Democrat Quotes & Actions Expressing Their Totalitarian Impulses to Transform America
The Democratic Party Views America As a Racist Nation in Need of Fundamental “Transformation”:
● Barack Obama: Perhaps most famously, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, during an October 2008 campaign stop in Columbia, Missouri five days before Election Day, said: “Now, Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days…. [W]e are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
● Barack Obama: By no means was that the first time Obama had voiced his desire to bring fundamental transformation to the U.S. Eighteen years earlier, in an interview published by the Daily Herald on March 3, 1990, Obama said: “There’s certainly racism here [at Harvard Law School]. There are certain burdens that are placed [on blacks], more emotionally at this point than concretely…. Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we’re going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous. I mean, I really hope to be part of a transformation of this country.”
● Barack Obama: On July 17, 2007, presidential candidate Obama spoke before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund to advocate for the expansion of abortion rights and said: “That struggle for equality is not over, and now we are at one of those rare moments where we can actually transform our politics in a fundamental way. But it’s going to take … millions of voices coming together to insist that it’s not enough just to stand still. That it’s not enough to safeguard the gains of the past—that it is time to be resolute and time to march forward…. When we have achieved as one voice a strong call for that kind of more fair and more just America, then I am absolutely convinced that we’re not just going to win an election, but more importantly we’re going to transform this nation.
● Barack Obama: When candidate Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) in July 2008, he said: “It’s been the work of this organization [NCLR] for four decades – lifting up families and transforming communities across America…. By living up to the ideals that this organization has always embodied, the ideals reflected in your name, ‘Raza,’ the people. [Actually, a literal translation is “the race.”] … And together, we won’t just win an election; we will transform this nation.”
● Democratic Party 2016 Platform: In 2016, the Democrat Party’s official platform said: “Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society. We will challenge and dismantle the structures that define lasting racial, economic, political, and social inequity. … We will push for a societal transformation to make it clear that black lives matter and that there is no place for racism in our country.” In a similar spirit, the party platform of 2020 lamented the “historic wrongs and abuses perpetrated against Native Americans, two and a half centuries of slavery, a hundred years of Jim Crow segregation, and a history of exclusionary immigration policies have created profound and lasting inequities … for communities of color.”
● Joe Biden: At a March 26, 2019 presidential campaign event in New York City, Joe Biden said: “We all have an obligation to do nothing less than change the culture in this country. This is English jurisprudential culture, a white man’s culture. It’s got to change.”
● Bernie Sanders: In October 2019, then-presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said in a tweet: “Our campaign is not only about changing the system politically and economically. We will change the value system of this country.”
● Joe Biden: On April 13, 2020, Biden said “we can transform this nation … so that [my administration] goes down in history … as one of the most progressive administrations since Roosevelt.”
- Analysis: In the progressive worldview, the proper role of government is not to confine itself to regulating a limited range of human activities as the founders stipulated, but rather to inject itself into whatever realms the times seem to demand. Progressives call for a more activist government whose regulation of people’s lives is properly determined not by the outdated words of an anachronistic Constitution, but by whatever the American people seem to need at any given time. This perspective dovetails with the progressives’ notion of an “evolving” or “living” Constitution,” connoting the idea that the U.S. Constitution is a malleable document with no permanent guiding principles. Author and scholar R.J. Pestritto writes that the progressives of the early 20th century “detested the Declaration of Independence, which enshrines the protection of individual natural rights (like property) as the unchangeable purpose of government; and they detested the Constitution, which places permanent limits on the scope of government and is structured in a way that makes the extension of national power beyond its original purpose very difficult.” Given their contempt for those documents, the progressives’ mission was to progress, or move beyond, the principles laid out by the founders. As its name indicates, progressivism suggests movement toward a goal – in this case, bigger government and increased state control. But it is a gradual, incremental movement rather than a sudden transformation.)
● Joe Biden: On May 4, 2020, Biden characterized the coronavirus pandemic as an “incredible opportunity … to fundamentally transform the country.”
● Joe Biden: During a May 11, 2020 podcast in which Biden was interviewing former Democrat presidential rival Andrew Yang, both men agreed that the U.S. needed to make radical changes in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. Said Biden: “We need some revolutionary institutional changes in how we do things…. [W]e need an environment in the wake of this revolution, [where] everybody has a chance to be part of the mix, though it’s not self-evident exactly how to do that.”
● Joe Biden: In early June 2020, Biden said that America needs to make “revolutionary institutional changes.”
● Jim Wallis: On June 12, 2020 — some 18 days after George Floyd‘s infamous death in an altercation with a white Minneapolis police officer — Rev, Jim Wallis co-authored an opinion piece about the Black Lives Matter movement and America’s allegedly ubiquitous racism. Some excerpts:
“‘America’s Original Sin’ of racism and white supremacy has become part of the American narrative and consciousness like we have never seen before in a multi-racial and cross-generational conversation.
“The Black Lives Matter movement has gone mainstream, with corporations like Amazon, civic leaders and police chiefs, and even NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell now emblazoning these words they once considered controversial on their websites and emails. But those words represent far more than a trendy slogan or hashtag; they are a resounding call for a deeper paradigm shift and transformation in American society to fully affirm the humanity and dignity of black people and ensure equal protection under the law for all.
“Saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ requires changing the culture of policing and transforming a whole system of racial injustice. Calls to ‘defund the police’ have also been growing louder from the streets. Sadly this call is already being misunderstood, caricatured and distorted. For many, at its core it is a call to radically rethink and recreate policies, systems and practices that will lead to public safety for all Americans and ensure that equal justice under the law is inclusive of black people. Our nation has been addicted to an overly punitive and racially biased justice system, characterized by an over-reliance on police and an underinvestment in many communities. Many cities spend one-third to half of their budgets on policing. Now is a time to ask why and to examine ways to redirect funding to the kinds of community services and evidence-based approaches that will more effectively reduce both violence and crime, as well as improve community well-being. […]
“Already the president [Trump] and his allies are exploiting the call to defund to stoke fear and division in this election season. But what we can all unite around is the imperative to reimagine public safety and what will lead to safer communities for all Americans. […]
“Many are asking how long these protests can last, particularly in the midst of a pandemic. The best answer to this question came from SCLC leader Ella Baker some 50 years ago: ‘Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a White mother’s son — we who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.’
“In his eulogy at George Floyd’s funeral, the Rev. Al Sharpton said, “We are not fighting some disconnected incidents. We are fighting an institutional, systemic problem that has been allowed to permeate since we were brought to these shores. And we are fighting wickedness in high places.’ […]
“But reimagining requires more than basic commonsense reforms: We must also reinvest in education, housing, treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues and much more. Some of those reinvestments will require diverting funds from parts of policing budgets that have been used ineffectively and sometimes harmfully to promote the very bias, brutality and deadly racism that George Floyd’s death has once again exposed. […]
“[P]olicy changes must happen alongside deeper conversations about America’s original sin, manifest in the systemic and structural racial injustice in our society, that must be eradicated, cleansed and healed.
“We have been reflecting both on George Floyd’s horrific murder — which followed the senseless killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and so many others — and on how the overwhelming response from the streets has galvanized an overdue tipping point in public opinion around police violence and racism.
“In religious terms, we hope and we pray that this moment could even be a Kairos moment, one in which the sheer brokenness and depravity of the status quo generates an awakening and reckoning that makes radical transformation possible. […] By using our voices, our votes, and our resources to advance both bold reforms and a reimagining of public safety, we can help strengthen and sustain a movement that has the power and potential to transform our nation.”
● Joe Biden: On July 4, 2020, Biden pledged to “transform” America and “rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country.”
● Joe Biden: On July 13, 2020, Biden promised to implement “systemic” and “institutional” changes to American society.
● Bernie Sanders: In August 2020, Bernie Sanders, who had dropped out of the presidential race, said that “when Joe Biden is elected president, when we have a Democratic House, when we have a Democratic Senate, we can begin the process of transforming this government and our nation.”
● Charles Schumer: In a September 30, 2020 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Democrat Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer stated that “everything is on the table” if Democrats were to win both the White House and a majority in the U.S. Senate, including turning Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. into states. “I’m not busting my chops to become majority leader to do very little or nothing,” he said. “We are going to get a whole lot done. And as I’ve said, everything, everything is on the table.” “I would — believe me, on D.C. and Puerto Rico, particularly if Puerto Rico votes for it, D.C. already has voted for it and wants it. I’d love to make them states,” Schumer elaborated. He also said that Senate Democrats were “using all the tactics we can” to slow down or block the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
● Joe Biden: On October 29, 2020, Joe Biden said: “Five days left [until election day]. Five days. I believe when you use your power, the power of the vote, we literally are going to change the course of this country for generations to come.”
● Charles Schumer: On the afternoon of November 7, 2020 — shortly after America’s largest media networks had announced that Joe Biden had won the Electoral College vote in the disputed 2020 presidential election — Schumer, raising a clenched left fist for emphasis, told a jubilant crowd of supporters in Brooklyn: “Now we take Georgia, and then we change the world! Now we take Georgia, and then we change America!” (This was a reference to the two upcoming Senate runoff elections slated for January 5, 2021 in Georgia; if the Democrats could win both, they would gain control of the U.S. Senate.)
● Charles Schumer: In a January 30, 2021 interview with Al Sharpton on MSNBC’s Politics Nation, Schumer, who was now the Senate Majority Leader, re-emphasized his commitment to enacting transformational change to the United States:
“Well, Rev., we have one goal: big, bold change in America. We would like the Republicans to join us in some of those things at least, and maybe they will. But we are going to get that change no matter what. We cannot — there is such a demand, three huge issues we have to do: climate, huge issue facing the country, racial and economic inequality, which has gotten worse, not better, which demands change and justice in a big, bold way, and improving our democracy. Making D.C. a state, automatic voter registration, getting rid of Citizens United, all the things embodied in H.R. 1, which the House passed and McConnell would block up, but we’re going to fight to pass it in the Senate. That’s why we’ve made it S 1. So, climate, racial inequality, economic inequality, and democracy, improving our democracy, letting people vote much more easily, dealing with D.C. and Puerto Rican statehood, dealing with bad money that flows in. The John Lewis Act, undoing the horrible decisions the court made, which defanged the Voting Rights Act, and that’s why Republicans have gotten away with taking people’s right away to vote for the last four years.”
Sharpton then asked, “What about [ending] the [Senate] filibuster?” Schumer replied, “Well, as I’ve said, we will find a way to do big, bold change. And our caucus will sit down and figure it out, but failure is not an option. We must create change.”
That was Schumer’s position, even though the Democrats had gotten no electoral mandate from the American people. The Democrats held only a slim advantage of 10 seats in the House of Representatives, and the Senate was split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris representing the tie-breaking vote.
● Joe Biden: Speaking about the Democrats’ proposed $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” bill, President Biden said on September 24, 2021: “I said from the outset — I said, ‘I’m running to change the dynamic of how the economy grows.’ I’m tired of trickle-down. The trillionaires and billionaires are doing very, very well — you all know it; you’ve all reported it — and in the middle of this crisis. But hardworking people and middle-class people are getting hurt.”
● Joe Biden: On September 25, 2021, President Biden said the following about the $1.9 trillion infrastructure bill he was promoting: “My first piece of economic legislation will “fundamentally change the structure and the nature of the economy in this country.”
● Nancy Pelosi: On October 12, 2021, Nancy Pelosi spoke about the fact that some Democrats wished to lower the cost of their party’s ten-year, $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending bill. She indicated that the legislation’s price tag would be negotiated down, most likely by reducing the number of years it would cover. “We ha[ve] some important decisions to make in the next few days so that we can proceed,” said Pelosi. “I’m very disappointed that we’re not going with the original $3.5 trillion, which was very transformative, but in whatever we do, we’ll make decisions that will continue to be transformative about women in the workplace.” Any changes, Pelosi elaborated, “only would be [made] in such a way that does not undermine the transformative nature of it.”
● Jen Psaki: During an October 12, 2021 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki discussed the ongoing negotiation between Democrat legislators vis-a-vis the $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” bill that the Biden Administration was hoping to pass. Conceding that the final product would likely be for a lesser amount because certain senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema objected to the $3.5 trillion price tag, Psaki bluntly explained why President Biden was pursuing a massive spending bill at that particular time. “The president wants to make fundamental change in our economy, and he feels coming out of the pandemic is exactly the time to do that,” she said. At other points during the briefing, Psaki made similar references to the Administration’s quest to enact “fundamental” economic changes:
- “No matter how you cut it, though, his [Biden’s] view is we can still do something historic and that will fundamentally change the economy for the American people.”
- “[W]hat we have to do is work with a range of [Democratic] members [of the House and Senate] who have a range of views about what should be included in the package … what is a priority to them so that we can make some fundamental changes.”
- “And then we can move forward on key components of the president’s agenda that will fundamentally change the economy and make the lives of so many people in this country better.”
- “[The goal is] to change fundamentally how we invest in our workforce, how we invest in American families, how we think about what our priorities are in the United States.”
● Joe Biden: On April 22, 2022, President Biden said the following about what he characterized as the environmental crisis: “In my view, this crisis is a genuine opportunity. An opportunity to do things we wanted to do. And only now it becomes so apparent.”
● Maxine Waters: On May 2, 2022, Politico reported that an unidentified individual had leaked an initial draft of a 5-4 majority opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which the Court had decided to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. After the Court officially announced its decision on June 24, 2022, Waters, flanked by fellow Congressional Democrat Al Green, joined a throng of pro-abortion activists outside the Supreme Court building and told reporters: “You ain’t seen nothing yet. Women are going to control their bodies no matter how they try and stop us. The hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them. Women will be in control of their bodies. And if they think Black women are intimidated or afraid, they got another thought coming. Black women will be out in droves. We will be out by the thousands, we will be out by the millions. We are going to make sure we fight for the right to control our own bodies.”
● Joe Biden: In a commencement address that he delivered to the black graduates of Howard University on May 13, 2023, President Biden said “We know that American history has not always been a fairytale. From the start, it’s been a constant push and pull for more than 240 years between the best of us, the American ideal that we’re all create equal — and the worst of us, the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. It’s a battle that’s never really over. But on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to st- — to stand up for the best in us. To choose love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my Inaugural Address — to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.”
Additional Quotes & Actions That Display the Democratic Party’s Totalitarian Impulses:
● Democrats Oppose Most Safeguards Against Voter Fraud & Election Fraud: One of the most important and emotionally charged issues in contemporary politics is voter-and-election fraud. The public debate over this issue centers around two diametrically opposed perspectives. One perspective maintains that any policy that increases the potential for fraud in the electoral process undermines both the validity of that process and the confidence Americans have in it. Those who embrace this view assert that strong measures—such as Voter ID requirements at polling places, the purging of ineligible names from voter rolls, and the minimization of fraud-facilitating practices like mail-in voting and ballot harvesting — should be implemented to reduce or eliminate the possibility of election fraud. They agree with the Supreme Court’s 2006 declaration that: “[C]onfidence in the integrity of our electoral processes is essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy. Voter fraud drives honest citizens out of the democratic process and breeds distrust of our government. Voters who fear their legitimate votes will be outweighed by fraudulent ones will feel disenfranchised.”
The opposing perspective, which is embraced by most Democrats in public office, contends that the incidence of voter fraud is extremely rare, and that initiatives like those enumerated above are unnecessary and constitute a form of vote suppression. A related argument holds that some demographic subgroups of the U.S. population—particularly nonwhite, low-income, and elderly people—are considerably less likely to hold government-issued forms of ID than are their white, affluent, and younger counterparts. Thus, say Democrats, Voter ID laws discriminate against these subgroups and function as a modern-day equivalent of “poll taxes” that have the effect of disenfranchising certain groups. In recent decades, Democrats — in an effort to rig elections in favor of their own party and thereby advance their totalitarian objectives — have fought aggressively and relentlessly to eliminate a host of safeguards against election fraud. For extensive details about these Democrat efforts, see the section of Discover The Networks titled “Voter Fraud & Voter ID Laws.”
● Obama Announces His DACA Program: On June 15, 2012, President Barack Obama issued an executive order enacting his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which essentially put into effect various aspects of the DREAM Act which had failed to pass through Congress. Specifically, the DACA order gave lawful permanent residency status and work authorization to anyone who: (a) had arrived in America illegally as a minor; (b) had lived in the U.S. for at least five years; (c) was either a current student or a high-school graduate; or (d) had served in the military and was not yet 35 years old.
With this executive order, Obama did precisely what he had said, numerous times, that he had no constitutional authority to do. For example:
- In October 2010, Obama stated: “I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.”
- In March 2011, he said that with “respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.”
- In May 2011, he declared that he could not “just bypass Congress and change the [immigration] law myself. … That’s not how a democracy works.”
- In a July 2011 speech to the National Council of La Raza, he stated: “Now, I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own. Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you. Not just on immigration reform. But that’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”
● Julian Castro Predicts Demographic Change Favoring Democrats: In January 2013, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro spoke with CBS News’ Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation and predicted that because of immigration from Central America — both legal and illegal — the state of Texas would soon change from majority-Republican to majority-Democrat. Said Castro: “In a couple of presidential cycles, you’ll be on election night, you’ll be announcing we’re calling the 38 electoral votes of Texas for the Democratic nominee for president. It’s changing. It’s going to become a purple state and then a blue state, because of the demographics, because of the population growth of folks from outside of Texas …”
● Maxine Waters Says Democrats Can Impeach Trump for Any Reason They Like: At a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation event on September 21, 2017, Maxine Waters asserted that Congress could impeach President Trump for any reason it chose. “Impeachment is about whatever the Congress says it is,” she said. “There is no law that can dictate impeachment. What the Constitution says is high crimes and misdemeanors, and we define that.”
● Letitia James’ Campaign Pledge to Target President Trump & Help Remove Him from Office: Throughout the 2018 political campaign season, NYS Attorney General candidate Letitia James made it well known that, if elected, she intended to aggressively target President Donald Trump in every way possible. Asserting that Trump was “an embarrassment to all that we stand for,” she vowed that as AG she would “never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake.” “He should be charged with obstructing justice,” James added. “I believe that the president of these United States can be indicted for criminal offenses, and we would join with law enforcement and other attorneys general across this nation in removing this president from office.” Proclaiming that “the days of Donald Trump are coming to an end,” she petitioned for the New York state assembly to pass legislation that would enable her to press state charges against Trump allies whom the president might choose to pardon for criminal convictions at the federal level.
In the fall of 2018, James made it clear that she planned to investigate Trump’s finances and real estate holdings: “President Trump was almost on the verge of bankruptcy and then all of a sudden he was flush with money and we all know that domestic banks were not offering him – extending any credit to him and so the question is where did he get all of that money from.” Moreover, James pledged to determine whether Trump’s continuing interest in his New York-based businesses violated the U.S. Constitution’s “emoluments clauses.”
And James prepared to start her new duties as AG after winning the November 2018 general election, she again reiterated her obsession with prosecuting President Trump: “I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.”
James likewise told NBC News in December 2018 that “we will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well” – indeed, “to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law.” Moreover, James went so far as to cite specifically some of the probes that she planned to pursue against Trump and his associates: (a) possible illegalities involving Trump’s New York real estate holdings; (b) the purpoe of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between three Trump campaign operatives and a Russian attorney; (c) U.S. government subsidies that Trump had received; (d) the possibility that Trump’s New York businesses may have placed him in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s emoluments clause; and (e) possible wrongdoing by the Trump Foundation.
● Letitia James’ Execution of the War on Trump: In March 2019, NYS Attorney General Letitia James announced that she had subpoenaed Investors Bank and Deutsche Bank for records of Trump’s various business transactions. According to the New York Post: “The Deutsche Bank subpoena seeks loan applications, mortgages, lines of credit and other records of financial transactions in connection to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, the Trump National Doral in South Florida and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, the New York Times reported…. Investors Bank, which is based in New Jersey, was asked for records connected to Trump Park Avenue. The AG has also requested records linked to Trump’s attempts to buy the Buffalo Bills [of the National Football League] in 2014.”
In November 2019, a New York state court ordered President Trump to pay $2 million in a lawsuit brought by James’ office, which charged that Trump personally had misappropriated money from his now-defunct charity, the Trump Foundation, to support his presidential campaign in 2016. CBS News reported that “the foundation’s current assets, $1.78 million, and the $2 million in damages will be distributed to various nonprofit groups, including the Children’s Aid Society, the United Negro College Fund and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.” A spokesperson for the Trump Foundation said, in turn:
“Since its inception in 1987, the Trump Foundation has distributed over $19 million to hundreds of worthwhile charities with little to no expenses. More than $9 million came directly from President Trump. Following the 2016 presidential election, the Trump Foundation publicly announced its intention to voluntarily dissolve and distribute all of its remaining funds to charity. Unfortunately, that donation was delayed due to the attorney general’s politically motivated lawsuit. We are pleased that the court, in rejecting the attorney general’s frivolous request for statutory penalties, interest and other damages, recognized that every penny ever raised by the Trump Foundation has gone to help those most in need. Now that this matter is concluded, the Trump Foundation is proud to make this additional contribution.”
On August 10, 2022 — two days after FBI agents had raided Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida — James and a lawyer from her office deposed Trump in a civil proceeding in which the former president was accused of having exaggerated the value of his assets by at least $3.6 billion per year in order to secure favorable loan-interest rates from banks. The following month, James filed a civil lawsuit against Trump, as well as his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, and his daughter, Ivanka. A press release from James’ office read as follows:
“The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, and senior executives at the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, to induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and at lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things….
“As a consequence of these violations, OAG [Office of the Attorney General] is seeking, among other relief, to: 1) permanently bar Mr. Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation or similar business entity registered and/or licensed in New York state; 2) bar Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization from entering into any New York real estate acquisitions for five years; 3) award disgorgement of all financial benefits obtained through the persistent fraudulent practices, estimated to total $250 million….
“For too long, powerful, wealthy people in this country have operated as if the rules do not apply to them. Donald Trump stands out as among the most egregious examples of this misconduct…. There are not two sets of laws for people in this country; we must hold former presidents to the same standards as everyday Americans. I will continue to ensure that no one is able to evade the law, because no one is above it.”
As the New York Post reported on September 8, 2023: “The lawsuit aims to force Trump to pay back to the state millions in penalties, halt Trump’s ability to run businesses in New York, and bar him and his team from buying commercial property for several years. James has also urged the court to sanction Trump’s legal team $20,000 for making ‘frivolous’ arguments.”
The illogic of James’ allegations against Trump was spelled out by Jack Hellner in the American Thinker:
“If the Trumps committed bank fraud, as James says, they [the banks] would have sued him and filed a criminal referral on him, but they did not. The state was not a victim, nor the bank, nor the citizens of New York, so why is she [Ms. James] suing? Well, either she’s extremely dimwitted or the move is purely for political reasons.
“Voters should never vote for any politician who seems to believe that a man can walk into a bank, claim to be worth billions, ask for a loan for hundreds of millions based on his word, and the banker just writes a check with no due diligence.
“The bank gets independent appraisals, evaluates financial statements, reviews tax returns, and takes whatever steps necessary to protect its regulators and owners to ensure the borrowers have the cash flow capacity to pay back the loan. Due diligence may be a foreign concept to politicians, but the regulators would put severe restrictions on banks that didn’t do their job. How could an attorney general not know this?
“James says Trump overvalued his properties to save money on insurance. How exactly did that work? I believe that the more property is worth, the higher the cost of insurance.
“I didn’t know she was an expert on valuations. She said Mar-a-Lago was worth only $75 million instead of the over $700 million figure the Trumps cited. She essentially multiplied cash flow times three to get that evaluation. It shows a great deal of economic illiteracy to pretend that Palm Springs property values are based on cash flow.”
On February 16, 2024, Judge Arthur Engoron fined Trump and the Trump Organization approximately $454 million in total penalties — consiting of $355 million in disgorgement and more than $98 million in prejudgment interest at an annual rate of 9 percent — and barred Trump from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for a period of three years. Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley called the ruling “confiscatory, extreme, and abusive.” In addition, NBC News reported: “The judge fined Donald Trump’s children as well…. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump’s adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, liable for a host of civil fraud counts in New York, including issuing false financial statements, falsifying business records and conspiracy. He ordered them each to pay $4 million for their personal profits from the fraud. In addition, Engoron fined former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg $1 million.”
In late February 2024, James, in an effort to taunt the former president, began posting on X (formerly Twitter) the additional interest that had accrued on Trump’s fine with each passing day. In an interview with ABC News, she stated: “If he does not have funds to pay off the judgment, then we will seek judgment enforcement mechanisms in court, and we will ask the judge to seize his assets.” One such asset, she said, was Trump’s building on 40 Wall Street in New York City: “We are prepared to make sure that the judgment is paid to New Yorkers, and yes, I look at 40 Wall Street each and every day.”
● Maxine Waters Demands Impeachment & Prison for Trump: In a July 22, 2019 tweet, Maxine Waters predicted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s appearance before Congress on July 24 would open the door for Democrats to impeach President Trump “immediately.” Wrote Waters: “The Judiciary members have a good plan to force more info out of Mueller when he testifies before the committee. If this works, this will give us the ammunition we need to start impeachment immediately…. It ain’t over until it’s over & it ain’t over until Trump is held responsible for all of his crimes. Impeachment first, prison next!”
● Kamala Harris Advocates Ending the Senate Filibuster Rule: In September 2019, Harris said that if she were to win the presidency and Senate Republicans tried to block legislation aimed at combatting climate change, she would support abolishing the filibuster — the requirement that any proposed legislation garner 60 votes as a prerequisite to ending the Senate’s unlimited debate and bringing the bill to a simple majority vote. “[I]f they [Republicans] fail to act,” she stated, “as president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.”
During a speech at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in September 2022, Harris said that if Democrats could win two additional U.S. Senate seats in the upcoming November elections, they would then have votes to end the “archaic” filibuster rule and pass legislation that her party deemed essential. “With just two more seats in the Senate, we can codify Roe v. Wade, we can put the protections of Roe in law,” Harris said. “With two more seats in the United States Senate we can pass the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Two more seats…. [A]s vice president, I’m also president of the Senate.… I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights. I cannot wait! Fifty-nine days [until Election Day].”
● James Clyburn: COVID Presents “A Tremendous Opportunity to Restructure Things to Fit Our Vision”: While House members worked to craft legislation that would offer some relief to the many Americans whose health and finances had been affected by the coronavirus outbreak of early 2020, Rep. James Clyburn — during a March 19 phone call with more than 200 fellow House Democrats — told his colleagues that the bill was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Soon thereafter, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled her bill, it contained numerous provisions that had nothing to do with the coronavirus, but were intended instead to advance a variety of left-wing agendas. Among these were provisions mandating: increased fuel emission standards for airlines; carbon offsets; student loan relief; the strengthening of collective bargaining powers for unions; the expansion of wind and solar tax credits; the collection of federal and corporate gender and racial diversity data; a financial bailout of the U.S. Post Office; the automatic extension of non-immigrant visas; a restriction preventing colleges from providing the federal government with information about students’ citizenship status; funding for Planned Parenthood; and authorization for election-related practices such as same-day voter registration, early voting, voting by mail, ballot harvesting, and absentee balloting.
● James Clyburn Urges President Biden to Use Many Executive Orders: In a November 9, 2020 interview, MSNBC’s Joy Reid asked Rep. James Clyburn to discuss how he thought Joe Biden, who seemingly had won the recent (disputed) presidential election, should proceed to govern. Said Reid: “You already have the Biden administration planning executive orders. … They want to get the United States back on the Paris Climate Accords. They’re going to reverse this withdrawal from the World Health Organization, which is great news, repeal the ban on all travel from Muslim-majority countries, reinstate the DREAMers program. So, he’s going to have to do a lot by executive order, right?” Clyburn responded, “Absolutely. And I want him to. The fact of the matter is, extend the olive branch, let them know what your programs are, ask them to join. And if they don’t, then let’s go with the executive order. I used to say that to Barack Obama all the time. And I’m saying that here.”
● Nancy Pelosi Says “We Can Impeach [Trump] Every Day of the Week for Anything He Does”: A mere 12 days after President Trump took office in January 2021, Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro (Texas) became the first of many Democrats to publicly call for his impeachment — specifically, in anticipation of the possibility that the president might disobey a court ruling that had placed a “hold” on his executive order banning travel to the U.S. from several nations that were hotbeds of Islamic terrorism. Trump did in fact abide by those court orders — and by all others after them — but the Democrats were relentless in finding new, additional reasons to impeach. By the end of 2019, elected Democrats had proposed more than 100 such reasons, as documented by Grabien.com. Pelosi, for her part, declared in September 2020: “We can impeach him every day of the week for anything he does.”
● Cori Bush’s Effort to Expel Republican Members of Congress: On January 6, 2021, Rep. Cori Bush tweeted: “I believe the Republican members of Congress who have incited this domestic terror attack [the breaching of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.] through their attempts to overturn the election must face consequences. They have broken their sacred Oath of Office. I will be introducing a resolution calling for their expulsion.” On January 10, 2021, Bush announced that the very next day, she would be introducing a resolution “to expel the members of Congress who tried to overturn the election and incited a white supremacist coup attempt that has left people dead.”
● James Clyburn Calls for the End of the Senate Filibuster Rule: In a February 26, 2021 appearance on MSNBC, Rep. James Clyburn took issue with a Senate parliamentarian ruling which stated that a minimum-wage increase could not be passed by means of the reconciliation process. As the Brookings Institution explains: “Reconciliation is, essentially, a way for Congress to enact legislation on taxes, spending, and the debt limit with only a majority … in the Senate, avoiding the threat of a filibuster, which requires 60 votes to overcome. Because Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate—plus a Democratic vice president—reconciliation is a way to get a tax-and-spending bill to the president’s desk even if all 50 Republicans oppose it.” Said Clyburn in his MSNBC interview: “Now, there are several ways around the parliamentarian’s rulings. I don’t think that President Biden will want his vice president to overrule the parliamentarian, but I’m not too sure President Biden is going to allow a filibuster to stop this pay increase. The filibuster is anathema to so many in the communities that I represent. The filibuster was used to deny voting rights. The filibuster was used to deny fair judges. The filibuster was used to deny civil rights. We are not going to see the filibuster being used to deny economic security. So, I suspect that we’ll find a way around what the parliamentarian’s ruling was. I certainly hope so.”
● Mazie Hirono Calls for End of the Senate Filibuster: On March 7, 2021, Senator Mazie Hirono told MSNBC’s The Sunday Show that if Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attempted to block President Biden’s agenda, Democrats would dispense with the filibuster rule: “When Mitch McConnell gets his way and decides to be an obstructionist, every major bill that President Biden wants, I think there will be a growing reality and recognition that we’re going to need to do filibuster reform. And I am open to it because if we’re going to continue to require 60 votes, you can bet that Mitch McConnell is going to do everything he can to obstruct every major bill that Joe Biden wants to get done. Mitch McConnell’s goal is to retake the Senate. That is, has goals. That’s where he’s going. We Democrats should be very clear-eyed about what we need to do. So filibuster reform, yes, that will come. That’s what I believe.”
In a separate interview with CNN on March 5, 2021, Senator Hirono said: “I definitely support filibuster reform, and part of that is ending the filibuster. It could be totally, or it could be for certain kinds of bills, but I’m definitely open to making those kinds of changes so we can get things done that helps people, as opposed to not doing anything, which is the Republicans’ posture.”
● Charles Schumer Calls for “Big, Bold Change” and the End of the Senate Filibuster: At a March 16, 2021 press conference, Senator Charles Schumer spoke in part about the prospect of Democrats either dispensing with the Senate filibuster rule, or circumventing it by means of the budget reconciliation process (by which bills can pass by a simple majority and do not require 60 votes to overcome a filibuster). Among his remarks were the following: “[W]e Democrats, all of us believe we need big, bold change. As I’ve said before, we hope our Republican colleagues will work with us to produce that change. We will try to get them to work with us. But if not, we will put our heads together and figure out how to go. And everything is on the table…. [W]e’re going to try to work with Republicans wherever we can…. But we must get bold change. And if our Republican friends block it, we’re going to put our heads together and figure out the best way to go. Everything’s on the table. It’s plain and simple.”
● Dianne Feinstein Calls for the End of the Senate Filibuster: On March 19, 2021, Senator Dianne Feinstein released a statement saying that, contrary to her previously articulated position, she was now supportive of ending the Senate filibuster. “There are many significant issues Congress needs to address,” she explained, including “gun violence, violence against women, and hate in the tragic shootings in Atlanta.” “Ideally the Senate can reach bipartisan agreement on those issues, as well as on a voting rights bill,” Feinstein wrote in a press release. “But if that proves impossible and Republicans continue to abuse the filibuster by requiring cloture votes, I’m open to changing the way the Senate filibuster rules are used.”
● Biden Vows to Issue Executive Orders on Guns, Rather Than Waiting for a gridlocked Congress: Shortly after two mass shootings — one in Boulder, Colorado, and another in Atlanta, Georgia — that had killed a combined total of 18 people, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced on March 24, 2021 that President Biden was planning to issue not just legislative proposals, but also executive orders, to address the issue of gun violence. The executive orders, she explained, would be forthcoming soon because Biden was “not waiting for anything to fail” in Congress.
● Bob Menendez Calls for End of the Senate Filibuster: In a June 23, 2021 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Senator Bob Menendez said he was in favor of enacting a “democracy exception” to the filibuster rule in order to enable Democrats to pass the “For the People Act,” their radical “election-reform” bill, with a simple majority in the U.S. Senate. Asked if there might be common ground to be found with Republicans on the issue of election reform, Menendez said: “Well, look, I hope that we can reach common ground. Preserving the right to vote and the ability to cast that vote is the very essence of representative democracy. Yet, what we see across the country over 400 actions taken by Republican legislatures and introducing bills that restrict the right to vote, that makes it far more difficult to cast a vote, particularly in minority communities. That’s a telltale sign of where Republicans really are at. So it is my hope that if it wasn’t for The for People Act, that then tell us what you’re for at the end of the day to see what we can come together on common ground, at least to advance some of the democracy gains that we should be having in our society and make sure that everybody who is eligible to vote gets that right to vote and it gets to do it relatively in an easy fashion.”
“The reality is that we don’t have 60 votes in the United States Senate,” Menendez continued, “and for so long as the filibuster rule continues to be the rule in the history of the Senate, then we’re going to have a challenge on some of these big things. But I will say it takes two to tango. So, if I invite you to do things, whether it’s on infrastructure or voting rights and you basically say no, then it creates the impetus for some to consider what is necessary to be done to change the rules to permit maybe at least a democracy exception. Because this is the very core of our government and how we proceed, and it affects all other things.”
At that point, Tapper asked: “So you would support getting rid of the filibuster for an election reform bill exclusively, not just in general?” The senator replied: “In the absence of any visible demonstration by Republicans to come to the table and broaden the scope of how we make the right to vote is enhanced how do we get dark money out of our system, how do we ultimately have greater transparency in the funding of elections, I would consider that.”
● Merrick Garland & DOJ Seek to Interfere in State Election Processes: On June 11, 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice was “applying scrutiny” to various battleground states’ post-election audits of the hotly disputed 2020 races and was offering “guidance” vis-a-vis those audits. That is, the DOJ might consider placing roadblocks in the way of the audits if the Department felt that they ran afoul of federal laws meant to protect voting records and prevent voter intimidation. Added Garland: “We are scrutinizing new laws that seek to curb voter access and where we see violations we will not hesitate to act. We are also scrutinizing current laws and practices in order to determine whether they discredit against black voters and other voters of color. Particularly concerning with in this regard are several studies showing that in some jurisdictions nonwhite voters must wait in line substantially longer than white voters to cast their ballots.”
Eleven days later, on June 22, 2021, Senate Republicans used a filibuster to kill the For The People Act, a radical “election reform” bill supported by nearly every Democrat in both the House and Senate. Three days after that, on June 25, Garland announced that the Justice Department was suing Georgia over the state’s Election Integrity Act (SB 202), which had been signed into law in late March. The aim of Garland and the Democrats was to use the DOJ lawsuit to achieve the same objectives as they had sought, but failed, to gain via the legislative process with the For The People Act. Said Garland in his announcement:
“Today, the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia,” Garland said. “Our complaint alleges that recent changes to Georgia’s election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of Black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Several studies show that Georgia experienced record voter turnout and participation rates in the 2020 election cycle. Approximately 2/3 of eligible voters in the state cast a ballot in the November election, just over the national average. This is cause for celebration. But then, in March of 2021, Georgia’s legislature passed SB202. Many of that law’s provisions make it harder for people to vote. The complaint alleges that the state enacted those restrictions with the purpose of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color.”
Contrary to Garland’s assertion, however, SB 202 simply sought to restore some of the same election-integrity measures — e.g., voter ID requirements — that had been in place prior to the changes that were made to the state’s election laws as a result of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the provisions of SB 202 actually made it easier to vote in Georgia than it had been prior to 2020.
● Amy Klobuchar seeks to Force Social Media to Censor “Misinformation”: On July 22, 2021, Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced a bill that would strip Facebook, Twitter, and other online platforms of many of the liability protections they had traditionally enjoyed as a result of the law known as Section 230, which shields Internet platforms from being sued for permitting content generated by their users and other third parties to be posted. Klobuchar’s bill called for the elimination of this protection in cases where the platforms were being used to spread “misinformation” about coronavirus vaccines or other matters that the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) may designate as public-health emergencies. HHS would likewise be the arbiter of constitutes health misinformation.
Said Klobuchar: “[T]he misinformation on the internet, which is something I’m personally taking on, is outrageous. These are the biggest, richest companies in the world that control these platforms, and they’ve got to take this crap off. We’re in a public health crisis — we still are — we’ve seen major improvement thanks to the vaccines, the ingenuity of people, Biden administration getting this out, but this is holding us back. Two-thirds of the people that are not vaccinated believe something that they read on the internet. That’s all the facts I need. That’s from a Kaiser Foundation Report. So I’m going to introduce a bill to limit the misinformation on vaccines by saying you guys are liable if you don’t take it off your platforms.”
As political analyst Daniel Greenfield noted: “The government dictating content to a social media monopoly that controls 80% of social media is de facto government censorship. And that’s an attack on the Constitution.”
● Merrick Garland’s DOJ Orders the U.S. Treasury to Deliver former President Donald Trump’s Tax Returns to Congress: In a letter dated July 30, 2021 and written by Acting Assistant Attorney General Dawn Johnsen, Merrick Garland’s DOJ ordered the U.S. Treasury to deliver former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to Congress. Wrote Johnsen: “The statute at issue here is unambiguous: ‘Upon written request’ of the chairman of one of the three congressional tax committees, the Secretary ‘shall furnish’ the requested tax information to the Committee,” Johnsen wrote. “Applying the proper degree of deference due the Committee, we believe that there is ample basis to conclude that its June 2021 Request for former President Trump’s tax information would further the Committee’s principal stated objective of assessing the IRS’s presidential audit program—a plainly legitimate area for congressional inquiry and possible legislation.” As the Daily Caller noted: “The Ways and Means Committee originally requested Trump’s returns in mid-June. Democrats in Congress have long tried to obtain Trump’s tax returns by force, subpoenaing Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, and his IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, to deliver the returns to Congress in 2019. Mnuchin held up the process, however, and Trump’s DOJ at the time released a memo arguing that ‘the Constitution requires the Committee to demonstrate a legitimate legislative purpose,’” according to The Hill.
● Cuomo’s Aggressive Measures to Get New Yorkers Vaccinated Against COVID: At a July 26, 2021 media briefing, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a new campaign allocating $15 million in taxpayer funds to promote COVID-19 vaccinations among the 3.5 million New Yorkers who had not yet been inoculated against the coronavirus responsible for COVID. “We have to get in those communities, and we have to knock on those doors, and we have to convince people, and put them in a car, and drive them, and get that vaccine in their arm,” he stated. “That is the mission.”
“Three and a half million unvaccinated people,” Cuomo added. “These numbers can be hard to put into context, but 3.5 million is larger than 21 other states’ total population. We have an unvaccinated population larger than the entire population of 21 states, and then when you put this COVID delta variant — which is transmitted much easier than the normal COVID virus — you put that variant with 3.5 million people, that spells ‘spread of COVID.’ That is what is happening. We know that’s what’s happening, we see it in the numbers, and numbers don’t lie.”
The governor then softened his approach a bit, saying: “We need a different approach, and the approach has to be community-based organizations who can have conversations in the community with people who know them culturally, know their issues, their fears. And it has to be a one-on-one conversation with that 25 percent because it’s not going to be a top-down message. It has to be someone who speaks their language, literally and figuratively, and says, ‘Let’s talk about this, tell me what you’re worried about, tell me what your fear is,’ and then address it with facts. And that’s what we’re going to do today.”
● President Biden’s Many Executive Actions: On his first official day in office — January 20, 2021 — President Biden signed 19 separate executive actions. One of them was a request to extend the federal moratorium on evictions which was enacted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, to prevent landlords from evicting anyone from their apartments for nonpayment of rent.
In March 2021, the CDC extended the suggested moratorium on evictions through the end of June. Then, once June arrived, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, decided to permit the moratorium to continue until the end of July but no further. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority, wrote in his opinion that “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [had] exceeded its existing statutory authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium.” Moreover, he declared that “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”
In compliance with the Court ruling, the CDC announced in June 2021 that its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, had “signed an extension [until July 31] to the eviction moratorium further preventing the eviction of tenants who are unable to make rental payments,” with the stipulation that “this is intended to be the final extension of the moratorium.”
The Biden administration was unhappy with the Court ruling and the CDC announcement. As White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: “Given the recent spread of the delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”
“In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Psaki added, “the president calls on Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” She claimed that the evictions ban was “a critical backstop to prevent hard-pressed renters and their families who lost jobs or income due to the COVID-19 pandemic from being evicted for nonpayment of rent.”
House Democratic leaders hoped to rally enough support in Congress to extend the moratorium through the end of the year. In a joint statement, Democratic U.S. Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri, Jimmy Gomez of California, and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said: “This pandemic is not behind us, and our federal housing policies should reflect that stark reality. With the United States facing the most severe eviction crisis in its history, our local and state governments still need more time to distribute critical rental assistance to help keep a roof over the heads of our constituents.”
On July 30, House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters drafted an emergency bill calling for an extension of the moratorium until December 31, but several moderate Democrats were opposed to the idea.
On July 30 as well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the CDC should, in defiance of the Supreme Court decision, extend the eviction moratorium until October 18 without congressional action. “The CDC has the power to extend the eviction moratorium,” she tweeted on August 1. “As they double down on masks, why wouldn’t they extend the moratorium in light of delta variant?”
On August 1, the Biden administration asked the CDC to “consider once again” extending the moratorium by means of executive action. In response, the CDC said it lacked the legal authority to do so.
On August 2, two days after the federal moratorium on evictions had expired, the Biden administration urged landlords to refrain for 30 days from evicting tenants and to seek compensation in the form of federal emergency rental assistance. The administration also exhorted states and cities to enact their own policies to help renters stay in their homes.
On August 3, the Biden administration — in response to pressure from Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others in the Democratic Party’s far-left wing — announced that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court ruling, a short-term fix had been arranged to prevent millions of renters from being evicted through at least early October. The fix came in the form of a new 60-day CDC moratorium on residential evictions that would apply wherever there was a substantial or high COVID-19 community transmission rate – i.e., approximately 80% of all U.S. counties, where 90% of all Americans lived. “The emergence of the Delta variant has led to a rapid acceleration of community transmission in the United States, putting more Americans at increased risk, especially if they are unvaccinated,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. “This moratorium is the right thing to do to keep people in their homes and out of congregate settings where COVID-19 spreads.”
In light of Biden’s disregard for the Supreme Court ruling, the constitutionality of the fix was questioned and seemed likely to draw a court challenge.
● Maxine Waters Demands a “Guilty” Verdict in Trial of Officer Whose Actions Had Led to the Death of George Floyd: On April 17, 2021, Maxine Waters joined demonstrators outside the police station in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota — the city where, ten days earlier, a white female police officer had accidentally shot and killed Daunte Wright, a young black man with a criminal record, when he resisted arrest and attempted to flee. Participants in this demonstration repeatedly shouted: “ACAB! All Cops Are Bastards!” With the expectation that a jury verdict in the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin, who had been involved in the May 2020 death of George Floyd, would soon be announced, the congresswoman issued a political call-to-arms: “We’re looking for a guilty verdict. And we’re looking to see if all of the talk that took place and has been taking place after they saw what happened to George Floyd, if nothing does not happen, then we know that we’ve got to not only stay in the street, but we have got to fight for justice. But I am very hopeful, and I hope that we are going to get a verdict that will say ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty.’ And if you don’t, we cannot go away.” The three charges facing Chauvin were: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. Waters said that a conviction for manslaughter would be insufficient, and that the charge actually should have been first-degree murder. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s first-degree murder,” she stated. When asked what protesters should do in the event of a not-guilty verdict, Waters replied: “We’ve got to stay on the streets. And we’ve got to get more active. We’ve got to get more confrontational.
● Cedric Richmond & Joe Biden Vow to “Run Over” Republicans Who Oppose Vaccine Mandates & “Get Them Out of the Way”: On September 9, 2021, White House senior adviser Cedric Richmond stated that President Biden would “run over” any Republican governors who might try to resist the new federal vaccine mandates. “The one thing I admire about this president,” said Richmond, “is the fact that we are always going to put people above politics. And those governors that stand in the way, I think, it was very clear from the president’s tone [in his speech] today that he will run over them.”
In his September 9, 2021 speech announcing new federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Biden said: “And tonight, I’m calling on all governors to require vaccination for all teachers and staff…. Let me be blunt. My plan also takes on elected officials in states that are undermining you [teachers] and these lifesaving actions. Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them, and even threatens their salaries or their jobs. Talk about bullying in schools. If they’ll not help, if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as president to get them out of the way.”
● Elizabeth Warren Demands the Suppression of Books That Spread “COVID-19 Misinformation”: On September 7, 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, demanding that the company use its algorithms to suppress the sale of books that, according to the senator, spread “COVID-19 misinformation.” By Warren’s telling, Amazon searches for various COVID-19 and vaccine-related terms yielded many books “based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures, including those written by the most prominent spreaders of misinformation.” “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products—an unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful course of action from one of the nation’s largest retailers,” Warren wrote in the letter. “At a time when every step towards ending the pandemic could save countless lives, misinformation poses a substantial obstacle.” “Given the seriousness of this issue,” she added, “I ask that you perform an immediate review of Amazon’s algorithms and, within 14 days, provide both a public report on the extent to which Amazon’s algorithms are directing consumers to books and other products containing COVID-19 misinformation and a plan to modify these algorithms so that they no longer do so.”
Warren complained, among other things, that Amazon algorithms seemed to promote The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal. That book, wrote the senator, “asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D, and quercetin — supplements sold on [one co-author’s] website — can prevent COVID-19 infection, a claim with such little scientific basis that the FDA sent a letter instructing [the co-author] to cease selling these supplements for the unapproved and unauthorized treatment of COVID-19.”
Kara Frederick, a Heritage Foundation research fellow in technology policy, warned that Warren’s letter was emblematic of a “broader trend: That of the Biden Administration and other progressive officials attempting to circumvent the Constitution by pressuring private tech companies to restrict freedom of expression under a broad definition of misinformation.” “Current attempts to define misinformation are mutable and often used as a catchall for ‘views we don’t like,’” Frederick added. “This catchall is then weaponized against anything to the right of leftist narratives about a host of topics. (see: NY Post’s Hunter Biden-Ukraine story in 2020, YouTube’s suppression of Ron DeSantis’s policy roundtable on COVID in April, their takedown of Hoover’s Scott Atlas’s coronavirus interview last September etc.).” Frederick also noted that “a few months ago, the Wuhan lab leak theory [regarding the origins of COVID] was actively suppressed by these [Big Tech] companies as misinformation before a confluence of evidence indicated its plausibility.”
● Biden Says “Our Patience is Wearing Thin” with the Unvaccinated: In a September 9, 2021 speech announcing his COVID vaccine mandates, President Biden said: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your [the unvaccinated’s] refusal has cost all of us.”
● Ilhan Omar Urges Democrats to Ignore Senate Parliamentarian’s Ruling That a “Human Infrastructure” Package Could Not Include a Pathway-to-Citizenship for Illegals: In a September 19, 2021 tweet, Rep. Ilhan Omar said that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and President Biden should “ignore” the ruling of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who held that Democrats could not include a pathway-to-citizenship in their $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” package, which they were hoping to pass by means of the budget reconciliation process. Voting on the bill via reconciliation would allow Democrats to evade the Senate filibuster, and to thereby pass the bill with just a simple majority. According to MacDonough, the “policy changes of this [pathway-to-citizenship] proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it, and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation.” “This ruling by the parliamentarian, is only a recommendation,” Omar tweeted in response. “Sen. Schumer and the White House can and should ignore it. We can’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity to do the right thing.”
● Biden Administration Promises “Consequences” for Border Patrol Agents Who Were Falsely Accused of Whipping Illegal Aliens: During the week of September 19, 2021 – by which time more than 14,000 Haitians had recently gathered under a bridge on the banks of the Rio Grande in hopes of gaining approval for asylum in the U.S. — the media were abuzz with accusations claiming that Border Patrol agents were using whips to prevent those Haitians from illegally entering the United States. Specifically, the controversy was sparked by photographs of agents mounted on horseback attempting to corral incoming migrants. Some photos showed the agents twirling their reins to coax the horses in certain directions. Many critics misidentified the reins as whips that were being used to harm and degrade the migrants.
Paul Ratje, the photographer responsible for the images in question, said that neither he nor any of his colleagues had seen Border Patrol agents whipping anyone. “Some of the Haitian men started running, trying to go around the horses, and that’s when the whole thing happened,” Ratje explained. “I never saw them whip anyone. The agent was swinging the reins that to some can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the pictures.”
Rowdy Ballard — who, prior to retiring, had spent 17 years on horseback for the Border Patrol and had served 6 years as the horse coordinator for Del Rio, Texas — told Fox News: “We all have the same message: we don’t carry whips.” Explaining that the Border Patrol does not train its agents to whip illegal migrants, and that those agents hardly ever place their hands on people “unless they’re not compliant,” Ballard said on America’s Newsroom: “It was a tense situation. The horses were a little reluctant to do the job that the agents were asking… twirling the reins was just another tool they used to get the horses to do what they’re asking.”
Notwithstanding the fact that the “whipping” claims were entirely false, the Biden Administration quickly announced that: (a) horse patrols at the border would be immediately suspended pending further investigation of the charges, and (b) the specific agents in the aforementioned photos would remain on administrative duty while the probe was being conducted. President Biden said in response to the (false) reports: “It was horrible [what] you saw. To see people treated like they did [sic]. Horses nearly running people over and people being strapped.” “It’s outrageous,” he added. “I promise you those people will pay. They will be investigated. There will be consequences.”
● Merrick Garland, Colluding with the National School Boards Association, Orders the FBI to Investigate Parents Who Oppose School Administrators Who Promote Critical Race Theory & Radicalism: The summer of 2021 saw many school board meetings where parents and community members vocally challenged local school officials over the inclusion of Critical Race Theory and other controversial topics — such as sexually explicit content, radical transgender ideology, and coronavirus mask mandates — in school curricula. On September 29, 2021, the National School Boards Association (NSBA), a leftist organization representing local school boards, sent a letter to President Biden saying that the federal government should investigate reports of violence and threats against school board members to see if they violate federal laws against domestic terrorism and hate crimes. Statutes like the Gun-Free School Zones Act and the USA PATRIOT Act, said NSBA, should be used to thwart crimes and violence targeting K-12 officials, on the premise that such acts could be classified as “the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.” Citing anger about Critical Race Theory as a major factor fueling disruptions and antipathy toward educators, the letter stated: “These threats or actual acts of violence against our school districts are impacting the delivery of educational services to students and families.” “These incidents are beyond random acts,” said NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven in an email. “What we are now seeing is a pattern of threats and violence occurring across state lines and via online platforms, which is why we need the federal government’s assistance.”
During a September 30 press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, addressing the subject of the NSBA letter, characterized the targeting of school board officials as “horrible,” adding: “We’d encourage individuals to report any threats they face to local and state law enforcement agencies.”
On October 4, 2021, Attorney General Garland, in an effort to federalize local school boards nationwide, ordered the FBI to begin investigating what he described as a recent spike in “harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against school administrators. In a memo, Garland directed U.S. attorneys and the FBI to collaborate with local officials to identify and prosecute any perceived threats to such administrators. Said the memo: “In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, the protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views. Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”
Notably, Garland did not provide any type of operational definition of what would constitute “harassment” and “intimidation.”
Parents Defending Education, a conservative organization, said of Garland’s memo: “This is a coordinated attempt to intimidate dissenting voices in the debates surrounding America’s underperforming K-12 education—and it will not succeed. We will not be silenced.”
Conservative broadcaster and legal scholar Mark Levin, who served as chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese during the Reagan Administration, said the following about Garland’s memo on October 5, 2021:
“American Marxism is on the rise. Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, is now using the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Community Relations Service, and Office of Justice Programs. He’s using all of them to unleash against parents and taxpayers and local communities who are protesting local school boards. I challenge anyone that tell us the federal authority that this attorney general and the rest of his band of reprobates has, to interfere in local school boards, to nationalize school board meetings, local police officers, and school board security officers are in charge of keeping the peace in township and community school board meetings. […] They have decided, ladies and gentlemen, that those of you who protest are domestic terrorists. […]
“The letter from the National School Board Association, in my view, was an inside job. They wrote this letter to the president of the United States, Joe Biden, on September 29, and five days later, including the weekend, we get a memo from the attorney general of the United States, dated yesterday, to the the director of the FBI, the director of the executive office of U.S. Attorneys, the assistant attorney general, criminal division.
“It states, ‘In recent months, there’s been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views to intimidate individuals based on their views.’
“What does that mean? It means nothing. There’s no federal law that says, quote unquote, you can’t intimidate individuals based on their views. It’s done all the time. […] If there are threats of violence, state and local law is what addresses it, not federal law. […]
“So, in other words, if any school board member, any educational bureaucrat, any teacher, anybody, any staff member thinks they’re being, quote unquote threatened, there’s going to be a hotline. And so they’ll send the FBI out to interview the parents, they’ll send the FBI out. You know what, this reminds me of the East German Stasi. […] The purpose of this is clear. It is to send fear through our communities all over the country, fear through parents, fear through taxpayers. To suppress your First Amendment right of free speech and assembly, to suppress your right to question your elected representatives. It is undermining your right to protest. And you can even yell at protests. That’s legal, too. […] The federal government has absolutely no legal authority, none, to be monitoring any of this, to be involved in any of this, period. This is totalitarianism. That is exactly what it is.”
On October 7, 2021, the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) — which describes itself as “a national, nonprofit organization working to promote the rule of law, prevent executive overreach, [and] ensure due process and equal protection for all Americans — sent a letter to Michael E. Horowitz, Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice. AFL’s letter exposed the fact that the Biden Administration (through Merrick Garland and the DOJ) had secretly colluded with the National School Boards Association to create a false pretext for the unconstitutional suppression of parents’ free-speech rights regarding the education of their children — all for purely political reasons related to the effect that parental protests against leftist indoctrination in the schools might have on the 2022 midterm elections. Some key excerpts:
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized American parents’ fundamental liberty interest in and Constitutional right to control and direct the education of their own children. On this basis alone, the nationwide protests by parents against public school policies and practices—regarding Critical Race Theory indoctrination; antireligious and anti-family gender ideology; and/or forced online education and mask mandates—are entitled to the most robust federal constitutional protection. Instead, in light of the Attorney General’s Memorandum of October 4, 2021, it appears the Department of Justice is committing the full weight of its federal law enforcement resources to prevent parents from exercising constitutionally-protected rights and privileges, for inappropriate partisan purposes.
Our understanding of the facts is as follows:
- Parents nationwide have protested public school policies and practices associated with, inter alia, the teaching or indoctrination of K-12 students in certain principles of Critical Race Theory and gender-related ideology.
- Key Biden Administration stakeholders, including the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and others, have combined to oppress, threaten, and intimidate parents to chill and prevent them from exercising the rights or privileges secured by the Constitution. To date these efforts, though extensive, have generally proven ineffectual.
- In early September, Biden Administration stakeholders held discussions regarding avenues for potential federal action against parents with a key Biden Domestic Policy Council official (Jane Doe #1) and White House staff (John Doe #1). Stakeholders also held discussions with senior department officials, including at least one political appointee in the department’s Civil Rights Division (Jane Doe #2). Jane Doe #1, John Doe #1, and others in the White House separately expressed concern regarding the potential partisan political impact of parent mobilization and organization around school issues
in the upcoming midterm elections.
- Upon information and belief, at the express direction of or with the express consent of Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2 and other Biden Administration officials developed a plan to use a letter from an outside group (“not the usual suspects”) as pretext for federal action to chill, deter, and discourage parents from exercising their constitutional rights and privileges.
Upon information and belief, in or about mid-September work began on development of what became the Attorney General’s Memorandum. Concerns expressed by department staff included (1) the absence of federal law enforcement nexus and authority, and (2) the constitutionally protected nature of parent protests. However, Jane Doe #2 made it clear this was a White House priority and a deliverable would be created.
- On or about September 29, citing legal authorities including the Patriot Act, the “National School Boards Association” made public a letter demanding federal action against parents citing authorities including the Patriot Act. The justification for federal action included, inter alia, parents were “posting watchlists against school boards and spreading misinformation (sic) that boards are adopting critical race theory curriculum and working to maintain online learning by haphazardly attributing it to COVID-19.” It is not yet clear whether and to what extent drafts of this letter were shared with Biden Administration officials, including Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, and whether changes were suggested or made by them, prior to the ostensible public release date.
- On October 4, the Attorney General’s Memorandum was made public. The short time frame between the September 29 letter and the Attorney General’s Memorandum suggests that either the entire matter was precoordinated and the September 29 but pretext, or that the normal clearance process and standard order both within the department (including legal sufficiency review by the Office of Legal Counsel, the Civil Rights Division, the Criminal Division, the Office of Legal Policy, and other components), and between the department and the White House Counsel’s Office and the Office of Management and Budget, were bypassed or corrupted.
- On October 5, there was a follow up call involving, inter alia, the White House Counsel’s Office, Jane Doe # 2, and many other Biden Administration political and career officials. The briefing included how to talk about “equity” initiatives, avoid liability for violating discrimination laws, and hide “equity” measures, initiatives, and action from Freedom of Information Act disclosure.
Accordingly, we request your Office investigate whether the Attorney General’s Memorandum was formulated and issued based on improper considerations. At this point, the dangers inherent in the undue politicization of the department’s criminal and civil law enforcement authorities, and in the corruption of the department’s standard order and process, should be evident.”
● Biden & Schumer Say That Republicans Should “Just Get Out of the Way” and “Let Us Do Our Job”: On October 4, 2021, President Biden – citing the October 18 deadline by which time the Democrat-controlled Congress sought to raise the federal debt limit above the existing $28.4 trillion level in order to allow for more government borrowing – accused Senate Republicans of harming the nation by using the filibuster to block the debt limit’s suspension. “They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said at the White House. “Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”
On October 5, Biden said there was a “real possibility” that Democrats might use their razor-thin majority to suspend the Senate’s filibuster rule so they could forcibly raise the debt ceiling with no Republican support.
In a similar vein, New York Senator Charles Schumer said on October 4: “We only ask that they get out of the way, let Democrats pass it on our own …”
● Biden Cuts Shipments of Monoclonal Antibodies to Florida: In September 2021, President Biden decided to restrict the federal government’s shipments of monoclonal antibody treatments for the coronavirus to Southern Republican states — most notably Florida and Texas, where COVID vaccination rates lagged behind the national average, and where demand for the antibodies was therefore high. As Breitbart.com reported on September 16, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided fewer than 31,000 doses to Florida for that particular week – less than half of the 70,000 doses requested by the state.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida condemned the president’s decision. Asserting that that the Biden administration was “punishing Florida” for electing not to impose vaccine mandates on its business establishments and other entities across the state, Rubio said: “Now they have decided they’re going to ration the antibody treatments…. These people are bordering now on tyranny and its outrageous. It has to stop.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki defended the actions of Biden’s HHS by noting that just seven states were responsible for 70 percent of the antibody orders filled by the federal government. Claiming that the governors of those seven states had failed to protect their residents by not imposing vaccine mandates – or penalties against those failing to get vaccinated – she said: “Clearly the way to protect people and save more lives is to get them vaccinated, so that they don’t get the COVID to begin with.”
A few days earlier, President Biden had announced his plan to increase shipments of the antibody treatments to states by 50 percent, and Psaki confirmed that those shipments had indeed grown from 100,000 doses per week to 150,000. But she nonetheless defended the decision to restrict shipments to the particular states in question, because the government’s supply of the antibody treatment doses was “not unlimited.”
Contrary to Psaki’s implication, however, manufacturers of the treatment had already indicated their willingness to ramp up production. Along those lines, a reporter asked Psaki: “But there have been no reports of a lack of supply, so why cut them to those states only if there’s no reports of a lack of supply?” Psaki replied: “I think our role as the — as the government overseeing the entire country is to be equitable in how we distribute. We’re not going to give a greater percentage to Florida over Oklahoma, nor do I think are you suggesting that. I think we have to move on [to another questioner].”
● Cori Bush Demands an End to Senate Filibuster, to Enable Passage of Transformative “Voting Rights” Bill: In early July 2021, Bush supported Democrat Senator Dick Durbin’s call to eliminate the filibuster in order to empower Democrats to pass their “voting rights” legislation known as H.R. 1, or the “For the People Act,” which sought to radically change American election laws and ultimately nationalize all elections in the country. “It can’t be made any clearer,” said Bush. “Black, brown, and Indigenous people are going to lose their ability to vote for the change that we need to literally save our lives if the Senate doesn’t abolish the filibuster and pass our agenda. We’re tired of waiting. Our lives are on the line.”
● Terry McAuliffe: “I Don’t Think Parents Should Be Telling Schools What They Should Teach”: In a September 28, 2021 gubernatorial debate between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, Youngkin — citing a recent incident where parents in Fairfax County complained that they had been unaware of sexually explicit content in certain books at their children’s school library — raised the issue of “school systems refusing to engage with parents.” “You believe school systems should tell children what to do,” Youngkin said to McAuliffe. “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.” McAuliffe replied by saying: “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” adding: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” In a subsequent interview, McAuliffe reaffirmed his position: “Listen, we have a Board of Ed working with the local school boards to determine the curriculum for our schools. You don’t want parents coming in in every different school jurisdiction saying, ‘This is what should be taught here’ and, ‘This is what should be taught here.’”
● Federal Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Mandate, but Biden Tells Businesses to Enforce the Mandate Anyway: On November 6, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit blocked a Biden vaccine mandate that was slated to take effect on January 4, 2022, and would have forced private companies with more than 100 employees to get workers vaccinated, submit to weekly tests, or face steep fines. But during a November 8, 2021 press briefing, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that private businesses should nevertheless proceed with the implementation of President Biden’s vaccine and testing requirements. “People should not wait,” she said. “They should continue to move forward and make sure they’re getting their workplace vaccinated.”
● Schumer Threatens to Dispose of Senate Filibuster in Order to Pass Radical Voting Legislation: On January 3, 2022, Senator Charles Schumer cited the infamous January 6, 2021 protest at the U.S. Capitol as a justification for Democrats to dispense with the Senate filibuster rule, a move that would empower them to forcibly advance “systemic reforms” in the form of far-left voting bills designed to “repair our democracy” without a single Republican vote in agreement. Those bills were “The Freedom to Vote Act” and the “John Lewis Voting Rights Act.” “Let me be clear: January 6th was a symptom of a broader illness, an effort to delegitimize our election process, and the Senate must advance systemic reforms to repair our democracy or else the events of that day will not be an aberration—they will be the new norm,” said Schumer. Added the senator: “Much like the violent insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol nearly one year ago, Republican officials in states across the country have seized on the former president’s Big Lie about widespread voter fraud to enact anti-democratic legislation and seize control of typically non-partisan election administrative functions. We must ask ourselves: if the right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, then how can we in good conscience allow for a situation in which the Republican Party can debate and pass voter suppression laws at the State level with only a simple majority vote, but not allow the United States Senate to do the same? We hope our Republican colleagues an change course and work with us. But if they do not, the Senate will debate and consider changes to Senate rules on or before January 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to protect the foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections.”
In a January 3, 2022 interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid, Schumer said:
“What happened on January 6 is a direct continuation of the big lie, which Donald Trump perpetrated created January 6 and a continuation of what is happening around the country. Non-partisan election officials, just plain people doing their job to count votes, are being threatened in state after state with violence. A few of them have had to have police protection. So the idea that January 6 is totally a one-off is wrong. It’s being perpetrated by this attempt to take away voting rights of so many people, people of color, young people, people living in urban areas, handicapped people, elderly people. We have to fight against this. The new Republican Party under the leadership of Donald Trump is viciously against voting rights and trying to take those away. So if we can’t get Republicans, if we can’t get Republicans to join us, we’re exploring a variety of different rules changes. We are working and trying to get all 50 Democrats, including Senators Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema to go along because if we don’t change rules, the Republicans will block this and our democracy could be at risk and wither in real ways.”
This was a stark contrast to what Schumer had said about the prospect of ending the filibuster in 2005, when Republicans held a solid majority in the Senate. Said Schumer at that time:
“The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called ‘the cooling saucer of democracy’ into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them. They want – because they can’t get their way on every judge – to change the rules in midstream, to wash away 200 years of history. They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules…. It would be a doomsday for democracy if we do.”
Schumer had similarly spoken out against ending the filibuster in April 2017, when he suggested, on NBC’s Meet the Press, that President Donald Trump should replace his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, with “a mainstream nominee” who would be able to garner 60 votes in the Senate — rather than allowing Republicans, who held a majority in the Senate, to do away with the filibuster and confirm Gorsuch with a simple majority vote:
“Let me make a proposal here to maybe break this problem that we have, okay? It looks like Gorsuch will not reach the 60-vote margin. So instead of changing the rules, which is up to Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority, why doesn’t President Trump, Democrats, and Republicans in the Senate, sit down, and try to come up with a mainstream nominee? Look, when a nominee doesn’t get 60 votes, you shouldn’t change the rules, you should change the nominee.”
● Pramila Jayapal Applauds Twitter’s Decision to Permanently Suspend the Account of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene: During a January 2, 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show, Pramila Jayapal applauded Twitter for its decision to permanently ban the personal account of Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, according to the social media giant, had been repeatedly spreading “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccines designed to combat it. (The day before the ban was announced, Greene had tweeted about an “extremely high amount of covid vaccine deaths” that she said were being “ignored” by the media.) Though Jayapal welcomed the news of Greene’s permanent suspension, she felt that Twitter should have shut down Greene’s account much sooner than it did:
“It’s no secret that our social media companies have been part of their algorithms promoting disinformation. And I think that these steps [banning Greene] are important but, frankly, a little too little and a little too late. The reality is it’s not just Marjorie Taylor Greene – all over Twitter, social media, Facebook, all of these companies have been using algorithms that are just about clickbait, not about truth. And so if we are going to take on the disinformation that’s out there, the big lie, and everything that goes along with it, then yes, this is a part of it but it’s got to be much, much more. That said, I think it’s just as well that we take one voice [Greene’s] that is deliberately spreading disinformation out of the mix as much as possible. That’s certainly a good thing.”
● President Biden Exhorts the Press and Social Media to Censor “Misinformation and Disinformation” About COVID: On January 13, 2022, President Joe Biden pleaded with Americans to continue to battle coronavirus by wearing masks and getting vaccinated, boosters on the vaccinated, and he exhorted social media and media companies to censor posts that that contradicted government narratives on COVID-19, its transmission, and the efficacy of masks and vaccines. “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets,” he said, “please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows, it has to stop.”
● Calling for Spotify to Do More to Censor Podcaster Joe Rogan: On January 24, 2022, 76-year-old musician Neil Young posted an open letter threatening to remove all of his music from Spotify, the world’s largest music streaming service provider, if the latter failed to immediately remove The Joe Rogan Experience — a podcast hosted by comedian/commentator Joe Rogan — from its platform. At issue was Young’s contention that Rogan, by interviewing two doctors in particular who had been vocal about some of the potential problems associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, was guilty of spreading misinformation about those vaccines. Two days later, Spotify, not wishing to remove the enormously popular and profitable Rogan podcast, proceeded instead to remove Young’s music as the singer had demanded. Then, on January 28, Young’s longtime friend and fellow musical artist Joni Mitchell likewise demanded that her music be removed from Spotify in solidarity with “Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.” On January 30, Spotify, in an effort to appease people like Young and Mitchell, announced that it would thenceforth include content advisory warnings on Rogan’s interviews with anyone who in any way might question the safety or efficacy of the vaccines. But this gesture by Spotify was not enough to satisfy the Biden White House.
During her daily media briefing on February 1, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that while Spotify’s proposed disclaimer was “a positive step,” “we want every platform to continue doing more to call out misinformation and disinformation while also uplifting accurate information.” Asserting further that it was a “fact” that unvaccinated people were “six to eight times more likely to die” from the virus than those who had been vaccinated and boosted, she added: “That’s pretty significant, and we think that is something that unquestionably should be the basis of how people are communicating about it.”
● Ruben Gallego Advocates the Forcible Seizure of the Vehicles Belonging to Participants in Truck-Driver Convoy Protesting COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates: On February 22, 2022, Rep. Ruben Gallego called for government and law-enforcement agencies to forcibly seize and then give away the vehicles of truck drivers who, emulating a campaign by truck drivers in Canada, were heading to the District of Columbia in a peaceful convoy to protest the Biden Administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. “Perfect time to impound and give the trucks to small trucking companies looking to expand their business,” Gallego tweeted in response to a news headline that read: “Trucker convoy could shut down DC Beltway tomorrow.”
● NY Rep. Mondaire Jones Says Democrats Will Force Through Gun-Control Legislation without Republican Support: During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 2, 2022, Mondaire Jones delivered an impassioned speech stating that Republicans would not be able to prevent the majority Democrats from passing gun-control legislation because the Democrats would go to extreme lengths to get such a measure through Congress. Specifically, he said that Democrats were prepared to go so far as to break the legislative filibuster rule in the Senate, and to expand the Supreme Court by adding several hardline leftist ideologues to its ranks. “Time after time, you have chosen your right to kill over our right to live,” Jones told Republicans during the hearing, adding: “You will not stop us from advancing the Protecting Our Kids Act today. You will not stop us from passing it in the House next week. And you will not stop us there. If the filibuster obstructs us, we will abolish it. If the Supreme Court objects, we will expand it. And we will not rest until we have taken weapons of war out of circulation out of our communities.”
● Maxine Waters on Supreme Court Decision Striking Down Roe v. Wade: “The Hell with the Supreme Court, We Will Defy Them”: On May 2, 2022, Politicoreportedthat an unidentified individual had leaked an initial draft of a 5-4 majority opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in which the Court had decided to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. After the Court officially announced its decision on June 24, 2022, Waters, flanked by fellow Congressional Democrat Al Green, joined a throng of pro-abortion activists outside the Supreme Court building and told reporters: “The hell with the Supreme Court, we will defy them.” “You see this turnout here?” she added. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
● Joe Biden Criticizes the Supreme Court after Its Ruling on the Right to Carry a Concealed Weapon: Biden condemned the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down a NYS law requiring applicants for a concealed carry gun permit demonstrate that they needed to carry a firearm. In the words of The Federalist Society, the Court concluded that: “New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.” Biden said of the Court’s decision: “[T]he United States Supreme Court has chosen to strike down New York’s long-established authority to protect its citizens. This ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”
● President Biden Calls for Suspension of Senate Filibuster in Order to Codify Roe v. Wade into Law: During a June 30, 2022 press conference in Spain, where he had just attended a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, President Biden was asked what “specific actions” he might take following the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. “The first and foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was and how much it impacts not just on a women’s right to choose, which is a critical, critical piece, but on privacy generally,” he replied. “But the most important thing, to be clear about it, I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, like voting rights, we provide an exception for this, we require an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision.”
● Joe Biden Criticizes the Supreme Court after Its Ruling on Abortion Rights
Following the Supreme Court’s June 2022 ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which terminated the constitutional right to abortion and permitted each individual state to regulate the procedure, Biden said that the decision represented “the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law,” and that it was “a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court.” “The court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognized,” he added.
● Ed Markey Calls for Suspension of Senate Filibuster in Order to Codify Roe v. Wade into Law: In a June 30, 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson Reports, Senator Ed Markey exhorted the Senate to eliminate the filibuster and pass “abortion rights” that would circumvent the recent Supreme Court decision and permanently enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. Said Markey:
“It is unconscionable. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and now we are seeing the consequences ripple through our country. It was set in law for 50 years that families could take advantage of IVF technology in order to make reproductive decisions for themselves. Now that is called into question. That is a cloud over too many families in our country. That is absolutely unacceptable, which is why I think the Congress should take up the offer that Joe Biden has made to repeal the filibuster. Carve out of the filibuster an exception for abortion rights for families in our country, for women in our country so they can make decisions for themselves.
“They should not have to worry that there is an attorney general from Oklahoma that might come into their lives and ruin all of the planning that they have made for their own families. I think that the president is right. I think it is time for us to carve out the exception for abortion. The filibuster has to be amended, or it has to be eliminated. Otherwise, we are just going to see, not just in this area, but gun rights, climate, and so many other areas just an evisceration of rights that Americans have come to depend upon.”
● Hillary Clinton Calls for Suspension of Senate Filibuster in Order to Codify Roe v. Wade into Law: On June 29, 2022, Mrs. Clinton tweeted her support for ending the Senate filibuster so that Democrats, without any Republican support, could forcibly pass legislation on “constitutional” issues like abortion rights and voting rights. “I personally believe that the Democrats should take a great big breath and risk lifting the filibuster for constitutional issues at the very least,” said Clinton. “The two that come to mind are a woman’s right to privacy, a women’s right to make the most intimate difficult choices because of that, and voting rights.”
● Mondaire Jones Vows That Democrats Would End Senate Filibuster Rule if They Could Win 2 More Senate Seats: In a July 4, 2022 appearance on MSNBC’s Deadline, Rep. Modaire Jones (D-NY) vowed that if the Democrats could win two more Senate seats in the upcoming midterm elections, they would be able to overcome the unwillingness of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to get rid of the filibuster rule. Ending the filibuster, he explained, would empower Senate Democrats to pass anti-gun legislation with just a simple majority. Said Jones:
“When you look at the polling, the American people support, broadly speaking, gun reforms like bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, raising the age to purchase semiautomatic rifles to 21, and of course enacting universal background checks. […] We have got to get rid of the filibuster to pass this legislation because my Republican colleagues, when it comes to fighting the end gun violence in this country, as proud as I was to just pass the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, I know that we’ve got to go much further than that. That means we’ve got to get rid of the filibuster by picking up just a handful more Democratic senate seats. We’ve got to talk openly about what the plan is because we’ve got to give people the confidence in us that if they do come out to vote in November, that they will see a material change. It’s shameful that Senators Sinema and Manchin aren’t willing to do this right now with respect to getting rid of the filibuster, but we’ve got to pick up two more Democratic Senate seats in the fall and keep our majority, and we can build a world in which the United States is free of gun violence.”
● President Biden Says That Mass Migration Is Changing U.S. Demographics & Making America “So Much Better”: During a September 30, 2022 speech for Hispanic Heritage Month, President Biden celebrated what he viewed as the political benefits of the mass migration of Mexicans and Central Americans into the United States. “When in American history has there been a circumstance where one ethnicity has the potential to have such a profound impact on the direction of a country?” he asked rhetorically. “Twenty-six percent of every child who’s in school today speaks Spanish — 26 percent,” Biden continued. “We’ve had large waves of immigration before but the thing is, we just have so much opportunity to make this country so much better. I really mean it … so as my father would say, ‘Let’s go get ’em.’”
● President Biden Says He Has Authority to Invoke the 14th Amendment to Circumvent Congress & Raise the Federal Debt Ceiling: In May 2023 — with the June 1 deadline for raising the federal debt ceiling drawing ever closer — President Biden said he believed that he had the authority to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment in order to unilaterally raise that ceiling without the consent of the Republican-led House of Representatives. “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority — I think we have the authority,” Biden told reporters at a press conference in Hiroshima, Japan on May 21. “The question is, could it be done and invoked in time that it would not be appealed, and as a consequence past the date in question [June 1] and still default on the debt. That is a question that I think is unresolved.”
The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, was primarily intended to secure equal protection under the law and grant citizenship rights to former slaves. But it also included a section known as the “public debt clause” in Section 4, which states: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” This clause was written mainly to address the issue of the Confederate debt incurred during the Civil War.
President Biden’s position in May 2023 rested on the interpretation that the public debt clause of the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes the president to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally — so as to avoid any action that questions the validity of the public debt, including defaulting on payments or creating uncertainty about the government’s ability to meet its financial obligations.
Critics of President Biden’s position held that the Fourteenth Amendment does not grant unilateral authority to raise the debt ceiling, and that the Constitution explicitly grants Congress — not the president — the power to borrow money on behalf of the United States, as stated in Article I, Section 8. Consequently, they argued, any attempt to circumvent the congressional approval process would: (a) constitute an overreach of executive power; (b) blur the separation of powers assigned respectively to the Executive and Legislative branches of government; and (c) undermine the principle of checks and balances.
On May 15, 2023, The Heritage Foundation provided the following context and analysis of this debt-ceiling conflict:
“The U.S. government has long been a spendthrift. It spends more than it takes in—now more than ever.
“The national debt has ballooned to a mind-boggling $31.46 trillion. To put that into perspective, the federal government has burdened each citizen with about $94,000 of this debt, but because many (most) citizens do not directly pay taxes (though everyone bears the burden of taxation, either directly or indirectly), the government has actually burdened each person who does directly pay taxes by about $247,000. And day by day, the national debt continues to grow.
“Unlike individuals who often finance their purchases through consumer credit (e.g., credit cards), the government finances its excess spending through various mechanisms, but mainly through the issuance of debt instruments such as Treasury notes, bills, and bonds.
“Before the Treasury can issue any debt, though, Congress first must authorize an expenditure and appropriate money for it. This is because the Constitution places the power of the purse with Congress. In other words, Congress—not the president and not the courts—decides both what money will be spent on and how much will be spent.
“If the government’s receipts from things such as tax revenues exceed those authorized and appropriated expenditures, that’s the end of the story. But they rarely do, so it rarely is. The government needs a way to make up this deficit.
“As a result, Congress traditionally accompanied those first two steps with a third—a specific debt-issuance authorization.
“But in 1917, Congress moved away from authorizing each specific debt issuance and instead authorized the Treasury to issue debt up to a certain ceiling. Still, it retained many sublimits on the amount and types of debt the Treasury could issue.
“It removed those sublimits in 1939, so many mark that event as the establishment of the modern debt limit, where Congress “set an aggregate limit … on federal debt, while allowing Treasury officials to decide how to manage that debt.”
“To be clear, the debt limit does not impact the ability of the federal government to spend authorized and appropriated money—if it has the money in hand to spend. The debt limit only precludes the Treasury from borrowing more money to fund those authorized and appropriated expenditures.
“In short, it helps Congress maintain its constitutional role as the holder of the purse strings and helps focus its attention on the total national debt that has resulted from year after year of deficit spending.
“Today, the government has already hit its credit limit. The Treasury can borrow no more money without Congress raising the debt limit. The Treasury has already undertaken “extraordinary measures”—primarily accounting gimmicks—to keep paying the bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen estimates the money could run out as soon as June 1.
“To avoid this outcome, the House of Representatives has passed a bill to raise the debt limit while also pairing that raise with a host of fiscally responsible measures.
“President Joe Biden, though, has indicated he will not sign into law anything besides a “clean” debt-limit increase with no strings attached, something Congress is unlikely to give him.
“So, Biden’s team has called in the lawyers. […] [S]ome have argued that the Constitution itself prohibits the debt ceiling. Those arguments come in different flavors, but most are based on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which says:
‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.’
“The key phrase for those arguments is that the ‘validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, … shall not be questioned.’ As should be obvious from the rest of the section, though, a post-Civil War Congress primarily included this provision in the Constitution to head off any attempts by a future Congress likely to be dominated by Southern members to repudiate the Civil War debts of the North and pay those of the South instead.
“Now, though, some have said that this phrase actually requires the president to continue issuing debt even in the face of a duly enacted statute (that has passed both houses of Congress and been signed into law by the president) prohibiting him from doing so.
“The implications of this argument are breathtaking. If the president can unilaterally continue incurring debt on behalf of the United States in contravention of Congress, why would he have to only spend money that Congress has appropriated for authorized purposes? He could essentially eliminate Congress from the budgetary process and spend however much money he wanted for whatever purpose he wanted.
“It’s a complete repudiation of the separation of powers. […]
“All said, the Constitution cannot be turned on its head to say something that it doesn’t. The president cannot through clever legal arguments confer on himself the power to unilaterally ignore—and effectively raise—the nation’s debt limit. It’s a job that requires Congress to pass a bill and the president to sign it. That’s what the Constitution requires—nothing less.”
Biden Defies Supreme Court Decision Barring Student-Loan Forgiveness
On June 30, 2023, a Fox News piece stated:
“The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the Biden administration’s $400 billion student loan bailout in response to a legal challenge by Job Creators Network Foundation…. The court ruled that the cancellation program was a clear act of executive overreach, a position that both President Biden and Nancy Pelosi have taken in the past. Congress neither authorized broad student loan forgiveness nor indicated intent to do so. In fact, Congress has repeatedly rejected student loan cancelation bills in recent years.”
On October 22, 2023, CNN.com reported:
“Although the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program in late June, his administration has found ways to cancel more than $48 billion in debt since then.
“The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs, which are limited to specific categories of borrowers, such as public-sector workers, people defrauded by for-profit colleges, and borrowers who have paid for at least 20 years.
“These programs are separate from the rejected forgiveness plan, which would have canceled about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt all at one time.
“The Biden administration has been granting student loan forgiveness through these existing programs on a rolling basis since coming into office and has discharged a total of $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million people to date.”
On April 12, 2024, Reuters reported:
“President Joe Biden announced plans on Monday [April 8] to ease student debt that would benefit at least 23 million Americans….
“Those plans include canceling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden’s administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers.
“The latest round of debt relief affects 277,000 Americans enrolled in the SAVE Plan, other borrowers enrolled in Income-Driven Repayment plans, and borrowers receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the White House said in a statement.
“It follows an announcement in March that $6 billion in student loans would be canceled for 78,000 borrowers.
“The administration said on Friday [April 12] it has approved $153 billion in student debt relief for 4.3 million Americans.
“Biden … last year
pledged to find other avenues for tackling debt relief after the U.S. Supreme Court in June blocked his broader plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt.”
● Joe Biden Criticizes the Supreme Court after Its Ruling Against Affirmative Action
Following the Supreme Court’s June 2023 ruling which held that colleges and universities could no longer take race into consideration as a factor in making admissions decisions, Biden said: “While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.” When a reporter subsequently asked him whether this was a “rogue court,” Biden replied, “This is not a normal court.” Biden also told MSNBC that the Supreme Court ourt had “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.”
FBI Targets “MAGA” Trump Supporters
On October 4, 2023, Newsweek.com reported:
“The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances around the 2024 U.S. presidential election is so great that it has quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.
“The challenge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the primary federal agency charged with law enforcement, is to pursue and prevent what it calls domestic terrorism without direct reference to political parties or affiliations—even though the vast majority of its current ‘anti-government’ investigations are of Trump supporters, according to classified data obtained by Newsweek.”
● Hillary Clinton Says That Trump Supporters Need “Formal Deprogramming”
During an October 5, 2023 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Mrs. Clinton contrasted what she described as the “sane” part of the Republican caucus with the “cult” wing which was loyal to former President Donald Trump. Said Clinton:
“That’s the way it used to be. I mean, we had very strong partisans in both parties in the past, and we had very bitter battles over all kinds of things… but there wasn’t this little tail of extremism, waving, you know, wagging the dog of the Republican Party as it is today. And sadly, so many of those extremists, those MAGA extremists take their marching orders from Donald Trump, who has no credibility left by any measure. He’s only in it for himself. He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions. And when do they break with him? Because at some point, you know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members, but something needs to happen.”
After Mrs. Clinton predicted that, “sadly,” Trump would be the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee, Amanpour asked her how she had “processed” the fact that Trump was again seeking the White House despite his ongoing legal battles against Democrat prosecutors. Clinton replied:
“It’s a classic tale of an authoritarian populist who really has a grip on the emotional, psychological needs and desires of a portion of the population. And the base of the Republican Party, for whatever combination of reasons — and it is emotional and psychological, sees in him someone who speaks for them, and they are determined that they will continue to vote for him, attend his rallies, wear his merchandise because for whatever reason, he and his very negative, nasty form of politics resonates with them. Maybe they don’t like migrants, maybe they don’t like gay people, or Black people, or the woman who got the promotion at work they didn’t get, whatever the reason.”
“So it is like a cult,” she added, “and somebody has to break that momentum. And that’s why I believe Joe Biden will defeat them and hopefully then that will be the end and the fever will break. And then Republicans can try to get back to fighting about issues among themselves and electing people who are [at] least, you know, responsible and accountable.”
● Jonathan Turley Writes about Numerous Democrats Who Have Sought to Remove Many Republicans from Their Offices or from Election Ballots
On January 3, 2024, the New York Post published an opinion piece by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, which read, in part, as follows:
“As the decisions disqualifying former President Donald Trump from the 2024 election work their way through the courts, a new filing in Pennsylvania seeks the same ‘ballot cleansing’ by barring Republican Rep. Scott Perry. It’s only the latest effort targeting congressional candidates as Democrats seek to bar opponents as “insurrectionists” for questioning the election of President Biden. […]
“Former [Democrat] congressional candidate Gene Stilp, who’s made headlines by burning MAGA flags with swastikas outside courthouses, filed the challenge.
“Using the 14th Amendment to disqualify candidates like Perry is consistent with Stilp’s signature flag-burning stunts. But what’s chilling is how many support such efforts, including Democratic officeholders from Maine’s secretary of state to dozens of members of Congress.
“Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory for challenging the election before Jan. 6, 2021.
“Similar legislation from Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres and “Squad” members Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
“When Maine’s secretary of state disqualified Trump [from the 2024 primary ballot], three in the state’s congressional delegation — Sens. Angus King (I) and Susan Collins (R) and Rep. Jared Golden (D) — condemned the decision. But others supported the antidemocratic action.
“The grounds were virtually identical to those of Stilp. He [Stilp] accuses Perry of supporting challenges to Biden’s election and opposing its certification. Of course, he ignores Democratic members who sought to block certification of Republican presidents under the very same law with no factual or legal basis.
“Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election. Jan. 6 committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted to challenge it in the House.
“Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result — particularly ironic since he’s a leading voice calling for Trump to be disqualified. He insisted last week on CNN that the effort to prevent citizens from voting for Trump is the very embodiment of democracy: ‘If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.’ […]
“The filing against Perry came the same day Pennsylvania Democratic state Sen. Art Haywood made public a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee against his Republican colleague Doug Mastriano accusing him of playing a role in the plot to overturn the election. Notably, in his effort to ‘hold insurrectionists accountable,’ Haywood admitted he relied on the same evidence from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that was used in the Colorado case.
“‘Insurrectionist’ is the newest label to excuse any abuse. During the McCarthy period, individuals were accused of being Communists or ‘fellow travelers.’ Now you have Stilp accusing Perry of being ‘supportive of insurrectionists.'”
● After Supreme Court Blocks Colorado Ballot Ban, Democrats Seek Other Ways to Disqualify Trump
On March 5, 2024, the Daily Caller reported:
“The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision Monday [March 4] shut down state efforts to remove Trump from the ballot but left a few options open for Democrats seeking to disqualify him, which some began exploring soon after the ruling dropped.
“Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin already said he is working on a bill that would create a pathway to disqualify candidates, stating it is ‘good news’ the Supreme Court did not challenge the Colorado court’s finding that Trump engaged in insurrection. Rather, the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado on the basis that it is Congress, not the states, that has the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal officials and candidates.
“‘[T]he Supreme Court punted and said, it’s up to Congress,’ Raskin said on CNN Monday following the ruling.
“The ruling kept open the option of states enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against their own officials and candidates, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), the left-wing group that filed the action against Trump in Colorado, has already been filing lawsuits to do. For federal officials, it held Congress is responsible for enforcement.
“‘I am working with a number of my colleagues, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Swalwell to revive legislation that we had to set up a process by which we could determine that someone who committed Insurrection is disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment,’ Raskin said Monday. […]
“Before the ruling, some senior Democrats suggested in comments to The Atlantic that they would not certify a Trump victory on Jan. 6, 2025, if the Supreme Court failed to provide clear guidance on whether or not he committed an insurrection. The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling put boundaries on how Congress can enforce Section 3: requiring it be enforced by legislation that shows ‘congruence and proportionality’ to the conduct in question. […]
“[A]ny effort Congress makes is likely to spark legal challenges of its own, on which the Supreme Court will have the ‘last word,’ University of California, Los Angeles law professor Rick Hasen wrote Monday. ‘We may well have a nasty, nasty post-election period in which Congress tries to disqualify Trump but the Supreme Court says Congress exceeded its powers,’ Hasen said.”
● Charles Schumer Denounces Israeli PM Netanyahu & Calls for Israel to Hold New Elections
As the military conflict between Israel and Hamas continued between October 2023 and March 2024, Schumer’s support for Israel’s efforts diminished greatly. In a lengthy floor speech that he delivered in the U.S. Senate on March 14, 2024, Schumer denounced Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an “obstacle to peace,” and he exhorted the Jewish state to hold a new election to replace its Netanyahu-led government. Indeed the speech, which Schumer delivered at a point in time when the Israeli military was drawing ever closer to completely eradicating Hamas, was replete with criticisms and denunciations of the Jewish state and its leaders. Some key excerpts illustrating Schumer’s totalitarian mindset:
“Five months into this conflict, it is clear that Israelis need to take stock of the situation and ask: must we change course? At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel, at a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.
“I also believe a majority of the Israeli public will recognize the need for change, and I believe that holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the post-war future.
“Of course, the United States cannot dictate the outcome of an election, nor should we try. That is for the Israeli public to decide — a public that I believe understands better than anybody that Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world.
“As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel after October 7.
“In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election.
“If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down, and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.
“The United States’ bond with Israel is unbreakable, but if extremists continue to unduly influence Israeli policy, then the Administration should use the tools at its disposal to make sure our support for Israel is aligned with our broader goal of achieving long-term peace and stability in the region.”
● Biden Moves to Stop Potential Trump Administration from Firing Civil Service Employees
On April 4, 2024, Reuters reported:
“The Biden administration on Thursday [April 4] issued final rules meant to protect the jobs of the government’s 2.2 million civil servants, as Republican challenger Donald Trump plans to replace thousands with hardline loyalists if he returns to the White House. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management [OPM] said the rule is meant to clarify longstanding protections for career civil service employees, after former President Trump in his final months in office sought to impose rule changes that would have made it easier for him to fire them.
“Democratic President Joe Biden revoked that executive order, known as Schedule F, shortly after he took office in January 2021. […]
“James Sherk, a senior domestic policy adviser to Trump during the Republican former president’s term and one of the architects of Schedule F, said in comments filed with OPM that the federal bureaucracy often stymied Trump’s policy proposals during his presidency. Last year, two judges on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that a president should have broad powers to fire government workers.”
● Democrat-Controlled Senate Votes to Dismiss Mayorkas’ Impeachment
In a party-line vote on April 17, 2024, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted to dismiss both articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and not to hear any evidence that could have been presented during a Senate trial. The first article of impeachment, “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law,” was voted down by a margin of 51-48, with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voting “present.” The second article — “breach of public trust” — was voted down by a margin of 51-49.
Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, who had previously vowed to derail any further inquiry into the matter as soon as the articles of impeachment were delivered by the House of Representatives, said that both impeachment charges were unconstitutional because, in his view, they did not rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” required to set the impeachment process into motion.
“We’ve set a very unfortunate precedent here,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said after the vote. “This means that the Senate can ignore, in effect, the House’s impeachment. It doesn’t make any difference whether our friends on the other side thought he should [have been] impeached or not; he was. And by doing what we [the Senate] just did, we have, in effect, ignored the directions of the House, which were to have a trial. No evidence, no procedure — this is a day that’s not a proud day in the history of the Senate.”
● James Carville Says Supreme Court Is Illegitimate, and He Scolds Young Voters for Not Being More Enthusiastic about Biden
On April 29, 2024, Democratic strategist and political consultant James Carville posted an online video titled “Donald Trump: A Fart or a Shart? That Is The Question,” in which he delivered a profanity-laced monologue scolding young voters for their general lack of enthusiasm for the 2024 re-election campaign of President Joe Biden. Some notable excerpts:
“I hear this a lot: ‘James, young voters are just not into this. It’s two candidates, one’s in their 80s, one is almost in their 80s, and they’re concerned about things that Washington or politicians — and you just can’t blame them for’ — Oh, shit. Fuck you!
“All right? Are you watching what is happening in the Supreme Court? If you’re 26, do you see what they’re doing? First of all, they’re gonna take every right that you could possibly have, away from you. Of course, I’m not asking you to be an involved citizen, but you elders [should] tell these kids that the Supreme Court is, out of nothing, getting ready to create immunity for one person, Donald Trump. Now, I am hardly a scholar of the American Revolution and the founding, but I do know this: One of the principles of the founding of the United States of America was that no person was above the law. […]
“And these assholes [conservatives on the Supreme Court] want to tell you, ‘Well, we are originalists and reconstructionists, and we believe in the original language of the Constitution, except if it comes to Trump, and [then] we’re just a pack of illegitimate whores. And that’s what they are. […] You think [Clarence] Thomas is legitimate? You think Thomas didn’t perjure himself about Anita Hill? Are you kidding me? … Do you think Kavanaugh told the truth when this woman came out and said that he raped her …? Do you think Bush was really elected in the year 2000? Of course he wasn’t elected. He was installed by the right-wing Supreme Court Justices. Do you think that Gorsuch, do you think that was legit? Oh please. Do you think that hurrying up [Amy Coney] Barrett’s confirmation [was legitimate]? Never look at these people and say this is a legit third branch of government. It is not. This is a illegitimate organization that, unfortunately, if I don’t do what they say, they’ll throw my ass in jail. But never, don’t teach your children, don’t teach your students, don’t teach anybody that the current Supreme Court has any moral or legal legitimacy. It doesn’t […]
“Is this the United States of America? Is this the nation that was founded on the principle that no person is above the law? And then you tell these young people, if you don’t get involved right now in this election, they’re going to be involved in your life for the rest of your freakin’ life.
“If Trump and Roberts and Alito and Gorsuch and Thomas and Leonard Leo and [the] Heritage Foundation, if they get a hold, there will be no government left, there will be no rights left. You will live under a theocracy. You’ll end up in Christian nationalism.
“But that’s alright, you little fucking 26-year-old, you ‘don’t feel like the election’s important to me, they’re not addressing the issues that I care about.’
“Well, the New York Times wrote a story about the Harvard Youth poll, which is a pretty well-regarded thing by John Della Volpe, and very recently they gave youngsters the 15 most important issues. Clocking in at 14 was student debt. You wouldn’t know that if you read the press. Number 15 was Israel/Palestine. High on the list was abortion, interest rates, housing affordability. All of these other things. You are being insufficiently served by the commentariat, and to some extent, you are being insufficiently served by Democratic messaging.
“My advice to tell these young people is to get off your motherfucking ass and go vote, because you should vote like your entire future and the entire future of this United States depends on it, because quite frankly, it does, and that’s not an exaggeration.”
● Biden Gloats As Democrats Prevent Trump from Campaigning by Forcing Him to Spend His Days in Courtroom
On May 23, 2024, the Daily Caller wrote the following:
Hitting the campaign trail for the first time during his New York criminal trial, former President Donald Trump told a group of his supporters on April 16 that the courtroom was affecting his ability to see the people. “They want to keep me off the campaign trail, but based on what I am doing, I think there is more press here than if I went to a nice location,” Trump said.
Trump has hosted just a fraction of his famous campaign rallies during 2024 that he did in 2016, an analysis by the Daily Caller found. In 2016, from Jan. 1 to May 7, Trump held 132 rallies across 43 states. During the same date range in 2024, the former president has held just 24 rallies in 11 states.
Since April 15, when Trump’s court case in Manhattan began, only allowing him Wednesdays and weekends free, the former president has held just three rallies. Through the same time period in 2016, Trump conducted 28 rallies. […]
“I’m supposed to be in Georgia, I’m supposed to be in New Hampshire, I’m supposed to be in Ohio and lots of other places, and they have me sitting here,” Trump said on April 30. […]
The Caller’s analysis included a review of Trump’s 2020 campaign events through the same time period, though the then-president was largely limited by the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump hosted 12 rallies from Jan. 1, 2020 to May 7, 2020. In-person events were suspended in March when much of the country shut down due to the pandemic. […]
Trump has referred to the legal pursuits against him as “massive election interference at a scale never seen” and alleged prosecutors had “AIMED for the various trials to come up during my campaign.” […]
While Trump has been confined to the courtroom, limited to coming out to speak to reporters or firing off a post on Truth Social, President Joe Biden’s campaign has made light of his opponent’s restrictions. In a proposal to debate twice during the summer, Biden joked that Trump only has one day available in the week [because he is required to be in court on most days]. “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal, I’ll even do it twice,” Biden said in a pre-recorded video. “So let’s pick dates Donald, I hear you’re free Wednesdays,” the president quipped.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, hit back on what she called the “strategy” from Biden and his cohorts. “Joe Biden and the Democrats’ entire strategy to defeat President Trump was to weaken him by confining him to a courtroom, but unfortunately for them, their strategy has backfired,” Leavitt told the Caller. “President Trump is increasing his lead over Joe Biden in the polls every day and raised millions more than Joe Biden and the Democrats in the month of April.”
● Biden Boasts That He Found Ways to Defy Supreme Court Rulings on Student Debt Forgiveness
During a commencement address which he delivered at Morehouse College on May 19, 2024, President Biden said: “I’m relieving the burden of student debt — many of you have already had the benefit of it — so I [you] can chase your dreams and grow the economy. When the Supreme Court told me I couldn’t [forgive student debt], I found two other ways to do it.”
● Ocasio-Cortez Gloats That Trump Has “A Legal Version of an Ankle Bracelet” Preventing Him from Campaigning Freely
On May 21, 2024, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that the campaign rally which former President Trump was planning to hold in the heavily Democratic South Bronx that week, was being held “not to make a point, but because he’s got court and the man practically has the legal version of an ankle bracelet around him, and he can’t leave the five boroughs because he always has to be in court.”
The congresswoman was referring to the fact that for approximately six weeks and counting, Trump had been required to attend court proceedings four days per week for the New York City trial in which he was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to a non-disclosure-agreement payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels, who claimed that she and Trump had had a secret affair years earlier.
● Biden’s Federally Funded & Partisan “Get-Out-The-Vote” Election Interference: Executive Order 14019
On May 15, 2024, the Heritage Foundation reported the following:
“President Biden signed Executive Order (‘E.O.’) 14019, Promoting Access to Voting, on March 7, 2021. The E.O. mobilizes the federal government to interfere in American elections. Section 3 of E.O. 14019 tasks agencies with, among other things, finding ‘ways to provide access to voter registration services and vote-by-mail ballot applications in the course of activities or services that directly engage with the public.’ Agencies are instructed to carry out this function by, among other ways, ‘soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.’ As detailed below, agencies have already begun implementing E.O. 14019.
“Put another way, President Biden ordered federal agencies that provide direct services and engage directly with the American people to explore ways to: (1) use their resources,
connections, and relationships with their clientele to facilitate registrations and mass mail-in ballot applications; (2) use federal resources to assist in completing those registrations and applications; and (3) provide space on ‘agency premises’ and resources to ‘approved’ non-governmental organizations (‘NGO’) and ‘state officials’ to accomplish these directives. […]
“Executive Order 14019 Has Partisan Origins and Application
E.O. 14019 largely tracks with the goals laid out by Demos, a far-left think tank with close ties to the Biden Administration, in its Executive Action to Advance Democracy: What the Biden-Harris Administration and the Agencies Can Do to Build a More Inclusive Democracy. The Demos blueprint called on the Biden Administration to ‘direct federal agencies to provide voter registration services.’ In particular, the blueprint called on the Biden Administration to direct ‘specified federal agencies, in their administration of federal programs, to act as voter registration agencies, including providing voter registration applications, assisting clients to complete applications, and transmitting completed applications to state authorities.’ The similarities of the Demos demand and Section 3 of E.O. 14019 are clear.
“On May 1, 2024, the Oversight Project issued a memorandum and supporting documents highlighting the partisan implementation of E.O. 14019 to date. That memo discussed a July 12, 2021 ‘Listening Session’ with White House staff, officials from the Department of Justice (‘DOJ’), and dozens of far-left NGOs about E.O. 14019.8 Analysis of these NGOs and their representatives who participated in the Listening Session identified zero Republicans, Independents, or politically conservative individuals. Every participant whose party affiliation or political donation history could be identified by the Oversight Project was identified as a Democrat except for one Green Party member.
“At the Listening Session, the NGOs pushed radical, far left ideas on voting. For example, the representative from the Mexican American Defense and Education Fund (‘MALDEF’) voiced their support for non-citizens voting in local elections where legally allowed and appeared to articulate the common left-wing view that prohibitions on non-citizens voting should not be enforced pre-election via methods widely used elsewhere (e.g., most of Europe) such as requiring appropriate voter ID. Rather, they should only be enforced post-election via prosecutions that face any number of obstacles (some deliberately interposed by the very same left-wing groups). Other groups, like the Sentencing Project and Campaign Legal Center, advocated for use of federal resources to register federal pretrial detainees and federal prisoners convicted of misdemeanors. A representative from the Native American Rights Fund advocated for increased ballot drop boxes and polling locations on or near Indian Reservations.
“Other groups identified particular government agencies that predominantly interact with historically Democratic Party voting constituencies to implement E.O. 14019’s federal voter registration tasking. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union (‘ACLU’) suggested using federal programs to register voters including Head Start (a federal preschool program for low-income families) and Social Security because those recipients ‘are lower income and have disabilities.’ Demos suggested the federal public housing agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (‘HUD’), as a vehicle to register low-income persons in public housing by ‘requiring public housing authorities to include this.’ A speaker from the Native American Rights Fund suggested means for expanding Native American voter registration to include ‘food distribution sites could be helpful, as could service sites for children and families, like head start, Bureau of Indian education.’ Partisan state actors have recently announced partnerships with Biden Administration government entities. On March 19, 2024, the Small Business Administration (‘SBA’) announced an agreement with the Michigan Department of State (‘MDOS’) pursuant to E.O. 14019 ‘to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan’ that will run through January 1, 2036. The agreement contains a memorandum of understanding under which MDOS will ‘create a unique URL for the SBA to use to drive online visitors to register to vote. The SBA’s Michigan field office may also allow MDOS officials to conduct in-person voter registration at the SBA’s small business outreach events.’
“In September 2023, MDOS announced a partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs to operate pilot voter registration sites at two Detroit and one Saginaw location. In the 2020 Presidential election, to the extent publicly reported numbers can be accurately relied upon, President Biden won Wayne County (which contains Detroit) by more than 300,000 votes and carried Saginaw county by about 300 votes while winning statewide by just over 154,000 votes.
“Michigan Secretary of State Benson is a left-wing partisan who has embraced policy positions that undermine election security. She’s called President Trump ‘a threat to
democracy.’ In 2019, Benson’s office worked with a ‘Zuckerbucks’-affiliated NGO to alter Michigan absentee voter laws to promote mass mail in ballots while circumventing the Michigan state legislature. Later that year, Benson accepted a position as the co-chair of the NGO’s Circle of Advisors.
“Benson appears to deploy the media tactic that anyone who questions the security of elections in Michigan or any other state, or tries to improve the security of elections, is a threat to democracy….”
On June 24, 2024, the Daily Caller reported:
“The Biden administration sought taxpayer funding for a program that would use school children to provide voter registration materials to Native Americans, according to emails obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Department of the Interior (DOI) officials in 2022 developed a plan that would have given Native American children attending Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools voter registration materials to bring home to their parents, internal emails show. Native Americans strongly preferred Democratic House candidates that year, with 56% saying they would cast their ballot for a Democrat compared to the 40% who said they’d vote Republican, according to a poll conducted by the African American Research Collaborative shortly before the midterm elections.
“’Department leadership is proposing having BEI send home voter registration cards with students to give to their parents,’” BIE team lead Jennifer Wiginton wrote in a February 2022 email.
“BIE’s proposed native voter registration plan, according to DOI attorney-advisor Joshua Berg, was formulated to comply with Executive Order 14019, which President Joe Biden issued in March 2021. The order compelled the heads of federal agencies to ‘evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation.’
“Berg went into greater detail regarding the proposed voter registration operation, writing in March 2022 that he and his colleagues had ‘developed a plan to distribute voter registration applications at BIE schools so that school children [could] bring home voter registration applications to their parents and/or guardians.’ Under Berg’s plan, the federal government would also have provided ‘return envelopes with pre-paid postage so that parents and/or guardians [could] mail in their completed voter registration applications directly to the corresponding elections office in their state.’
“The BIE, which is a division of the DOI, funds a network of 183 elementary and secondary schools spread across 64 Indian reservations in 23 states, according to the agency’s website. These schools, 53 of which are directly administered by the agency and 130 of which are tribally operated, serve roughly 46,000 Native American students.
“Berg contacted DOI Deputy Assistant Secretary Eric Werwa on March 2 seeking to schedule a call so that the two could discuss funding for the BEI school voter registration initiative, emails show. On March 22, Wiginton and Brian Quint, a DOI attorney-advisor, were sent a link to a meeting with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) where taxpayer funding for the BIE’s “voting rights” initiatives was to be discussed.
“However, a DOI spokesperson told the DCNF that ‘there was no program to distribute voter registration materials to children attending BIE schools.’”
● Biden Cancels More than $7 Billion in Student Debt for 160,000 People
“In June 2023, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision to block Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt for almost 40 million people.
“‘Today, my Administration is canceling student debt for 160,000 more people, bringing the total number of Americans who have benefitted from our debt relief actions to 4.75 million,’ Biden said in the statement. ‘Each of those borrowers has received an average of over $35,000 in debt cancellation.’ […]
“Biden’s latest announcement comes after he announced in April that his administration would be canceling student debt for more than 270,000 people….”
● Biden Again Criticizes the Supreme Court
At a June 15, 2024 fundraising appearance, Biden noted that “the next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees.” Claiming that former president Trump’s appointees had been “very negative in terms of the rights of individuals,” Biden warned that if Trump were to be elected in November, he would “appoint two more flying flags upside down.” “The Supreme Court has never been as out of kilter as it is today,” Biden added, identifying a number of rights (such as access to contraception, in-vitro fertilization, abortion, and same-sex marriage) that would allegedly be threatened by a Trump presidency.
● Elizabeth Warren Rejects Supreme Court’s Abortion Decision & Calls for End of Filibuster
During a July 17, 2024 appearance on ABC’s The View, Warren stated that it was vital for Democrats to win majorities in both the House and Senate, so as to empower Senate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster rule and push through their legislative agendas without impediment. Said the senator: “So, we can make Roe v. Wade the law of the land, we got to have a majority in the house, skinny majority and can take a skinny majority in the Senate. I’ll take 50, and a Democrat in the White House. We have those three things, we will suspend the filibuster, we have the votes for that on Roe v. Wade. First vote Democrats will take in the Senate, first substantive vote, is to make Roe v. Wade law of the land again in America.”
● Biden Calls for Changes to the Supreme Court
On July 29, 2024, Breitbart.com reported:
“President Joe Biden has unveiled a long-awaited proposal for changes at the U.S. Supreme Court …
“’I have great respect for our institutions and separation of powers,’ Biden argues in a Washington Post op-ed published Monday. ‘What is happening now is not normal, and it undermines the public’s confidence in the court’s decisions, including those impacting personal freedoms. We now stand in a breach.’ […]
“Biden is calling … on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment reversing the Supreme Court’s recent landmark immunity ruling that determined former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.”
● Schumer Tries to Reverse the Supreme Court’s Presidential Immunity Decision
Senator Charles Schumer objected to the Supreme Court’s July 1, 2024 ruling that U.S. presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution for actions they take as part of their official duties — a ruling that cast doubt on the constitutionality of the Biden Justice Department’s prosecution of Donald Trump for his efforts in 2020 to challenge the results of that year’s presidential election. On August 1, 2024, Schumer, in an attempt to invalidate and overturn the Court’s decision, introduced the “No Kings Act.” ”Given the dangerous and consequential implications of the court’s ruling,” said Schumer, “legislation would be the fastest and most efficient method to correcting the grave precedent the Trump ruling presented.” Schumer’s Senate bill had more than two dozen Democratic cosponsors.
● Kamala Harris Vows to “Snatch” Patents away from Companies That Failed to Comply with Government Price-Fixing
In her speech at a 2019 presidential campaign event in Iowa, Harris vowed that in order to forcibly lower the costs of pharmaceuticals, she, as president, would have the government set what it deemed to be a fair market price for each drug, and would punish any pharmaceutical companies that failed to comply by “snatch[ing]” their patents for the medicines in question. “I will snatch their patent so that we [the government] will take over,” she declared. When a rally attendee asked, “Can we do that?”, Harris replied: “Yes we can do that! … The question is, do you have the will to do it? I have the will to do it!”
“The Biden-Harris administration uses every part of the government to run investigations of its political opponents on the most implausible of pretexts. Like trying to put Trump on trial over a law created to stop the KKK from wearing masks on highways. Or an investigation of RFK Jr. over something that happened decades ago.
“In 2012, Kick Kennedy, RFK Jr.’s daughter, told a story to Town and Country Magazine about something her dad had supposedly done when she was six years old: Kick’s taste for the extreme was fed by her dad’s eccentric environmentalism. Exhibit A: When she was six, word got out that a dead whale had washed up on Squaw Island in Hyannis Port. Bobby — who likes to study animal skulls and skeletons — ran down to the beach with a chainsaw, cut off the whale’s head, and then bungee-corded it to the roof of the family minivan for the five-hour haul back to Mount Kisco, New York. ‘Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car, and it was the rankest thing on the planet,’ Kick recalls. ‘We all had plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people on the highway were giving us the finger, but that was just normal day-to-day stuff for us.’
“Since Kick was supposedly born in 1988, this would have happened in 1994. Or 30 years ago. (RFK Jr. describes it as being 20 years ago so maybe my math is off or his daughter’s age is.) No one cared. Certainly no one launched investigations of RFK Jr.
“Then RFK Jr. not only campaigned against Biden, but endorsed Trump. And suddenly the event from 1994 was interesting again in the same way that Justice Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook was suddenly big news.
“If there’s any ambiguity about this, let’s look at the timetable. On Aug. 23, RFK Jr. dropped out and endorsed Trump. On Aug. 27, the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, a Democrat PAC attached to an environmentalist leftist nonprofit, which has endorsed Kamala, demanded that the Biden administration investigate RFK Jr. over the whale. ‘NOAA law enforcement should open an investigation and potentially bring charges against him,’ the Center demanded, four days after RFK Jr. had endorsed its political opponent.
“The Biden administration’s NOAA waited a few weeks (the wheels of government grind slowly even when AG Garland is screeching on the phone and demanding action) before giving CNN the good news: ‘The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed on Monday it is investigating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for allegedly decapitating a dead whale carcass and transporting it home two decades ago. On Saturday, Kennedy said at a campaign event in Arizona he received a letter from the National Marine Fisheries Services, an organization that falls underneath NOAA, informing him he was under investigation for an incident he said occurred 20 years ago in which he collected a dead whale specimen. A spokesperson for NOAA confirmed to CNN on Monday that Kennedy is under investigation for the incident. […]’
“The total weaponization of the federal government against political opponents is happening.”
● Hillary Clinton Advocates the Criminalization of “Misinformation”
During a September 16, 2024 appearance on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program, Hillary Clinton stated that Americans who, whether knowingly or not, shared political misinformation, should be subject to civil – and in some cases criminal – prosecution. After Maddow cited the Justice Department’s recent indictment of two Russia Today television network employees who allegedly had covertly funded conservative commentators in the U.S., Maddow asked Clinton whether the American government was taking foreign attempts to spread political falsehoods “seriously enough.” In the course of her response, Clinton said:
- “I … think are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda, and whether they should civilly, or even in some cases criminally charged, is something that would be a better deterrent. Because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to stand trial in the United States.”
- “We need to uncover all of the connections. You can vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries — whether it is Russia, China, Iran or anybody else — basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders.”
- “They are using Americans, both those who are witting and willing – and those who are unwitting and are just so surprised to get $400,000 a week or $100,000 a podcast — to parrot Kremlin propaganda.”
● Hillary Clinton Says Government Must Regulate Social Media to Stop “Misinformation”
During an October 5, 2024 appearance on the CNN program Smerconish, Mrs. Clinton spoke about the need to increase government regulation of social media lest “we lose total control.” She said:
“We need national action and sadly, our Congress has been dysfunctional when it comes to addressing these threats to our children…. This should be at the top of every legislative, political agenda. There should be a lot of things done. We should be, in my view, repealing something called section 230, which gave platforms on the internet immunity because they were thought to be just pass-throughs, that they shouldn’t be judged for the content that is posted. But we now know that that was an overly simple view, that if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control and it’s not just the social and psychological effects. It’s real harm, it’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.”
“Remove the immunity from liability and we need to have guardrails, we need regulation. We’ve conducted a big experiment on ourselves and particularly our kids, and I think the evidence is in. We’ve got to do more, take phones out of schools. I’m so happy to see schools beginning to do that where kids turn their phone in when they walk in the door.”
Additional Resources:
Totalitarianism: Can It Happen in America?
By Rod Dreher (Prager University)
January 3, 2022