Examination of the committee’s request to speak with Ginni Thomas has given the prominent conservative activist pause.
irginia “Ginni” Thomas, a prominent conservative activist who is also married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is demanding that the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 elaborate on its basis for soliciting testimony over privately petitioning her own government.
Hours after the Jan. 6 Committee wrapped up its sixth hearing on Tuesday, Ginni’s attorney, Mark Paoletta, sent a letter to the panel’s leadership requesting specifics on why the probe with an open animosity for the Thomas family seeks to publicly drag his client before lawmakers.
“Mrs. Thomas is eager to clear her name and is willing to appear before the Committee to do so,” Paoletta wrote to Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo. “However, based on my understanding of the communications that spurred the Committee’s request, I do not understand the need to speak with Mrs. Thomas.”
In March, Ginni became the center of a fabricated controversy related to the Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation when the panel leaked a series of private text messages with former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The messages, 29 in all, revealed a conservative activist pleading with a government official to continue investigating allegations of election fraud in the pandemic-era contest, which included record-level turnout in the form of mail-in voting that was ripe for misconduct.
Committee members escalated their efforts to compel Ginni’s testimony earlier this month after more private communications were revealed with individuals involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to halt certification of the 2020 election. Thompson told Axios his colleagues on the panel “think it’s time that we, at some point, invite her [Thomas] to come talk to the committee.”
Ginni said shortly after she looked “forward to talking to them.”
“I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions,” she told the Daily Caller.
Further examination of the committee’s request, however, has given Ginni pause.
The panel’s request focuses on Ginni’s communications with attorney and law professor John Eastman, who produced legal theories to justify delays in certification of the electoral college. The extent of the pair’s contact, however, as outlined by Paoletta, stretches to generic emails forwarded by Ginni on a large distribution list and an invitation to speak to a group of conservative activists, a type of event Ginni organizes regularly.
“Not a single document shows any coordination between Mrs. Thomas and Mr. Eastman,” Paoletta wrote.
Paoletta also outlined skepticism that the committee was operating in good faith in its desire to bring Ginni before lawmakers, considering her husband is among the most targeted members of the Supreme Court.
In 2014, Thompson stood by his comments calling Justice Thomas “Uncle Tom” in a speech with the New Nation of Islam, which believes “intermarriage or race mixing should be prohibited.”
Thomas “doesn’t like black people, [and] he doesn’t like being black,” the congressman said.
“These statements by the Committee’s chairman certainly raise alarm bells when the committee says that it wants to speak with Mrs. Thomas,” Paoletta wrote.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.
The chorus of Tennessee legislators calling on Governor Bill Lee to take action to help save the jobs of Tennessee National Guard members continues to grow.
Several additional Tennessee legislators have come forward to The Tennessee Star, issuing statements in solidarity with the Tennessee National Guardsmen who are about to lose their jobs due to noncompliance with the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
State Representative Jerry Sexton (R-Bean Station) urged Governor Bill Lee to take action to help the guardsmen.
“I strongly encourage Governor Lee to utilize all power at his disposal to intervene on behalf of the Tennessee National Guard soldiers that are about to be fired. The vaccine mandates are immoral and something must be done to protect the good men and women who serve our state in such a dedicated manner. I will be disappointed if Governor Lee does not act,” he said.
State Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville) also added his voice to the group of Tennessee legislators speaking out.
“I support our National Guard, and I believe that the men and women who serve our country should decide for themselves, in consultation with their doctor, whether they want to receive a COVID-19 vaccination. I do not support any employer threatening someone’s job and livelihood based simply on their vaccination status,” he said.
The Star has confirmed that in addition to Sexton, State Reps Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville), Chris Todd (R-Jackson), Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster), and John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) will speak at the “Guard Freedom” event in support of the Tennessee National Guard soldiers.
The legislators will speak and there will be letter readings by surrogates from active-duty National Guard members who cannot speak publicly for fear that they will immediately lose their jobs, and a reading of requests for Governor Bill Lee to take immediate action on, on their behalf.
Some off-duty guardsmen are expected to attend the rally as well.
Governor Lee has been invited to join them in order to address this issue. As of press time, Lee has continued to ignore requests for comment, as has Attorney General Slatery.
After the event, several National Guard supporters and legislators will walk over a letter to Governor Bill Lee’s office asking for his support if the governor declines the invitation to address the gathering.
Additionally, State Rep. Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna) expressed support on his radio show on Sunday.
The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to abortion extremism on Friday, striking down the arbitrary restriction the Left has used to prevent voters from enacting laws to protect the most vulnerable. Relying on judicial brute force for five decades may have degraded some abortion supporters’ reasoning abilities, judging from their reactions. Here are a few of the most egregious comments made about the pro-life Dobbs ruling.
Pro-life justices will ban interracial marriage?
Vice President Kamala Harris implied the Dobbs decision somehow threatens “the right to interracial marriage.” The pro-life, constitutional ruling “calls into question other rights that we thought were settled, such as the right to use birth control, the right to same-sex marriage, the right to interracial marriage,” Harris said during prepared remarks in Illinois on Friday afternoon.
While Harris is not the first Democrat to make this charge — Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) claimed without evidence that “Republicans want to ban interracial marriages” in March — her assertion cannot be substantiated based on any of the opinions associated with the Dobbs ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas, whose forceful concurring opinion eviscerated Roe, is married to a white woman. There is no indication the former Catholic seminarian wishes to dissolve his union with Ginni Thomas.
Abortion is a broad consensus supported by people of all faiths?
On Friday, President Biden called Roe v. Wade “a decision with broad national consensus, that most Americans of faith and backgrounds [sic] found acceptable.”
Biden made the same erroneous assertion just last month. In reality Christianity, and to degrees Orthodox Judaism and Islam, reject abortion-on-demand. Nor did Americans hold a “broad national consensus” in favor of abortion at the time Roe was decided. In 1969, only 40% of Americans believed abortion should be legal during the first trimester. The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who founded the group now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America but later became pro-life, admitted the abortion lobby “simply fabricated the results of fictional polls” showing “60% of Americans were in favor of permissive abortion.”
Abortion pills “safely end early pregnancies”?
“My administration will also protect a woman’s access to medications that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration — the FDA — like … mifepristone, which the FDA approved 20 years ago to safely end early pregnancies and is commonly used to treat miscarriages,” said Biden on June 24.
Mifepristone, part of a two-drug cocktail used to induce early medical abortions, certainly isn’t safe for the baby. But as abortions have shifted from surgical to medical abortions, mothers have also suffered an increasing number of side effects and injuries. Women who take the “medications” touted by Biden run a 53% greater risk of visiting the emergency room than those who have a surgical abortion. “Women who had a chemical abortion followed by a second abortion of any type within the next 12 months were more than twice as likely to wind up in the emergency room,” the authors of the study, who are associated with the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement to The Washington Stand. “Consistent with CDC reports, we found the percentage of abortions performed by means of mifepristone and misoprostol increased from 4.4% of total abortions in 2002 to 34.1% in 2015. Similarly, ER visits following mifepristone abortion grew from 3.6% of all postabortion visits in 2002 to 33.9% of all postabortion visits in 2015,” the peer-reviewed study concluded.
“The safety of the abortion pill is greatly exaggerated,” said its lead author, Dr. James Studnicki.
Abortion-on-demand is a constitutional right?
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) claimed, “Six radical Supreme Court Justices have overturned nearly 50 years of precedent, stripping away the constitutional right to an abortion.” Biden likewise said, “I believe Roe v. Wade was the correct decision as a matter of constitutional law.” Numerous Democrats made similar remarks.
First, only five justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. Chief Justice John Roberts’s concurring opinion upheld the Mississippi law protecting unborn children from abortion after 15 weeks but would not overturn Roe.
Second, it’s impossible to fact-check an opinion but, if Biden sincerely believes Roe v. Wade is good constitutional law, he is in the smallest of minorities. The late Ruth Bader Ginsburg once describedRoe as “heavy-handed judicial intervention.” A former clerk to the justice who wrote the Roe decision, Harry Blackmun, said, “Roe borders on the indefensible,” because “it has little connection to the constitutional right it purportedly interpreted. A constitutional right to privacy broad enough to include abortion has no meaningful foundation in constitutional text, history, or precedent.”
The Roe decision hardly pretended to root the judicial activists’ desired outcome in the language of the Constitution. The justices explained their creative approach to the Constitution in a prior ruling: “The Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance,” they wrote. Roe v. Wade asserted that these emanations created a constitutional “right” to “sexual privacy” which, they discovered, included the right to an abortion. Abortion is “protected by the Bill of Rights or its penumbra,” they said.
“To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”
Shortly after justices released the Dobbs decision, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) responded by saying, “To hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”
While nothing requires people to endorse any Supreme Court decision, few politicians since President Andrew Jackson or former segregationist Democrat George Corley Wallace have called for actively ignoring its rulings. While dissenting from a decision may be the right choice at times, some believe it straddles the line of undermining the High Court’s legitimacy. “Sounds very insurrectiony for a member of Congress,” retorted the principled conservative group ForAmerica.
Honorable mentions
Other statements worth noting:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said pro-life advocates base their actions on unbridled misogyny. “Republicans seek to punish and control women,” she wrote. “This cruel ruling is outrageous and heart-wrenching [sic]”;
Pelosi invoked motherhood in her defense of abortion-on-demand. “American women today have less freedom than their mothers,” she said;
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Fox News the judicial majority voted to “endanger the lives of all women and all birthing people in this country.” She tweeted, “People will die because of this decision” before retweeting a link to a pro-abortion rally hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America;
Failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deemed abortion-on-demand “sacred,” a term usually reserved for human beings created in imago Dei. “Most Americans believe the decision to have a child is one of the most sacred decisions there is,” she said, claiming the Dobbs ruling “will live in infamy as a step backward for women’s rights and human rights.”
As outrageous as these statements may be, none matches the fundamental lie that the most innocent human beings are “clumps of cells” or “parasites” who deserve to lose their God-given right to life based on a 49-year-old piece of judicial fiction.
Tennessee Department of Education Seeks Public Input by August 2 on Rules Governing School Funding Formula
June 21, 2022 Aaron Gulbransen
The Tennessee Department of Education (TNDOE) is seeking public comment by August 2 on rules that govern Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) funding for kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) public schools.
In a tweet amplifying a previous request for public input, TNDOE said, "Informed by input from a variety of stakeholders, all Tennesseans are encouraged to submit public comment on the proposed rules on the TISA public school funding formula by 8/2."
Comments should be e-mailed to Tisa.Rules@tn.gov or mailed to the following address:
Tennessee Department of Education, Andrew Johnson Tower, 9th Floor 710 James Robertson Pkwy, Nashville, TN 37243 ATTN: TISA Rules
"Thanks to thousands of Tennesseans being involved in the public funding review engagement process and the dedication of Governor Lee and the Tennessee General Assembly, our districts, schools, educators, and most importantly, students, now have an updated public school funding formula that will meet each of their needs," Commissioner Penny Schwinn said. "We hope all Tennesseans will remain engaged and submit comments on the proposed rules as we prepare to implement the TISA in the months ahead."
According to the Tennessee Department of Education, "The TISA Act was passed by the Tennessee General Assembly on April 28, 2022 and was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee on May 2, 2022. Through the passage of the TISA Act, Tennessee's K-12 public schools will now transition to a student-based funding approach and invest an estimated $9 billion in education funding for the state, including state and local funds, which includes an additional recurring state investment of $1 billion starting in the 2023-24 school year."
"The TISA will empower each student to read proficiently by third grade, prepare each high school graduate for postsecondary success, and provide resources needed for all students to ensure they succeed," the agency said.
"The TISA Act specifically requires rule-making in certain areas to further flesh out the law, define terms, and establish processes and procedures for funding disbursements. In alignment with the funding review engagement process, which generated over 1,000 comments, the department will collect public feedback and input that will strengthen the proposed rules that will accompany the statute and ensure its alignment as the state transitions to a student-centered K-12 public education funding formula," TDOE added.
TNDOE also noted that there will be a public rule-making hearing with an additional opportunity to provide public comment will be available during a rule-making hearing.
Details regarding the hearing will be shared when they become available.
Pro-abortion protesters carrying baby dolls and wearing clothes stained with what appeared to be fake blood demonstrated outside Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett’s home on Saturday.
Activists from Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights proceeded to Barrett’s home to protest the potential reversal of the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. A video posted to Twitter by the group shows protesters with their hands taped to baby dolls and their crotches covered in what appears to be fake blood.
Some held signs with slogans including “abortion on demand and without apology,” according to Fox News, while one sign had a picture of a coat hanger and the words “not going back,” the New York Post reported.
“Children will be forced to give birth to children. Women will be silenced. Women will be invalidated. Women will be told they are ‘less-than.’ Women will be told they are inferior,” one protester says in a video posted to Twitter. “We cannot let that happen. So all of you who say you are pro-choice, get up and say it out loud.”
Virginia lieutenant governor Winsome Sears lamented the demonstration in an appearance on Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday.
“I have no words. I have no words when I see these grotesque images that these young, young girls are carrying,” Sears said. “And I wonder, what country am I living in? And what is the mindset, what is the mindset that would cause this to happen?”
The latest protest comes weeks after the leak of a draft opinion indicating the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. A separate group of protesters gathered outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh on June 8, less than a day after authorities charged a man with attempted murder after he appeared near Kavanaugh’s home with a handgun.
President Biden signed a bill on Thursday that allows families of Supreme Court justices to receive security, if approved by the Marshal of the Supreme Court. The House passed the bill on Wednesday after weeks of delays.
Doctors say they are treating an extraordinary number of cases of various common viruses in young patients that they believe are the result of a severe decrease in immunity caused by the lockdowns and other COVID-19 mitigation measures.
The Washington Post reported the Yale New Haven Children's Hospital in Connecticut is seeing, in addition to COVID-19, staggering numbers of children with adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza.
Thomas Murray, an infection control expert and associate professor of pediatrics at Yale, told the Post that some children have been admitted to the hospital with as many as three different viruses at the same time.
And the overall rise in cases, he added, is "not typical for any time of year and certainly not typical in May and June."
Another doctor told the Post "we're seeing viruses behave in very odd ways that they weren't before."
Murray was among physicians interviewed by the Post who believe the strict pandemic measures have compromised immunity.
But the loss of primary care during the pandemic also had an impact, the physicians said.
The lockdowns and other restrictions were "a massive natural experiment," said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist who serves as the chief science officer for the online health platform eMed.
"All of these decisions," Murray said, "have consequences."
During oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito asked Julie Rikelman, the attorney representing the abortion facility, “Can it be said that the right to abortion is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the American people?” Rikelman responded in the affirmative. A similar question posed by Chief Justice Roberts prompted this response by Rikelman: “[A]t the time of the founding and for most of early American history, women had an ability to access abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.”
However, according to analysis recently published by the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Rikelman’s answers were incorrect.
Researchers attempted to answer the question, “Did Americans in the Founding Era express in writing the view that American women ‘had a right to abortion?’” To do so, they performed queries using the Corpus of Founding Era American English (COFEA), an online database of “documents written and read by ordinary people of the day, including letters, diaries, newspapers, non-fiction books, fiction, sermons, public papers of seven major figures of the Founding Era, and legal materials,” dating from the reign of King George III through the death of George Washington. The authors searched both singular and plural versions of the word “abortion” and examined the context of each instance in which the word appeared to gain insight into the then-current understanding of abortion’s role in early American society.
Their conclusion? “Our empirical research … not only failed to find any such writing [supporting the concept of a right to abortion in early America] but further produced persuasive evidence that … at that time ‘abortion’ had not developed today’s meaning of a woman’s voluntary choice to end pregnancy but instead was generally used in the same way we use ‘miscarriage’ today[.]”
Researchers found 135 unique instances of the word “abortion” in the COFEA database, which is publicly available. Of these, 37 were metaphorical, generally referring to “a misshapen or monstrous living thing or to an unfortunate occurrence.” The other 98 instances clearly referred to termination of pregnancy.
Out of these 98, 85 appeared in the context of involuntary terminations – what we would call “miscarriages.” Dr. John Elliot’s Medical Pocketbook, for example, gives a detailed definition of abortion that is clearly analogous with miscarriage; the entry for “miscarriage,” on the other hand, simply refers readers back to the entry for “abortion.”
Authors did find 12 instances in which context indicated an author’s awareness that a woman might voluntarily terminate her pregnancy by killing her preborn child. These were further investigated to determine whether the word “right” or “privilege” appeared contextually – no such instances were found. Furthermore, the texts overwhelmingly portrayed voluntary abortion in a negative light, even referring to it as murder.
This investigation reveals the disingenuous nature of claims made by Rikelman and others that voluntary abortion was part of early American life. No evidence of such a reality can be found within the texts written and widely read during that era; indeed, it is clear from their words that early Americans saw involuntary abortion as an unfortunate occurrence to be avoided, and intentional abortion as an abomination.
Because the money flows through the government, the government then gets to decide how it is spent. And bureaucrats simply can’t be trusted to do what parents want.
Freedom isn’t lost in one fell authoritarian swoop. It happens slowly, and by degrees.
An unexpected outcome of the Covid-19 years is that the need for school choice and educational freedom have become more apparent than ever. But if legislators do not proceed cautiously, the freedom and flexibility that non-public education alternatives offer, specifically in the case of homeschooling, could be erased by misguided policies.
Over the past two years, parents have watched from their living rooms as public schools failed their children. They’ve seen school boards implement unscientific health policies, and have been appalled at divisive curricula being taught to young kids. As a result, more families than ever before are pursuing other options besides government-run schools.
But the one feature of public schools that keeps appealing to the vast majority of parents is that our tax dollars already pay for public education, so there is no upfront cost. Any other educational venue requires families to pay upfront. So, in regard to school choice, the number-one question legislators seek to answer is how to make the financial burden less onerous.
The most popular solution—especially in Congress—is to hand out money. But in the case of homeschooling, the popular solution is incredibly dangerous. When legislators create policies that would give federal funds to homeschooling families, even when trying to assist those families, they threaten the very foundation that makes homeschooling successful. There is no such thing as federal dollars that come with no strings attached.
The policies most proposed on Capitol Hill are ESAs (“education savings accounts”) and “money follows the child” plans. Both sound benign. Many families already have an education savings account in the form of a 529, in which they have put their own money to be used at a later date on education expenses. As to the latter, it makes sense to have already spent tax dollars follow a child to whatever school they attend, be it public, private, or at home.
But ESAs are not true savings accounts. With an ESA, the government collects the taxes designated for public education, then redistributes those dollars to families who choose not to attend public schools.
Because the money flows through the government, the government then gets to decide how it is spent—for example, what types of school, curriculum, and tutoring programs. The same is true for “money follows the child” bills. The government would still collect taxes meant for public schools, but it would just broaden what those taxes can be spent on. The government, and not families, would still have the final say in what is considered an “approved educational expense.”
When bureaucrats are empowered to decide what is acceptable, education freedom is threatened. Many families—including those who are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Sikh—choose to homeschool because they want to include religious material in their learning. Others have children with learning disabilities who require special tutoring services.
The flexibility of homeschooling has given rise to a plethora of education methods that allow parents to address these specific concerns. These methods range from interest-driven learning like Montessori (focused on hands-on, collaborative play) and Finland’s forest kindergarten, where children spend up to 95 percent of their time learning outdoors, to more traditional textbook learning. Which one person, bureaucrat or otherwise, is equipped to say that this wide variety of learning methods all fit into the “approved educational expense” box?
Government policies to fund education open the door to other regulations: lists of curricula that families have to use, mandatory homeschool registration, and even mandatory home inspections. There have been attempts to implement all of these at the state level. The pressure would be intensified if the federal government started regulating home education as well.
The corrosive nature of these public funding schemes can be seen in California. Currently, California, believe it or not, is one of the best states to homeschool in. Homeschool families register as private schools, and private schools are not subject to the same testing and curriculum requirements as the public options.
But any school in California registered as a charter school, not a private school, receives funds to be used for approved expenses. The lure of supposed free money is powerful, and many families have used this provision to register their “homeschool” as a charter school in order to receive government funds. The result is that California has seen an increase in public-school-at-home families and a decrease of true home-based education families free from the state’s regulations.
Abuse of California’s charter school provision has also led to attempts at increased regulation in the state. In recent legislative sessions, state legislators have introduced bills to provide more oversight over these “homeschool” charter schools. Private school families fear this regulation push could target them next.
Because parents know and love their children better than any government bureaucrat
can, society thrives when parents are empowered to make the best choices for their
children. And that’s why homeschooling works: free from overregulation, families are
able to direct their children’s education in a way that best suits the child’s individual
needs, rather than follow a one-size-fits-all model.
Policies that allow maximum freedom for home education are policies that help create successful, flourishing kids and families. The better approach does not take money from families that are already homeschooling. Tax credits, true savings accounts like 529s, and making homeschool parents eligible for the teacher tax deduction are all ways legislators can help ease the financial cost of school choice without increasing government regulation.
The 529 plans vary state by state, but can allow families up to $10,000 per year per beneficiary for tuition at any public or private elementary or secondary school. Their success is well known and helps homeschool families without the risks associated with ESAs.
The very reason so many families are leaving the public schools is that they want less government regulation, more parental choice, and more ability to do what is best for their children and families. Keep homeschooling free from federal funding and intervention and let families thrive.
Maggie McKneely is the federal relations liaison for HSLDA, the largest legal advocacy group for homeschool and education freedom.
There was a major problem with the 2020 Census, and most people probably haven’t heard about it, even though it has enormous implications. At the end of May, the Census Bureau admitted that it miscounted 14 states in the 2020 Census.
Why didn’t the media make a big stink about this story? Maybe it was overshadowed by the recent mass shootings, that’s certainly a possibility, but I have another theory.
Here are the states that the Census acknowledged it overcounted: Hawaii, Delaware, Rhode Island, Minnesota, New York, and Massachusetts.
Here are the states that the Census acknowledged it undercounted: Texas, Illinois, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Well, gee, isn’t that interesting. Does it seem like a mere bizarre coincidence that the overcounted states all voted for Biden in 2020, and five of the six undercounted states for Trump in 2020?
“Last week’s Census Bureau announcement of serious errors will impact the next decade’s congressional apportionment and delegations, and play a crucial role in the presidential race,” explained Kristin Tate at The Hill. “Given the nature of the mistakes, Democrats could hang onto the presidency under particularly controversial circumstances due to publicly-acknowledged errors.”
The changes will impact national politics in a dramatic fashion. The 2020 census led to significant changes to congressional seats apportioned to states. Texas gained two congressional seats, while North Carolina, Florida, Montana, Colorado and Oregon each gained one. New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and California each lost one seat in Congress. There was significant surprise that population growth winners such as Texas and Florida didn’t gain more seats. With the possible exception of Illinois not losing a seat, the likely effects of an accurate count would have overwhelmingly aided red states. Simply put, the revised figures show that (mostly) red states had even quicker relative population growth compared to the rest of the country — and especially compared to (mostly) blue states. It is entirely possible that undercounted states could have gained at least one seat in Congress, while overcounted states may have lost at least one each.
Not only is it suspicious that the errors occurred, but as Tate explains, so is the timing of the admission of the error. “Had states known the true figures within the past year, the redistricting process would have been very different for the miscounted states. Not only are the number of seats per state affected, but the district lines are as well. In addition, the Electoral College determines the weight per state based on the total representatives and senators. The loss or gain of a single seat affects two Electoral College votes — the one gained by one party, and thus lost by the other.”
And there’s nothing that anyone can do about it. It is too late to correct the faulty reapportionment, barring a Supreme Court challenge.
Are we expected to believe these were honest mistakes and not deliberate?
Americans have already lost faith in our election system, and now we have reason to suspect politics has tainted the Census.
Former San Luis mayor pleads guilty to illegally collecting early ballots in 2020 primary
Bob Christie June 2, 2022
An Arizona woman accused of illegally collecting early ballots in the 2020 primary election pleaded guilty Thursday in an agreement with state prosecutors that saw the more serious forgery and conspiracy charges dismissed and limited any potential for a lengthy prison sentence.
Guillermina Fuentes, 66, could get probation for running what Arizona Attorney General's Office investigators said was a sophisticated operation using her status as a well-known Democratic operative in San Luis to persuade voters to let her gather and, in some cases, fill out their ballots.
Prosecutors were apparently unable to prove the most serious charges, dropping three felony counts alleging that Fuentes filled out one voter's ballot and forged signatures on some of the four ballots she illegally returned for people who were not family members.
Republicans, who have rallied around the possibility of widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election where former President Donald Trump was defeated, have pointed to the charges against Fuentes as part of a broader pattern in battleground states. But there’s no sign her illegal ballot collection went beyond the small-town politics Fuentes was involved in.
Fuentes and a second woman were indicted in December 2020 on one count of ballot abuse, a practice commonly known as “ballot harvesting” that was made illegal under a 2016 state law. The conspiracy, forgery and an additional ballot abuse charge against Fuentes were added last October.
Fuentes said little during a change of plea hearing in Yuma County on Thursday, just acknowledging the judge's questions with “yes” as he asked whether she had read and understood the plea agreement.
Fuentes, a former San Luis mayor who serves as an elected board member of the Gadsden Elementary School District in San Luis, could be sentenced to up to two years in prison, but that would require a judge to find aggravating circumstances. The plea agreement leaves the actual sentence up to a judge, who could give her probation, home confinement and a hefty fine for her admission to illegally collecting and returning four voted ballots.
Sentencing was set for June 30. Fuentes will lose her voting rights and must give up elected office.
Attorney Anne Chapman said in an email Thursday that she had no comment on the charges against her client.
But she slammed Arizona's ballot collection law, saying it impedes minority voters who have historically relied on others to help them vote. She said “this prosecution shows that the law is part of ongoing anti-democratic, state-wide, and national voter suppression efforts.”
Attorney General's Office investigation records obtained by the Associated Press through a public records request show that fewer than a dozen ballots could be linked to Fuentes, not enough to make a difference in all but the tightest local races.
The office of Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican seeking his party's U.S. Senate nomination, provided the records after delays of more than 15 months.
It is the only case ever brought by the attorney general under the 2016 “ballot harvesting” law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Investigators wrote that it appeared Fuentes used her position as a powerful figure in the heavily Mexican-American community to get people to give her or others their ballots to return to the polls. Fuentes and her co-defendant were seen with several mail-in envelopes outside a cultural center in San Luis on the day of the 2020 primary election, the reports show. The ballots were taken inside and dropped in a ballot box.
She was videotaped by a write-in candidate who called the Yuma County sheriff. The reports said the video showed her marking at least one ballot, but that charge was among those dropped.
An investigation was launched that day, and about 50 ballots checked for fingerprints, which were inconclusive. The investigation was taken over by the attorney general's office within days, with investigators collaborating with sheriff's deputies to interview voters, Fuentes and others
Although Fuentes was charged only with actions that appear on the videotape and involve just a handful of ballots, investigators believe the effort went much farther.
Attorney General's Office Investigator William Kluth wrote in one report that there was some evidence suggesting Fuentes actively canvassed San Luis neighborhoods and collected ballots, in some cases paying for them.
Collecting ballots in that manner was a common get-out-the-vote tactic used by both political parties before Arizona passed the 2016 law. Paying for ballots has never been legal.
There’s no sign she or anyone else in Yuma County collected ballots in the general election, but investigators from the Attorney General's Office are still active in the community.
The Arizona Republic reported Tuesday that search warrants were served last month at a nonprofit in San Luis. The group's executive director is chair of the Yuma County board of supervisors and said the warrant sought the cell phone of a San Luis councilwoman who may have been involved in illegal ballot collection.
And at a legislative hearing Tuesday where election conspiracy theorists testified, the Yuma primary election case was again a highlight.
“It’s all about corruption in San Luis and skewing a city council election,” Yuma Republican Rep. Tim Dunn said. “This has been going on for a long time, that you can’t have free and fair elections in south county, for decades. And its spreading across the country.”
Definitive Proof Schools Are Indoctrinating Students Into ‘Progressive’ Ideology on Race, Gender, and Sexuality in K-12
How many times have you heard these so-called progressives claiming that ideas inspired by Critical Race Theory (CRT), along with radical concepts about gender identity and sexuality, are not really being infused into K-12 classrooms? Remember how they pretended the whole thing was a boogeyman cooked up by crazed conservatives, who were simply trying to demonize members of the LGBTQ community and erase the nasty parts of America’s history when it concerns black Americans?
It became a mantra for them. NBC News even went so far as to claim concepts related to CRT are not being introduced into the classroom–despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
It’s time to shut them up, once and for all.
To that end, I have created two spreadsheets curating news stories detailing situations in which school districts have promoted far-leftist ideology in their K-12 classrooms. One spreadsheet includes news stories about districts and their educators presenting and promoting so-called progressive approaches to gender identity and sexuality in the classroom. Many of these stories are about districts encouraging and helping kids transition to the opposite gender without the knowledge and consent of parents.
The second chronicles stories detailing how districts and educators are promoting ideas related to Critical Race Theory in the classroom and among school staff.
Each spreadsheet already has numerous examples from the past two years; I have collected quite a few. I will be adding to these as more stories emerge; I’m sure there will be quite a few. But feel free to send me any you find along the way – my email is in my bio below. This should be a group effort.
I created these spreadsheets as a resource for those who might be dealing with people who deny the indoctrination that is happening in too many public schools across the country. Perhaps you’re trying to show a family member, friend, co-worker, or that annoying troll on social media that this isn’t just a made-up problem. This will provide numerous examples showing what is really going on in the classroom.
Keep in mind this will not stop progressives from continuing to lie about the matter. They have to use deception because if they tell the truth, they will have to defend it. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that most of this is indefensible. Defeating this push for indoctrination requires as much exposure as possible. The reason why so many conservatives are running for – and winning – school board seats, choosing to homeschool their children, or seeking other educational options is because they were able to see what is going on in public schools. Sunlight, as they say, is the best disinfectant. Let us start disinfecting.
