-enforcement.
“By leaking his confidential communications with the President in an attempt to save face in the wake of his firing, Mr. Comey believed he was above the rules of the DOJ,” Jordan said. “His actions were disgraceful and part of a wider effort within the Obama Justice Department to undermine President Trump.”
Most praised Horowitz and his team for their efforts to seek the truth regarding the origins of the Russia scandal and the FBI’s role in it.
“I’m grateful to Inspector General Horowitz for his characteristically thorough and professional work,” said Collins, the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee.
“… This further cements the need for us to get to the root of how the Russia investigation began,” Collins continued. “It’s time to restore Americans’ confidence that federal law enforcement is committed to justice and free from political gamesmanship.”
‘We have a very anti-union federal government that’s very much out to get them as much as they can…’
FBI officials raid the home of UAW President Gary Jones in Canton Township, Mich. / IMAGE: WDIV via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A four-year investigation into racketeering and corruption involving the United Auto Workers labor union and Fiat Chrysler reached new levels Wednesday with raids on the residences of top UAW officials.
Among the five homes and offices raided Wednesday were those of current UAW President Gary Johnson and prior President Dennis Williams.
The probe, which already has netted eight convictions, may result in the federal government assuming oversight of the country’s sixth-largest union, The Detroit News reported.
“This is the nuclear option,” former federal prosecutor Peter Henning, now a Wayne State University law professor, told the paper.
Such a move would likely indicate criminal culpability for the Michigan-based union with deep ties to Democratic politicians including House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings.
In the 2018 election cycle alone, it spent roughly $4 million on contributions to Democratic candidates and political-action committees, as well as another $4 million in lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Not surprisingly, noted the Media Research Center, two of the three major network news broadcasts completely ignored the story. Although CBS included it in Wednesday’s coverage, neither ABC nor NBC reported on it.
Meanwhile, some liberals went so far as to appear to rally behind the allegedly corrupt union and blame the investigators.
“Federal oversight completely and profoundly changes the direction of the union,” UC-Berkeley economist Harley Shaiken told The Detroit News. “The fact that it is even being discussed is disturbing news. One would need to see evidence of sustained institutional malfunction.”
Arthur Wheaton, an automotive industry specialist at Cornell University, doubted it would reach the level of a government takeover but said the raids showed that the Justice Department meant business..
“We have a very anti-union federal government that’s very much out to get them as much as they can,” Wheaton said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they really tried to take it to them.”
The case resembles one brought against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in the 1980s that resulted in 25 years of oversight after U.S. Attorneys charged that the union had a “devil’s pact” with the Mafia.
Although the government monitoring was fazed out starting in 2015, it resulted in the removal of more than 200 officials—including 50 chapter presidents—and more than 600 disciplinary charges.
Henning said the move to an oversight consent agreement likely meant the current leadership of the union was refusing to cooperate and that removal was the only option.
“Maybe the U.S. Attorney’s Office feels it has reached a dead-end and they’re not getting cooperation, that they’re getting stonewalled,” he told The Detroit News. “A trustee or monitor could come in and open up the books and make them available to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
‘There is a fundamental structural barrier that prevents progress: manipulated electoral maps drawn … by politicians to preserve their party’s political power…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Former President Barack Obama‘s failures in leadership led to one of the most significant electoral “shellackings” against his party in modern political history.
Now, he has made it his priority to flip the script, claiming that the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014—which together yielded a loss of 90 Congressional seats—were part of yet another ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’
Obama this week announced via Twitter the rollout of a new re-education program to “train volunteers, give them the tools to impact the redistricting process in their state … and empower them to be leaders in the movement for fair maps,”according to the web page for his Redistricting U.
Training is at the heart of organizing. It’s why I’ve always made it a priority – from my 2008 campaign until now. And it’s why I’m proud to announce @allontheline’s in-person training initiative, Redistricting U. Join us: https://t.co/yrWJ50wSdEpic.twitter.com/HiKvGd2XyE
The program is one of several being run through All On The Line, a supposed nonprofit “social welfare” advocacy campaign underwritten by the National Redistricting Action Fund that, nonetheless, reserves the right to “engage in grassroots electoral work,” according to the website.
Blaming the Maps
Eric Holder & Barack Obama/PHOTO: WhiteHouse.gov
Although Obama and his flunkies—including Eric Holder, his self-declared wingman, former campaign bundler and disgraced ex-attorney general—have long claimed that unfair electoral maps were created during the 2011 redistricting, when Republican legislatures dominated many states, the bulk of his losses came prior to that.
After Obama forced his disastrous signature healthcare legislation through Congress by a party-line vote on Christmas Eve 2009, the next year’s election netted six gubernatorial gains for the GOP and 20 state-legislature turnovers (699 total seats) on top of 63 U.S. House and six Senate losses for the Democrats.
Ignoring the clarion-call for bipartisanship, Obama pressed forward on his unilateral, auto-pen agenda, with many of his executive actions later being ruled unconstitutional.
Democrats reclaimed 10 congressional seats during the 2012 election but lost 21 in 2014, for a net loss of 80 during Obama’s presidency.
It was reportedly during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia that party elites including then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—a longtime Clinton stooge—hatched a plan to scapegoat the centuries-old, bipartisan practice of gerrymandering for their political failures.
Not long after, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by Holder, came into being—first as a nonprofit, but later boasting its own political-action committee and fundraising operations.
As the All On The Line website noted, one of the top obstacles for far-left Democrats has been facing the political backlash of efforts to enact their radical agenda.
“Whether you care about making sure everyone has access to quality, affordable health care, achieving equal pay, reducing the gun violence that plagues our schools and communities, protecting voting rights, or dealing with the urgent threat of climate change,” said the website, “there is a fundamental structural barrier that prevents progress: manipulated electoral maps drawn with surgical precision by politicians to preserve their party’s political power and silence the will of the people.”
Red States in the Crosshairs
North Carolina’s Congressional districts/IMAGE: USA Today via Youtube
Earlier this year, Obama folded his own campaign organization, Organizing for Action (formerly Obama for America) into the NDRC, adding to its massive network of resources and political infrastructure, with speculation that it may be part of a behind-the-scenes prelude to a presidential run by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
For now, though, its main focus is on legal battles and activism to coerce states into making their districts more favorable to Democrats—often employing a “Sue til Blue” strategy that relies on favorable decisions from activist liberal judges.
In one case, even though a liberal candidate for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court had denounced the funding and support of outside interest groups, Holder and the NDRC continued to run ads and campaign heavily on her behalf.
Despite a setback when the U.S. Supreme Court this year ruled that partisan gerrymandering was outside the purview of federal judges, the NDRC network has pressed onward in its mission of targeting red states in the hope of flipping legislatures, state courts and other key positions prior to the next round of redistricting so that they, themselves, may gerrymander the districts to favor their party.
They have succeeded already in using court orders to force the redrawing of several crucial swing states—including Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
This contributed to some of the pickups that Democrats flaunted in the 2018 midterm election—where they had a net gain of 41 U.S. House seats and seven governorships.
Even with those advances, though, the “fairness” that the Left seeks will not be achieved until it has secured permanent legislative majorities for Democrats.
In North Carolina, for instance, after the state was forced to redraw its maps due to what the courts determined was race-based gerrymandering, Democrats still were unable to flip the state legislature and are now suing again, claiming the redrawn maps they approved were unfair.
Sore Losers, Soros and Secretaries of State…
Stacey Abrams / IMAGE: Late Night with Seth Meyers via Youtube
The Obama–Holder juggernaut is not the only left-wing group seeking to manipulate election outcomes through backdoor efforts to redraw the maps.
Her Fair Fight 2020 PAC is also targeting at least 19 other “battleground” states in a multi-million-dollar campaign before next year’s election.
Abrams, who refused to concede the governor’s race to her Republican opponent, Brian Kemp, has insisted that voter suppression was the cause of her loss—even as the state made substantial gains in minority voter participation while Kemp was its secretary of state.
In addition to her own adocacy group, Abrams is supporting an initiative led by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State to flip the state-level offices charged with certifying elections—as well as other down-ballot races, like district attorneys and state attorneys general.
Soros previously funded a similar campaign, the Secretaries of State Project.
“We looked at the states that are going to have the strongest impact, based on the margins of victory or loss from the 2016 election and also [the] 2018 [midterm elections],” Abrams told NPR’s “On Point” in an interview broadcast Tuesday, revealing the sheer political motives of the group’s activism.
“We looked at states where we have Senate elections that will help determine control of the Senate for 2020, and we looked at states that have [secretary of state] races, but also states that have chambers that may flip and influence who controls redistricting for 2021 and beyond,” she said.
‘Our overall mission is not to get any one person nominated. It’s to get judicial issues more into the marrow of Democratic activists…’
Brian Fallon / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Following in the footsteps of President Donald Trump—only backward—activist Democrat organizations have begun compiling their wish-list of future judicial nominees that will help advance a partisan agenda.
For some of the Left’s leading social engineers, that means fewer judges from corporate law firms and more from pro-bono advocacy outfits that value their own ideology over an impartial interpretation of law.
Ironically, noted The American Prospect, activists like Obama-era legal advisers Brian Fallon and Christopher Kang benefited from precisely the sort of cronyism and good-old-boy networking that they claim to be fighting against.
After launching their careers as leading staffers for high-profile Democrats including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, former Attorney General Eric Holder and former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the pair went on to found the group Demand Justice, where they helped to orchestrate the “resistance” against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination.
Noting their backgrounds, the magazine said, “These are not résumé items you would typically associate with people who want to burn down the dominant frameworks for judicial nominations.”
But the two radicals claimed their effort to politicize the judiciary is a necessary quid-pro-quo since appointing lawyers who built their careers representing corporate clients “tilts the federal bench in favor of corporate interests.”
The two Demand Justice co-founders penned a piece in the far-left Atlantic that laid out their “provocative” proposal, Fallon said, in order to begin “socializing the concept” among the Left’s radical-progressive base.
Invoking the coded dog-whistle language of the Left, Fallon claimed that it was not an anti-capitalist agenda he was seeking to unleash on the judiciary; rather, it was in need of more “diversity.”
“[T]here’s a widespread recognition of the lack of professional diversity,” he said. “… We felt the need to get a little bit more intense about it, and put it in starker terms. If you want to put the onus on people to look at different types of nominees, you need to put firmer point on it.”
Yet, Fallon was also candid about his eventual goal of using the judiciary to force the Left’s socialist lurch into the mainstream by seeking the “AOC equivalent of a federal judge.”
He acknowledged that liberals from the Obama administration and earlier had succeeded in doing similar things for social causes like abortion, but said even the current left-leaning judicial philosophies remained too moderate.
“[T]he courts are a theater where this war is being contested and there’s no one on the battlefield,” he said. “It’s a place to advance the interests as well.”
Fallon urged Democrats to cull their nominees by consulting with groups—like the Open Market Institute—that are working to unseat centrist Democrats in districts where more radical representatives are needed.
Likewise their congressional counterparts who still value antiquated notions of bipartisan compromise, the traditional concept of jurisprudence that many judges base their decisions on is inadequate to enact the new world order envisioned by Demand Justice.
“Our overall mission is not to get any one person nominated,” Fallon said. “It’s to get judicial issues more into the marrow of Democratic activists. People must center the courts as a needed element of the movement’s activities and goals.”
‘The popularity of the lawsuits … appear[s] to be perceived as a boon for various firms’ reputations…’
House Counsel Doug Letter and his team of DC attorneys parade to the courthouse for a lawsuit over subpoenas of Trump’s tax returns. / IMAGE: Ruptly via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) One of the primary plans of attack for Democrats in the Trump era has been legislation by lawsuit.
No matter the cause, from immigration to school lunches and everything in between, lawyers have clogged the legal system with spurious suits and injunctions that will delay the president’s agenda and pose unprecedented checks on executive authority.
According to The National Law Journal, bias within the ranks of attorneys is helping the left-wing politicians run interference.
Along with Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the Democrat-led House of Representatives, a legion of activist lawyers is coordinating with the Left to undermine Trump. Fortunately, they aren’t charging taxpayers to do it, since many work for free.
By contrast Republicans had to pay top dollar to wage legal defenses against the Obama administration, with some attorneys charging upward of $500 an hour.
Even so, the GOP’s own counsel during the Obama era, Kerry Kircher, admitted that high-powered D.C. lawyers were more “aroused” by aiding the Left’s agenda and less interested in fighting it.
“It wasn’t like I could have gotten top-notch representation on a pro bono basis to do that,” he told the NLJ‘s Law.com.
While the precise reasoning for the leftward lean of attorneys is not easy to nail down, the American Bar Association has historically given to Democrats in political races much more than to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
On one hand, the very basis of the Left’s philosophy—an increase in regulatory and oversight practices—favors the legal industry, which needs more laws to make more money. Thus, throwing charity work to radical lawmakers may be something of a loss-leader.
Cronyism within the industry may also play a role, as is the case in academia and other fields where powerful influencers rely on virtue-signaling to steer the success of their anointed proteges and weed out ideological diversity.
In that sense, the elitist lawyers make up in social capital among their like-minded peers what they forgo in actual revenue.
“[T]he popularity of the lawsuits—and in some cases the novelty of the lawsuits—also appear to be perceived as a boon for various firms’ reputations,” noted the legal blog Law & Crime.
‘If the GOP were the “silent majority” they claim, they wouldn’t be so scared of a popular vote…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After claiming last week that the U.S. Constitution was a scam, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY, raised the stakes by saying her Republican detractors were too chicken to abolish it.
Specifically, Ocasio–Cortez was referring to the Electoral College, the process outlined by the 12th Amendment for determining proportional representation among each state polity in the national presidential election.
Without evidence, the race-baiting freshman congresswoman alleged last week that the system inherently suppressed minority votes.
“Due to severe racial disparities in certain states, the Electoral College effectively weighs white voters over voters of color, as opposed to a ‘one person, one vote’ system where all our votes are counted equally.”
Following push-back over her outlandish rhetoric, she followed up with a tweet on Friday.
I see Fox News is big mad about abolishing the electoral college.
So let’s talk about it.
1) If the GOP were the “silent majority” they claim, they wouldn’t be so scared of a popular vote.
They *know* they aren’t the majority. They rely on establishing minority rule for power.
A study released this month found that a majority of states had counties with more registered voters on their rolls than residents, resulting from failures to enforce voter-registration procedures required by the Bill Clinton-era “Motor Voter” law.
Additionally, several major “sanctuary cities” allow non-citizens to vote in local elections and provide them with government-issued identification cards that closely resemble driver’s licenses.
Many on the Left insist that verifying voter identity at the polling place is also “racist.”
While Ocasio–Cortez’s tweet claimed to be calling the GOP on its bluff about the ‘silent minority,’ left-wing activists fought tooth-and-nail to prevent a comprehensive census count from determining what proportion of the population comprised illegal immigrants.
The U.S. Supreme Court determined the Trump administration’s citizenship question to be valid, but due to a relatively minor procedural issue it remanded the case back to a lower court in New York, where a liberal judge threatened to delay congressionally mandated printing deadlines for the decennial population count.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/IMAGE: screenshot via Twitter
Instead, far-left Democrats, including ‘AOC’ and her fellow ‘Squad‘ members, have been vocal advocates for open borders, comparing detention facilities to Nazi concentration camps, and demanding that illegal immigrants be released into the U.S. without processing or adjudication.
Current efforts to abolish the Electoral College—along with other once-dismissed Democratic agenda items, such as slavery reparations and packing the Supreme Court—promise to figure prominently into next year’s election should one of several socialist-leaning candidates in the presidential primary race be nominated.
Led by top contenders Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., many on the Left have expressed openness to the policies being pushed by the party’s extreme fringe.
Sanders recently acknowledged that energy policies widely supported by Democrats, such as Ocasio–Cortez’s Green New Deal, would require that the entire energy sector be nationalized, much as it was in Venezuela.
It remained unclear whether Ocasio–Cortez planned to follow up on her earlier taunt about the election process by double-dog-daring the GOP to cede private industry to government hands.
‘We are so focused on immigration, we have neglected our community…’
Charlotte Sheriff Gary McFadden/IMAGE: Garry Mcfadden 4Sherrif via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Garry McFadden, the sheriff of North Carolina’s Charlotte and the surrounding Mecklenburg County, built his career as a homicide detective and even cashed in with a reality television series.
But now, the controversial lawman is playing the victim while catching political flak for his refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
McFadden is one of several sheriffs in the conservative state’s blue urban centers who have declared their districts to be ‘sanctuary’ locales while running afoul of state lawmakers.
After a second high-profile episode in which McFadden released a dangerous criminal in defiance of a detainer request from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Republican-led General Assembly this week passed HB 370, which would have forced the sheriffs to comply or face removal.
However, the bill was vetoed by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper.
McFadden has pinned the blame on everyone but himself for the failures to protect the community.
He blamed ICE for neglecting to obtain a federal warrant that would have forced cooperation.
He blamed judges for setting the bail and terms of release.
He blamed the conservative politicians, alleging their legislative efforts were racially motivated since the three North Carolina sheriffs in defiance of immigration agreements were all black.
And now, he is blaming the constituents themselves for making their displeasure known.
“It’s very nasty,” he complained to WSOCTV. “It’s a very nasty debate. People fear for their lives.”
McFadden claimed he personally had become a target of abuse and was afraid of what the dangerous criminals at large in the community could do to him.
“I have to be more cautious,” he said. “I get death threats. I get people openly telling me what they want to do to me and my family.”
But still he remained dug into his position on non-cooperation. The debate, he claimed, no longer had anything to do with immigration but was now about his authority as a duly elected public official to decide how to interpret the laws he was paid to enforce.
“Do not erode the powers and duties of an elected sheriff,” he said.
McFadden griped that the political turmoil was distracting him from his ability to conduct business as usual.
“We aren’t even discussing the 70-some murders in Charlotte,” he said. “We aren’t discussing mass shootings. We aren’t discussing school shootings. We are so focused on immigration, we have neglected our community.”
After a mass shooting occurred at the University of North Carolina–Charlotte in May, police were largely praised for their fast response.
However, when some observed that preventative measures like a wall around the campus and tighter enforcement of security would best enhance safety, the proposals were dismissed in short order.
“The open campus is a feature of American higher education that will never go away,” campus security consultant Steven Healy told USA Today. “We want people to be able to freely travel across campus. This is who we fundamentally are, a place for the open exchange of ideas.”
McFadden, for his part, put the blame for the nationwide shooting epidemic on an uptick in “hate,” echoing unsubstantiated talking points from many scaremongering Democrat politicians that “white supremacy” was on the rise.
“I think we need to focus on violence in the schools, mass shootings and the hate that we are now seeing,” he said.
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With the veering of the Democratic left wing toward a socialist platform, many have fretted over the vulnerability of battleground Democrats who managed to flip historically conservative districts.
Meanwhile, center-leaning Republicans also have struggled with their own identity crisis in the age of Trump.
Now, even their own support structure seems to be eroding from within.
In February, quibbling from within the Republican Main Street Partnership, an outside funding group that raises money for GOP moderates, led to the dissolution of its official congressional caucus, reported NPR in a profile published Friday of the group and its financial dispute.
The RMSP has been around since the mid-1990s, “driven by a desire to counterbalance the weight of the conservative wing inside the House GOP,” NPR’s Susan Davis wrote. “Lawmakers believe that rebuilding the centrist coalition is key to improving the GOP’s odds of winning a House majority in 2020.”
Its eponymous caucus, however, lasted only two years. Although it began in 2017, the heavy casualties among moderate GOP representatives in the 2018 midterm election left the lawmakers “licking their wounds,” NPR said.
Of the roughly 40 incumbent members in the Republican Main Street Caucus, 18 were defeated. That accounts for nearly half of the net loss of 37 GOP seats (with one GOP seat in North Carolina still pending the outcome of a special election).
Some former caucus members fear the infighting and divisions will spill over into the 2020 races as well.
In the wake of the election disaster (although still relatively mild when compared with Democrats’ 63-seat loss under Obama in 2010 and 54-seat loss under Clinton in 1994) the caucus members blamed RMSP chief Sarah Chamberlain
They questioned why RMSP had left more than $722,000 in the account of its super-PAC, Defending Main Street that might have been put to good use.
Chamberlain said that the partnership’s organizations had invested nearly $6 million in the races, but the legislators’ subsequent demands for an independent audit went unanswered.
“It just all smelled really bad,” said one unnamed former congressman, according to NPR.
Compounding the outrage was that Chamberlain received at least $700,000 in compensation—or roughly 20 percent of the operating budget—according to disclosure reports.
In response, the RMSP disputed the figure, saying her salary was a mere $500,000, and claimed that the criticism was the result of underlying sexism.
“It is not surprising that Sarah Chamberlain is being attacked,” wrote RMSP board member Doug Ose in a statement to NPR. “RMSP is the only Republican organization other than the RNC that is [led] by a woman.”
But with many crediting the defection of suburban women for the 2018 Democratic upsets, RMSP’s emphasis on women’s issues has rightfully come under scrutiny.
Among the operations funded by the RMSP umbrella was Women2Women, a speaking tour that Chamberlain founded that claims to support female empowerment as its main goal but does not appear to be aligned with any specific GOP objectives.
The organization’s website quotes Chamberlain as saying, “There are more men name John in the US Congress than there are Women in Congress.”
However, that claim is demonstrably false. Currently, there are 25 women in the Senate (17 Democrats and eight Republicans) and 102 in the House (89 Democrats and 13 Republicans)
According to a search of the Congress.gov database, 75 percent (15) of the 20 men named John in the 116th Congress are Republican.
Additionally, two incumbent Republicans named “John” (Reps. John Culberson in Texas-07 and John Faso in NY-19) were among those who lost their seats to Democrats in the 2018 election. Culberson—a nine-term incumbent—lost to a woman, Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher.
With Chamberlain exercising near-complete control over the operations, several prominent congressmen chose to disassociate themselves with the RMSP.
Among them was Rep. John Katko, R-NY, who drafted a formal resolution for the lawmakers in the caucus to suspend their association with the RMSP. The group also outlined its concerns in a December memo.
“How does money flow between each entity?” asked the lawmakers in the memo. “Is there any wall in place? If so how do we prove it? Sarah is the only person in a position to know as the only check signer.”
‘It is to make country by country assume leadership and assume this ambition that is necessary…’
President Donald Trump chairs the U.N. Security Council/IMAGE: Fox News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Senior White House officials said President Donald Trump has no plans to attend the United Nations‘s Climate Action Summit being put on by Secretary–General António Guterres next month.
Instead, they said, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler will represent the U.S. at the Sept. 23 event, which mark’s the opening of a new session for the global body’s General Assembly.
An EPA spokesman said that Wheeler plans “to highlight America’s environmental progress” while attending the summit, McClatchy reported.
However, the sources who spoke to McClatchy said that official word on who will attend remained up in the air should the president exercise his prerogative to change plans.
“The United States is considering the nature of our participation at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit,” said one State Department official.
The news outlet said it remained to be seen whether UN Ambassador Kelly Craft, who replaced Nikki Haley in February, will attend.
Democrats attacked Craft during her confirmation hearing over her husband’s links to the coal industry, forcing a promise from her to recuse herself from her on any UN discussions on climate change or coal.
Wheeler also worked as a pro-energy lobbyist representing the coal industry prior to his EPA appointment.
Both have aligned themselves with Trump in expressing skepticism over some of the scientific claims regarding global warming, though Craft has said she agreed that man-made emissions play a part in climate change.
Even so, many dispute the scope and urgency of the so-called crisis, with even former Vice President Al Gore, a strident green activist, acknowledging that previous UN reports had “torqued up” the alarmism.
Other skeptics question the cost—benefit breakdown of solutions as members of the far left pitch extreme proposals like the Green New Deal that would fundamentally alter the American economy and lifestyle.
Globally speaking, one of Trump’s first acts was to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
The Obama-era agreement imposed sharp restrictions and penalties on carbon-dioxide emissions, even though some of the world’s largest greenhouse-gas producers either were not a part of the pledge or were not complying in good faith with it.
Critics called it a glorified wealth-redistribution effort to shift money to poorer, non-industrialized countries.
Despite the withdrawal from the agreement, Trump officials said the U.S. will outline the progress it has made toward reducing CO2 emissions, including the encouragement of private-sector innovations for carbon capture and storage.
Last month, Guterres asked participating countries to submit by early August “concrete, realistic plans” for lowering emissions prior to the renewal date of the Paris accord next year.
“It’s not to convene a conference to come to a consensus on a document,” Guterres told Time magazine as part of a June cover story hyping global warming. “It is to make country by country assume leadership and assume this ambition that is necessary,” he said.
