The most important question about the 2020 election
Dennis Prager: 'Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?'
By Dennis Prager Published January 25, 2021 at 10:23pm
Since the day after the 2020 presidential election, I have said I am agnostic with regard to whether the election was honestly or dishonestly decided.
The primary reasons for my agnosticism are the usual ones:
The anomalies:
In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost. Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 – and lost.
Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard as the "bellwether" counties that virtually always go with the outcome of presidential elections. Yet he lost.
He won four bellwether states – Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina. Yet he lost.
Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats. Yet, Trump lost.
Add the following to the anomalies:
Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.
Mostly Democratic states sent out tens of millions of ballots or applications for absentee ballots to people who never requested them.
Voting began in some states six weeks before Election Day.
People have submitted sworn affidavits at great personal cost and with possible perjury charges that they witnessed ballot tampering on election night.
But all these things would matter little if Democrats involved in ballot-counting felt morally compelled to count votes honestly.
So, then, there is one question I have never heard posed that trumps all other considerations: Would moral considerations prevent Democrats from cheating to oust Trump? Or, to put the question in the positive: Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?
The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump's reelection. The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.
For four years, the media and their party, the Democrats, told us every day that Trump is a fascist, a dictator, a racist and a white supremacist; that he was an agent of the Russian government – a real-life Manchurian candidate. We were also repeatedly told by the lying media (Trump's accurate description of the mainstream media) that in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there are "very fine" Nazis (see the PragerU video, "The Charlottesville Lie"). Yes, the media told us with a straight face that a man with a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren said there are fine Nazis. Biden said he decided to run
So, then, here is the question: Why would anyone who sincerely believed Trump is a white-supremacist fascist dictator not cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming or remaining president of the United States?
Let me sharpen this question: Isn't someone who could prevent a fascist, white-supremacist, Nazi-defending dictator morally obligated to cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming president?
I certainly would. If I were in a position to cheat in order to prevent a fascist from becoming president, why would I not cheat? I think of the most relevant example: the Nazis in the 1932 elections, Germany's last free election until after World War II. Though the Nazi Party did not receive a majority of votes, the Nazis held the most seats in the Reichstag, and the head of the party, Adolf Hitler, was named chancellor of Germany. If I were in a position to have prevented the Nazis from coming to power by cheating in the vote-count, wouldn't I have been morally obligated to do so – and therefore done so? The answer is obvious.
To repeat, I have never said Biden did not win the election. And even if there was considerable fraud, that doesn't mean the election result would have been different.
But there are consequences to beliefs. Unless Democrats knew they were lying for four years when they labeled Trump a fascist, racist, Nazi, dictator, etc., were they not duty-bound to cheat on Biden's behalf? So, then, when you have circumstantial evidence (not proof), combined with opportunity, desire, motive and, most important, no moral argument against cheating and a strong moral argument for cheating, it isn't a "lie," and it isn't a crackpot conspiracy theory, to wonder about the integrity of America's 2020 presidential election.
A good rule to go on in the modern era is that anything with the words “the people” in it are inane populists who think they speak for “the people” or hard leftists trying to masquerade as populists. This example showcases the latter.
HR1, the “For the People” Act is an attempt by the Democrat majority, another wonderful result of the Georgia defeat, to make permanent every single dirty trick and unethical ploy they used in 2020. If it passes election integrity will be severely limited. It can be stopped, but only if Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell are at the top of their games.
The most important question about the 2020 election
Dennis Prager: 'Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?'
By Dennis Prager
Published January 25, 2021 at 10:23pm
Since the day after the 2020 presidential election, I have said I am agnostic with regard to whether the election was honestly or dishonestly decided.
The primary reasons for my agnosticism are the usual ones:
The anomalies:
In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost. Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 – and lost.
Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard as the "bellwether" counties that virtually always go with the outcome of presidential elections. Yet he lost.
He won four bellwether states – Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina. Yet he lost.
Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats. Yet, Trump lost.
Add the following to the anomalies:
Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.
Mostly Democratic states sent out tens of millions of ballots or applications for absentee ballots to people who never requested them.
Voting began in some states six weeks before Election Day.
People have submitted sworn affidavits at great personal cost and with possible perjury charges that they witnessed ballot tampering on election night.
But all these things would matter little if Democrats involved in ballot-counting felt morally compelled to count votes honestly.
So, then, there is one question I have never heard posed that trumps all other considerations: Would moral considerations prevent Democrats from cheating to oust Trump? Or, to put the question in the positive: Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?
The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump's reelection. The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.
For four years, the media and their party, the Democrats, told us every day that Trump is a fascist, a dictator, a racist and a white supremacist; that he was an agent of the Russian government – a real-life Manchurian candidate. We were also repeatedly told by the lying media (Trump's accurate description of the mainstream media) that in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there are "very fine" Nazis (see the PragerU video, "The Charlottesville Lie"). Yes, the media told us with a straight face that a man with a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren said there are fine Nazis. Biden said he decided to run
So, then, here is the question: Why would anyone who sincerely believed Trump is a white-supremacist fascist dictator not cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming or remaining president of the United States?
Let me sharpen this question: Isn't someone who could prevent a fascist, white-supremacist, Nazi-defending dictator morally obligated to cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming president?
I certainly would. If I were in a position to cheat in order to prevent a fascist from becoming president, why would I not cheat? I think of the most relevant example: the Nazis in the 1932 elections, Germany's last free election until after World War II. Though the Nazi Party did not receive a majority of votes, the Nazis held the most seats in the Reichstag, and the head of the party, Adolf Hitler, was named chancellor of Germany. If I were in a position to have prevented the Nazis from coming to power by cheating in the vote-count, wouldn't I have been morally obligated to do so – and therefore done so? The answer is obvious.
To repeat, I have never said Biden did not win the election. And even if there was considerable fraud, that doesn't mean the election result would have been different.
But there are consequences to beliefs. Unless Democrats knew they were lying for four years when they labeled Trump a fascist, racist, Nazi, dictator, etc., were they not duty-bound to cheat on Biden's behalf? So, then, when you have circumstantial evidence (not proof), combined with opportunity, desire, motive and, most important, no moral argument against cheating and a strong moral argument for cheating, it isn't a "lie," and it isn't a crackpot conspiracy theory, to wonder about the integrity of America's 2020 presidential election.
I sure wish I had not learned so much over the last five years. In retrospect, five short years ago seems almost like Mayberry. Here are some important things that I didn’t know five years ago or now.
There actually is a deep state and they really do not honor the election results nor the will of the people.
There really appear to be lawless elements within the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who are not accountable for their crimes and are thus above the law.
The fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, really is unaccountable to the "unwashed masses."
Many of our top military command, along with many in the Military Industrial Complex, don't always hate wars. There's a lot of money and many promotions to be made during a time of war. The last 4 years saw no new wars and even troops coming home. For some, that is bad for business.
1984 and Animal Farm are no longer works of fiction, but prophecies.
George Orwell was righter than Nostradamus.
The news media centers of New York City and Washington, DC are not neutral arbitrators of the truth, but uncomfortably resemble TASS and Pravda from the Soviet Union days.
The old robber barons like Rockefeller, Carnegie and JP Morgan are starting to look a whole lot better compared to the new Robber Barons like Dorsey, Zuckerberg, and Bezos.
The United States Supreme Court would actually refuse to hear a legitimate case because they were scared and frightened of violence.
The left insist on conflating and equating evangelical Christians with White supremacists. This should terrify the Christian community.
Words such as mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother and sister are now not words of love and respect; but are considered politically incorrect verbiage in Congress.
Censorship, the cancel culture, and becoming a nonperson comes from the left, not the right.
The left, not the right, actually is going to try and deny citizens rights afforded to all in the Bill of Rights.
Violence from The Left is regarded as free speech and noble, while violence from the right is classified as sedition and felonious by powerful institutions.
It really is not Republicans vs. Democrats, but globalists vs. nationalists.
The new McCarthyism, blacklists, history re-writers, and re-education camps are coming from the left, not the right.
Fences and barriers are a good thing for our nation's capital but somehow a bad thing for our nation's borders.
Our Founding Fathers of yesteryear would be called "domestic terrorists" by some today.
Presidential elections really can be stolen by corrupting just a handful of precincts in just a handful of states.
Calling into question the validity of the 2016 presidential election is patriotic, while calling into question the validity of the 2020 presidential election is treasonous.
The good old days of just five short years ago sure do make us nostalgic for Mayberry. Trouble is, we now must decide, how are we to respond with what we now know. Sigh.
The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)
The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.
Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission, or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.
Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.
First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders' commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator -- all the true beginning of the American experiment.
The commission reminded us that the founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos. So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.
The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them. It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections and self-government -- especially during late-18th-century era of war and factionalism.
The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787 -- in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South, and voting reserved only for free males.
Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents. So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved -- often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the Declaration and Constitution into something that they were not.
Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S. Constitution. Neither wished to replace the founders' visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realized and enforced.
The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach America's 250th birthday. Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal -- an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.
The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.)
The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal. The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective. It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.
Whether because the report was issued by a Donald Trump-appointed commission, or because the conclusions questioned the controversial and flawed New York Times-sponsored 1619 Project, there was almost immediate criticism from the left.
Yet at any other age than the divisive present, the report would not have been seen as controversial.
First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787. It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders' commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator -- all the true beginning of the American experiment.
The commission reminded us that the founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos. So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.
The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them. It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections and self-government -- especially during late-18th-century era of war and factionalism.
The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787 -- in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South, and voting reserved only for free males.
Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents. So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved -- often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the Declaration and Constitution into something that they were not.
Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S. Constitution. Neither wished to replace the founders' visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realized and enforced.
The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach America's 250th birthday. Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal -- an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.
The commission was no more sympathetic to the current popularity of identity politics or reparatory racial discrimination. It argued that the efforts to insist that race, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender define who we are, rather than remain incidental in comparison to our natural and shared humanity, will lead to a dangerous fragmentation of American society.
Finally, the commission offered the unifying remedy of renewed civic education. Specifically, it advocates far more teaching in our schools of the Declaration and the Constitution, and other documents surrounding their creation.
It most certainly did not suggest that civic education and American history ignore or contextualize past national shortcomings. Again, the report argued that our lapses should be envisioned as obstacles to fulfilling the aspirations of our founding.
The commission may be short-lived with the change of administrations, given that it was born in the chaos of the divisive present. President Joe Biden reportedly planned to terminate the commission through an executive order.
But any fair critic can see that the report's unifying message is that we are a people blessed with a singular government and history, that self-critique and moral improvement are innate to the American founding and spirit, and that America never had to be perfect to be both good and far better than the alternatives.
The full list of President Trump's accomplishments shows why leftists are so desperate to 'unperson' him
As the world focuses on the deletion of Trump's accounts from the most prominent social media sites, LifeSite presents these lists so that Trump's pro-life, pro-family accomplishments are not forgotten
ANALYSIS
January 11, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) - Despite the fact that President Donald Trump has only 10 days left in office, the left is trying to impeach him yet again, saying that by urging protestors to "peacefully" march to the U.S. Capitol Trump "incited" an "insurrection." There is also a coordinated effort banning him from almost all social media, showing that perhaps the leader of the free world isn't necessarily the most powerful person in the world. Why is there such an effort to "unperson" him, to borrow a term from George Orwell's prophetic 1984?
LifeSiteNews has reported on all aspects of Trump's presidency as related to life, family, and culture issues. Despite Trump's support of same-sex "marriage," which we have never tried to sugarcoat or gloss over, he has nevertheless been a stalwart defender of unborn children, a thorn in Planned Parenthood's side, and he has strongly defended religious liberty. Here we present a list of his accomplishments for the pro-life and pro-family movement as well as America in general. Much of this list is compiled using information from the Family Research Council, the Susan B. Anthony List, the Trump administration itself, and previous LifeSite coverage.
In addition to the below accomplishments, Trump also kept the U.S. out of new wars; brokered historic peace deals in the Middle East; oversaw record economic growth and employment numbers; axed the Obamacare individual mandate which forced people to buy expensive, low-quality, and often pro-abortion health plans; and signed the biggest package of tax cuts and reforms in history. Under Trump, the FDA approved more affordable generic drugs than ever before in history and many drug companies froze or reversed planned price increases.
Also notable is the fact that Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord and the U.S.-Iran Deal, both of which were pushed by far-left radicals. The pro-abortion Paris Climate Accord includes language "designed to promote abortion and contraception," as Voice of the Family put it. It is also premised on dubious "climate change" science and undermines national sovereignty.
Joe Biden has said he will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and has promised to implement the left's long wish-list, which includes laws (particularly the so-called Equality Act) and/or executive orders protecting abortion on demand, transgenderism in civil rights law, and forcing Americans to violate their consciences as related to abortion, contraception, same-sex "marriage," and transgender confusion.
Additionally, Trump has made numerous strong statements about national sovereignty and the role of Christianity in the public square. These include his pro-God Poland speech and Christmas messages about the birth of Jesus which have gone viral.
He has also pushed back against political correctness and the divisive, anti-human "critical race theory" that undergirds it. And during the coronavirus crisis as leftist governors tried to ban people from going to church (among other normal and necessary activities) while keeping marijuana shops and abortion centers open, Trump spoke out in favor of religious freedom, calling places of worship "essential."
As the world focuses on the deletion of Trump's accounts from the most prominent social media sites, LifeSite presents these lists so that Trump's pro-life, pro-family accomplishments are not forgotten. They are long lists, but worth reading all the way through.
Broad pro-life accomplishments
Appointed pro-life judges including three to the U.S. Supreme Court
Allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood of Title X and Medicaid money
Stopped taxpayer funding of abortion overseas
Defunded the pro-abortion United Nations Population Fund, which cooperates with China's forced abortion regime
Required health insurers to disclose if their plans cover abortions
Cut $60 million from Planned Parenthood's federal funding
Ended the Obama-enforced contraceptive mandate, which had forced corporations with religious objections from covering abortifacients in their health plans
Appointed many strong pro-lifers to key positions within his administration
Created a new office for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Canceled contract for taxpayer-funded experimentation with aborted baby body parts
Allowed Texas to fund a health program that does not send funds to abortion businesses
An important part of being pro-life is protecting the rights of people with disabilities
The above-mentioned Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has taken many actions to protect the rights of vulnerable people, particularly those with disabilities. It is this office that was part of the Trump administration's efforts to get California and Vermont to comply with laws protecting conscience rights in healthcare, and its intervention to ensure people hospitalized with the coronavirus had access to a priest and the Last Rites.
Below is a list from OCR of its many accomplishments in the area of protecting and helping Americans with disabilities. Many of these also intersect with bioethics, like the rationing of healthcare. OCR compiled this list in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
Defending Rights and Supporting Critical Needs During COVID-19
Awarding Funding to Address the Needs of Individuals with Disabilities in Emergency Responses: CDC has awarded $3 million in COVID-19 funding to support the development of resources for people with disabilities who have extreme low literacy and the creation of national standards to inform emergency response communications for reaching people with disabilities. CDC also awarded $10 million in COVID-19 funding to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities to address the needs of Americans with disabilities in COVID-19 preparedness, planning, mitigation, and recovery efforts.
Unprecedented Support for Independent Living: Through the CARES Act, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) awarded an unprecedented $85 million in direct funding to more than 350 Centers for Independent Living (CILs), community-based organizations led by individuals with disabilities. With this funding, individuals received food and prepared meals, personal care and basic home items, personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves to ensure continuity of support services, housing assistance, and alternative transportation for medical appointments. CILs also transformed direct services to include virtual options and supported people with disabilities by providing access to technology and the Internet.
Guidance on Disability Rights Protections: In March 2020, the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a Bulletin on Civil Rights laws and HIPAA during the COVID-19 pandemic, reminding covered entities of their obligations to provide effective communications and reasonable modifications to persons with disabilities. This follows emergency guidance issued in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Preventing Disability Discrimination in Triage Decisions: In April 2020, OCR resolved a complaint against Pennsylvania after the state revised its interim Crisis Standards of Care to prevent disability discrimination in triaging of vital health care.
Preventing Disability Discrimination in Hospital "No Visitor" Policies During COVID-19: In June 2020, OCR resolved a complaint with the state of Connecticut after the state issued an executive order on no-visitor policies in hospitals to ensure these policies do not deny reasonable access to needed support persons for people with disabilities. OCR also resolved a complaint with Hartford Hospital after it agreed to grant a 73-year-old woman with aphasia access to support persons to help with her communication and comprehension in her treatment.
Protecting Rights and Preventing Abuse in Long-Term Care: ACL began issuing guidance in March to help State Long-Term Care Ombudsmen continue working to protect the health, welfare, and rights of nursing home residents, most of whom are protected under the ADA.
Protecting Against Disability Discrimination in State Triage Plan: In June 2020, OCR resolved a complaint against Tennessee after it updated its crisis standards of care plan to ensure that the criteria does not discriminate against persons based on disability or age. Through technical assistance, the state updated its policies to ensure that hospitals do not deny life-saving care during a crisis based on stereotypes about disabilities or other impermissible factors.
Protecting Rights in Healthcare
Access to Health Care for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities: In February 2019, OCR resolved a case in North Carolina alleging discrimination against an individual with autism who was deemed ineligible to be on a heart transplant wait list because of his disability. After OCR intervened in the case, the medical facility reversed course and allowed the individual to be eligible for the waiting list.
Access to Sign Language Interpreter for Deaf Child: In July 2019, OCR resolved a case with Mid-Maryland Musculoskeletal Institute to protect a 6-year-old patient's rights to effective communication while attending physical therapy sessions.
Disability Discrimination Protections for Individuals with Opioid Use Disorder: In May 2020, OCR secured an agreement with West Virginia to protect persons in recovery from opioid use disorder, resolving an uncle's complaint that he had been denied the ability to gain custody of his young niece and nephew (in state custody) due to his enrollment in a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program.
Protections for Individuals with Disabilities in State Child Welfare Systems: In November 2019, OCR entered an agreement with Oregon to protect the rights of parents with disabilities. OCR's investigation was spurred by allegations that the Oregon Department of Human Services removed two children from their parents because of stereotypical beliefs and assumptions concerning the parents' intellectual disabilities.
Empowering Americans with Disabilities to Live in the Community
Helping Veterans with Disabilities Remain in Their Homes: ACL has worked with the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand the Veteran-Directed Care program, which allows veterans to use VA benefits to work with ACL-supported aging and disability networks to access the services they need to live independently.
Training and Assistance under the ADA: ACL's ADA National Network provides training and technical assistance on the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2019, the Network hosted over 1,100 training activities and nearly 17,000 individual consultations with people with disabilities, agencies, businesses, and state and local governments. During the pandemic, the ADA Network has provided technical assistance to consumers and employers on the implications for disability-related services and return to work.
Promoting Innovation to Combat Isolation: In partnership with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, ACL launched a prize competition to combat social isolation for people with disabilities, veterans and older adults. The Mobilizing and Empowering the Nation and Technology to Address Loneliness & social isolation (MENTAL) Health Innovation Challenge will award $750,000 in prizes for development of an easy-to-use online system that offers recommendations for programs, activities, and resources that can help users connect to others and engage in the community, based on their individual needs, interests, and abilities. The winning system will be announced and demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January 2021 and will become the centerpiece of a national public awareness campaign.
Improving Home- and Community-Based Services (HCBS) in Medicaid: CMS issued several pieces of guidance to assist states in implementing the criteria defining a home and community-based setting, balancing the need to ensure settings facilitate and empower beneficiary autonomy and community integration with the need to ensure a workable implementation approach for states and providers. CMS has developed an HCBS quality framework, strategy, and work plan to align and coordinate activities within CMS and with other partners related to HCBS quality measurement, in order to ensure the health and safety of people receiving HCBS; promote high-quality and accessible HCBS; and promote value-based care and services for people receiving HCBS.
A New Center to Combat Health Inequities: In September 2019, ACL launched the Center for Human Dignity in Healthcare for Individuals with Disabilities to reduce life-limiting healthcare inequities faced by people with disabilities. The center, based at the Children's Hospital Medical Center at the University of Cincinnati, increases education around four focus areas: Prenatal Genetic Testing, Mental Health and Suicidality, Organ Transplantation and Aging and End of Life. The Center is conducting an analysis to identify gaps and investigate the impact of discrimination and disparities on the medical treatment outcomes of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD). In response to COVID-19, the Center developed two fact sheets on medical discrimination: one for people with disabilities and one for medical practitioners.
Promoting Physical Activity for Americans with Disabilities: ACL refocused the I Can Do It program, returning it to its roots as a program that partners with schools to encourage and support physical activity for children with disabilities.
Expanding Work Opportunities
A First-Ever Task Force to Boost Employment for Americans with Disabilities: ACL launched a historic government-wide task force focused on expanding employment for Americans with disabilities, to build on the historically low unemployment rates for Americans with disabilities in the booming Trump economy before COVID-19. Fourteen federal agencies actively participate in the task force's work on key issues, particularly the removal of barriers that inhibit employment and, recently, the anticipated difficulty of post-COVID-19 employment and reentry.
A Prize to Boost Private-Sector Support for Employment: As part of National Disability Employment Awareness Month 2019, ACL announced a national prize competition, Inclusive Talent Pipeline for American Business, which drew nearly 60 applicants from the private and nonprofit sectors to create and operationalize innovative and market-disruptive approaches to recruiting, retaining, and advancing employees with disabilities. Five Round One prize winners were announced in April 2020 and are currently preparing to pilot their proposed models in the fall of this year.
Improving Healthcare
New Wheelchair Options in Medicare: Medicare expanded coding and increased payments for complex rehabilitative wheelchairs to ensure access to newer, expensive complex rehabilitative wheelchair options and accessories.
Broader Access to Therapy: Medicare allowed therapy assistants (rather than only therapists) to perform maintenance therapy under the Medicare home health benefit starting in 2020, helping to expand access to this important service for all beneficiaries, including individuals with disabilities.
Reforming Payment for Medicare Advantage Beneficiaries with Disabilities: Starting in 2017, CMS modified the Medicare risk adjustment model used to pay beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans to have separate factors for disabled (versus aged) beneficiaries, to better reflect their expected cost to the plans, allowing payments to be better targeted to plans based on the cost of their enrollees.
Expanding More Flexible Preventive Services: For 2018, CMS finalized billing codes for "prolonged preventive services," allowing for additional Medicare payment for preventive service visits that extend beyond the typical time, which can be important for beneficiaries with mobility or cognitive disabilities who may take extra time to complete these visits.
Closing the Life Expectancy Gap: In June 2020, ACL announced a funding opportunity to improve health outcomes for the ID/DD population, who have significantly lower life expectancy than their non-ID/DD peers. Funding will support a national consortium that will build upon existing efforts to collaborate with medical and allied health schools to embed ID/DD content into their curriculum.
Expanding Research on Disability Issues
Establishing Prevalence of ID/DD: ACL is leading an interagency effort to establish and maintain valid and reliable prevalence rates of intellectual and developmental disabilities and to improve data about health status and factors that influence health outcomes of individuals with ID/DD.
A First-Ever Government Wide Inventory: A partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and ACL's National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) aims to create a government-wide inventory of all federally supported disability research, launching in the fall of 2020, housed at the NIH Library.
Building a Limb Loss and Preservation Registry: In 2018, NIH and the Department of Defense announced plans to establish a registry to document the number of people in the United States living with limb loss and to provide insights on their challenges and needs.
Studying Conditions that Affect Americans with Down Syndrome: In June 2018, NIH launched the INCLUDE (INvestigation of Co-occurring conditions across the Lifespan to Understand Down syndromE) project to study conditions that affect both individuals with Down syndrome and the general population. The goal is to learn more about these conditions in both populations so that new treatments can be developed in both groups. People with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities have often been excluded from participating in clinical research and clinical trials because it was thought that it would be too difficult to include them in complicated research studies, or the process to provide informed consent would be too challenging. People with Down syndrome are now being invited to speak up about their research needs, and new clinical trials supported by INCLUDE focus on topics such as sleep apnea, Alzheimer's disease, and treatment of co-occurring ADHD.
New Hope for Turning Thoughts into Speech: The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders (NIDCD) supported groundbreaking research on augmentative and alternative communication devices, which help people with voice, speech, or language disorders communicate. This includes people with ALS or brainstem stroke who lose their ability to move their muscles for writing or speaking, even as they are able to think and reason normally. In an important advance, NIDCD-supported researchers developed an approach to turn a person's thoughts directly into speech. The scientists trained a computer algorithm that is typically used to interpret voice commands to decipher brain activity instead. Individuals with epilepsy undergoing brain surgery listened to sentences spoken by different people, and the researchers used the neural patterns measured from these patients to train the computer algorithm. When the patients simply thought of the words they had heard, the algorithm was able to accurately decipher the thoughts 75 percent of the time.
Making Hearing Aids More Accessible and Affordable: Approximately 28.8 million adults in the United States could benefit from using hearing aids, yet only one in four has ever used one. Research funded by NIDCD directly contributed to a measure included in the 2017 FDA reauthorization act to create a first-of-its-kind category of direct-to-consumer hearing aids for adults with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss, which is expected to spur innovation, reduce consumer costs, and improve hearing health care for millions of Americans who have hearing loss by making hearing aids more accessible and affordable.
Designing Visually Accessible Spaces for People with Low Vision: Mobility challenges are one of the most serious consequences of impaired vision, and one approach for dealing with this problem is to make public spaces more accessible for people with low vision. Building on the concept of environmental modifications that enhance physical mobility (such as ramps for wheelchairs), the National Eye Institute (NEI) supported a combination of empirical and computational research to extend the concept of environmental modifications to "visual accessibility" (i.e., to what degree one can use vision to travel safely through an environment). In the final phase of this project, the models developed to predict low-vision visibility and navigability of real-world spaces are being translated into a set of open-source software modules to enhance architectural and lighting design for visual accessibility. The intended use is for architects and lighting designers to submit a design to the software and get a labeled output indicating what is likely to be a potential mobility hazard for pedestrians with reduced acuity and/or contrast sensitivity.
Advances in Turning Thoughts into Computer Control: NEI is supporting work aimed at helping quadriplegic people use computer interfaces. By implanting recording electrodes in visual and motor areas of the brain, the researchers are able to turn the person's intentions for cursor movements on a computer screen into action.
Progress on Restoring Visual Perception to the Blind: NEI is supporting work aimed at helping blind people achieve useable visual perception. By placing stimulating electrodes on the visual cortex of the brain, the researchers are able to turn images recorded by a camera mounted on the head into the sensation of a rough pattern of light and dark. This interface is being gradually improved by training computational algorithms to optimize the pattern of stimulation. The blind patient also has to be trained to work with the brain-machine interface, but good progress is being made.
Detailed list of accomplishments related to pro-life issues, religious liberty, and the family
The Family Research Council Action published this list of Trump's accomplishments by year on issues social conservatives care about. It was last updated September 3, 2020. A PDF of this excellent FRC resource is available here.
2017
On January 23, President Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, which blocks funding for international organizations that perform or promote abortion. This new program is known as Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA), which now covers $8.8 billion in family planning and global health funds that go to organizations abroad (none of whom may perform or promote abortion).
On February 22, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Justice (DOJ) rescinded President Obama's guidance that required public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and showers of their choice.
On April 7, President Trump's nominee Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Justice Gorsuch has already developed a reputation as an originalist who will rule the right way on religious liberty issues. Gorsuch is representative of President Trump's judicial nominees overall.
On May 4, President Trump signed an Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty (known as the "Religious Liberty Executive Order"), broadly setting forth religious liberty as a policy priority of the administration, and requiring all federal agencies to take action to protect it. The order also more specifically addressed conscience protections, forthcoming guidance from the DOJ, and religious liberty in the context of free speech.
On August 25, President Trump announced changes to the Obama administration's Department of Defense (DOD) policy which had allowed military personnel to serve even if they openly self-identified as transgender. (A DOD study found the Obama administration's policy to be detrimental to military readiness, lethality, and unit cohesion.)
On September 7, DOJ filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending the religious freedom rights of baker Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. This filing is representative of other actions defending religious freedom taking place throughout the Trump administration DOJ.
On October 6, DOJ issued guidance and an implementing memo (as instructed by the Religious Liberty Executive Order) to all federal agencies explaining religious freedom law and how religious liberty must be protected. This guidance laid out a broad defense of religious liberty based on multiple statutes and provided each federal agency with guidelines for protecting religious liberty.
Also on October 6, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed two regulations to deal with the Obamacare "HHS contraceptive mandate" that had for years violated conscience and religious liberty. These new regulations exempt organizations that have moral or religious objections to purchasing insurance that includes coverage of contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs and devices.
2018
On January 16, DOJ filed an amicus brief with the District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on behalf of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. The Archdiocese had wanted to promote a religious message during the Christmas holiday but, had been denied advertising space within the District's public transit system.
On January 18, DOJ filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue defending the First Amendment rights of parents and students who attend a religious school, to participate in a private school scholarship program.
On January 18, HHS announced a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within its Office of Civil Rights (OCR). This new division was established to enforce federal laws that protect conscience rights and religious freedom.
On January 19, HHS issued a new proposed regulation on conscience protections related to abortion. Specifically, the regulation proposed to implement 25 laws that protect pro-life healthcare entities against discrimination by federal agencies -- or state or local governments receiving federal funds -- due to their objections to participating in abortion, sterilization, and other morally objectionable procedures.
On January 24, Sam Brownback was confirmed as U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. In choosing Brownback for this role, President Trump demonstrated the administration's commitment to religious freedom by choosing someone with gravitas and experience on the issue.
On April 26, Mike Pompeo was confirmed as Secretary of State. In choosing Pompeo for this position, President Trump chose someone who cares deeply about religious liberty and will make it a priority to see the issue advanced through this administration.
On April 30, during a press conference with Nigeria's president, President Trump raised the issue of religious freedom and the killing of Christians in that country -- bringing attention to an issue that had largely been neglected by other government officials.
On May 22, HHS issued a new proposed regulation reversing the Title X family planning regulations implemented by President Clinton. The proposed regulation would restore the separation of abortion services from the federal Title X family planning program, which President Reagan first implemented. The proposed regulation would also ensure parents are more involved in the decisions of minors to obtain services from Title X clinics. It reverses the discriminatory abortion referral requirement the Clinton regulations implemented and is poised to put a dent into Planned Parenthood's roughly $60 million annual revenues from the Title X program.
On June 13, DOJ announced the Place to Worship Initiative, designed to increase enforcement and public awareness of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUPIA). This federal law protects places of worship and other religious uses of property. Through this initiative, federal prosecutors will receive training about legal protections for houses of worship.
On July 24-26, the State Department held the first-ever Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Political and civil society leaders from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C. for a three-day summit to discuss religious freedom issues and solutions. The Potomac Declaration, issued at the Ministerial, made a strong statement about the state of religious freedom around the globe and provided a plan of action for promoting global religious freedom. The U.S. also announced the International Religious Freedom Fund (to provide emergency assistance to victims of religiously motivated discrimination and abuse around the world) and the Genocide Recovery and Persecution Response Initiative (which has provided nearly $373 million to help persecuted ethnic and religious minorities in northern Iraq restore their communities). The U.S. was among 25 countries who signed a statement condemning terrorism and the abuse of religious believers by non-state actors.
On July 30, DOJ announced a Religious Liberty Task Force to fully implement religious liberty guidance and policy across all components of the DOJ.
On August 1, the Trump administration relied on Executive Order 13818 (which builds on Global Magnitsky Act authority) to sanction two Turkish officials over the detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson due to his Christian faith. This Executive Order ultimately resulted in Pastor Brunson's release.
On September 24, HHS terminated a $15,900 contract with Advanced Bioscience Resources to procure fetal tissue from aborted babies for research. The termination of this contract led HHS to announce an audit of all acquisitions and research involving human fetal tissue to ensure consistency with statutes and regulations.
On October 6, President Trump's nominee Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is the second constitutional originalist the president saw confirmed to the Court.
On November 7, HHS finalized its two regulations to protect conscience and religious liberty from long-running problems with the Obamacare "HHS contraceptive mandate." These two final regulations exempt organizations with either a moral or religious objection to purchasing insurance with coverage of contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs and devices. The regulations took effect on January 14, 2019.
On November 9, HHS proposed a new regulation to address an abortion surcharge hidden in many plans purchased on the Obamacare exchange. This proposed regulation would enforce the requirement that abortion surcharges are to be collected separately from other insurance premiums. This requirement was not closely followed under the Obama administration, leading HHS to now more strictly enforce the separation of abortion payments from other payments.
On December 26, DOJ filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending a publicly-displayed cross-shaped veteran's memorial that had been challenged as a violation of the Establishment Clause. This position is representative of the Trump administration's originalist approach to the Constitution concerning First Amendment rights and other issues. Such an approach results in legal analysis that interprets the law rather than injecting policy preferences into it.
2019
On January 18, HHS notified California that its law requiring pregnancy resource centers to post notices about how to obtain an abortion violated the pro-life Weldon and Coates-Snowe Amendments. This marks the first time that the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division at HHS found a state in violation of these laws. This demonstrates the administration's commitment to enforcing conscience protections and its pro-life priorities.
On January 19, at the request of 169 members of Congress and 49 senators, President Trump sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he promised to veto any legislation that weakens current pro-life Federal policies and laws. This letter was a message to the new Democrat ma jority in the House that longstanding pro-life protections like the Hyde Amendment and safeguards protecting the conscience rights of health care providers are not negotiable.
On February 22, HHS announced final rule changes governing the Title X family planning program. Consistent with federal law, these rule changes ensured that Title X clinics would be financially and physically separate from abortion facilities and would not refer patients for abortions. Since the implementation of the rule, Planned Parenthood and several pro-abortion states voluntarily decided to withdraw from the program rather than quit performing abortions or referring patients for abortions.
On March 8, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback criticized China's poor religious freedom record in a speech he delivered in Hong Kong.
On April 12, the Trump administration's policy on military service by those with gender dysphoria went into effect. This policy will help halt the deterioration of military readiness, lethality, and unit cohesion caused by social experimentation in the military.
On May 2, HHS announced a final rule to expand the structure in which federal conscience laws are enforced. In 2011, President Obama issued a rule that enforced only three federal conscience provisions. The new regulation under President Trump covers 25 existing statutes, which will be enforced by the new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, part of the HHS OCR.
On May 5, at the World Health Assembly, the Trump administration issued a joint statement on behalf of the United States and eight other nations calling on other countries to join an effort to focus on women's health issues that unify rather than create dissension among members (like abortion and sexual and reproductive health). This statement was the first action taken under the administration's new Protecting Life in Global Health Policy (PLGHP), which seeks to build a global coalition to promote women's health while also protecting unborn life and strengthening the family. This policy works in conjunction with the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA) program, which restricts funding for organizations abroad that perform or promote abortion.
On May 24, HHS proposed a new regulation that clarifies that discrimination on the basis of sex in section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act was to be interpreted under the plain meaning of the word. Therefore, it does not include "gender identity" or "termination of pregnancy" as set forth by a 2016 Obama administration regulation. The HHS regulation will continue to enforce existing civil rights protections; however, it makes clear that the federal government will not force physicians to participate in gender reassignment surgeries or abortions.
On June 5, after an extensive audit into fetal tissue research, the Trump administration announced a major change in the enforcement of research contracts. HHS would no longer conduct intramural (internal) research using tissue from aborted babies and would greatly increase the ethics rules and safeguards that govern extramural (external) fetal tissue research contracts. All new external contracts will be subject to a congressionally authorized ethics advisory board, making it much more difficult for fetal tissue research contracts to be awarded by the National Institute of Health.
On July 16-18, the State Department held the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new global initiative, the International Religious Freedom Alliance, meant to provide a way for like-minded countries to work together to advance religious freedom. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai gave a compelling speech condemning the use of technology to track and control the lives of religious minorities. The United States was among 14 signatory countries on a statement of concern about technology and religious freedom. The U.S. was also one of 34 countries that signed a statement of concern on counterterrorism as a pretext for the repression of religious freedom; one of 27 countries that signed a statement condemning blasphemy, apostasy, or other laws that restrict religious freedom; and was one of 46 countries that signed a statement that called upon government officials to condemn attacks on places of worship and to work with religious communities to protect these places. At this event, the State Department and USAID also announced new religious freedom training programs for foreign service officers.
On July 16, the State Department placed targeted sanctions on Burmese military officials for their human rights and religious freedom violations committed against the Rohingya Muslim population.
On August 15, the Department of Labor (DOL) proposed a new regulation that would clarify the scope and application of religious exemptions for federal contractors. Under the Obama administration, the scope of religious exemption at the DOL was severely narrowed. The current DOL relied on the history of our nation's preservation of religious liberty, the First Amendment, and Supreme Court decisions to re-invigorate the exemption to its historical and constitutional parameters.
On August 28, the HHS OCR issued a notice of violation to the University of Vermont Medical Center for forcing a nurse to participate in an abortion despite a conscience objection. This marks the third time that the HHS Religious Freedom Division under President Trump has investigated a conscience complaint related to participating in or promoting abortion.
On September 10, the State Department placed targeted sanctions on Russian officials for their religious freedom violations and torture of Jehovah's Witnesses.
On September 23, President Trump hosted a meeting during the U.N. General Assembly and gave a speech solely on the topic of religious freedom. During the speech, he announced a U.S. policy initiative to protect places of worship, pledging an additional $25 million in funding to protect religious sites and relics. President Trump also announced the U.S. would form a coalition within the business community to protect religious freedom. This is the first time a U.S. president has hosted a meeting focused solely on religious freedom at the UN.
On September 24, President Trump discussed the need to protect religious freedom during his UN General Assembly speech, in which he also discussed China and Iran -- two major violators of religious freedom.
On September 25, HHS Secretary Alex Azar delivered a statement at the UN General Assembly stating that there is no international right to abortion, and that the U.S. does not support ambiguous terms like "sexual and reproductive health" in UN documents.
On October 7, the Department of Commerce blacklisted 28 Chinese companies whose surveillance technology products are used to systematically oppress and control -- and violate the religious freedom -- of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, China.
On October 11, 2019, Attorney General Barr delivered a striking defense of religious liberty at Notre Dame Law School. He noted, "[t]he imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers' belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government." The Attorney General proceeded to remind the audience that religion gives us the "right rules to live by." Barr highlighted the recent attacks on religious liberty, and that the DOJ under his leadership has been fighting back and protecting religious liberty.
On November 14, the U.S. government lead a statement on behalf of itself and 10 other countries at the Nairobi Summit, once again calling upon the international community to focus on areas of consensus instead of divisive issues like abortion and sexual and reproductive health.
On November 19, HHS issued a rule removing burdensome requirements that all grantees, including those that are faith-based, must accept same-sex marriages and profess gender identity as valid in order to be eligible to participate in grant programs. This included the adoption and foster care space, where these requirements had been used to shut down faith-based providers of foster care and adoption.
On November 27, President Trump signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act into law, which affirms Hong Kong's semi-autonomous status and protects against Chinese government encroachment, which is a threat to Hong Kong's religious freedom.
On December 19, the Treasury Department sanctioned two Iranian judges responsible for human rights violations. One of the judges was known to violate the rights of Iran's Christian and Baha'i religious minority communities
On December 20, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a final regulation to address the abortion surcharge hidden in many plans purchased on the Obamacare exchange. This final rule aligns federal regulations with section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act, ensuring that consumers know their health care plan covers abortion and that funding for abortion is kept separate from all other covered services.
2020
On January 16, HHS Secretary Alex Azar hosted 34 countries for a meeting on how to promote women's health and protect the lives of the unborn. This meeting followed an invitation sent by Secretary Azar and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to 70 different countries inviting them to join a coalition to oppose international efforts to enshrine abortion as a human right.
On January 16, the Departments of Education and Justice issued guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public elementary and secondary schools. This guidance ensures that prayer in schools is properly protected and not unconstitutionally prohibited or curtailed.
On January 16, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) sent a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies providing guidance on Executive Order (EO) 1379 8 "Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty." In order to protect the ability of religious organizations to operate in the public square, this memo required the agencies to review the EO and publish policies on how they will comply.
On January 22, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at HHS approved a family planning waiver for Texas to implement a state-run Medicaid program that excludes abortion providerslike Planned Parenthood. This makes Texas the first state to receive Medicaid funding for a family planning program that does not include abortion providers.
On January 24, President Trump became the first sitting president to give remarks in person at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C. In his address he stated the eternal truth that every child is a sacred gift from God and reiterated his effort to defend the dignity and sanctity of every human life.
Also on January 24, HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced live at Family Research Council's ProLifeCon event that HHS issued a notice of violation to California for violating the federal Weldon Amendment by mandating all health insurers provide coverage for abortion. California's abortion coverage mandate has deprived over 28,000 residents of plans that do not cover abortion. This marks the second time that HHS has issued a notice of violation to California for violating federal conscience laws and is the fourth enforcement action taken by the HHS OCR's Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.
On February 4, during his State of the Union address, President Trump called on Congress to pass legislation that would ban late-term abortions. To highlight the need for this legislation, he invited special guest Ellie Schneider, who was born at just 21 weeks gestation.
On February 5, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched the International Religious Freedom Alliance. The Alliance will unite government leaders from like-minded nations to strategize ways to promote religious freedom and protect religious minorities around the world.
On February 25, OMB issued a Statement of Administrative Policy strongly supporting two pro-life bills being voted on in the U.S. Senate: the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. Had Congress passed these bills, the president's advisors would have recommended that he sign both into law.
On March 24, DOJ filed a statement of interest in a case protecting women against men intruding on their sporting competitions. The statement made clear that athletic qualifications on the basis of "gender identity" were harmful to women's sports.
On March 28, amid the coronavirus pandemic, HHS OCR issued a strong statement reminding health care entities of their obligation to treat persons with disabilities with the same dignity and worth as everyone else. OCR reiterated its duty to enforce current civil rights laws and has already worked with states to remove discriminatory practices from their pandemic health plans.
On April 2, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback held a special briefing. He called upon China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia to release their prisoners of conscience in light of the contagious coronavirus. Many of these prisoners were imprisoned for their religious faith.
On April 3, the Small Business Administration (SBA) issued a FAQ document confirming that churches and religious nonprofits are eligible for assistance like the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in the coronavirus relief legislation known as the CARES Act. These clarifying protections ensure organizations would not be discriminated against based on their religious affiliation and would not have to give up their religious freedom in order to participate in these programs. In addition, the administration used an affiliation rule to ensure that large abortion providers like Planned Parenthood would not be eligible for coronavirus relief in the CARES Act.
On April 14, DOJ filed a statement of interest protecting the religious liberty of church-goers in Greenville, Mississippi. During the coronavirus pandemic, the city of Greenville banned all religious services, even those that were able to abide by social distancing standards with drive-in church services.
On April 17, the Department of Homeland Security included "clergy for essential support" in its list of personnel and entities deemed "essential" for purposes of responding to the coronavirus. This designation allows clergy and pastors more freedom to continue to operate and serve those around them in need at this time.
On May 3, DOJ filed a statement of interest supporting the religious freedom of Lighthouse Fellowship Church in Chincoteague Island, Virginia. After the church held a 16-person worship service on Palm Sunday (following strict social distancing protocols), a criminal citation and summons were issued against the pastor pursuant to Governor Ralph Northam's executive order which banned in-person religious services but allowed large gatherings for businesses like liquor stores and dry cleaners.
As of May 12, the Trump administration has overseen the confirmation of 193 federal judges, including two Supreme Court justices and 51 federal appeals court judges. Counting seven other judicial confirmations for roles outside the federal court system, President Trump has confirmed 200 judges so far during his time in office. An overwhelming number of President Trump's judicial nominees have been constitutional originalists, who will interpret the law as written, rather than interpret it according to their personal policy preferences. As judges, these nominees will rule correctly on religious liberty and pro-life issues.
On May 15, the DOL issued guidance implementing the administration's Religious Liberty Executive Order and the DOJ religious liberty guidance. The DOL guidance also cited to the OMB memo from earlier this year which directed all grant-administering agencies to detail how they will protect religious liberty in the context of such grants, and included specific action steps to ensure that religious liberty is protected.
On May 18, USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa sent a letter to the UN Secretary General advocating that the UN not push abortion during the coronavirus crisis. Barsa noted that abortion is not an "essential service," and there are many actual health needs at this time. Therefore, the United States, which stands with the international pro-life community under the Trump administration, does not look kindly on these efforts to promote abortion.
On June 12, facing strong opposition from LGBT rights organizations, HHS finalized its regulation that clarifies that discrimination on the basis of sex in section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act is to be interpreted under the plain meaning of the word. Therefore, it does not include "gender identity" or "termination of pregnancy" as set forth by a 2016 Obama administration regulation. The HHS rule will continue to enforce existing civil rights protections; however, it makes clear that the federal government will not force physicians to participate in gender reassignment surgeries or abortions.
On June 19, the DOJ filed a statement of interest defending the constitutionality of Idaho's Fairness in Women's Sports Act. The Fairness in Women's Sports Act ensures that only biologically female athletes are permitted to compete in female sports. By restricting male athletes from participating, female athletes have a fair shot when competing.
On June 24, President Trump issued an executive order to strengthen America's foster care and adoption system. Among other things, this action seeks to increase partnerships with faith-based organizations to care for children and preserve families.
On June 29, the White House released a statement condemning the Supreme Court ruling on June Medical Services v. Russo. This ruling concluded that requiring individuals who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals is unconstitutional.
On June 30, the White House released a statement praising the Supreme Court ruling on Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. This ruling is a victory for religious freedom, ensuring that religious schools are not discriminated against in state voucher programs.
On July 8, HHS Secretary Alex Azar issued a statement celebrating the Supreme Court ruling in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania. The ruling upheld the Trump administration's expansion of religious freedom protections under the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate.
On July 9, the Treasury Department sanctioned four current or former Chinese government officials and one Chinese g overnment entity for their abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.
On July 21, OCR resolved a religious discrimination complaint against the Prince George's Hospital Center of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS). Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the hospital denied a patient's request to have a Catholic priest visit the hospital to provide spiritual care. OCR worked with the hospital system to revise their visitor's policy to allow religious visitations during the pandemic.
On July 31, the Treasury Department sanctioned a Chinese paramilitary organization in connection to their human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in China.
On August 5, Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech on the importance of protecting life and reaffirmed the administration's pro-life positions. He also became the first vice president to visit a pregnancy resource center - these centers are valuable lifelines that offer abortion-free services for women facing crisis pregnancies.
On August 17, the State Department, in coordination with other federal agencies, released a second review of President Trump's PLGHA Policy, which requires U.S. global health funds recipients to certify that they will not promote or perform abortions. This report reaffirmed the policy's effectiveness and the U.S. government's ability to simultaneously protect unborn life and promote better health outcomes for women globally.
On August 18, the Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board-which was convened as a part of President Trump's June 5, 2019 fetal tissue research policy-issued recommendations on the ethics of fetal tissue research proposals. The board recommended against funding 13 of the 14 proposals because of ethical concerns with how fetal tissue from aborted babies would be used. This board will continue to review any new fetal tissue research proposals applying for federal funds.
On August 20, OCR resolved a civil rights complaint against the state of Utah, helping the state amend their crisis standards of care (CSC) guidelines to ensure the elderly and disabled are not discriminated against when medical resources are scarce. This is now OCR's seventh resolution helping states create CSC plans that value the dignity of all human life.
On August 25, USAID released its updated Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Policy with the purpose of "empowering women and girls to participate fully in and equally benefit from the development of their societies." The updated policy takes into account the biological differences between males and females and recognizes the importance of strengthening "families and communities" to achieving its goal.
And just today, the Trump administration proposed another rule to make it harder to experiment on aborted babies.
MANY THANKS TO LIFESITE NEWS FOR COMPILING THIS INCREDIBLE LIST FOR US. If you aren't familiar with them, you will want to check out their excellent work.
Attention readers: The following column was co-authored with the Daily Caller editorial board.
Patriots enlist and defend their country. They work hard, do their best, raise good families. They help their neighbors. They perform civic duties. They grit their teeth and pay their taxes. Then they show up and vote. They compete, they win or lose, but they do both with grace. These are some of the things patriots do.
Patriots do not storm their own Capitol over a lost election. They do not bum-rush members of Congress. They do not assault strangers. They do not push and shove police officers and trash federal buildings. These are things criminals do, and criminals of any political stripe deserve one thing: the rule of law.
While Congress convened Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the electoral votes for President-elect Joe Biden — an act that has been performed, for the most part throughout history, peacefully and without incident — the city outside swelled as tens of thousands of protestors whipped themselves into a #stopthesteal frenzy. Eventually, many of them descended on the Capitol building, hellbent on disrupting the American constitutional process.
As this summer's political protests escalated into rioting and lawlessness, many of us pointed out how unacceptable that was for any reason. This situation is no different. Every single one of the people who stormed that building and participated in that rank, un-American lawlessness should be in jail. There are prodigious photos and video evidence. Law enforcement officials should find them and prosecute them, all of them, no exceptions.
The reason why is simple: The peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of Western democracy. It is the cornerstone of everything we love. It is apple pie. It's lining up and shaking hands when the clock hits zero. We have ways to resolve political disputes, including election disputes. What happened in Washington is not on the list. If we want to end the cycle of political violence — and it has become a cycle — now is the time to set the precedent.
The left excused this summer's rioting as "mostly peaceful." The same could be said of the events in Washington. It's irrelevant. "Mostly" is not the standard to which we should aspire. Political violence is wrong. Period. This was true in 2016 when the #NotMyPresident rioters disrupted the Trump inaugural, and it's true today. Rule of law is an essential element of our peaceful transition of power. The people who stormed that building do not represent the vast majority of America.
Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff received significant boosts in their challenges to Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) in Georgia’s runoff elections this month after the state’s foreign-born population ballooned over the last three decades.
Warnock, who beat Loeffler with 51 percent of the vote, won huge majority support from Georgia’s two largest immigrant populations — winning 64 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of Asian Americans. In contrast, Loeffler won less than 4-in-10 Hispanics and about 40 percent of Asians
Ossoff pulled off a similar feat, gaining support from 64 percent of Hispanics and nearly 6-in-10 Asians compared to Perdue’s 36 percent with Hispanics and 41 percent with Asians.
According to the New York Times, the Democrat wins are “fueled by the state’s changing demographics” that could “mean that Georgia has finally achieved battleground status,” for which the Democrat Party has long worked. Days before the election, Democrat activists gleefully cheered that the state had become their new California with a “trajectory of change.”
As much of the establishment media has acknowledged, much of the Democrats’ success in Georgia is due to the nation’s annual admission of 1.2 million legal immigrants a year who can eventually become naturalized citizens and sponsor foreign relatives for green cards. The process is known as “chain migration.”
Before President George H.W. Bush signed the Immigration Act of 1990, Georgia’s foreign-born population stood at about 2.7 percent of its total population with fewer than 200,000 foreign-born residents in the state.
Today, Georgia is home to nearly 1.1 million foreign-born residents who make up more than 10 percent of the state’s population — a 515 percent increase in three decades. Nearly 3-in-10 of these foreign-born residents are Asian and another almost 4-in-10 are Hispanic.
Most significantly for Democrats, though, is that in 1990, less than 40 percent of foreign-born residents in Georgia were naturalized citizens and thus eligible to vote if they were 18-years-old or older. Today, more than 45 percent, or about 480,000, of the state’s foreign-born residents are naturalized citizens and thus eligible to vote once they hit 18-years-old.
The number of foreign-born voters and their voting-age children in Georgia has boomed by 337 percent since 2000 while the native-born voting-age population in Georgia has increased just 22 percent over that same period.
As has occurred in Virginia, the booming of Georgia’s foreign-born population is making the state increasingly favorable to Democrats. President-Elect Joe Biden won the state by a slim margin of 0.2 percent against President Donald Trump, according to state election officials.
The establishment media has repeatedly noted the impact of immigration on the Democrats’ odds in congressional districts, swing states, and presidential elections.
In 2019, for example, an analysis by the Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein revealed that congressional districts with a foreign-born population above the national average, a little more than 14 percent, have a 90 percent chance of being won by Democrats over Republicans.
“The single biggest threat to Republicans’ long-term viability is demographics,” Axios reporters Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen wrote in 2019. “The numbers simply do not lie … there’s not a single demographic megatrend that favors Republicans.”
At current legal immigration levels, Georgia’s foreign-born population is set to continue expanding. By 2040, research by the Center for Immigration Studies states that the U.S. will have brought 15 million new foreign-born voters to the U.S. — eight million of which will have arrived through chain migration.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Fellow at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation Hans von Spakovsky to the show.
During the second hour, Spakovsky discussed his many years of experience in election oversight and the need for transparency in voting advocating the importance of in-person voting on Election Day. He also added that it was important to go forward with paper ballots that have an identifiable chain of custody and continued his warning about machine voting and the elimination of private funding.
Leahy: We are joined now by Hans von Spakovsky. He is the manager of the election law reform initiative and a senior legal fellow at The Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation. A native of Huntsville. A graduate of Vanderbilt law school. And the author of Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holders Justice Departmentpublished by HarperCollins-Broadside Books in June 2014. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report Mr. Von Spakovsky.
Spakovsky: Yes. The same editor I had. That’s exactly right.
Leahy: The greatest editor I’ve ever had. He’s just fabulous and really a great guy.
Spakovsky: He certainly was a pleasant surprise given some of the people you have to deal with in these publishing houses.
Leahy: He’s now with the Bombardier imprint of Post Hill press which as it turns out is based right here in Nashville, Tennessee. How about that?
Spakovsky: Well, I didn’t realize that.
Leahy: Yeah, he’s doing great work and has a lot of really good books coming out of that imprint. So, election integrity. I’m not going to go back and relitigate you know, all the five or six the problems with the unlawful nature of the election in these five or six states on November 3. But I do want to look forward. And I’d like to have you react to my view on this see if you think I’m going down the right track.
It seems to me that the potential for fraud is huge when you use a huge number of absentee ballots. We have these signature verification problems that and then you also have the drop boxes. This seems to be all sorts of chain of custody problems. All sorts of ballot harvesting problems. And it seems to me if we’re going to have any confidence in the electoral process in America state legislators around the country are going to have to fix the laws and make sure that unelected bureaucrats don’t change the rules. That’s my view. Am I on the right track or am I missing anything?
Spakovsky: Oh no, you’re absolutely right about that. Look people need to understand that absentee ballots are the only kind of ballots that are voted outside the supervision of election officials. Outside the observation of poll observers and poll watchers. And they’re the only kind of ballots that are then handled instead of being placed right into a ballot box in a polling place.
Then they go through some kind of process where they are handled by third parties before being delivered. All of that makes them extremely vulnerable not only to intentional fraud but to other problems like, you know getting lost in the mail on the way back and all kinds of other issues. And that’s why I agree.
You know we need to have absentee ballots for those who like our overseas military personnel and people who are too sick or disabled to make it to the polling place on Election Day. We should not be moving in the direction of encouraging everybody to use an absentee ballot if in fact, they have the ability to go to a polling place on Election Day and vote.
Leahy: Yeah, that seems to me to be the critical problem here in terms of integrity. You can’t be confident in the integrity of absentee ballots. Not only those by mail but particularly those placed in the drop boxes.
Spakovsky: That’s a big problem.
Leahy: I don’t know if you saw our reporting at The Georgia Star News one of our six outlets. You know, we own The Tennessee Star and several other state-based conservative news sites. But as you may know in Georgia in the November 3 presidential election there were about 1.3 million absentee ballots. The Secretary of State there didn’t know how many were delivered by mail or how many by drop boxes. But you probably know John McLaughlin the pollster, right?
Spakovsky: Oh, yeah.
Leahy: John did a poll and the polling results looked like about 600,000 of those 1.3 million absentee ballots were deposit and drop boxes. So we at The Georgia Star News asked the Secretary of State, hey, do you know how many of these absentee ballots were delivered by mail and how many by drop boxes? And the answer was, and you probably know this already…no, we don’t know. You have to ask the 159 counties.
Spakovsky: Right.
Leahy: We went and asked the 159 counties. We’ve only got an account for like 150,000 of those 600,000 drop boxes still like two and a half months later. And of those, if you look at the ballot transfer forms that we got, you know, 80 percent of them were not delivered within one hour, which is what the rule said. You know there are all sorts of concerns there it seems to me. Will the state legislators that are back in session now, will they act in your view to appropriately constrain and control the proliferation of drop boxes and absentee ballots?
Spakovsky: Well, they’d better because if they don’t the public confidence and the integrity of the election process was extremely important and which was totally shaken by this past election is just going to get worse. And it’s going to affect elections for years. I think what I’ve seen is that a lot of state legislators are finally, finally aware of these problems.
And the public is finally aware of these problems. and I just saw that for example the governor of, Georgia is urging the state legislators to make a change which is the change that I’ve recommended for years, which is to remember Georgia like Tennessee has a voter ID law. Georgia passed its voter ID law and it was first effective in 2008. It’s a great law, but it’s got one big failing. It only applies to in-person voting. It doesn’t apply to absentee ballots too.
And that is a change that needs to be made in the law. If you look at Alabama, right? If you stay to yourself. We didn’t hear a lot of claims about problems in Alabama as opposed to Georgia. Well, the difference is Alabama actually passed a great voter ID law some years ago. But it applies to both in-person and absentee balloting. And while that can’t stop all problems are all fraud it certainly can minimize it when you have that kind of a legal requirement.
Leahy: Let me ask you this question and you’ve been at this for some time. Why is it that the Democrats are just so intensely focused on this? They spend so many resources and appear with a guy like Mark Elias and all those folks that they just have huge legal resources to advance absentee ballots and all these things that are I think in my view fraud-prone. Why on the Republican conservative side have we paid so little attention to it?
Spakovsky: You know how I hate to say this but my experience with this is that they think the end justifies the means. And they believe that they want to make it frankly easier to cheat and easier to manipulate election results. And that sounds harsh but I will tell you that I wrote a case study some years ago about this big voter fraud case that occurred in Alabama in the mid-1990s. And the fraud had clearly occurred.
It was in an overwhelmingly Black or Democratic county down in Alabama. And do you know that the NAACP and other civil rights groups did everything they could to prevent and stop the FBI from investigating this voter fraud? Which by the way has been reported to them by young African-American Democratic candidates.
But they did everything they could to try to stop the investigation. And you know in the end, almost a dozen individuals and local officials were convicted of fraud, and that fraud included stealing the votes of Black voters. But these civil rights groups did not want this investigation going forward. And that was so shocking to me. But that is unfortunately an attitude I see all the time.
(Commercial break)
Leahy: By the way, I have to say this. Are you an Alabama football fan?
Spakovsky: Well, I have to admit I was. As you know the whole state would come to a stop every year with Auburn and Alabama played each other. And I could still remember watching those pictures of the kids.
Leahy: Well, congratulations to you and all Alabamians because last night perhaps one of the best college football teams ever, the Alabama Crimson Tide stomped the Ohio State Buckeyes 52 to 24 to win the national championship. I bet you it’s a good day in the von Spakovsky household right?
Spakovsky: Well, it is. And I have a good friend in Ohio and I’m going to have to call and give a hard time to. (Laughter)
Leahy: So hey, I want to ask you this question. I noticed that you’re not just shall we say an academic. I’m looking at your background you have served on the board of advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and on the Fulton County Georgia Board of Registrations and Elections in Fulton County which was the center of where all this was going on in Georgia. You’ve seen how these things work. Let me bring this question up to you. I’ve watched with great interest how Fulton County and many other counties in these Metro areas in swing states.
I don’t know surreptitiously or quietly accepted huge amounts of money from The Mark Zuckerberg funded Center for Technology and Civic Life which basically specified how they should run the elections down there and specified how many drop boxes they should have and centralized the counting systems and the tabulation areas in ways that made it difficult to observe. You and I haven’t talked about this, but when you look at what the Zuckerberg Center for Technology and Civic Life did, is this the kind of thing that we should be allowed going forward in American elections?
Spakovsky: The first thing the Georgia legislature should pass, the first bill is a bill barring any election officials or county or state governments from receiving private funding. Because if you look at the way this money was structured, you know it all so it all sounds like oh it’s well-intentioned. But this was simply a way of taking get-out-the-vote money that would normally have gone to a political campaign and using it to manipulate public election officials.
Because where did all this money go? It only went to democratically held urban areas and places where the votes would help Joe Biden and Democratic candidates. And the changes they made, for example, I can’t think of anything as you know, you mentioned drop boxes. I can’t think of anything more dangerous than putting unsecured and un-surveilled and unmonitored drop boxes for people to put their absentee ballots in. That is dangerous.
It is a way of making it easier to manipulate elections and for example, deposit fraudulent ballots in huge numbers when there’s no one there to see what’s happening. It’s like I said, this is something that every state needs their state legislators need to immediately change. It’s just such a conflict of interest. Election officials are taking that money.
Leahy: Do you in your capacity as the head of the Election Law Reform Institute of The Heritage Foundation, do you ever go and testify before state legislatures on these matters?
Spakovsky: I most certainly do. I’ve done it on numerous occasions. And I’ve been working on this. Look, one of the differences between me and other folks is as you’ve mentioned is there a lot of academics out there making all kinds of recommendations. None of whom have any actual experience administering elections. I spent five years in Georgia as a county election administrator in the biggest county in the state. And I did that for three years in Virginia.
Leahy: You were the Richard Baron of Fulton County before he was?
Spakovsky: No I was on the county election board, which was a five-member board that ran elections in Fulton County.
Leahy: So you supervised the guy who ran it.
Spakovsky: That’s exactly right.
Leahy: Wow!
Spakovsky: I for example was astonished when I heard the news of how they stopped counting ballots at the end of election day. We would never have done that. We had backup teams of people and we would count all of the ballots and we made sure when I was there which was 20 years ago that we had observers there from the parties and the candidates and we put them close enough so they could see what we were doing because we wanted that transparency.
Because we wanted them to be able to see that we were obeying the law and not doing anything wrong. And when you have election officials keeping observers out that, of course, leads to suspicions and they should lead suspicions because again transparency is the key to have a secure election that people can have confidence in.
Leahy: Have you been invited to testify before the Georgia state legislature? They opened the session yesterday. Have you been invited to go down and testify there?
Spakovsky: No, they have not brought me down. By the way, I should tell you that all the talk about electronic voting machines, I was in Georgia when they were trying to decide what kind of equipment to go to this is back after the 2000 election when people using punch-card equipment. And I testified against having the state go to electronic voting machines.
Leahy: And we have about 30 seconds left. In synopsis, what’s the argument against electronic voting machines?
Spakovsky: Well, the problem with them is that with most of them there is no audit trail. I think the best way is to have Opti-scan equipment where you have a paper ballot. Yes, it’s scanned by a computer to count but you have the paper ballot that you can then hand account to ensure that you’re not being somehow hit by software.
Leahy: You said the magic word. Hand count, paper ballots. That’s the way to make sure there is some integrity there. Hans von Spakovsky the Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation. Thanks for joining us and come back again, please.
A group of House Democrats introduced a resolution to amend the Constitution to abolish the Electoral College and institute a direct national popular vote for president and vice president.
“Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to abolish the electoral college and to provide for the direct election of the President and Vice President of the United States,” reads the text of House Joint Resolution 14.
The effort, led by Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, claims that the “development of mass media and the internet has made information about Presidential candidates easily accessible to United States citizens across the country and around the world.”
In a statement explaining the move, Cohen called the Electoral College an “archaic institution” that “has twice awarded the presidency to a candidate who did not win the popular vote” in the last 20 years.
“Americans expect and deserve the winner of the popular vote to win office,” Cohen’s statement continued. “More than a century ago, we amended our Constitution to provide for the direct election of U.S. Senators. It is past time to directly elect our President and Vice President.”
Cohen also cited the siege of the U.S. Capitol last week, arguing that “efforts can be made to manipulate the Electoral College vote using falsehoods and shenanigans by ambitious politicians.”
“It was during the largely ceremonial certification of the Electoral College vote that a mob invaded the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday at the urging of a president who had lost the popular vote by more than seven million votes,” Cohen continued.
The text of the resolution invokes Thomas Jefferson, who said that he is “not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitution, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.”
The resolution also points out that the Constitution has been amended multiple times to “expand the opportunity for citizens to directly elect their elected leads,” specifically pointing to the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race; the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote regardless of gender; and the 26th Amendment, which guaranteed the right to vote to all citizens over 18 years of age.
The effort comes four years after President Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote, which led many Democrats to renew a push to abolish the Electoral College.
Outside of amending the Constitution, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is an agreement between a group of states that seeks to circumvent the Electoral College by awarding their electors to the winner of the national popular vote if the compact can reach the necessary 270 votes to win the presidential election. The compact currently has the commitment of 16 jurisdictions, comprising 196 of the 270 votes necessary to trigger the agreement.
But Cohen is seeking to do away with the Electoral College through the traditional amendment process, arguing that it is “past time” to institute a popular vote.
“The President should always be elected by the people, not the politicians, and the Electoral College allows politicians to make the ultimate decision,” Cohen said. “It is well past time to do away with this anachronistic institution and guarantee a fair and accurate vote for President.”
Cohen’s office did not immediately respond to a Washington Examiner request for comment.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos -- whom National Public Radio called in December "by far the wealthiest person on the planet" -- used a small sliver of his vast fortune in 2013 to buy The Washington Post.
In 2020, this newspaper endorsed Joe Biden for president.
"Mr. Biden's competence and honor are more important in this cycle than any particular stand on any particular issue," the Bezos paper said in a Sept. 28 editorial.
Did it have a right to make this endorsement?
The First Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." Therefore, the answer is yes.
But under a constitutional amendment Biden is proposing, the question could become: How much, if anything, could the Bezos paper -- or any other organization -- spend on speech that is for or against a politician?
"In 1997, and many years afterward," says a page on Biden's campaign website, "he co-sponsored a constitutional amendment that would have limited contributions as well as corporate and private spending in elections and prevented the damage caused by the Supreme Court in Citizens United."
"Toward those ends, Biden will: Introduce a constitutional amendment to entirely eliminate private dollars from our federal elections," says the Biden website.
"Biden believes it is long past time to end the influence of private dollars in our federal elections," it says. "As president, Biden will fight for a constitutional amendment that will require candidates for federal office to solely fund their campaigns with public dollars, and prevent outside spending from distorting the election process. This amendment will do far more than just overturn Citizens United: it will return our democracy to the people and away from the corporate interests that seek to distort it."
Biden's website links to the congressional webpage for Senate Joint Resolution 18 -- the constitutional amendment Biden co-sponsored back in 1997 (when it lost 38 to 61).
This failed amendment said in part: "Congress shall have power to set reasonable limits on the ... amount of expenditures that may be made by, in support of, or in opposition to, a candidate for nomination for election to, or for election to, Federal office."
Now, suppose this amendment had been ratified. Then, suppose Congress had enacted a law saying no individual or corporation could spend more than $1,000 on any given day supporting or opposing a candidate for federal office.
Under that restriction -- made constitutional by Biden's amendment -- would a newspaper be able to pay for the writing, layout, printing and distribution of an edition that endorsed (or opposed) Joe Biden for president"?
In the 1975 case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court reviewed the Federal Election Campaign Act that limited "expenditures by individuals or groups 'relative to a clearly identified candidate' to $1,000 per candidate per election." The court explained why this kind of restriction was unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
"It is clear that a primary effect of these expenditure limitations is to restrict the quantity of campaign speech by individuals, groups, and candidates," the court said in a per curiam opinion. "The restrictions, while neutral as to the ideas expressed, limit political expression 'at the core of our electoral process and of the First Amendment freedoms.'"
The court went on to conclude that the law's "independent expenditure limitation is unconstitutional under the First Amendment."
Now, some might say that newspapers -- because they are press organizations -- have a right to speak about political candidates in a way other corporations do not. The First Amendment, after all, specifically protects freedom "of the press."
But, in the Citizens United case in 2010, the Supreme Court reviewed a federal law that prohibited "corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech defined as an 'electioneering communication' or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate."
The law, as the court explained, defined an "electioneering communication" as "'any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication' that 'refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office' and is made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election."
The law exempted the media from this rule. But, then, the Supreme Court said the government could not treat the First Amendment rights of a corporation that operates a news outlet differently from one that does not.
"'We have consistently rejected the proposition that the institutional press has any constitutional privilege beyond that of other speakers,'" said the court.
"With the advent of the Internet and the decline of print and broadcast media, moreover, the line between the media and others who wish to comment on political and social issues becomes far more blurred," said the court.
"And the exemption results in a further, separate reason for finding this law invalid: Again by its own terms, the law exempts some corporations but covers others, even though both have the need or the motive to communicate their views," said the court. "The exemption applies to media corporations owned or controlled by corporations that have diverse and substantial investments and participate in endeavors other than news. So even assuming the most doubtful proposition that a news organization has a right to speak when others do not, the exemption would allow a conglomerate that owns both a media business and an unrelated business to influence or control the media in order to advance its overall business interest. At the same time, some other corporation, with an identical business interest but no media outlet in its ownership structure, would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue.
"This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment," said the court's opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.
In pursuit of his goal "to end the influence of private dollars in our federal elections," Joe Biden -- according to his campaign website -- would amend the Constitution to "overturn" this Supreme Court decision.
Then government could limit the money Americans spend on political speech.
Terence P. Jeffrey is the editor in chief of CNSnews.com.
Democrats in 2020 focused their electoral efforts on a single point: They were against Donald Trump. That might work in the presidential race, depending on how the final vote counts turn out, but in Senate and House races across the country, voters were not buying it. Activists, insiders, and social media might be anti-Trump all day, every day, but ordinary voters wanted leadership and moderation. By helping the Republicans keep the Senate and expand their minority in the House, they might just get it.
Several factors cause the Democrats’ delusion, but all relate to the same basic thing: living in a bubble. For party leaders, this is always a concern. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, like all members of Congress, live their daily lives surrounded by people who are as obsessed with politics as they are — and not just politics, but insider politics, the give-and-take of Washington power structures. That makes sense for a member of Congress, but it does not match how the rest of us spend our time.
When they are not talking to fellow politicos, they are talking to rich donors and industry lobbyists, whose view of the world is similarly unrepresentative. To the extent they step outside those circles, it is often into the social media websites that also feature the loudest and most extreme opinions. We have seen viral videos for four years of young women screaming in rage at something Trump has done. How often do you encounter such a sight in real life?
That vision of unreality is hard for anyone to overcome. The truly talented politicians manage it, though. Having a feel for the average Joe is not something that can be learned from a spreadsheet; it is innate. Bill Clinton is the last Democratic leader who could truly be said to have that gift. It let him push a progressive agenda just far enough, knowing when to stop and when to triangulate, a term he and Dick Morris popularized in 1996.
Democrats Don’t Know When to Stop
No one in the Democratic Party’s leadership today knows how to triangulate. Even when they strayed from their platform of Trump being bad, they focused on things that appeal mostly to their wealthy donors or their most radical constituents. Every debate had a significant segment on the government’s role in environmental regulation, something that people who are already going to vote Democrat care a great deal about.
Almost nothing was asked of Trump or Biden about jobs, education, and trade, the bread-and-butter issues for millions of voters. Biden, at least, could speak to those points in his own disjointed fashion. Democratic congressional candidates were much more myopic on these kitchen-table issues, and corporate media encouraged the blindness.
Contrast this with the 2006 elections, when Democrats picked up 31 seats in the House to reclaim control of the chamber for the first time in a dozen years. They picked up five seats in the Senate that year, too, making a slim majority. Then, too, Democrats were running against a Republican president and the Iraq War that had become increasingly unpopular with the electorate. But in 2006, Pelosi and Harry Reid knew that the way back to majority status was through the center, not the fringe.
In Pennsylvania, for example, they won with House candidates like Joe Sestak and Chris Carney, ex-military men who communicated a moderate, professional approach to government. In the Senate, Pennsylvania sent Bob Casey Jr. (who was still pretending to be pro-life) to join Jim Webb of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. All presented themselves as reasonable moderates, and some of them actually were.
The Left Got High on Its Own Supply
Pelosi and Schumer have drifted leftward in the 14 years since then and assumed the rest of the electorate has joined them. The results in 2020 show they are wrong. But even had the party leadership understood the degree to which they are out of touch, would it matter? Would a pro-life Democrat like Casey, a career prosecutor like Klobuchar, or an ex-Republican former soldier like Webb win in a Democratic primary today? Even with the support of the party, would the Democratic enragés of 2020 fall in line?
It is hard to imagine them winning in most jurisdictions nowadays. Part of the problem is that we increasingly sort ourselves geographically. For progressive Democrats, especially, that can mean living in a city where everyone looks different, but the thoughts they express publicly are remarkably similar.
No congressional district is 100 percent liberal Democrat, but the public scorn that awaits moderate comments — or even, heaven forfend, conservative speech — can give the progressives the same bubble effect that Washington politicians enjoy. They have only the evidence available to them, and when fewer people are comfortable speaking their minds, that limits the evidence to what confirms, not challenges.
While replacing a moderate with a radical is of no harm in a solidly Democratic district such as that of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, elsewhere it drives independent voters away. For all the talk of “turning Texas blue,” Democrats there shot themselves in the foot by nominating radical lefties such as Wendy Davis, who is most famous for her strident pro-abortion stance. Meanwhile, moderate Democrats such as Pennsylvania’s Conor Lamb look to edge out victories in marginal districts.
Progressives in Washington and on the internet have been getting high on their own supply for the past four years. They might yet get their fondest wish in removing Trump from office, but the mania with which they pursued that goal and their lack of focus on issues important to ordinary families ensured that every other race tilted back to their opponents.
Kyle Sammin is a lawyer from Pennsylvania, a senior contributor to The Federalist, and the co-host of the Conservative Minds podcast. Read some of his other writing at his website, or follow him on Twitter at @KyleSammin.
David was the richest man in the country. He was royalty. He owned a large home and had many servants at his beck and call. David was a good man, but he had his faults, too. The most grievous fault was lust. Even though he had many women around him to make him happy, there was but one that he wanted – the wife of a friend.
So he did the unthinkable. He had the friend murdered and took his wife for his own. She was a beautiful woman and made David very happy. Soon they had a child.
One day a special guest paid a visit and was able to point out to David that he had taken a woman that was not his and had her rightful husband killed. David quickly admitted his guilt. The guest told David that there would be a price to pay for his behavior and predicted that the son his wife had given birth to would soon die.
David was beside himself with grief! How could this man possibly know that David’s young son would die? But soon enough, the baby became very sick.
David prayed day and night. He cried out to the Lord and begged for the child to be spared. He didn’t eat or sleep for days. He was in so much anguish that even his servants were afraid that David would take drastic measures and end his own life. This would have been a horrific blow to the country as David was very important to their safety and well-being.
After the child had been sick for a week, he passed away. That’s when David did the completely unexpected thing – he stopped grieving. He got up, put on clean clothes, went to his synagogue and worshipped, then came home and asked his servants to bring him a meal.
This confused those around him. They asked him why he had grieved with such anguish while the child was alive, but conducted himself completely normally after the boy had died. David explained that while the child had been alive he did everything he knew to do in order to save the child. He prayed, he cried, he begged and pleaded with the Lord to spare the child’s life. But David knew that once the child had died that the Lord had spoken and that there was nothing else he could do. In other words, David had done all he could, everything he could, and that the only thing he could do at this point would be to go about his life and honor the Lord now.
Dear Reader, this story of King David (yes, the one in the Bible who was the king of Israel and the father of another son, Solomon)1 is very similar to the one we face today. Most people just don’t realize it yet.
It is highly probable that our constitutional republic has died. Indeed, this has been a “baby” to me and many other patriots for years. Some have poured their heart and soul into legislative affairs, elections, policy, and education in an effort to keep the “child” alive. Yet earlier today, our beloved Capitol building was attacked by people who apparently wanted to destroy it rather than save it. If we had just looked, scripture told us this would happen. So did history.
If you were, like me, hopeful that court cases would be heard, logic would rule in debates, and honesty and integrity would prevail, you may very well be devastated right now. But this writer is not. While some trust in chariots and horses2 – or courts and lawmakers – scripture admonishes us to trust in the Lord our God.
Solomon, who was the child born to David and his wife after the death of their first son, was the teacher who dictated Ecclesiastes. In Chapter 3, verse 4, he states there is a time to mourn. I have been mourning the loss of our constitutional republic for years as I’ve watched it be taken apart by ridiculous laws and rules. I’ve grieved over the millions of lives lost due to abortion. I’ve agonized over the loss of freedom as sheep blindly followed anyone with a rod and agreed to wear masks, sit at home, and fear everything as our economy fell to pieces. I’ve lamented the loss of friendships of mine and others over petty squabbles regarding quarantines, lock downs, elections, and whose lives matter.
But that same verse also says that there is also a time to dance. Metaphorically speaking, that means there is a time for celebration. But for some of us, dancing is what we do in the normal course of our day.
Therefore, I’m choosing to take the advice of both King David and King Solomon. I’ve gotten up out of my bed of despair. I put on fresh clothes each morning, I pray, worship, and I eat my breakfast. Then I go about the business of my day, working harder than I ever have. The child may be dead, but I am not. I choose to keep going, and believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.3
~Temerity Dowell
1See 2 Samuel 12: 1-23
2Psalm 20:7 (a passage written by King David)
3See Psalm 27:13 (another passage written by King David)
On Nov. 4, 2020, I suddenly saw with my own eyes the depth and breadth of the political corruption myself and others had tried and failed to prevent for so many years.
I am angry. It’s not a passing emotion brought on by a single circumstance. This anger is a deep, painful, abiding anger created by a mix of frustration, despair, hopelessness, and injustice. For decades I have been told to trust American institutions and if I have grievances to work harder to improve them. I have done so, far more than most Americans, and my reward has been watching corruption and ineptitude only increase.
As a public school science teacher in the late 1990s, I watched parents disengage from their children and students gain more power over my classroom every day. I saw administrators allow it to happen and even excuse bad behaviors: “She has a very hard home life; she just needs to blow off steam and we need to give her a safe place to do that. You don’t want her to feel unsafe, do you?”
I saw good teachers leave the profession rather than fight the brewing storm on the horizon that would make them constables instead of instructors, rely more on technology than instruction, and remove their classroom autonomy. So I quit to begin a family.
Concerned about the way the Obama administration was taking control of public education, handing out stimulus checks, and pushing for government-run health care, I helped start a local citizens’ group. I helped bring in candidates for public office to interview and study bills and legislation. I worked with legislators to develop a bill to improve civic understanding by mandating study of U.S. founding documents in high school.
I watched legislators talk to me and my fellow citizen lobbyists as though we were little more than gum on the bottom of their shoes and explain to us why they knew better than we. A legislator told me voters sent him to the capital to make laws, and I watched a scowl darken his face when I told him, “No, voters send you to the capital to protect their liberty, which often means repealing laws.”
I watched legislators lie to my face about the status of bills and why they wouldn’t vote for them. I became frustrated and disillusioned with legislators and the entire civic system and quit.
On Sept. 12, 2009, I went to our nation’s capital for the Taxpayer March on Washington. It was amazing to flood the streets of Washington D.C. with hundreds of thousands of other human beings, knowing I wasn’t the only person concerned about the state of the union, its history and trajectory.
Although we left the Washington Mall cleaner than we found it, we came home to hear that not only had corporate media downplayed and lied about the numbers of participants, but according to them we were all middle-America yokels who knew little beyond what we could dig up in our corn fields. We were called disgusting names, criticized, denigrated, and smeared by even President Obama himself.
Hoping for the best, I enrolled my children in public elementary school that year. Over the course of five years, I watched a son be bullied so badly by other students and his own teacher that I tried homeschooling just to see him smile again. I watched my other son be left behind in math to the point that he couldn’t add single-digit numbers properly. I watched a daughter bring home papers about global warming and bad white people who hurt Native Americans.
I joined the parent-teacher association only to find that fixing these issues wouldn’t happen there because there were no issues more important than selling wrapping paper to buy a new gymnasium and computers to make sure we had the same equipment other schools did. I saw no future for myself or my children there, so I quit the system.
Hoping that becoming involved in party politics could help steer the type of legislator we elect, I joined the state Republican Party. For years I dutifully went to every precinct meeting, county meeting, and district meeting, even volunteering for the platform committee numerous years.
Every year a group of us tried to create policies that would require Republican legislators to follow the platform upon which they ran but six years of work saw no success with that, or any other activity that attempted to make Republican politicians more accountable to the people who elected them. I became frustrated and disillusioned with the party system and I quit.
I found out about a national education initiative called Common Core. I began writing about its problems and joined many other parents attempting to push back, even helping to get Common Core removed from state law.
After all my efforts, I watched nothing improve. I watched the state department of education continue to find ways to propel Common Core into classrooms with no way to stop it from happening. I watched teachers use social media to tear myself and other parents apart personally for having the audacity to care about our kids and other Oklahoma students, so I quit.
For years after that, I simply taught my kids and served my community as a local elected official. Then came Nov. 4, 2020. On this day, I suddenly saw with my own eyes the depth and breadth of the corruption myself and others had tried to push against for so many years unsuccessfully.
Since that day, I’ve seen legislators and judges ignore significant allegations of wrongdoing, strong reasons for doubting the results, and legitimate evidence of election fraud. I’ve seen congressmen sit quietly and reservedly about the deep concerns of their constituents, presumably too concerned about their committee seats and donors to even croak out words in defense of a republic that was the only one of its kind.
In just a few short weeks I’ve seen the results of all the efforts I’ve ever attempted to uphold my tiny little corner of the world crash into a million pieces. I can never trust a single elected official again. How can I when public officials should have but have not been falling all over themselves to ferret out every single way public trust was violated during this presidential election, knowing that without fair and secure elections in this country, nothing else matters?
Without the assurance of fair and secure elections, the people are not represented. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people cannot be legitimate if the people can’t be sure their representatives were elected in accord with duly passed and equally enforced laws. How is it in the best interest of any state to simply “move on” from an election that has been fraught with as many questions, concerns, and outright unconstitutionalities as this one?
I’m angry because I’ve been playing by the “rules”: paying my taxes, being civil and tolerant of my neighbor, accepting without protest the election of past presidents I didn’t support, and never threatening physical violence, using name-calling, canceling careers, using government goons to unlawfully spy to invent reasons for impeachment, or using media to misreport, misrepresent or otherwise create dissension and anger. Yet the other side has carte blanche to do all this and more without condemnation, conviction, or retribution of any kind.
Yes, the world will continue to turn if this election goes to Joe Biden. Yes, Jesus is still on His throne. In my view, however, God blessed us with a nation unlike any other ever on this planet that was created to allow individuals more freedom to speak, worship, and live than in any other.
Our Constitution reserves nearly all power to the people and very little to the government, yet we’ve continually chosen government over freedom in our individual lives to the point we’re now standing at the edge of a very deep precipice from which we may not return. It’s hard not to be angry when confronted with this earth-shattering truth.
On Jan. 6, I will try one more time. That day I will stand with fellow Americans on the Mall in Washington DC, where I will once again petition Heaven, where I will again hope to see results before I quit for good.
Jenni White has a master's in biology and has had careers in advertising, biology, epidemiology, and teaching. She is the former education director and co-founder of Reclaiming Oklahoma Parent Empowerment and has written for publications including The Pulse, the Heartland Institute, and American Thinker. She is a homeschooling mother of five currently serving as an elected official in the small town where she helps her husband run their microfarm. She can be reached at jenni.rope2.0@gmail.com.
Editor's Note: The author of this column, Jake Hoffman, is a Republican presidential elector in Arizona and a plaintiff on numerous election integrity lawsuits.
The stage is being set for January 2021, more specifically January 6th, to be one of the most consequential periods in our nation’s storied history. Dozens of members of the U.S. House and at least a few members of the Senate have expressed their intent to formally object to the Electoral College tallies in nearly a half dozen states due to the pervasive election irregularities and alleged voter fraud that occurred.
As the day approaches, the left-wing media has been quick to describe this as an “assault on democracy,” among many other things. But if Democrats are going to pretend to be appalled by this “disruptive” action, they need to take a look in the mirror. By their own standards, Democrats have been assaulting democracy for quite some time.
In nearly 150 years, Electoral College votes have been objected to four separate times, three of which were in the last 20 years and all four times Electoral College votes have been objected by Democrats.
Four years ago on January 6, 2017, Democratic House members objected to Electoral College votes for Donald Trump eleven times. Ironically, the presiding President of the Senate at those proceedings was none other than Joseph Biden, then Vice President. Biden shot down those objections on procedural grounds: objections must be filed in writing and have the signature of both a House member and a seated Senator. The 2017 challenges failed to cross that hurdle.
Lest you think this was just a product of early onset Trump Derangement Syndrome, similar attempts were made in January of 2001 to contest the outcome of the “hanging chad” election. In that year, Democrats made 20 objections, and were shot down on the same procedural grounds as in 2017: failing to secure the objection in writing signed by both a House member and a Senator.
The Democrats actually mounted a challenge a third time: January 2005 regarding the outcome of the Bush-Kerry election. That year Democrats did submit an objection in writing by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA). That led Vice President Dick Cheney to order the two bodies, House and Senate, to their respective chambers to debate the objection. The GOP controlled both chambers at the time and the objection went nowhere.
Senator Boxer said at the time, “While we have men and women dying to bring democracy abroad, we've got to make it the best it can be here at home, and that's why I'm doing this.” Rep. Tubbs Jones said, “How can we possibly tell millions of Americans who registered to vote, who came to the polls in record numbers, particularly our young people... to simply get over it and move on?”
The law in effect to count the electoral votes was passed in 1877 and the only time these procedures had been invoked prior to 2001 was in January 1969. One of North Carolina’s 13 electors cast his vote for Independent Candidate for President George Wallace, rather than for Republican Richard Nixon. Rep James O’Hara (D-MI) and Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) filed an objection to North Carolina’s tally. They wanted to discourage so-called “faithless electors” in the future. Ultimately, the House voted against the objection 228-170 and the Senate 58-33.
Protecting the integrity of American elections isn’t merely good public policy, it is a civil rights imperative. As engaged citizens, we must do all in our power to encourage and pray for the courageous men and women who will stand up and object. Whatever happens, do not let the media and Democrats get away with slandering these actions. After all, it was Democrats who pioneered this strategy.
Jake Hoffman is a contributing columnist at Townhall, the President and CEO of Rally Forge, one of the nation’s top conservative communications and media strategy firms, and member-elect of the Arizona House of Representative. Follow him on Parler at @JakeHoffman.
