‘The United States will not sit idly by while unaccountable political operatives convene kangaroo court trials in foreign countries to prosecute and persecute American soldiers…’
Ted Cruz/IMAGE: NBC News via Youtube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) The United Nations‘ International Criminal Court on Thurdsay approved an investigation into alleged crimes that American soldiers committed while in Afghanistan but Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the prosecution will fail.
Cruz, who introduced a resolution to censure the ICC, said in a press release the decision undermines America’s sovereignty and national security.
“Today’s announcement by the International Criminal Court is an explicit assault on the sovereignty and security of the United States, which is not a party to the ICC and over which the ICC has no jurisdiction,” he said.
“It marks the end of the pretense that the ICC is a legitimate legal body bound by norms and jurisdiction, and exposes it as a political organization targeting America and our allies, including Israel, to advance the political agendas of hostile countries which themselves often lack the rule of law.”
Cruz’s resolution would ask the UN Security Council to ban the ICC from prosecuting nation-states that have not ratified the treaty that authorizes its actions, The Daily Beast reported.
“The United States will not sit idly by while unaccountable political operatives convene kangaroo court trials in foreign countries to prosecute and persecute American soldiers and the soldiers of our allies,” Cruz said.
“I will work with my colleagues and the Trump administration on measures aimed at countering this decision, including and especially through a United Nations Security Council resolution that would prohibit the ICC from prosecuting the nationals of non-member states,” he added.
Major world powers, including Russia, China, Israel and the United States, have not agreed to the ICC’s jurisdiction.
“The ICC’s campaign against our troops will fail because the United States will ensure that it fails, but also because it is fundamentally illegitimate,” Cruz said.
“The ICC and the international community must decide between bringing the Court back in line or destroying whatever legitimacy it still claims for itself,” he said.
The ICC’s decision to launch an investigation into American military activity in Afghanistan and Cruz’s proposed resolution come as President Donald Trump’s administration has taken steps to end the war.
‘If you want to take everyone’s AR-15s, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C. and start with this one?’
Ken Buck / IMAGE: @RepKenBuck via Twitter
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) After Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden announced that he would appoint former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, to spearhead his administration’s anti-Second Amendment initiatives, Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., challenged the duo to “come and take it.”
During his short-lived presidential campaign, O’Rourke positioned himself as perhaps the most extreme anti-gun-rights candidate in American history.
At a September presidential debate, he vowed to ramp up gun-confiscation efforts in the wake of several tragic mass-shootings. “Hell yes we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said.
Despite O’Rourke’s radical promise, Biden said after a recent primary win in South Carolina that he was “counting on” him to “take care of the gun problem.”
The timing—which coincided with O’Rourke’s endorsement of the Biden campaign—suggested the possibility of a strategic political alliance.
However, many have expressed concerns that Biden, who has long postured himself as a moderate, would be easily swayed if elected by surrounding himself with far-left ideologues.
Buck responded to Biden’s recent pledge to partner with O’Rourke by posting a video on Twitter.
I have just one message for Joe Biden and Beto O’Rourke, if you want to take everyone’s AR-15s, why don’t you swing by my office in Washington, D.C. and start with this one?
“I have always been a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment and will continue to stand up to any attacks on the law-abiding gun owners of Colorado’s Fourth District,” Buck said in a press release.
In addition to his support for radical gun laws, the 77-year-old former vice president has also adopted nearly every position endorsed by the newly socialist Democratic Party, including extreme tax-hikes, healthcare policies and environmental measures.
Joe Biden promises Beto O’Rourke, who pushed for gun confiscation for legal gun owners, will “be the one who leads” his gun control effort pic.twitter.com/qjgft8wFkt
‘[T]he campaign filed this lawsuit … to hold the publishers accountable for their reckless false reporting and also to establish the truth…’
Photo by red, white, and black eyes forever (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Attorneys for President Donald Trump filed their third recent defamation lawsuit against the “fake news” for making knowingly false comments that recklessly and harmfully accused Trump of colluding with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.
“The complaint alleges CNN was aware of the falsity at the time it published them but did so for the intentional purpose of hurting the campaign while misleading its own readers in the process,” said Jenna Ellis, senior legal adviser to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., according to Fox News.
“… [T]he campaign filed this lawsuit against CNN and the preceding suits … to hold the publishers accountable for their reckless false reporting and also to establish the truth,” Ellis said.
It specifically referenced a June 2019 story by Larry Noble, former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission, which was published on CNN.com.
Similar to the other two libelous examples, Noble accused Trump, without evidence, of “soliciting dirt” on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
In fact, “there was an extensive record of statements from the Campaign and the administration expressly disavowing any intention to seek Russian assistance,” said the recent complaint.
“The Campaign therefore was left with no alternative but to file this lawsuit to: publicly establish the truth, properly inform CNN’s readers and audience (and the rest of the world) of the true facts, and seek appropriate remedies for the harm caused by CNN’s false reporting and failure to retract and apologize for it,” it said.
Trump’s legal score-settling follows not only the extensive and costly Mueller investigation into the Russia accusations, but also partisan House Democrats’ impeachment effort on unrelated—or, perhaps, loosely related—accusations that he sought Ukraine’s help in soliciting dirt on current presidential rival Joe Biden.
However, the president has the wind at his back in several regards. A recent settlement CNN made with Kentucky teenager Nick Sandmann over its false reporting during a media feeding frenzy in which the Covington Catholic High School student was accused of taunting a Native American activist.
Moreover, an undercover investigation by conservative watchdog group Project Veritas last year exposed the concerted efforts of CNN leadership—including network president Jeff Zucker—to smear Trump with negative coverage due to personal and political vendettas.
While left-wing legal analysts clamored to write off Trump’s earlier libel lawsuits as legally insupportable, Fox News commentator Gregg Jarrett made the case that the Times case did, in fact, meet the high legal bar, which ironically was established in a prior lawsuit against the newspaper, that it had acted with “actual malice” in a 2017 opinion piece by former Executive Editor Max Frankel.
“The evidence is contained in its own reporting,” Jarrett said.
“The newspaper’s previously published articles undermined or contradicted Frankel’s statement,” he continued. “… If the Times stands by the accuracy of its own reporters and the veracity of their stories, then it knew or should have known that Frankel’s column was false.”
‘I think the two-party system is good for the South and good for the n***o—good for the black in the South…’
Joe Biden / IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Early in the Democratic primary, former Vice President Joe Biden faced debate heat from then-rival Kamala Harris about his past support of segregationist busing policies and working cooperatively with racist civil-rights-era Democrats.
Those with good memories may also recall that Biden’s controversial remarks about his soon-to-be boss, Barack Obama, which effectively helped eliminate him from the 2008 Democratic primary.
“I mean, you got the first mainstream African–American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden told the New York Observer in 2007. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Regardless, in the current election cycle, many black voters—who continue to dominate Democratic Party politics in many Southern states—helped steer him to his historic primary comeback on Tuesday.
Now, some political watchers, including conservative pundit Sean Hannity, are reminding Democrats precisely how offensive their anointed candidate can be.
The Fox News host on Thursday played a 1973 recording in which Biden casually used the second-most verboten “n-word.”
“I think the two-party system is good for the South and good for the n***o—good for the black in the South,” Biden said.
Joe Biden once referred to African Americans as “N*gros”
Ironically, Biden, newly elected in his first term as a U.S. senator, was defending the two-party system, shortly after white Southern Democrats had splintered off in the 1968 election to support Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s run as an independent.
That rift helped Republican Richard Nixon to claim the White House, prompting intra-party debates among the Democrats that are similar to those that progressive Bernie Sanders supporters are now raising.
While some on the Left sought, at the time, to repudiate Democrats’ racist politics, Biden was not one of them. Once again, nearly 50 years later, he continues to prove himself to be, above all, malleable in his convictions—willing to shift with the political trade-winds and adapt in the moment to his audience.
GOP-supporting political-action committees recently linked Biden’s glad-handing and political pandering with the old Democratic machine, using Obama’s own words to describe politicians cut from the same cloth.
Our new ad playing in South Carolina: @JoeBiden joined segregationists, wrote a bill that disproportionately jailed African Americans, & blamed black parents for inequality. He will not represent us. pic.twitter.com/9qkiOOYn0V
“Plantation politics. Black people in the worst jobs. The worst housing. Police brutality rampant,” Obama described in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father.
“But when the so-called black committeemen came around election time, we’d all line up and vote the straight Democratic ticket,” he continued. “Sell our souls for a Christmas turkey.”
Although Obama later demanded that the ad be removed, the pro-Trump Committee to Defend the President refused to acquiesce.
“[We] reject these banal attempts to abuse the legal process and shut down grassroots-driven political speech your firm disagrees with, as doing so is wholly un-American,” CDP wrote in a letter to Obama. “Our commitment to free political speech is absolute.”
‘In the state with the largest electorate in the nation, the vote count does not end on election night—and that’s a good thing…’
Photo by Ken Lund (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The 89 delegates who remain unaccounted for in California‘s Democratic primary (as of noon on Friday) would more than close the 75-delegate gap between leading contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
In fact, the number of California delegates still up-in-the air is more than double the 41 delegates at stake in the Iowa caucus, which officially kicked off the presidential nominating contests in early February.
But despite having 10 times the total number of delegates that Iowa has, California also has managed, somehow, to duck the sharp scrutiny that Iowa faced.
Meanwhile, California’s secretary of state, Alex Padilla, sought even before the primary to lay the scaffold for his state’s disastrous election management—and in the aftermath he spun it by claiming it was a win for democracy.
“In the state with the largest electorate in the nation, the vote count does not end on election night—and that’s a good thing,” Padilla claimed. “Several safety nets exist to protect voting rights.”
The state relies heavily on absentee and provisional ballots, which long have raised questions about potential ballot-harvesting issues and have cast aspersions on the election integrity as the election-night victories of more conservative candidates often get overtaken in the final counts.
Adding to the chaos, new voting machines in Los Angeles County, among other areas, created hours-long lines that, undoubtedly, deterred many would-be voters.
L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn called for an investigation via Twitter.
The hours-long wait times that some voters experienced yesterday are unacceptable. Today I am calling for a complete investigation into what was behind the long lines so that this does not happen again this November. #LAvoteshttps://t.co/NrHMQiSN4X
Yet, on a national level, even Sanders—who lost Iowa to then-candidate Pete Buttigieg by a 0.04-percent margin after demanding a partial recanvassing—seemed to shrug off the chaos in California.
Although projections showed him winning the state, the margin is much narrower than expected, with Biden’s success in earlier-voting states likely swaying the outcome. Democrats’ system of proportional primary delegation means California’s voter delays, thus, likely netted Sanders a loss of delegates overall.
Still, on Friday, Sanders said that if Biden, following his near sweep of all but four states up for grabs on Super Tuesday, wins a plurality of delegates, he should be the nominee without fear of invoking a brokered convention.
Alex Padilla/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
Regardless, Padilla said his state is in no rush to help bring the picture into focus. He expected it to be more than a month before he officially certified the California vote.
“April 10 is well before the end of the national primary schedule and well before the political parties’ nominating conventions,” he said, downplaying the delay.
As a result, Democrats—in their efforts to circle the wagon around a viable general-election candidate, regardless of how flawed—seem to be doing precisely what Padilla and others in California claim to be working against.
Their calculated delays, paired with the media’s rush to project campaign momentum onto Biden, threaten once again to silence the voices of Sanders’s supporters (and those of the last remaining female candidate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii), in favor of handing the election to the milder and, ostensibly, more mainstream alternative.
‘I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations…’
Mitt Romney/PHOTO: Gage Skidmore (CC)
UPDATE: Politico reports that Mitt Romney has said he will vote to subpoena records related to Hunter Biden’s work for Ukrainian oil company Burisma.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After going all-in for Democrats’ flimsy case to subpoena additional witnesses during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, NeverTrump Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, elected a Republican, has flipped his attitude on wanting to have a thorough account of White House’s apparent abuse of power.
Immediately following Trump’s acquittal, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, stepped up what had been a three-year investigation into Burisma‘s corrupt dealings in Ukraine by subpoenaing the travel records of its former board member, Hunter Biden.
Johnson is also seeking documents from Blue Star, a U.S. based legislative-affairs lobbying operation that—along with Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer—represented Burisma’s interest to the U.S. State Department and others during the Obama administration.
But Romney, who could cast the tie-breaking vote next Wednesday in whether or not to issue the subpoenas, showed little interest in supporting the effort.
“I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations,” he told The Washington Post, further claiming that this one “appears political.”
The Post‘s piece rehashed several stale, left-wing tropes suggesting that there was “little evidence” of misconduct on Biden’s part, despite the fact that Johnson was seeking precisely that.
The article also pushed a new talking point: that the probe into Biden and his father, former Vice President Joe Biden, had gone dormant during the few weeks between Trump’s acquittal vote and the Super Tuesday primary elections, when the latter Biden once more regained his front-runner status in the Democratic primary race.
However, there is little evidence that this was, in fact, the case.
Buying the Left’s defense, that the long-running Burisma investigation was a matter of optics more than public integrity, Romney suggested he would instead support a special-counsel probe into it.
“I would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body,” he said. “There’s no question the appearance is not good.”
However, in the wake of the Mueller Report, which debunked accusations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, Democrats also have sought to discredit the Justice Department, claiming it, too, has been compromised.
Shady Ukraine Dealings
Hunter and Joe Biden / IMAGE: Donald J Trump via Youtube
Johnson’s investigation likely would explore whether Hunter Biden, Archer and Blue Star sought to inappropriately pressure the U.S. officials to, in turn, pressure Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko administration into dropping its Burisma investigations.
Shortly after prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin raided several Burisma-related locations, the natural-gas company stepped up its communications with the State Department, including what appears to have been a meeting between Archer and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Archer—who, along with Hunter Biden, received a million dollars a year for his “consulting” work on the Burisma board of directors—had been a former top aide to Kerry and was college roommates with Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz.
Heinz, also a founding member of the Rosemont Seneca Partners firm, later disassociated himself from the business when Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board in 2014.
Roughly a month after Burisma ramped up its U.S. lobbying efforts, in March 2016, Joe Biden, who was overseeing U.S.–Ukrainian affairs for the White House, met with Poroshenko and threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan if Shokin was not fired as the prosecutor–general.
Biden later bragged, during a 2018 panel discussion, about pressuring the Ukrainian administration to oust its lead investigator.
“I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” he recounted in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
Democrats and their media allies claim that Shokin’s firing was unrelated to the Burisma investigation, widely pointing to the demands from several globalist entities—including one funded by leftist mega-donor George Soros—that Shokin be fired for failing to support their so-called anti-corruption priorities.
Shokin also had investigated some of the “anti-corruption” groups who were behind a 2014 revolution that had ousted the prior, Russian-backed administration.
A Dubious Defense
Ron Johnson/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
Biden apologists point to the fact that a handful of GOP senators, Johnson among them, had signed a letter supporting Shokin’s removal.
However, Johnson said that bipartisan overture was but one of many letters he affixed his signature to.
Moreover, his ongoing investigation into Blue Star suggests he did so without the knowledge of Burisma’s U.S. lobbying efforts and the likely conflict of interest involving the Bidens.
The issue is among several alarming revelations about Biden’s political patronage of his family’s personal enrichment efforts that the media widely shrugged off, both during and after the Obama administration.
However, when Trump and his attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, pressed the matter with the newly elected Ukrainian president, Democrats cried foul, claiming abuse of power.
Although House Democrats’ articles of impeachment against Trump failed to produce a crime, Romney—an adversary of Trump’s since the 2016 presidential campaign, despite having been endorsed in his own political efforts by the president—was the only Republican during Trump’s Senate trial who voted to convict.
Yet, in his recent Post interview, Romney downplayed the Bidens’ parallel, antecedent abuses of power.
“With regards to Hunter Biden, taking excessive advantage of his father’s name is unsavory but also not a crime,” Romney said.
“Given that in neither the case of the father nor the son was any evidence presented by the president’s counsel that a crime had been committed, the president’s insistence that they be investigated by the Ukrainians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit,” he claimed. “There is no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president would never have done what he did.”
‘Every President has the right to appoint people who are in line with their agenda and policies…’
President Donald Trump addresses the crowd at a rally in Charlotte, NC, before Super Tuesday. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The White House has introduced a new questionnaire that asks potential employees about their commitment to President Donald Trump and his agenda, according to CNN.
The survey is intended to make sure White House employees are loyal to the president, so they must now answer questions about Trump, his campaign, and whether the employees support either or both.
The applicants are specifically asked, “What part of candidate Trump’s campaign message most appealed to you and why?”
The survey, itself, states that its purpose is “to expedite Presidential Personnel’s vetting process.”
It is specifically reserved for political appointments, according to the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, and as such it’s not unusual. Almost every administration has vetted its appointees in a similar fashion, CNN noted.
“Every President has the right to appoint people who are in line with their agenda and policies,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
These new questions, however, are more personal, CNN contended.
One question asks potential White House picks if they’ve ever “appeared in the media to comment on ‘candidate Trump, President Trump, or other personnel or policies of the Trump administration.’”
Another asks employees to list the “thinkers, authors, books or political leaders” who have “influenced you and led you to your current beliefs.”
Potential employees must also list the campaigns they have “worked on or volunteered for,” according to CNN.
This is just the latest effort by the Trump administration to weed out officials who have been disloyal to the president and his policies.
Trump appointed McEntee the White House’s new presidential personnel director. Ever since, McEntee has been scouring the administration for political appointees deemed disloyal to the president, according to CBS News.
‘Yo yo, you know what, you’re so freakin’ obsessed with what I decide to do with my body, maybe you shouldn’t even want to have sex with me!’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) In a bizarre pro-abortion rant on Wednesday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., declared that pro-life voters are “obsessed with our bodies,” and yelling that “maybe you shouldn’t even want to have sex with me!”
.@RashidaTlaib at today’s abortion rally: “Yo yo, you know what, you’re so freakin’ obsessed with what I decide to do with my body, maybe you shouldn’t even want to have sex with me!”
Adds that pro-life pols are “commercializing” women’s bodies to make them “less than.” pic.twitter.com/yTt10nNvdY
Joining dozens of abortion activists at a rally in front of the Supreme Court, Tlaib claimed pro-lifers wanted to “control” women’s bodies.
“This past year, I realized, my, my, my are they obsessed with our bodies, how we talk, how we look, what we stand for,” she said. “I mean, this type of policing of our bodies is so interconnected to all the social justice movements all around the country.”
Then things got weird: “And let me tell you,” Tlaib continued. “This obsession with our bodies. You know, I, in the Michigan legislature for six years, used to say to people, ‘Yo, yo, you know what, you’re so freakin’ obsessed with what I decide to do with my body, maybe you shouldn’t even want to have sex with me!'”
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful actions,” Schumer said, earning a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
‘I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never—never—would do such a thing…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Senate Minority Leaders Charles Schumer, D-NY, facing a wave of criticism over threats he made to two Supreme Court justices, attempted to do damage control on the Senate floor Thursday, but stopped short of apologizing.
Schumer drew a sharp rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts and many others after telling justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the steps of the Supreme Court Wednesday that they “have released the whirlwind and will pay the price” if they seek to overturn existing abortion laws.
But Schumer excused his behavior by claiming it was the result of his blunt rhetorical style and his passion for abortion. “I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language,” he said.
His speech followed a searing criticism from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“There is nothing to call this except a threat,” McConnell said, according to Fox News.
Not only did Schumer avoid taking personal responsibility by denying that it was a threat, though, he immediately sought to deflect criticism back onto his Republican opponents for rebuking him.
“I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat,” Schumer claimed.
“I never—never—would do such a thing,” he continued. “And Leader McConnell knows that. And Republicans who are busy manufacturing outrage over these comments know that too.”
Contrary to those claims, Schumer has garnered a reputation for making coercive threats, as well as using every available opportunity to hammer away at his radical agenda.
Chuck Schumer is an atrocity. He’s a truly awful human being in every respect and his depravity knows no end. Anyone who paid attention to NY politics in the 90s & later can tell you what a zero Schumer is.
Partisan Congressional Democrats already have made veiled threats against Kavanaugh in the past.
Even after unsubstantiated rape allegations surfaced in his 2018 confirmation hearing, resulting in a nation-rending smear campaign and FBI investigation that yielded no corroborating evidence, some have insisted Kavanaugh is guilty and have called for his impeachment.
Likewise, during President Donald Trump’s partisan impeachment trial, Schumer routinely held press conferences in which he rehashed talking points that claimed Republicans were corrupting the process by seeking a quick dismissal without hearing additional witnesses that the House had failed to subpoena.
“This is not the first time Chuck Schumer has tried to intimidate someone,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, one of Trump’s strongest congressional allies, according to Fox News.
“It didn’t work with President Trump,” Jordan continued. “I don’t think it’s going to work with Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh, but it’s still wrong—you don’t do those kinds of things.”
The president responded to Schumer’s attack on the judiciary by drawing a parallel of his own with the Left’s impeachment shenanigans.
During a phone call with Sean Hannity, Trump likened the situation to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., falsifying the transcript of an Oval Office phone call with the Ukrainian president, Fox News reported.
But while Schiff’s remarks on the House floor were immune from prosecution, Trump said Schumer’s public threats and incitement of violence were not protected speech.
There can be few things worse in a civilized, law abiding nation, than a United States Senator openly, and for all to see and hear, threatening the Supreme Court or its Justices. This is what Chuck Schumer just did. He must pay a severe price for this!
Many others on the Right called on Schumer to issue an outright apology for the comments.
Schumer cannot give himself a pass because “he’s from Brooklyn.” He owes Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh an apology. He would demand no less if a GOP Senator attacked a liberal justice with those same words. 4/5
Some went even farther, as in a Fox News op-ed by Committee for Justice President Curt Levey suggesting that Schumer be censured by the Senate.
Levey also was one of several to note that Schumer’s threat, far from being a frenzied fit of passion, seemed a calculated effort to target the court’s newest justices with an intimidation campaign that built on the Left’s past efforts to delegitimize the high court itself.
“It is telling that he didn’t mention [conservative] Justices [Clarence ]Thomas and [Samuel] Alito, who—unlike Trump appointees Gorsuch and Kavanaugh—have an actual record in abortion cases and are at least as likely to uphold abortion restrictions,” he wrote. “It reveals that what Schumer is really livid about is that Trump’s election allowed him to appoint justices in the first place.”
‘They should change their status and go non-Sanctuary. Do not protect criminals!’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump announced this week that his administration will begin withholding federal funds from sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.
As per recent Federal Court ruling, the Federal Government will be withholding funds from Sanctuary Cities. They should change their status and go non-Sanctuary. Do not protect criminals!
The announcement followed a ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals last week that declared the Trump administration does, in fact, have the right to withhold funding from cities and states that refuse to work with government agencies.
The three-judge panel in Manhattan found Congress had delegated authority to the U.S. attorney general to set conditions on federal grant programs—in this case, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program.
The 2nd Circuit also noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly observed that the federal government maintains broad power over states when it comes to immigration policies.
More than seven sanctuary states and cities sued the DOJ in 2017 when former Attorney General Jeff Sessions first tried to withhold funds from local governments that refused to give ICE access to law enforcement data bases.
Multiple circuit courts sided with the states, but the federal appeals court concluded that Trump is in the right.
Sanctuary states and cities, such as New York City, can now expect to lose funding from the Edward Byrne grant, through which Congress dispenses more than $250 million to state and local criminal justice efforts. The Trump administration has also threatened to slash federal funding in other way—a move New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently complained about.
“This is not just the federal government taking an isolated action that is hurting the state,” Cuomo said last week after the state lost a federal health-care grant worth $600 million this year.
“There is a continued pattern and series of these actions,” he griped. “Connect the dots and you see the line.”
