The cultural Left&#8217;s ongoing battle to sexualize children and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-using-children-advance-your-political-josh-hammer">deprive them of their innocence</a> is now raging in the Old Dominion.
On <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PriscillaForFairfax/photos/a.111043596987758/120923609333090/?type=3&amp;theater">Facebook</a>, Fairfax County, Virginia School Board candidate Priscilla DeStefano sounded the alarm on the news that, unless parents opt out, children in the County would be mandated to take the <a href="https://www.fcps.edu/resources/student-safety-and-wellness/youth-survey?fbclid=IwAR0jUGUdnGQ-n8iApPZVbVQbzSeqScimslGRCt8Ozig25zIPPpdwLiPAa2I">Fairfax County Youth Survey</a>. Lest that survey sound innocent enough, DeStefano highlighted how the questionnaire would reportedly grill children as young as eighth grade on whether they are sexually active, have engaged in oral sex, and how many sexual partners they have had. It would also reportedly probe children as young as sixth grade about whether they smoke marijuana or drink alcohol.
&#8220;Starting this week, 6th, 8th, 10th &amp; 12th graders will be given the Youth Survey unless you OPT THEM OUT!,&#8221; DeStefano <a href="https://www.facebook.com/PriscillaForFairfax/photos/a.111043596987758/120923609333090/?type=3&amp;theater">warned</a>. &#8220;The 6th grade survey asks about drug use, like if they’ve ever huffed aerosols to get high; please look through it to see if you are comfortable with your 11/12 year being asked the 84 questions in the survey,&#8221; she continued.
DeStefano then noted how the Fairfax County Youth Survey is even more intrusive for older students in the county&#8217;s public school system: &#8220;The 8th, 10th &amp; 12th graders are asked much worse questions like if they’ve ever used heroin or LSD, their prescription drug use, and their sexual activity — like if they use condoms, if they’ve had oral sex, and how many sexual partners they’ve had.&#8221;
In total, the survey for 8th, 10th, and 12th graders has 174 questions — quite the rigorous inspection of children as young as sixth grade. At least opt-out forms are available on the Fairfax County Public Schools <a href="https://www.fcps.edu/resources/student-safety-and-wellness/youth-survey?fbclid=IwAR0jUGUdnGQ-n8iApPZVbVQbzSeqScimslGRCt8Ozig25zIPPpdwLiPAa2I">website</a> in each of English, Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Spanish, Urdu, and Vietnamese.
Many of those commenting on DeStefano&#8217;s Facebook post expressed shock, disgust, or outrage.
&#8220;My request is to continue this fight and to hold the recently elected accountable!!,&#8221; commented one. &#8220;This is the beginning in my opinion. We must stay vocal and active and not allow the degradation of our society to happen without a fight. If all the candidates who did not get elected can form an alliance and network or action league we can remain in their faces. I know that our priorities are family. We now know that their priorities are breaking up of family and all holy beliefs and traditions.&#8221;
Another user observed how this activity seems to her to be nothing new: &#8220;This is, unfortunately, nothing new. I graduated high school in Oregon in 2000 and I recall a survey very similar to this given my freshman or sophomore year.&#8221;
A <a href="https://abc11.com/4506227/?fbclid=IwAR1gtHMK9zedbmm5v_0ltILr-mpToBotXhEvdjt0AQ6SrBYUtyucpqZBfAY">similar story</a> unfolded last month in North Carolina, when a survey given out to local sixth graders inquired about the students&#8217; sexual orientation. Local ABC affiliate ABC 11 <a href="https://abc11.com/4506227/?fbclid=IwAR1gtHMK9zedbmm5v_0ltILr-mpToBotXhEvdjt0AQ6SrBYUtyucpqZBfAY">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The mother of a Terrell Lane sixth-grader is upset after a survey given to her son included a question asking about his sexual orientation.
&#8220;Why are you asking 11-year olds these questions?&#8221; asked Connie Jo Hutchinson.
The program is called Shifting Boundaries, which is funded through a federal grant. In the survey handed out to students, the sixth question asks &#8220;What is your sexual orientation?&#8221;
It lists 10 possible options: Bisexual, Gay, Fluid, Heterosexual, Lesbian, Pansexual, Queer, Questioning, Prefer not to disclose, and Self-identify.</blockquote>

survey pencil

Virginia School Board Candidate Blasts Survey For 8th Graders Asking About Sexual Activity

Children

Education

Homosexuality

Leftism

LGBT

Progressivism

Sexuality

Virginia

A bombshell <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/icig-complaint-ukraine-whistleblower">new report</a> from Fox News&#8217; Gregg Re reveals that a second intelligence community whistleblower has <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/read-complaint-to-icig-regarding-ukraine-whistleblower">formally alleged</a> that the now-infamous initial intelligence community <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-report-whistleblower-worked-for-the-c-i-a">whistleblower</a> may have violated federal law. Specifically, according to Re, the second whistleblower, in the complaint filed with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), &#8220;may have violated federal law by indirectly soliciting more than a quarter-million dollars from mostly anonymous sources via a GoFundMe page.&#8221;
Legally, the second whistleblower complaint alleges that these indirect solicitations through a GoFundMe page constitute &#8220;gifts&#8221; in violation of both regulatory and statutory law. The complaint cites both <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/5/2635.203" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="16">5</a> CFR 2635.203 and 18 U.S.C. §§ 208-209 as possible areas of violation. Fox News has uploaded the <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/read-complaint-to-icig-regarding-ukraine-whistleblower">full complaint</a>, which was provided courtesy of the second whistleblower&#8217;s law firm, Tully Rinckey PLLC.  The law firm has not revealed the identity of the new whistleblower, though Fox News reports that &#8220;the individual is the holder of a top-secret SCI security clearance and has served in government.&#8221;
&#8220;The most concerning allegation that my client believes is that the federal employee you [ICIG] are protecting and their attorneys apparently have strategically weaponized their alleged whistleblowing activities into a very lucrative money-making enterprise using a charity incorporated under a different name than the trade name it is using for fund-raising purposes, which would appear to my client to be a clear abuse of the federal employee&#8217;s authority and access to classified information,&#8221; the Tully Rinckey PLLC-authored <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/read-complaint-to-icig-regarding-ukraine-whistleblower">document</a> reads. &#8220;We are requesting you investigate whether [criminal statutes or regulations have] been violated by the federal employee you are protecting when they reportedly requested an investigation into a matter that they had no direct personal knowledge of, and on account of which they were able to obtain sizeable gifts from unknown persons because of their official duty,&#8221; it continues.
The complaint is dated as of four days ago.
Tully Rinckey PLLC&#8217;s managing partner Anthony Gallo told Fox News: &#8220;I have not seen anything on this scale. It’s not about politics for my client — it’s whistleblower-on-whistleblower, and [my client&#8217;s] only interest is to see the government ethics rules are being complied with government-wide.&#8221;
The initial whistleblower&#8217;s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, responded in a statement also provided to Fox News: &#8220;Any fundraising efforts for the Intelligence Community Whistleblower have complied with federal laws, including ethics requirements. Should any governmental agency properly inquire we would, of course, cooperate.&#8221;
As noted by <a href="https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2019/11/12/new-second-whistleblower-filed-complaint-icig-eric-ciaramellas-alleged-fundraising-solicitations/">RedState</a>, the Bakaj and Mark Zaid, each of the Compass Rose Law firm, have been working with a non-profit called Whistleblower Aid. The duo had initiated the GoFundMe page fundraising campaign in conjunction with Whistleblower Aid.
Per Fox News, the <a href="https://www.oge.gov/web/OGE.nsf/All%20Advisories/9D4E04812177E26C852583A2005856F0/%24FILE/LA-19-01.pdf?open">Office of Government Ethics</a> actually took the step earlier this year of explaining to all federal government employees that they &#8220;may not accept any gift given because of the employee&#8217;s official position&#8221; — or, in other words, the gift is legally unacceptable if the gift would &#8220;not have been given had the employee not held the status, authority, or duties associated with the employee&#8217;s federal position.&#8221;

Blue whistle

BOMBSHELL: Another Whistleblower Comes Forward, Files Complaint Against Ukraine Whistleblower For Soliciting Illicit Donations, Report Suggests

trump

Ukraine

whistleblower

Former Vice President Joe Biden&#8217;s once-solid double-digit lead over the rest of the field of 2020 Democratic Party presidential nominees shrunk, over the past couple of months, before generally re-expanding over the past few weeks. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html">Biden currently stands 6.0% above second-place Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)</a> in the average of recent national polling. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) round out the top five in most recent national polling. Increasingly, the field appears to be shaping up as a three-horse race among Biden, Warren, and Sanders, although Buttigieg has recently been surging in Iowa.
Biden&#8217;s once-formidable lead has narrowed since its high watermark in May, although it has since grown back substantially from a recent nadir of less than 1%. Warren has generally emerged over the past few months as a frontrunner, although her national polling has taken a bit of a drop over the past few weeks. Warren and Sanders seem to be competing for a very similar voting demographic, and it is interesting to ponder the possibility of how one candidate would likely be substantially elevated were the other to drop out and endorse the other. Some polling data suggests that Sanders hypothetically dropping out would help Warren more than it would help Biden. But Sanders may be <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/16/bernie-sanders-isnt-going-anywhere-anytime-soon/">in this for the long haul</a>, after all.
Electoral prediction market website <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">PredictIt</a> still pegs Warren as the favorite to win the presidential nomination over Biden — with Buttigieg, Sanders, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang following. But while PredictIt showed Warren with a huge lead recently, her lead has over Biden has substantially narrowed, of late. It is likely that many of these bettors are skittish about Biden&#8217;s age and perceived substantive centrism — with the latter especially worrisome among a Democratic Party base that is increasingly brazen and unabashed in its promotion of ardent, full-spectrum leftism. But to the extent Warren is any frontrunner at all, she remains an extraordinarily weak frontrunner who only seems to be getting weaker still.
The <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/2020_democratic_presidential_nomination-6730.html">RealClearPolitics</a> polling average for 10/8/19 – 11/05/19 shows Biden with an average national polling lead of 6.0%.
A recent <a href="https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/cseozthmrp/econTabReport.pdf">Economist/YouGov</a> national poll conducted from 11/03/19 – 11/05/19 showed Biden, at 26%, with a one-point lead over Warren. Warren was up 11 points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_110619/">Monmouth</a> national poll conducted from 10/30/19 – 11/03/19 showed Biden and Warren tied at 23%. They were each up three points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/469490-poll-biden-support-hits-record-low-of-26-percent">Hill/HarrisX</a> national poll conducted from 11/01/19 – 11/02/19 showed Biden, at 26%, with an 11-point lead over Warren. Warren was up one point on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary-2-2/">Politico/Morning Consult</a> national poll conducted from 10/28/19 – 11/03/19 showed Biden, at 32%, with a 12-point lead over both Warren and Sanders. No one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/HHP_October19_Topline_RegisteredVoters.pdf">Harvard-Harris</a> national poll conducted from 10/29/19 – 10/31/19 showed Biden, at 33%, with a 15-point lead over Sanders. Sanders was up three points on Warren and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6538104-19433-NBCWSJ-Late-October-Poll.html">NBC News/Wall Street Journal</a> national poll conducted from 10/27/19 – 10/30/19 showed Biden, at 27%, with a four-point lead over Warren. Warren was up four points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1208a32020Democrats.pdf">ABC News/Washington Post</a> national poll conducted from 10/27/19 – 10/30/19 showed Biden, at 28%, with a five-point lead over Warren. Warren was up six points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-biden-leads-nomination-race-tops-trump-by-12-points-in-matchup">Fox News</a> national poll conducted from 10/27/19 – 10/30/19 showed Biden, at 31%, with a ten-point lead over Warren. Warren was up two points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
A recent <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/joe-biden-leads-elizabeth-warren-both-beat-trump-2020-election-ibd-tipp/">IBD/TIPP</a> national poll conducted from 10/24/19 – 10/31/19 showed Biden, at 29%, with a six-point lead over Warren. Warren was up ten points on Sanders and no one else polled in double digits.
Will Warren and Biden remain the two frontrunners? Will Buttigieg or Yang catch more traction? Stay tuned.
Latest Aggregate Early State-By-State Polling Data
Iowa: Warren 21.8%, Buttigieg 17.5%, Sanders 15.8%, Biden 15.5%, Klobuchar 4.0%
New Hampshire: Warren 19.7%, Biden 19.7%, Sanders 19.0%, Buttigieg 11.3%, Gabbard 4.0%
Nevada: Biden 26.0%, Warren 19.5%, Sanders 18.5%, Buttigieg 4.8%, Harris 4.3%
South Carolina: Biden 35.0%, Warren 15.5%, Sanders 12.8%, Harris 7.0%, Steyer 4.5%
This article has been updated to reflect the most recent survey data.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate In Detroit Over Two Nights

Who Will Win The Democratic Primary? The Latest On 2020 Presidential Primary Polling.

2020 Election

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Party

Elizabeth Warren

Joe Biden

Pete Buttigieg

As the 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidates <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/48863/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">battle it out for the nomination</a>, politicos must also pay close attention to President Donald Trump&#8217;s approval rating across the 50 states. While Trump&#8217;s national approval rating has been hovering below 50% for his entire presidency, it was <a href="https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/july-national-poll-biden-extends-lead-in-democratic-primary-trump-closes-the-gap-in-the-general-election">on the upswing</a> for the beginning of the summer before faltering a bit toward the end of July. The president&#8217;s approval rating recovered a bit in September before falling again as news of the Ukraine phone call incident rattled national headlines. Since the onset of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-complete-timeline-of-the-trump-ukraine-story">Ukraine scandal</a>, it has more or less stabilized.
Historically, presidents have fared well in re-election campaigns when they maintain approval ratings above 50%. This president, to be sure, has never had such an approval rating at any point throughout his presidency. But President Trump oversees a soaring economy, with record-low unemployment rates, and has a hardened base of core supporters. One must also never forget the sheer power of incumbency: Since FDR, only Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were elected and then subsequently not re-elected four years later.
Yet, fair-minded observers must still ask: If Trump&#8217;s overall approval rating number stays below 50%, will Trump be able to defy historical trends for presidential incumbents?
As of November 12, 2019, the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html">RealClearPolitics average</a> for Trump&#8217;s national job approval rating sits at 43.7% — or 10.7% underwater.
Overall, <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/general_election/">national head-to-head polls</a> also do not presently show Trump to be in particularly good electoral shape. Specifically, one of the <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/most-accurate-2016-poll-shows-biden-warren-sanders-beating-trump/">most accurate pollsters</a> from the 2016 national election, IBD/TIPP, <a href="https://www.investors.com/news/elizabeth-warren-joe-biden-sanders-democratic-race-biden-vs-trump/">showed fairly recently</a> that Trump was losing hypothetical head-to-head matchups with each of Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Kamala Harris. While still early and despite the fact Trump does lead in some hypothetical matchups, the Trump campaign should still be taking very seriously this hypothetical head-to-head matchup polling. I have previously offered some <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-trump-needs-to-focus-on-a-safety-and-security-agenda-for-2020">unsolicited advice</a> to the Trump campaign: Focus on a safety and security agenda to appeal to persuadable moderate, independent, and suburban swing voters.
The Daily Wire will also be tracking Trump&#8217;s state-by-state approval rating as the general election nears. Here is the latest Trump approval rating information from across all the various swing states.
Battleground State-By-State Trump Approval Rating (latest data via <a href="https://morningconsult.com/tracking-trump-2/">Morning Consult&#8217;s October 2019</a> monthly survey)
ARIZONA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 3.57%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -4%</li>
</ul>
COLORADO:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 4.91%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -18%</li>
</ul>
FLORIDA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 1.20%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -2%</li>
</ul>
GEORGIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 5.09%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -3%</li>
</ul>
IOWA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 9.41%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -12%</li>
</ul>
MICHIGAN:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.23%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -13%</li>
</ul>
MINNESOTA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 1.51%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -14%</li>
</ul>
NEVADA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 2.42%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -14%</li>
</ul>
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 0.37%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -20%</li>
</ul>
NORTH CAROLINA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 3.66%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -3%</li>
</ul>
OHIO:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 8.13%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -6%</li>
</ul>
PENNSYLVANIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.72%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -9%</li>
</ul>
TEXAS:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 8.99%</li>
<li>Governor: Republican</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Republican</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: +2%</li>
</ul>
VIRGINIA:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Clinton + 5.32%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Democrat, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -7%</li>
</ul>
WISCONSIN:
<ul>
<li>2016 presidential result: Trump + 0.77%</li>
<li>Governor: Democrat</li>
<li>U.S. Senate: Republican, Democrat</li>
<li>Current Trump approval rating: -17%</li>
</ul>
This article has been updated to reflect the most recent survey data.

Trump rally Kentucky

Will Trump Win? The Latest On Trump’s National And State-By-State Approval Ratings.

Donald Trump

Economy

Republican Party

Here is everything you need to know, to-date.
<ul>
<li>April 2014: Hunter Biden <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/">joined</a> Ukrainian energy company Burisma.</li>
<li>August 2014: Ukrainian Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/">opened</a> a corruption investigation about Burisma.</li>
<li>Fall 2015/Winter 2015–2016: Then-Vice President Joe Biden first <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/66271/timeline-trump-giuliani-bidens-and-ukrainegate/">made a public issue</a> out of alleged prosecutor-related corruption in Ukraine.</li>
<li>February 2016: Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which had Hunter Biden as a board member at the time, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-hammer-on-tipping-point-with-liz-wheeler-the-hunter-biden-foia-bombshell">sought to utilize</a> Biden&#8217;s stature as a means to secure a U.S. State Department meeting.</li>
<li>March 2016: Then-Vice President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/hunter-bidens-ukraine-gas-firm-lobbied-state-department-to-end-corruption-allegations-emails-show_3137480.html">pressured Ukraine</a> to fire the prosecutor involved with investigating Burisma.</li>
<li>June 2017: Rudy Giuliani <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">visited Ukraine</a> and met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.</li>
<li>January 2018: Joe Biden was <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/09/27/flashback_2018_joe_biden_brags_at_cfr_meeting_about_withholding_aid_to_ukraine_to_force_firing_of_prosecutor.html">filmed bragging about</a> how he forced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor he did not like by threatening to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine.</li>
<li>August 2018: Giuliani was <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">hired</a> by a company run by Ukrainian business tycoon Lev Parnas.</li>
<li>Later 2018: Giuliani pressured Lutsenko to open corruption-related investigations about the Bidens and Burisma.</li>
<li>January 2019: Giuliani met multiple times with Lutsenko and, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html?module=inline">The New York Times</a>, allegedly pushed Lutsenko on the Bidens, Burisma, and then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.</li>
<li>March 2019: Lutsenko <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">opened two investigations</a> — one on the Bidens and one on Burisma. The Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/us/politics/biden-son-ukraine.html?module=inline">alleged</a> that Lutsenko also accused Yovanovitch of corruption.</li>
<li>April 2019: Trump <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">reportedly told</a> Fox News host Sean Hannity that Attorney General William Barr might investigate allegations about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.</li>
<li>May 2019: Yovanovitch resigned as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.</li>
<li>May 2019: The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/09/us/politics/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html">reported</a> on an upcoming Rudy Giuliani trip to Ukraine.</li>
<li>May 2019: Giuliani <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/the-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair/">expressed</a> his belief in the theory that Ukraine actively assisted the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election.</li>
<li>June 2019: Giuliani <a href="https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1142085975230898176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&amp;ref_url=safari-reader%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2F2019%2F10%2Fthe-two-theories-of-trumps-actions-in-the-ukraine-affair%2F">tweeted</a> that Ukraine was &#8220;abused by Hillary and Obama people.&#8221;</li>
<li>July 25, 2019: Now-infamous <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf">phone call</a> took place between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.</li>
<li>September 24, 2019: <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf">Transcript</a> of phone call released between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.</li>
<li>September 24, 2019: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/democrats-impeachment-trump.html">announced</a> that House Democrats would seek to open an impeachment inquiry against President Trump.</li>
<li>September 26, 2019: Whistleblower complaint about the Trump-Zelensky phone call <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/26/us/politics/whistle-blower-complaint.html">revealed</a>.</li>
<li>October 2, 2019: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/us/politics/adam-schiff-whistleblower.html">Revelation</a> that Rep. Adam Schiff&#8217;s (D-CA) office had been in contact with the whistleblower.</li>
<li>October 17, 2019: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/17/770714277/read-gordon-sondlands-opening-statement-to-congress">Written testimony</a> of U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland includes: &#8220;President Trump was skeptical that Ukraine was serious about reforms and anti-corruption, and he directed those of us present at the meeting to talk to Mr. Giuliani, his personal attorney, about his concerns. It was apparent to all of us that the key to changing the President’s mind on Ukraine was Mr. Giuliani.&#8221;</li>
<li>October 22, 2019: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/22/us/politics/william-taylor-ukraine-testimony.html">Written testimony</a> of top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine Bill Taylor notes: By mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelenskyy wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.&#8221;</li>
<li>October 29, 2019: Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who serves on the U.S. National Security Council, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/11/08/777514772/read-testimony-of-alexander-vindman-the-white-houses-ukraine-specialist">testified</a> that the White House&#8217;s released transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call had <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/politics/alexander-vindman-testimony-white-house-transcript/index.html">crucial omissions</a> with respect to the Bidens.</li>
<li>October 31, 2019: House <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/31/us/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry-house-vote.html">voted</a> to establish the procedural rules governing the impeachment of President Trump.</li>
</ul>

Map of Ukraine

The Complete Timeline Of The Trump-Ukraine Story

Hunter Biden

Impeachment

Rudy Giuliani

Volodymyr Zelensky

<a href="https://jstreet.org">J Street</a> has long been one of the most pernicious anti-Israel groups operating in the open. Untold amounts of ink have been <a href="https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2013/12/3/letter-j-street-liberals-fundamentally-misunderstand-pro-israel/">spilled</a> revealing the self-described &#8220;political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans&#8221; for the <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/222366-j-street-pro-progressive-not-pro-israel">highly biased</a>, anti-Israel, <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/anti-zionism-of-j-street/">Palestinian-Arab apologist</a> organization that it is.
For years following its 2007 founding by leftist activist Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street operated on the outermost fringes of the institutional pro-Israel and Jewish communities. But the years-long success of the <a href="http://www.thetower.org/article/open-hillel-is-a-much-bigger-problem-than-you-think/">insidious</a> &#8220;Open Hillel&#8221; movement helped to ingratiate J Street, which routinely assails Israeli governmental policy and never seems to find any fault with Islamist terror acts committed against the Jewish state, within some more mainstream elements of the American Jewish community. And as Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro recently wrote, the modern Democratic Party feels more at home within the J Street fold than it does within the ambit of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-what-exactly-current-role-aipac-josh-hammer">moderate</a> pro-Israel group AIPAC:
<blockquote>[T]he heart of the Democratic Party has moved against Israel. &#8230; So the Democrats built up and gave credence to J Street, a Trojan horse group dedicated to undermining American support for Israel and justifying left-wing hatred of the Jewish state. J Street was founded by Clinton operative Jeremy Ben-Ami and Israeli far-left political figure Daniel Levy in late 2007. One of its chief sources of funding — a source obscured in the early years by its founders — was anti-Israel radical George Soros.</blockquote>
Accordingly, four candidates for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination — South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rep. Julian Castro (D-TX), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — spoke last month at the <a href="https://jstreet.org/conference/">J Street National Conference</a>. By contrast, not a single 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate spoke at the <a href="http://www.policyconference.org">AIPAC Policy Conference</a> last spring.
Now, the indispensable Legal Insurrection website has <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">highlighted</a> a particularly vile and irksome exchange that emanated from the bowels of the conference. It appears that April Baskin, who has the titles of &#8220;Racial Justice Director, Jewish Social Justice Roundtable&#8221; and &#8220;Founder/Principal, Joyous Justice Consulting,&#8221; defended noted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-womens-march-president-suggests-jews-are-ryan-saavedra">anti-Semite Tamika Mallory</a> and expressly compared infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/17/us/farrakhan-again-describes-hitler-as-a-very-great-man.html">anti-Semite</a> Louis Farrakhan to longtime Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-after-much-electoral-fanfare-israelis-once-josh-hammer">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>. Per <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/11/j-street-radicalization-conference-speaker-compares-netanyahu-to-louis-farrakhan-and-stands-by-tamika-mallory/">Legal Insurrection</a>:
<blockquote>[P]anelist April Baskin said that white supremacy is &#8220;woven into Jewish life in America.&#8221; She also said there are things she &#8220;hates&#8221; about the Jewish community — including her belief that Jews have a &#8220;propensity&#8221; to &#8220;complain.&#8221; &#8230;
Later in the session, Baskin declared her support for the disgraced Tamika Mallory. Mallory’s downfall culminated in early 2019 when when it emerged that she maintained a close relationship with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist and Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Mallory, the ex-Women’s March leader, refused to condemn Farrakhan and even posted a picture calling the anti-Semite &#8220;the GOAT (greatest of all time).&#8221;</blockquote>
Perhaps most egregiously of all, Baskin compared infamous Jew-hater Farrakhan to Netanyahu: &#8220;Tamika Mallory being pictured with with Louis Farrakhan, honestly, isn’t that different to me than my former boss, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, being seated with prime minister Netanyahu. In both cases, they both largely don’t agree with their politics, but in both cases, those are leaders who are connected to a large body of people.&#8221;
As of publication time, it seems that none of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates who spoke at last month&#8217;s J Street National Conference have condemned Baskin&#8217;s vicious smear. Surprise, surprise.

Netanyahu election night

J Street Conference Speaker Compares Benjamin Netanyahu To Louis Farrakhan

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel

J Street

Louis Farrakhan

Palestinians

Last week, a pro-Israel group called <a href="https://theisraelgroup.org">The Israel Group</a> launched an important campaign in the broader fight back against the anti-Israel hostility that pervades high-profile media and educational institutions.
The Israel Group, which <a href="https://theisraelgroup.org/about-the-israel-group/">describes</a> itself as &#8220;a nonprofit that protects Israel in the diaspora by developing and launching initiatives to cripple the [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] (BDS) movement against at Israel&#8221; and features many powerful Jewish/pro-Israel individuals on the organization&#8217;s board of advisors, began rolling out its &#8220;<a href="https://theisraelgroup.org/wikipedias-war-against-israel/">Battle Against Wikipedia</a>.&#8221; According to The Israel Group, Wikipedia is the fifth most trafficked website but is ranked number one in terms of both global online educational resources, more generally, and dissemination of anti-Israel propaganda, in particular. The Israel Group&#8217;s website <a href="https://theisraelgroup.org/wikipedias-war-against-israel/">describes</a> the importance of the project:
<blockquote>For more than a decade, Wikipedia — the number one online educational resource globally — has allowed anonymous anti-Israel editors to falsely and negatively alter Israel’s factual history in Wikipedia articles pertaining to the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
A cabal of virulently anti-Israel anonymous editors is responsible for decimating virtually the entire pro-Israel editing community. Volunteer &#8220;administrators&#8221; (with lifetime positions), responsible for overseeing the editing process of Wikipedia, have not only allowed anti-Israel editors freedom to take over Wikipedia, they have participated by blocking and banning predominantly Jewish and pro-Israel editors. &#8230;
The Israel Group has been working for many years, under the radar, on a confidential initiative, Wiki-Israel, that combats Wikipedia’s antisemitic bias against Israel. The initiative includes a dedicated website that, among many other things, shows how anti-Israel editors smear Israel — both subtly and overtly — across hundreds of articles, and how the pro-Israel community can stop it.</blockquote>
While the formal launch of the project is not set to commence until January 2020, The Israel Group has teased the endeavor&#8217;s formal launch by already divulging the identities of what it has deemed to be the two most notorious anti-Israel editors on all of Wikipedia: Brendan McKay, a math scientist at the Australian National University (described by The Israel Group as &#8220;the unofficial leader of the entire cabal of anti-Israel Wikipedia editors&#8221;), and Peter Nicholas Dale, an Australian author born in 1950 (described by The Israel Group as &#8220;the most prolific and proficient&#8221; of the Wikipedia&#8217;s anti-Israel editors).
Reached for exclusive comment by The Daily Wire, Jack Saltzberg, The Israel Group&#8217;s founder and president, provided the following:
<blockquote>For more than a decade, there have been many articles and blog posts calling attention to Wikipedia’s clear bias against Israel. Generally these complaints vanish into the ether. Even worse, too many people insist, &#8220;Wikipedia is meaningless, nobody takes it seriously,&#8221; or &#8220;I never go to Wikipedia.&#8221; Both statements couldn’t be faultier. As Wikipedia <a href="https://wikiedu.org/partnerships/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://wikiedu.org/partnerships/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573373339611000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFRKHTkg5jg34hftU0s2K06-uc_Fw">itself states</a>, &#8220;As the top online educational resource on the planet, with more links from search engines than any other site, Wikipedia is one of the most powerful platforms for the dissemination of knowledge.&#8221; Additionally, a <a href="https://firstmonday.org/article/view/2830/2476" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://firstmonday.org/article/view/2830/2476&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573373339611000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-aPn3v82LEpOmKz4xxY5iLcT9OQ">majority of university students now</a> use Wikipedia for background information.
The [BDS] campaigns waged against Israel have succeeded through the promulgation of lies, smears, and libels against Israel; and Wikipedia is the number one vehicle substantiating, reinforcing, and disseminating that false propaganda.
As an organization established for one reason — to help cripple the BDS movement — The Israel Group decided five years ago that stopping Wikipedia’s anti-Israel bias is the most important endeavor in the war against BDS. Subsequently, The Israel Group has, under the radar and confidentially, been researching and battling the anti-Semitism and anti-Israel radicalism inside Wikipedia’s pages related to the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.
The Israel Group has identified the primary anti-Israel offenders who go to extremes and use an array of techniques to illegitimately silence and block pro-Israel editors.
They’ve spent more than a decade — both subtly and overtly — embedding anti-Israel rhetoric within nearly 1,000 Wikipedia articles. The Israel Group is the first to publicly expose the true identities of the two leading anti-Israel anonymous Wikipedia editors. &#8230;
When the Wiki-Israel initiative launches in January 2020, we will not only reveal the depth of the problem and its many challenging aspects, but we&#8217;ll also guide people who care about Israel on how they can become experienced editors capable of fighting back.
The Israel Group has also investigated other related subjects and groups that receive similar smears and libels — namely, Christians and conservatives. For many years, those on the Right, especially those who support Israel, have been well aware of Wikipedia&#8217;s bias against them. In 2020, the Wiki-Israel initiative will reveal innovative, original research quantifying and proving this bias beyond a reasonable doubt, exposing the methods and madness of the political activists who have hijacked the world&#8217;s most popular and largest encyclopedia.</blockquote>
Godspeed to a valiant and indispensable organization. Sunlight, as Justice Louis Brandeis once said, is oftentimes the best disinfectant.

Wikipedia

Pro-Israel Group Launches Initiative Fighting Back Against Anti-Israel Wikipedia Editors

Anti-Semitism

Media Bias

Overall, last week was a quieter week in the unfolding impeachment saga.
Earlier last week, Trump administration officials continued the ongoing habit of defying House Democrats’ impeachment-related subpoenas. As Fox News <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W66Yc9M66hdk3W3XxYpT2NH8vQ0/5/f18dQhb0SfHn9c-h9gW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Vj1Qt2G2VLDpF18CSvhfW8CZrMG8m7vgGW8B-9dc8yVPQ_N3HtdkMVbDp_W3Htl0P3N0TRKW67jVlh5wL6c-VTH5T364Qd0yW8zvHql5_Vt-mF8m81QV25l2W55fLnq8WmgDpW5n6V1k8VCv8JW2MznrN5nbq6BVGXpVf3ZQWFgW5nyN8z2z95WfW2yscgj7nlhG4W5ZpycS57-ZBTW83C5JP6rY-3sW2KQ2YY1Gk5dXN2Hj7tS8JHM_W8c3wwh3X0g0yN6bp1cMbq5fxW4TKc2l5vJbBHN7fdQ4vP_8XWW5kNW6S8LkXJBW9jJxZh8d9s4gW50XBc38Sh4LLW4F2q0N7lCx_cW1pgv5Z8L1RcHW7YGRT28rg-P2W51m0wR3ghHDsW4Vyr8l8qCrzkW9jBRnz3zJsY2W7d0nLw5bW-L4W1bBvW33_5XgcW6hz0s82bzNQYW5ZS0xn6yzFt5W4cyCw230Pjz7W1CV8c97G7bpYN4QDgwJWW9M5W5RRkPs6zX_YLW5_5dnz7SJ7wCW4zBVJp2-BmhdVTr0CC1yf53YvVL6QTbLkf68sTPS02" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W66Yc9M66hdk3W3XxYpT2NH8vQ0/5/f18dQhb0SfHn9c-h9gW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Vj1Qt2G2VLDpF18CSvhfW8CZrMG8m7vgGW8B-9dc8yVPQ_N3HtdkMVbDp_W3Htl0P3N0TRKW67jVlh5wL6c-VTH5T364Qd0yW8zvHql5_Vt-mF8m81QV25l2W55fLnq8WmgDpW5n6V1k8VCv8JW2MznrN5nbq6BVGXpVf3ZQWFgW5nyN8z2z95WfW2yscgj7nlhG4W5ZpycS57-ZBTW83C5JP6rY-3sW2KQ2YY1Gk5dXN2Hj7tS8JHM_W8c3wwh3X0g0yN6bp1cMbq5fxW4TKc2l5vJbBHN7fdQ4vP_8XWW5kNW6S8LkXJBW9jJxZh8d9s4gW50XBc38Sh4LLW4F2q0N7lCx_cW1pgv5Z8L1RcHW7YGRT28rg-P2W51m0wR3ghHDsW4Vyr8l8qCrzkW9jBRnz3zJsY2W7d0nLw5bW-L4W1bBvW33_5XgcW6hz0s82bzNQYW5ZS0xn6yzFt5W4cyCw230Pjz7W1CV8c97G7bpYN4QDgwJWW9M5W5RRkPs6zX_YLW5_5dnz7SJ7wCW4zBVJp2-BmhdVTr0CC1yf53YvVL6QTbLkf68sTPS02&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322538000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHfzSxml8H1uB5yNuwuigeuqaTJEQ">reported</a>, a lead National Security Council attorney, a top aide to Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and an additional Office of Management and Budget aide all failed to show up for their scheduled depositions on Capitol Hill. Otherwise, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W4tGyMg8VHFFjW65NlCc5Kwsbs0/5/f18dQhb0Sq5G8Y9-RWW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Tq1Vq7GqVLDpF18CSvhfW8DrSws3J4F4KW8B-9dc8yX6RjW3knCMv8yXl2gW5x625k8mFVfxW3GCvtS3Q020dW1pgMhv65jGWdN5v6x90SbM5KW8mFFZS5wL96LW1sL3M03MybvyW6RNDcs5xKvMBW69GbGF3NpJSjW4KQJk12N33B5W3_t0gL32Gf2QW4dnWJc69NG1wW6PqSg98mQMWvW5Vb2cd5w8WykMMNBCZMMQxXW80gSRf97rB1bW8xqZLV24H1v5W2756LD93S-6cW8tdfY73N8_sZW3PgfgR4p3W3cW653Nh163tMgzW2xrxt664Ls7qW66YDzg6SLQd9W6Rbygg6QhWvKN3lll5mVxnMPN5J1scwhMG-KW23y2NH5C2CLWVSRWT_27s9J8W7wV0lj1xfQR4W3ygvH88c3fNTVJ5v6n7v4WNLW49vfHg6sFhDKMN-wDG42c_8W3nh5k98qNPfnW3FXFhk4BKzChW6QJtpH81-l8QW11PGlS1BzGN8W5YZ_DT73yKD2W70RWLy5bkc53111" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W4tGyMg8VHFFjW65NlCc5Kwsbs0/5/f18dQhb0Sq5G8Y9-RWW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Tq1Vq7GqVLDpF18CSvhfW8DrSws3J4F4KW8B-9dc8yX6RjW3knCMv8yXl2gW5x625k8mFVfxW3GCvtS3Q020dW1pgMhv65jGWdN5v6x90SbM5KW8mFFZS5wL96LW1sL3M03MybvyW6RNDcs5xKvMBW69GbGF3NpJSjW4KQJk12N33B5W3_t0gL32Gf2QW4dnWJc69NG1wW6PqSg98mQMWvW5Vb2cd5w8WykMMNBCZMMQxXW80gSRf97rB1bW8xqZLV24H1v5W2756LD93S-6cW8tdfY73N8_sZW3PgfgR4p3W3cW653Nh163tMgzW2xrxt664Ls7qW66YDzg6SLQd9W6Rbygg6QhWvKN3lll5mVxnMPN5J1scwhMG-KW23y2NH5C2CLWVSRWT_27s9J8W7wV0lj1xfQR4W3ygvH88c3fNTVJ5v6n7v4WNLW49vfHg6sFhDKMN-wDG42c_8W3nh5k98qNPfnW3FXFhk4BKzChW6QJtpH81-l8QW11PGlS1BzGN8W5YZ_DT73yKD2W70RWLy5bkc53111&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322538000&amp;usg=AFQjCNG2N_u7lof0SETcF-Mvxtr0JqxbtQ">updated</a> his recent testimony in a way that could further hurt the Trump team’s efforts to rebut Democrats’ charge that Trump engaged in a nefarious “quid pro quo” in last summer’s now-infamous phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump has been <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W3qSM5D31MlCFW4FjM1117Mbmx0/5/f18dQhb0Sq5z8Y9YsWW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5R21Nvw7TVLDpF18CSv07W5w5R8T8x14cSW8yVJcM8rdDcDN1nPcdCMDj_jW8tYz--5w5BNDV_tKSx5C3LsHN5F294hXy7VSVY0M9Y5y5jh-W1rfXlz1kRpb7W7ZClNK1q7NGsW8t4BPX4Sf1kGW6dqF0Z8W2c9WW32CQ2l8jxMNSW1Vx27W6Pkt_VN62_rT82FpQ3W9dH8_66V4mcJW86KnNH7P1-wWN33FK-yqPkxDVnjZC81Hfvb0W59lgPN1y_PrlW1gtmV585y-CwW9djGw_77c_9bVKJRZ98ksL8qW9d6gxl5n3MwtW2Rw5ft82_d7wW6xcPLZ7ws4HJVJC88f6zyWGlVp-_rh7x3yGJW9g4bml77nXYRW52Ym4r14HD_cW2p8_TT7-cq2QW3d0zvx4p7yDTW2zz89m3M1RxqW8r4Pxt5_BMMVW3fKSXy5Zl4SZVd8y6q1QNZ5kW2gzfh33MP03dW2B62ny6lgqdyW95ccVC5_6SwhW1KSCLB36sLG2w1NsfDKpw5f2Hnn1w02" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W3qSM5D31MlCFW4FjM1117Mbmx0/5/f18dQhb0Sq5z8Y9YsWW80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5R21Nvw7TVLDpF18CSv07W5w5R8T8x14cSW8yVJcM8rdDcDN1nPcdCMDj_jW8tYz--5w5BNDV_tKSx5C3LsHN5F294hXy7VSVY0M9Y5y5jh-W1rfXlz1kRpb7W7ZClNK1q7NGsW8t4BPX4Sf1kGW6dqF0Z8W2c9WW32CQ2l8jxMNSW1Vx27W6Pkt_VN62_rT82FpQ3W9dH8_66V4mcJW86KnNH7P1-wWN33FK-yqPkxDVnjZC81Hfvb0W59lgPN1y_PrlW1gtmV585y-CwW9djGw_77c_9bVKJRZ98ksL8qW9d6gxl5n3MwtW2Rw5ft82_d7wW6xcPLZ7ws4HJVJC88f6zyWGlVp-_rh7x3yGJW9g4bml77nXYRW52Ym4r14HD_cW2p8_TT7-cq2QW3d0zvx4p7yDTW2zz89m3M1RxqW8r4Pxt5_BMMVW3fKSXy5Zl4SZVd8y6q1QNZ5kW2gzfh33MP03dW2B62ny6lgqdyW95ccVC5_6SwhW1KSCLB36sLG2w1NsfDKpw5f2Hnn1w02&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322538000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFOMhLg0w9RtoEqGXB9qMbywrUpsQ">tweeting</a> a lot recently to encourage Americans to actually read the underlying transcript of the Zelensky phone call, which potentially bodes well in terms of the Trump team realizing that it needs to advance a substantive — instead of merely a procedural — argument that expressly argues that the totality of what substantively transpired between Trump and Zelensky does not even come close to meeting the “high crimes and misdemeanors” criterion that the Constitution prescribes as its impeachment standard. As I have explained in previous Election Wires, Alexander Hamilton <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W6jrZP49glTwtVQXTVh83DLRD0/5/f18dQhb0SbTP8YHrXgN8HWm5lHyjJqW8q-jQ-4XyTvPW3hHh8X2P7_nXVcnTGj98kNPXW26n-yd25xxTKW5t2x5c4v13hrN98jppGZbhHpW4r1N_c5tXDYXW1wJ6H251RS_HW61SSZm7mG7sDW51vX4y6HrZgDW7lVtgt4s2-MqW8f6L0f3VpzgTW9dSlS635rgClW94-4T07sLptqW41TlcR3TwTqCW4KbJZx2kGg8MW6sCkcN4YFc44W57-WqM3H_PtyW2DzCtR1yBNY7W1kBBQz2Gm3GzVqYwFH8FCZrbW7nGzDf8Gd1wNVkDZvr7FhCnlW5SSSCD6qSd4CW82-KL08jhTv1W4b5wR-2r7NVtW2G-ftt4nmPn4V7r66n4GtrHrN8gGSMWBnDH8W1sl9sW9kFWZfW32k78t6Pc2NRN7PwBwrVzQv-VVn7DD12G_sLW1RP_SX32Sff8N4JWF2MhL_4cW24Zwh22nRzM3W5701m62WqWb0W3gtYvZ2_yD7XW8DnzGX2hj86VW1vhHFD54NZMCMNDyx-rTzpYV10v2z2KMnWW103" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W6jrZP49glTwtVQXTVh83DLRD0/5/f18dQhb0SbTP8YHrXgN8HWm5lHyjJqW8q-jQ-4XyTvPW3hHh8X2P7_nXVcnTGj98kNPXW26n-yd25xxTKW5t2x5c4v13hrN98jppGZbhHpW4r1N_c5tXDYXW1wJ6H251RS_HW61SSZm7mG7sDW51vX4y6HrZgDW7lVtgt4s2-MqW8f6L0f3VpzgTW9dSlS635rgClW94-4T07sLptqW41TlcR3TwTqCW4KbJZx2kGg8MW6sCkcN4YFc44W57-WqM3H_PtyW2DzCtR1yBNY7W1kBBQz2Gm3GzVqYwFH8FCZrbW7nGzDf8Gd1wNVkDZvr7FhCnlW5SSSCD6qSd4CW82-KL08jhTv1W4b5wR-2r7NVtW2G-ftt4nmPn4V7r66n4GtrHrN8gGSMWBnDH8W1sl9sW9kFWZfW32k78t6Pc2NRN7PwBwrVzQv-VVn7DD12G_sLW1RP_SX32Sff8N4JWF2MhL_4cW24Zwh22nRzM3W5701m62WqWb0W3gtYvZ2_yD7XW8DnzGX2hj86VW1vhHFD54NZMCMNDyx-rTzpYV10v2z2KMnWW103&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322538000&amp;usg=AFQjCNE1AffeFK5cSCOpT2MgXlzcjpLYCw">explained</a> in The Federalist No. 65 that the impeachment of a president may be properly considered for all “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
Accordingly, Trump’s impeachment defense must be centered around substantively arguing that the Zelensky phone call did not “abuse or violat[e] … some public trust.” This should not be particularly difficult, and the White House should consider hiring a <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W4Fc5RG6l41mxW3_0SfX5CPqKQ0/5/f18dQhb0S2C728_sBBVMvn3M1b7DcSN2xHp4pDHJ4kW1q92vL54Rt0YW2wjy_W47QqJ6W4lbFp33MvbCdW2CYkfh1KTHDsW4VJy_Z19zfMlW1gMDxd1v2NSTW1qM8X183Y1KQW22rH4F9g6_SwW5zQJWQ3JR16lW52zsJc51CmnTW6PNRz95jffL2W6gP_kl1p6wj_Mr6nn9-nDwzW8s13Dv6HDfN2W2KFwBv4vJQwPW8c8qlR826XdzVVCy5B155FnWVs5ySm8_nzKFW4Xs1Gv2YvvGqW8-pqRl4P47H0W6CPTrn2zBQTHVFWlfK4W7pFVV622bD93_c68N40ZDz6tT08JW435ZY65jY-YHW68BbGd4qRRHvW3DqYXW1fPFpGVXY-vN3-tmwkW2Vwy9x86TCbgW8n-ZzZ2RDT7pW40B3Pk3gsnxDW1mDSY91J8w2jW6xyVCF3M7Y9BW8m6g-k2HHttGW6MQQqS3gcvNJW3Kr-Fn7b8kx3W7rn_rY5GJ7sgW33-3gL7HTkg0Vr85Hc5D0l0gW4LCWXN3FmmKJW6HCFvV7cjdDFW5F2PS24F1QhjW6WGKZx6mBz8LW7rD5qB7hvX58W1SC1Xh4Fzzd3W761s0r23_rQTf5N2-BB11" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W4Fc5RG6l41mxW3_0SfX5CPqKQ0/5/f18dQhb0S2C728_sBBVMvn3M1b7DcSN2xHp4pDHJ4kW1q92vL54Rt0YW2wjy_W47QqJ6W4lbFp33MvbCdW2CYkfh1KTHDsW4VJy_Z19zfMlW1gMDxd1v2NSTW1qM8X183Y1KQW22rH4F9g6_SwW5zQJWQ3JR16lW52zsJc51CmnTW6PNRz95jffL2W6gP_kl1p6wj_Mr6nn9-nDwzW8s13Dv6HDfN2W2KFwBv4vJQwPW8c8qlR826XdzVVCy5B155FnWVs5ySm8_nzKFW4Xs1Gv2YvvGqW8-pqRl4P47H0W6CPTrn2zBQTHVFWlfK4W7pFVV622bD93_c68N40ZDz6tT08JW435ZY65jY-YHW68BbGd4qRRHvW3DqYXW1fPFpGVXY-vN3-tmwkW2Vwy9x86TCbgW8n-ZzZ2RDT7pW40B3Pk3gsnxDW1mDSY91J8w2jW6xyVCF3M7Y9BW8m6g-k2HHttGW6MQQqS3gcvNJW3Kr-Fn7b8kx3W7rn_rY5GJ7sgW33-3gL7HTkg0Vr85Hc5D0l0gW4LCWXN3FmmKJW6HCFvV7cjdDFW5F2PS24F1QhjW6WGKZx6mBz8LW7rD5qB7hvX58W1SC1Xh4Fzzd3W761s0r23_rQTf5N2-BB11&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322539000&amp;usg=AFQjCNFaoX3W5izx0HAP-yge7DG7VQV-sA">chief strategist</a> to lead the effort — one possible name that comes to mind is <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W25ysKm8yt6j7N2N7qC0QXDx30/5/f18dQhb0Sjvm6BHC8SW62tQd64T_wDdW5w02yj5w05lbVscWqS1VbPj2W53DQ4N33FVCTW1W0s6730rr3SW8_gQtC8ZCH4KN7X_pnlRbnvcW1lQNDF5w5C_HW5y5jh-1rfXlzW1kRpb77ZClNKW1q7NGs8t4BPXW4Sf1kG6dqF0ZW8W2c9W32CQ2lW8jxMNS1VwV0kW3HbhT65tNvm-W52mV-88tzC3FW8q-1tC6H4mrRW55T8N87w3wPSW1NC3Kc1F6KTtW8Y0h_b2T-f0qW2GttMf7v5xChVzZmCx2266yKW92pY_C4dZGZtW1KT2mr7MctF-Vy90MB1wgXPmN7Tzp61wZk9_W92rRtX1Xv_n0W7nZfGg58677kW20S-qb7CkfkRW2MVMJp2VPGKHW8XRjSq7ZjRCNW1BxxJm819pLQW73R1h2224kXkW1WYmHy20ZdMCW1c8vq-7ps3S_N8Yztwfb2_nMW6PxM7x7vs64-W7fTjHB97sBJnW4jfDlp6KRQscW25yrLf397kxjW2vSzV74Q-5SVW4HzlZ64mb2rj111" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*W25ysKm8yt6j7N2N7qC0QXDx30/5/f18dQhb0Sjvm6BHC8SW62tQd64T_wDdW5w02yj5w05lbVscWqS1VbPj2W53DQ4N33FVCTW1W0s6730rr3SW8_gQtC8ZCH4KN7X_pnlRbnvcW1lQNDF5w5C_HW5y5jh-1rfXlzW1kRpb77ZClNKW1q7NGs8t4BPXW4Sf1kG6dqF0ZW8W2c9W32CQ2lW8jxMNS1VwV0kW3HbhT65tNvm-W52mV-88tzC3FW8q-1tC6H4mrRW55T8N87w3wPSW1NC3Kc1F6KTtW8Y0h_b2T-f0qW2GttMf7v5xChVzZmCx2266yKW92pY_C4dZGZtW1KT2mr7MctF-Vy90MB1wgXPmN7Tzp61wZk9_W92rRtX1Xv_n0W7nZfGg58677kW20S-qb7CkfkRW2MVMJp2VPGKHW8XRjSq7ZjRCNW1BxxJm819pLQW73R1h2224kXkW1WYmHy20ZdMCW1c8vq-7ps3S_N8Yztwfb2_nMW6PxM7x7vs64-W7fTjHB97sBJnW4jfDlp6KRQscW25yrLf397kxjW2vSzV74Q-5SVW4HzlZ64mb2rj111&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322539000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEkHYtQGNJnUgVekOAXvHBD3KQ8eQ">Mark Paoletta</a>. The Trump team should stop focusing on loudly denying that a “quid pro quo” transpired and instead defend the notion that quid pro quos and the process of attaching strings to foreign aid recipients is <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*N3c1jhC4ZhWgN6rBZ-4YF-cd0/5/f18dQhb0S1Xm7w2QxfSmM12K3Q-HW68S6q64L28KfW3cdmVv2Jn1FXW18qSz31J8h02W8LnY5s7x1q7mW6STH7-1bp9m9W8wpfBS8XtdxFN8wq4xmF1bLxW9lTT6l9cDS-QW6pNSgD4mFYXjW2HSGbL7mGP1-W3zVgJT3yL6j-N8NwdnyHWJZyMB7fMXJGYFfN75Nwr-zsQ-BW7j1dg516K1vjW5gV2yf5gQxCcW1_hG_C5nXjzNTh4fP4zR4TSN7PJ6y79bxwLW77nMT856H4GwW95ZhXW17lqjXW1FbWlF75SM7MW5BQQDK3RcXGVW6CsNd55bs4Y6W7XYbBK8ynYp2VXqQhY47C4vDW5y8VSl6NMk7NW6FV12Y41T4sqW6l0q6b1nKfB7W7JZPgs15Cc9xN5Qcq2T-_c4XW1nd44N4M0l8FW4czpW7330DHvW5GrLjj3VjQcCW6tctB76kzZLxW4Y74pp1thsyMW1LjKTn4rGl2xVp_zGp8lhY4-W3Xkt3827BFppVYJm-q1qgt-rW77Tm9c5ym3_xW9bpbdl6-lsLTW4syWxg7bgtSJN8DC3d8j8RbyW27Yv1r2G8ZN-111" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*N3c1jhC4ZhWgN6rBZ-4YF-cd0/5/f18dQhb0S1Xm7w2QxfSmM12K3Q-HW68S6q64L28KfW3cdmVv2Jn1FXW18qSz31J8h02W8LnY5s7x1q7mW6STH7-1bp9m9W8wpfBS8XtdxFN8wq4xmF1bLxW9lTT6l9cDS-QW6pNSgD4mFYXjW2HSGbL7mGP1-W3zVgJT3yL6j-N8NwdnyHWJZyMB7fMXJGYFfN75Nwr-zsQ-BW7j1dg516K1vjW5gV2yf5gQxCcW1_hG_C5nXjzNTh4fP4zR4TSN7PJ6y79bxwLW77nMT856H4GwW95ZhXW17lqjXW1FbWlF75SM7MW5BQQDK3RcXGVW6CsNd55bs4Y6W7XYbBK8ynYp2VXqQhY47C4vDW5y8VSl6NMk7NW6FV12Y41T4sqW6l0q6b1nKfB7W7JZPgs15Cc9xN5Qcq2T-_c4XW1nd44N4M0l8FW4czpW7330DHvW5GrLjj3VjQcCW6tctB76kzZLxW4Y74pp1thsyMW1LjKTn4rGl2xVp_zGp8lhY4-W3Xkt3827BFppVYJm-q1qgt-rW77Tm9c5ym3_xW9bpbdl6-lsLTW4syWxg7bgtSJN8DC3d8j8RbyW27Yv1r2G8ZN-111&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322539000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHEw9E7rY4Yf2KZyP460NghspYTSg">inherent in the very foreign aid enterprise</a> itself. Think about it logically: Why shouldn’t Americans want more conditions imposed on foreign countries in order to receive the beneficence of our U.S. taxpayer dollars? There is ample room here for Trump to tap into widespread, populist-infused opposition to mass foreign aid itself.
National polling remains narrowly in favor of impeachment. As of November 7, 2019, <a href="https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*N9g4SqVFBFCcW95frjl3yBbvc0/5/f18dQhb0SbTX8Y9Wm6W80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Rq5Cgxh0VnQ9Qq8ZvGN0W6yR8-3549KcjW7r98KK1SLhGnW328XxL2LWcZ_N4dPVJtql99tW1Vws8c2KWLmnW4cPwbS8HbRxPN8k1dMQpSBF3W8WhTQ14JftKGW8W5ZBz759s5xW7PNfvy96zRPSW6bT6L38RRjRDW5CktzD83KHrFN7J39rl1g4hYW4Dk-X22PGBDHW7lRZ4W8gjY6LW8WBKbV56sy_8W2NhXFJ6Y23ZhW5njKYK5lqJMTW6zzJtZ774x7FW59BDvc2dDPmkW5MhB-77ryzGvN4gl57p6Qr93W2L52jd4jqztHW4Pz5934zXcZfVwm8sc6wjgmDW1k0MNr7wyGhBW4cntCV310tMKW33KGSm6XvYPyN4lBZ6Fnpt4xW6GTq088Ph58-W594SN87x2btgW7w46LW2F435_W6wrhgQ5h-8njW61lQ4C23WHzLN4gFC2zPT2nMV9-MvN86_DdBN7LCVy2GCyWsW24nf__4L1MmrN4JXQH_1nvT7f5zJXvM03" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://email.dailywire.com/e2t/c/*W4n-ptk20ymJxW8JtsBr1WvdDc0/*N9g4SqVFBFCcW95frjl3yBbvc0/5/f18dQhb0SbTX8Y9Wm6W80JfVF1k63-nN7sTcfmt_T69W6Dk5Rq5Cgxh0VnQ9Qq8ZvGN0W6yR8-3549KcjW7r98KK1SLhGnW328XxL2LWcZ_N4dPVJtql99tW1Vws8c2KWLmnW4cPwbS8HbRxPN8k1dMQpSBF3W8WhTQ14JftKGW8W5ZBz759s5xW7PNfvy96zRPSW6bT6L38RRjRDW5CktzD83KHrFN7J39rl1g4hYW4Dk-X22PGBDHW7lRZ4W8gjY6LW8WBKbV56sy_8W2NhXFJ6Y23ZhW5njKYK5lqJMTW6zzJtZ774x7FW59BDvc2dDPmkW5MhB-77ryzGvN4gl57p6Qr93W2L52jd4jqztHW4Pz5934zXcZfVwm8sc6wjgmDW1k0MNr7wyGhBW4cntCV310tMKW33KGSm6XvYPyN4lBZ6Fnpt4xW6GTq088Ph58-W594SN87x2btgW7w46LW2F435_W6wrhgQ5h-8njW61lQ4C23WHzLN4gFC2zPT2nMV9-MvN86_DdBN7LCVy2GCyWsW24nf__4L1MmrN4JXQH_1nvT7f5zJXvM03&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1573279322539000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHjohA6iENayXNCIer4Ab-w5ydxzA">FiveThirtyEight</a> indicates that Americans now support impeachment by a 3.6% margin. This margin has been generally narrowing of late, however, which could indicate that congressional Democrats are over-playing their current hand.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) actually holds a formal House-wide vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry. As readers will recall from previous Impeachment Wire updates, the much-ballyhooed vote that Pelosi led two weeks ago seems to only lay out the procedural rules for impeachment — as opposed to authorizing impeachment itself. The big impeachment-related news this week will come on Wednesday, when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has stated he will finally open up the initial impeachment hearings to the public.
This piece will be frequently updated.

House Democrats Hold Meeting To Discuss Impeachment Inquiry

Impeachment Wire: The Latest On The Effort To Impeach President Trump

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

On Wednesday, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York imposed a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-pence-promises-challenge-nationwide-josh-hammer">lawless</a> &#8220;nationwide injunction&#8221; on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services&#8217; (HHS) so-called &#8220;Conscience Rule.&#8221; That administrative rule, promulgated under the guidance of HHS&#8217;s <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/about/leadership/roger-severino/index.html">Roger Severino</a>, attempted to ensure, in Judge Engelmayer&#8217;s <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/district-court-ruling-against-hhs-conscience-rule/">words</a>, that both HHS programs and those who receive HHS funds properly &#8220;address objections to abortion, sterilization, and assisted suicide, in addition to counseling and referrals related to these services.&#8221;
Judge Engelmayer&#8217;s gargantuan <a href="https://affordablecareactlitigation.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/file0.602539871159149.pdf">147-page opinion</a> deems the Conscience Rule to be an unconstitutional agency overreach, but is primarily concerned with HHS&#8217;s alleged statutory violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Careful readers will recall how the APA has frequently been <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/18-966_bq7c.pdf">weaponized</a> against President Donald Trump by a revanchist judicial &#8220;<a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/judicial-resistance">resistance</a>.&#8221;
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), who was a high-ranking official in the Bush administration&#8217;s Office of Legal Policy and is no legal slouch, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/06/politics/judge-blocks-hhs-conscience-rule-health-care-workers/index.html">excoriated</a> the anti-conscience ruling: &#8220;This decision is absurd mush. The point of the First Amendment — especially the free exercise of religion — is to protect the conscience rights of Americans. In this country, government doesn&#8217;t get to tell you that your faith is fine on Sunday at church but not Monday at work.&#8221; Ed Whelan has a similarly critical post today at National Review&#8217;s &#8220;Bench Memos&#8221; blog, <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/district-court-ruling-against-hhs-conscience-rule/">arguing</a> that the rudimentary logic undergirding Judge Engelmayer&#8217;s administrative law analysis is non-sensical hogwash.
It is possible that this is not the most prudent hill to die on. But perhaps it is; after all, there is no issue more foundational to the American experiment than religious liberty and protection of individual conscience rights. But whether this particular lawless &#8220;nationwide injunction&#8221; represents the ideal time to push back once and for all against <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">judicial tyranny</a> run amok, it is surely as clear a reminder as ever that it is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-it-past-time-trump-openly-defy-court-order-josh-hammer">long past time for President Trump to openly defy</a> a truly lawless, debilitating district court ruling.
The notion of a &#8220;nationwide injunction&#8221; is axiomatically self-contradictory; by its plain meaning, &#8220;[t]he judicial power&#8221; of which the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii">Article III</a> of the Constitution speaks only extends to the individual litigants in a specific &#8220;case[]&#8221; or &#8220;controversial[y]&#8221; properly before a federal tribunal. Chief Justice John Marshall&#8217;s most famous passage in the judicial review-establishing 1803 case of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/5/137#writing-USSC_CR_0005_0137_ZO">Marbury v. Madison</a> makes this point extraordinarily clear: &#8220;It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule.&#8221; (Emphasis added.) &#8220;The judicial power&#8221; thus only extends to &#8220;particular cases,&#8221; and it is in each &#8220;particular case[]&#8221; that a court must &#8220;expound and interpret&#8221; the relevant law as it applies to those particular litigants.
Abraham Lincoln was thus emphatically correct, in his <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp">First Inaugural Address</a>, to vow to only enforce the morally and legally abhorrent <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/60/393#writing-USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO">Dred Scott</a> ruling as it pertained to Mr. Scott himself:
<blockquote>I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. &#8230; At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.</blockquote>
As Lincoln observed, norms of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-stop-calling-everything-impeachable-offense-josh-hammer">prudence</a> and the inherent concept of the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1073942">Article III judgment power</a> alike do caution the president to enforce a federal court ruling as it pertains to named litigants to a lawsuit. But in our constitutional order, the binding scope of judicial power goes no further than that. If President Trump were so inclined, he could therefore treat all parties not expressly named as litigants in the Conscience Rule lawsuit as not being bound by Judge Engelmayer&#8217;s diktat. Indeed, such an action would accord with the Madisonian conception of the separation of powers, as described in <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp">The Federalist No. 51</a>, that &#8220;[a]mbition must be made to counteract ambition.&#8221; It would be beneficial and positively healthy for our constitutional order to see such &#8220;[a]mbition &#8230; counteract[ing] ambition.&#8221;
Again, perhaps this case is not the ideal hill upon which Trump ought to launch such a constitutional broadside. But until the president of the United States begins to push back against the fallacious and unconstitutional notion that a single federal district court judge can bring the entirety of an executive branch program to a screeching halt, nothing else in our politics truly matters. What is the point of governing, after all, if the <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.asp">&#8220;least dangerous&#8221;</a> branch of the federal government is allowed to usurp powers it manifestly does not possess without any resistance whatsoever from the more powerful federal departments — Congress and the presidency?
I had a conversation a little over a year ago with a well-known lawyer who previously clerked on the U.S. Supreme Court for a conservative justice. I asked him/her what would be the single best action President Trump could take to help restore a more constitutionally principled separation of powers structural equilibrium. That former clerk responded to me: &#8220;Defy a lawless court order.&#8221; I hope you are listening, Mr. President.

Close-Up Of Gavel On American Flag

HAMMER: When Will The Trump Administration Finally Defy A Lawless Federal Court?

Constitution

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

Trump Administration

Today, news broke that former New York City mayor and prominent billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg is considering tossing his hat into the dystopian ring that is the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary. The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/michael-bloomberg-preparing-to-enter-2020-democratic-race-11573167459?mod=hp_lead_pos3">quotes</a> a Bloomberg adviser named Howard Wolfson, who suggests that the main reason Bloomberg might jump in is his fear that none of the current 2020 Democrats can defeat President Donald Trump at the ballot box.
<blockquote>
&#8220;Mike believes that Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to our nation,&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said.
&#8220;Mike is increasingly concerned that the current field of candidates is not well positioned to [defeat Trump],&#8221; Mr. Wolfson said. &#8220;If Mike runs he would offer a new choice to Democrats built on a unique record running America’s biggest city, building a business from scratch and taking on some of America’s toughest challenges as a high-impact philanthropist.&#8221;
</blockquote>
By all means, Bloomberg should enter the fray if he feels called to do so. But we should not mince words here: There is no chance whatsoever that Bloomberg would successfully win the Democratic presidential nomination if he were to enter the field. And the chief reason for that is very simple. Bloomberg would have no shot because he is a somewhat sane person who would be seeking the presidential nomination of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-democratic-party-has-become-parody-itself-josh-hammer">fully insane</a> political party.
Bloomberg, who has made a veritable fortune over the course of a lifetime working in the financial services industry, is an ex-Republican who openly identifies as a <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/01/30/bloomberg_we_shouldnt_be_embarrassed_about_capitalism_non-capitalistic_venezuela_is_collapsing.html">capitalist</a>. But he would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party whose grassroots <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx">increasingly identify</a> as more socialistic than capitalistic. He would be seeking the presidential nomination of a political party in which the leading sources of disagreement over the course of the past few televised primary debates have been whether the harebrained &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; nostrums has a bankrupting price tag best estimated at $40 trillion or $50 trillion, and whether it is appropriate to literally eliminate private health insurance for over a hundred million American citizens while implementing that quixotic socialized medicine scheme.
Bloomberg, furthermore, is nothing if not a lifelong friend of the Jewish state of Israel. In 2014, when anti-Israel President Barack Obama oversaw a temporary <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/213288-obama-defends-israel-flight-ban">U.S. flight ban</a> to Israel amidst the jihadist rocket fire that rained down on the Jewish state that summer from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-israel-must-destroy-hamas-once-and-all-josh-hammer">Hamas</a>-controlled Gaza Strip, Bloomberg personally <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2014-07-23/why-i-flew-to-israel">flew to Israel</a> solely to demonstrate to his fellow Americans that it was safe to do so. Bloomberg may not be a hardcore <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-pro-israel-case-against-u-s-military-aid-to-israel">Caroline Glick-style Zionist</a>, but he is, at minimum, an AIPAC-style pro-Israel advocate. But the modern Democratic Party is no longer an AIPAC-style pro-Israel political party. On the contrary, the 2020 Democrats now shirk AIPAC en masse in favor of obeisance at the sycophantically pro-Palestinian altar of the vehemently anti-Israel group <a href="https://www.creators.com/read/ben-shapiro/10/19/the-j-street-democrats">J Street</a>.
Additionally, it must be noted that Bloomberg, while hardly Orthodox in identification, is nonetheless proudly and publicly Jewish. This too is a problem for the modern Democratic Party, which extols the virtues of Holocaust deniers like Palestinian Authority chieftain Mahmoud Abbas, glorifies Jew-haters like Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and is being rapidly Corbynized into an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-stark-choice-facing-jewish-democrats-josh-hammer">overtly anti-Semitic</a> political vehicle. It is difficult to see how Bloomberg&#8217;s proud Jewishness counts, in the eyes of today&#8217;s Democratic Party, as anything other than a net negative.
Bloomberg would have no chance for the Democratic presidential nomination were he to formally enter the fray. He is a sane Jew who would be seeking the presidential nomination in a fully insane, socialist, increasingly Jew-hating political party.

Michael Bloomberg.

HAMMER: Michael Bloomberg Would Have No Chance At The Democratic Presidential Nomination

Capitalism

Judaism

Michael Bloomberg

Last evening, The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/469133-graham-predicts-controversial-trump-court-picks-will-clear-panel">reported</a> that U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) plans to bring Halil Suleyman (&#8220;Sul&#8221;) Ozerden back up for a Committee-wide vote this Thursday. Ozerden, who (by pure happenstance!) <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/13/mulvaney-halil-suleyman-fifth-circuit-1362794">seems to have had</a> Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as a groomsman at his 2003 wedding, was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/president-donald-j-trump-announces-judicial-nominees-3/">announced</a> this past summer by the White House as its pick to fill a long-vacant Mississippi-based seat on the crucial U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In addition to Mulvaney, Ozerden has the backing of each of Mississippi&#8217;s two Republican senators.
Ozerden, who is only a recent convert to Federalist Society membership and whose judicial track record seems <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/conservatives-voice-concerns-over-potential-fifth-circuit-nominee/">scattershot</a> at best, has long faced <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/key-conservatives-double-down-opposition-trump-josh-hammer">fairly intensive</a> movement conservative opposition. As I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-sul-ozerden-very-weak-fifth-circuit-pick-josh-hammer">noted</a> last summer in launching my own anti-Ozerden salvo, much of the opposition centers around the 2012 Southern District of Mississippi case of <a href="https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/FA-MS-0001-0002.pdf">Catholic Diocese of Biloxi v. Sebelius</a>, wherein the eponymous diocese challenged the intrusive and conscience rights-undermining Obamacare contraceptive mandate promulgated by President Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services. Ozerden, then the district court judge presiding over the case, went so far as to <a href="https://www.clearinghouse.net/chDocs/public/FA-MS-0001-0003.pdf">deny the diocese’s mere motion for oral argument</a> — thereby treating a Catholic diocese pleading a genuine infringement of its right to conscience in much the same manner as a judge swatting away a pro se prisoner&#8217;s filing of a risible habeas corpus petition.
At the time, I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-sul-ozerden-very-weak-fifth-circuit-pick-josh-hammer">urged</a> Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to &#8220;lead this battle&#8221; and predicted that, &#8220;[w]ith Cruz’s leadership, it is hard to see how at least [Sen. Josh] Hawley [(R-MO)] does not follow.&#8221; Not to toot my own horn, but that is indeed precisely what happened. Cruz <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/ted-cruz-halil-sul-ozerden-nomination-1492305">came out in public opposition</a> to Ozerden in early September, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/26/josh-hawley-judicial-nominee-1513793">Hawley followed</a> two weeks later. Lacking the votes to pass Ozerden out of the Judiciary Committee with a favorable recommendation, then, Graham <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/26/josh-hawley-judicial-nominee-1513793">tabled a vote</a> on Ozerden&#8217;s nomination. And in the time since Graham tabled the Ozerden nomination, furthermore, Eliana Johnson of The Washington Free Beacon broke a <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/white-house-judicial-nom-violated-judicial-code-of-conduct-ex-wife-alleged/">scandalous story</a> about Ozerden allegedly once pressuring his wife to make an illegal campaign contribution to then-Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott&#8217;s (R-MS) political action committee.
Lacking the Republican votes on the Judiciary Committee and with a genuine scandal garnering headlines in conservative media, it seemed that the Ozerden nomination was heading for a slow but painful death. But rumors started circulating last week that Graham was actively courting Democratic votes on the Judiciary Committee to help favorably pass through Ozerden. Knowledgeable Senate sources confirmed to me this week that Graham planned to try to push through the Ozerden nomination with Democratic votes, and The Hill&#8217;s aforementioned <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/469133-graham-predicts-controversial-trump-court-picks-will-clear-panel">report</a> last evening followed. Sources tell me that the Committee Democrat most likely to cross the aisle to vote for Ozerden is either Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) or Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE).
If Graham follows this through to conclusion, let us call this spade a spade: It would be a betrayal of movement conservatism and the coronation of a thoroughly milquetoast, unfit nominee for the Anthony Kennedy-style swing seat on one of the nation&#8217;s most influential federal courts of appeal. The Fifth Circuit, which covers the red states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, represents the geographical and ideological heartland of post-Reagan conservatism in America. Mississippi, which has two Republican senators, could do a lot better than to nominate a scandal-tied non-movement conservative jurist with an inconsistent judicial track record and an expressed hostility to the foundational issue of religious liberty.
Lindsey Graham should stop what he is doing and not embark upon this path. There is no world in which Democratic votes should be relied upon to pass through a weak nominee who is opposed by large swaths of the conservative movement. Allowing Ozerden to move through would be a tremendous proverbial middle finger to the scores of conservative and religious liberty activists who have opposed his nomination from the get-go.
But if Graham does proceed, then the onus will fall on another courageous Judiciary Committee Republican to join forces with Cruz and Hawley in opposing Ozerden. Perhaps that courageous Judiciary Committee Republican is someone who is allegedly still on the fence, with respect to the Ozerden nomination, and who has a demonstrable <a href="https://www.sasse.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/sasse-op-ed-important-win-for-religious-liberty">track record</a> of defending the interests of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3VblIoWpDs">religious liberty</a>.
Are you listening, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE)?

Lindsey Graham

HAMMER: Lindsey Graham Would Betray Conservatives By Relying On Democrats To Pass Through Sul Ozerden

Ben Sasse

Conservatism

Josh Hawley

Mississippi

Ted Cruz

What is national security if not the obligation of a sovereign nation to secure its citizenry against the threats posed along the border by a lawless neighboring state overrun by murderous transnational criminal organizations?
Following the horrific <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/3-women-6-children-from-u-s-mormon-family-massacred-by-mexican-drug-cartel-trump-responds">overnight news</a> of nine Americans — three women and six children — killed across the Mexican border when they found themselves caught in the midst of a cartel turf war shootout, this is the question that ought to be on the mind of every American policymaker. The bipartisan foreign policy clerisy may seem <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-do-political-elites-care-more-about-turkeys-border-than-they-do-about-our-own-border">disproportionately focused</a> right now on a centuries-old Islamic sectarian war raging along the Turkish-Syrian border, but it is long past time for our leading foreign policy and national security hands to turn their attention to a much nearer and more immediately harrowing threat: Mexico.
The unfortunate but sober reality right now is that Mexico is best described as a failed state. One longstanding defining characteristic of a modern nation-state, after all, is a monopoly on the use of force; truly sovereign states are not overrun with drug-peddling marauders, terrorist militias, or other roving bands of vigilantes with the collective willpower and requisite military-style hardware to take &#8220;enforcement&#8221; matters into their own hands. There is a reason that the Old West was called &#8220;<a href="https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-old-west">wild</a>.&#8221;
Under this rudimentary criterion of what is necessary for national sovereignty, modern Mexico fails the test. The Mexican government does not have anywhere remotely resembling a monopoly on the use of force within its own territory. On the contrary, transnational criminal organizations flourish throughout the country, physically hold territory like mini-ISIS &#8220;caliphates,&#8221; literally <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/gun-battle-involving-el-chapos-son-highlights-growing-challenges-to-mexican-government-control/2019/10/19/e39d57be-f1b3-11e9-bb7e-d2026ee0c199_story.html">out-gun the Mexican government</a> in live shootouts, control vast swaths of the the illegal alien human trafficking corridors currently <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/happens-illegal-aliens-mexican-cartels-shut-government/">wreaking so much havoc</a> on America&#8217;s territorial integrity, and collectively have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/conservative-favorite-rep-chip-roys-maiden-floor-josh-hammer">&#8220;operational control&#8221;</a> of large chunks of the U.S.-Mexico border.
And now, American citizens — women and children, that is — are paying the ultimate price due to Mexico&#8217;s inability to control its own emerging anarchy. American citizens are paying the ultimate price due to Mexico being an inveterate narco-state full of kleptocratic politicians who are invariably either too venal or too reckless to actually take the fight to the cartels.
To be sure, President Trump ought to double down in his efforts to build a physical border wall separating our nation from the failed state to our south. But Trump should go further. It is far past time for the U.S. State Department to formally designate the leading Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. As Daniel Horowitz has persuasively <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/time-designate-mexican-cartels-terrorist-organizations/">argued</a>, these cartels are no longer run-of-the-mill drug mules — they are full-on paramilitary terrorist organizations and some even have close organizational ties to international jihadist outfits like <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/">Hezbollah</a>. Such a State Department formal designation would, as a threshold matter, more easily permit the various levers of the federal government apparatus to crack down on the cartels’ financing sources.
But Trump should go even further still. He should rally congressional Republicans to pass a formal authorization for the use of military force, similar to the post-9/11 AUMF of 2001, that effectively declares war on the leading Mexican cartels. In what world does it make sense to intervene in and referee Islamic civil wars overseas whilst allowing a failed state on our very border to allow murderous criminal rings to run amok and kill vulnerable U.S. citizens? In what world does it make sense to waste precious blood and treasure on trying to make a Madisonian democracy out of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-never-forget-911-we-need-rethink-how-we-josh-hammer">Kabul</a> while there is a corrupt and violent wasteland claiming American lives right in our own backyard?
Ranchers across our beleaguered border have long suffered from the effects of cartel violence; now, they are joined by the members of an innocent Utah family that tragically found itself stuck in the middle of a cartel turf war shootout. The situation in Mexico is rapidly escalating into a national emergency, and the Mexican government itself has repeatedly shown itself over the decades to be incapable of rooting out its own domestic rot. The time has come for the U.S. government to step in and defend its own sovereignty and security alike. Indeed, the U.S. government is actually morally obligated to do so.

Border Patrol truck

HAMMER: The U.S. Is Morally Obligated To Take On The Mexican Drug Cartels

Crime

Drugs

Foreign Policy

Mexico

<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">Leading</a> 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come under fire, of late, for her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-elizabeth-warren-says-shes-open-to-cutting-off-aid-to-israel">suggestion</a> that U.S. foreign aid to our ally Israel could become jeopardized by an oh-so-very obstinate Israeli governmental refusal to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-yes-palestinian-state-far-more-dangerous-josh-hammer">commit national suicide</a> at the jihadist altar of the &#8220;two-state solution&#8221; cartel. &#8220;It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution,&#8221; Warren <a href="https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1186052533405528067?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1186052533405528067&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fwatch-elizabeth-warren-says-shes-open-to-cutting-off-aid-to-israel">intoned</a>, &#8220;and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction, then everything is on the table.&#8221; Similarly, today comes news that fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg <a href="https://twitter.com/merica/status/1191415957731848192">believes</a> that the U.S. must &#8220;take steps to make sure th[at] US taxpayers [are] not contributing&#8221; to policies counter to the much-ballyhooed &#8220;two-state solution.&#8221;
Sounds a lot like a <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1191416211537616897">quid pro quo</a>, no?
Alas, none of this anti-Israel braggadocio is particularly new for the Left. Many today forget that Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin&#8217;s thunderous 1982 Zionist vow that he was &#8220;not a Jew with trembling knees&#8221; was issued in <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/menachem-begin-to-joe-biden-i-am-not-a-jew-with-trembling-knees/2015/04/03/">direct response</a> to &#8230; wait for it &#8230; then-Sen. Joe Biden&#8217;s (D-DE) threat to cut off U.S. aid to Israel. Yes, that would be the same purported &#8220;moderate&#8221; now once again seeking his party&#8217;s presidential nomination. Similarly, when ham-handed former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/john-kerry-israel-apartheid-palestine-peace-process-2014-4">dropped the &#8220;apartheid&#8221; word</a> in 2014 to describe the oh-so-very dire possible outcome of failed Israeli-Palestinian <del>capitulation to jihad</del> &#8220;peace talks,&#8221; it seemed obvious that the bumbling Bostonian had in mind a withholding of U.S. aid to Israel as one plausible penalty.
The status quo of <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf">mass U.S. aid to Israel</a>, therefore, amounts to a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles#Sword_of_Damocles">sword of Damocles</a> that empowers hardened anti-Israel U.S. policymakers to wield U.S. aid as a cudgel toward achieving their leftist, capitulatory, Islamism-empowering policy goals. There is no reason to ever expect this to change: Contra the bemused lecturing of the likes of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), such quid pro quos and strings attached on foreign aid beneficence are intrinsic to the entire foreign aid edifice itself. The result is to denigrate Israel as little more than an American satrap that must act according to the capricious whims of a foreign superpower. Israeli sovereignty is a casualty — as is Zionism itself.
It therefore ought to make sense that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/20070425_RL33222_ee97f8a100b2abd96b43a0f4d0cc6848e74efb26.pdf">suggested</a> a reduction and eventual phasing out of U.S. aid (technically just economic aid, but Netanyahu&#8217;s logic also applies to military aid) to Israel during his initial prime minister stint during the 1990s. Caroline Glick — arguably the single most consistently <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Israeli-Solution-One-State-Peace-Middle/dp/0385348061">arch-Zionist</a> commentator of the past two decades — has long <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-one-Time-to-walk-away-from-US-aid-462677">believed</a> in phasing out U.S. aid to Israel, going so far as to call military aid a &#8220;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/carolineglick/posts/i-believe-that-us-military-aid-to-israel-is-a-poison-pill-israel-subsidizes-us-m/859228864147869/">poison pill</a>&#8221; for Israel. Venerable Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, a longtime stalwart of the pro-Israel community, <a href="https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffjacoby/2016/09/05/israel-doesnt-need-american-foreign-aid-n2213875">agrees</a>. Not only are Israeli self-determination and Zionism itself undermined, but the median American&#8217;s opinion of the morally and strategically indispensable U.S.-Israel alliance is sullied by crass fiscal considerations. To state the obvious, phasing out the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid from receiving any foreign aid would redound to the interests of U.S. taxpayers.
True, this phasing out cannot happen overnight. True also, there have historically been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/israel-how-bernie-sanders-could-actually-hurt-the-palestinians">real American gains</a> from U.S. aid to Israel. But the reality is that in the long run, contra the more organizationally myopic views of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-what-exactly-current-role-aipac-josh-hammer">powerful organs</a> of the Jewish and pro-Israel establishment, both the United States and Israel alike would benefit from a phasing out and gradual winding down of all U.S. aid to Israel. This conclusion surely strikes many in the pro-Israel community as counter-intuitive, but it is ultimately correct. The integrity of the Zionist project would only be fortified by the Jewish state&#8217;s slowly weaning itself off Uncle Sam&#8217;s fiscal teat.

U.S. Israel flags

HAMMER: The Pro-Israel Case Against U.S. Military Aid To Israel

Middle East

Military

The modern-day Democratic Party is, on any number of issues, simply <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-democratic-party-has-become-parody-itself-josh-hammer">beyond parody</a>. The far-left tail that is the AOC-led &#8220;Squad&#8221; has long come to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">wag the dog</a> that is the institutional party apparatus, and perhaps nowhere is this dynamic more obvious than in the intersection of economics and mathematics that sentient human beings have hitherto referred to as &#8220;sanity.&#8221;
In the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">Communist</a> &#8211; VT) was notable for proposing sundry pie-in-the-sky socialistic nostrums that far outflanked eventual nominee Hillary Clinton on the hard left. In the clown car pile-up that is the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Sanders has once again outdone himself. As economic policy expert Brian Riedl recently broke down for <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/bernie-sanders-expensive-spending-proposals">City Journal</a>, Sanders&#8217; &#8220;current plans would cost as much as $97.5 trillion over the next decade,&#8221; and government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product would rise to an astonishing 70% — or three and a half times the 20% that has been the frequent post-World War II <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S">American norm</a>. The single priciest component of Sanders&#8217; hammer-and-sickle agenda, as the erstwhile Soviet Union honeymooner has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNP-AQlVZKM">conceded</a>, is his bankrupting &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; plan — to the tune of $30–$40 trillion over a ten-year timeframe.
What is simply remarkable is that Sanders&#8217; &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; price tag now looks positively conservative compared to the newly unveiled plan of 2020 Democratic presidential primary rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). As The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ashe Schow <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/elizabeth-warrens-plan-to-fund-medicare-for-all-is-a-complete-fantasy">noted</a> earlier today, Warren&#8217;s new &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; proposal &#8220;would cost $52 trillion over 10 years.&#8221; Proving even more thoroughly that the quixotic Democratic Party mind lies somewhere between the idyllic river of dragon dreams and the paradisal valley of unicorn farts, Warren doubled down on the disingenuous mathematical impossibility that she peddled ad nauseam at the last presidential primary debate and informed us gullible plebeians that her plan will somehow <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/11/01/775335150/read-elizabeth-warrens-plan-to-pay-for-medicare-for-all">not result in middle class tax hikes</a>.
Hmmmm.
As Riedl has <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/8/7/17658574/democratic-socialism-cost-medicare-college-sanders-deficits-taxes">previously</a> <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-deficits-on-the-rise-and-not-because-of-tax-cuts-democrats-will-make-it-worse">demonstrated</a>, there is simply no world in which this exorbitant level of federal spending can be sustained. It is a complete and utter mathematical impossibility. Heck, we as a nation cannot even fiscally sustain our own previously pledged commitments to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-republicans-need-be-adults-and-talk-about-josh-hammer">bankrupting entitlement programs</a>!
But sure, what&#8217;s another $52 trillion in health care going to do, once we&#8217;re all already heading straight for a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/business/international/greece-debt-crisis-euro.html">Greece-style</a> sovereign debt abyss? At this point, the entirety of both the Democratic Party and &#8220;progressive&#8221; economic firmament seem to be unanimously in thrall to the <a href="https://economics21.org/modern-monetary-theory-rational-inflation">economically illiterate</a> fiction that is co-called &#8220;modern monetary theory&#8221; (MMT) — the nonsensical notion, as <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-4588060">explained</a> by Investopedia, that governments that print their own currency &#8220;do not need taxes or borrowing for spending&#8221; because &#8220;they can print as much as they need and are the monopoly issuers of the currency.&#8221; Intellectually honest Democrats would publicly proclaim their fealty to the MMT cabal, in lieu of constantly equivocating when pressed about how they might possibly fund their fiscally ruinous and un-fundable schemes.
Sober-minded citizens have already seen the 2020 Democrats lurch to the far left on all sorts of bread-and-butter cultural and civilizational issues — from border security to religion to abortion to transgenderism. But on perhaps no issue is this crop of hucksters more transparently nutty than on their various plans for perhaps the most rudimentary political issue of all: Government spending.

October Democratic primary debate

HAMMER: The Democratic Presidential Primary Is A Race To The Fiscally Illiterate Bottom

Health Care

Medicare

Obamacare

Last evening, on the verge of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit judicial nominee Lawrence VanDyke&#8217;s confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the much-vaunted American Bar Association (ABA) released a shockingly ad hominem, scathing <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/10/30/2019.10.29_chair_rating_letter_to_graham_and_feinstein_re_nomination_of_lawrence_j.c._vandyke.pdf">letter</a> that concluded that VanDyke is &#8220;Not Qualified&#8221; for his proffered perch. The most shocking paragraph in the ABA&#8217;s letter accuses VanDyke, a religious Christian, of harboring animus against the LGBT community:
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Some interviewees raised concerns about whether Mr. VanDyke would be fair to persons who are gay, lesbian, or otherwise part of the LGBTQ community. Mr. VanDyke would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community.
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This is a vicious and malicious <a href="https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/1189369387263954950">smear</a> made against a good and decent man. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/politics/american-bar-association-nominees-vandyke/index.html">Moved to tears</a> at his confirmation hearing earlier today while questioned by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), VanDyke protested the ABA&#8217;s grotesque libel with an affirmation of the teachings of his Christian faith: &#8220;It is a fundamental belief of mine that all people are created in the image of God. &#8230; [litigants in court] should all be treated with dignity and respect.&#8221;
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Lawrence VanDyke brought to tears because of the shameful and false accusation by the <a href="https://twitter.com/ABAesq?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ABAesq</a> that he holds animus toward the LGBT community. Thank you to <a href="https://twitter.com/SenHawleyPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenHawleyPress</a> for highlighting this injustice. The ABA has lost all credibility for trying to destroy this good man’s life. <a href="https://t.co/4ARyHvw3Zu">pic.twitter.com/4ARyHvw3Zu</a>
&mdash; Gregory T. Angelo (@gregorytangelo) <a href="https://twitter.com/gregorytangelo/status/1189579775414808576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Fellow Judiciary Committee member Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) captured the essence of the whole sordid affair: &#8220;The ABA has lost its credibility as a neutral arbiter; it should be treated no differently than any other special interest group, which it is.&#8221;
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In judiciary hearing <a href="https://twitter.com/SenMikeLee?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SenMikeLee</a> rips <a href="https://twitter.com/ABAesq?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ABAesq</a> over controversial &quot;not qualified&quot; rating for Trump judicial nominee Lawrence VanDyke :
&quot;The ABA has lost its credibility as a neutral arbiter; it should be treated no differently than any other special interest group, which it is.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/8DHwVOGq0E">pic.twitter.com/8DHwVOGq0E</a>
&mdash; Nate Madden (@NateOnTheHill) <a href="https://twitter.com/NateOnTheHill/status/1189637851257982976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 30, 2019</a></blockquote>
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To conservatives, it should be obvious that Sen. Lee is emphatically correct. The ABA, which has also <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/the-confirmation-process-that-was-then-this-is-trump/">attempted</a> to claim other Trump judicial nominee <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/seventeen_judicial_nominees_advance_to_the_senate_including_two_rated_not_q">scalps</a>, is institutionally controlled by leftist trial lawyers and bigwig Democratic Party donors. As Thomas Jipping <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/another-self-inflicted-wound-for-the-aba/">noted</a> this morning for National Review&#8217;s &#8220;Bench Memos&#8221; blog, &#8220;since the 1970s, the ABA House of Delegates has passed hundreds of resolutions on all the hot political topics, all of them taking a liberal position.&#8221; In fact, the lead ABA reviewer of VanDyke, Marcia Davenport, is a partisan Democrat who once <a href="https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/1189362031561990145">donated</a> to VanDyke&#8217;s opponent in his 2014 Montana Supreme Court election. VanDyke, additionally, is qualified by any objective metric: He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, clerked for the highly prestigious former Judge Janice Rogers Brown on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and has entertained a supremely successful career as an appellate litigator. Accordingly, the Judicial Crisis Network&#8217;s Carrie Severino <a href="https://judicialnetwork.com/in-the-news/aba-has-outdone-itself-lvd/">opined</a>: &#8220;The ABA has amassed quite the history of bias against conservatives over the last few decades, but with VanDyke, it has really outdone itself.&#8221;
Indeed.
Over the years, I have heard gripes from no shortage of conservative friends working in the judicial nominations arena that the ABA is a biased, left-wing organization that merely masquerades as politically neutral in the self-interested pursuit of its own institutional clout. This is undoubtedly true — and the obvious solution is to stop treating the ABA&#8217;s ratings with any respect. For both Judiciary Committee Republicans and GOP presidents alike, that requires a systemic disclaiming of any legitimacy for the ABA&#8217;s judicial nominee qualifications. Republicans must resist the urge to tout the ABA&#8217;s more customary &#8220;Well Qualified&#8221; ratings for even the GOP&#8217;s own judicial nominees. Only by refusing to play the ABA&#8217;s game, across the board, will the GOP ever make headway in pushing back against this partisan organization. Much like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-conservatives-how-much-longer-are-you-josh-hammer">judicial supremacist game</a>, the ABA qualifications game is not something that conservatives can ever win.
There is no reason whatsoever to care about how the trial lawyer-dominated ABA vets judicial nominees. But for conservatives, that means that we literally cannot ever care — whether the ABA&#8217;s ratings are helpful or harmful to our cause. Only by demonstrating such consistency will we ever help discredit an organization that deserves nothing but discrediting.
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ABA logo

HAMMER: Who Cares About The ABA’s Judicial Nominee Ratings?

Christianity

Mike Lee

Religion

Transgender

U.S. Attorney General William &#8220;Bill&#8221; Barr has been making quite a name for himself over the past couple of months.
Last month, the attorney general, following the lead of Vice President <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/mike-pence-announces-trump-administration-will-fight-back-lower-court-nationwide-injunctions/">Mike Pence</a>, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/u-s-attorney-general-william-barr-end-nationwide-injunctions/">tore into</a> the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-pence-promises-challenge-nationwide-josh-hammer">erroneous notion</a> that so-called &#8220;nationwide injunctions&#8221; are an appropriate judicial remedy in our constitutional order. The practice of Article III federal judges issuing so-called &#8220;nationwide injunctions,&#8221; Barr averred, &#8220;flouts constitutional principles and stultifies sound judicial administration, all at the cost of public confidence in our institutions.&#8221; In so doing, the attorney general thus took the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-nationwide-injunctions-11567723072">same position</a> on the constitutional unsoundness of &#8220;nationwide injunctions&#8221; that Justice Clarence Thomas took in his <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf">lone Trump v. Hawaii concurrence</a> from June 2018. Justice Thomas may have gone solo in Trump — it is worth emphasizing that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-supreme-court-term-begins-today-here-is-what-conservatives-should-look-for">not a single other</a> purportedly conservative justice joined Thomas&#8217;s concurrence that doubted the constitutionality of &#8220;nationwide injunctions&#8221; — but the attorney general of the United States is now on record as wholly agreeing with him.
Earlier this month, the attorney general one-upped himself, delivering a <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/bill-barr-religious-liberty-warrior/">thunderous disquisition</a> at the University of Notre Dame that functioned as a débutante ball for Barr&#8217;s grand emergence into the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-culture-war-conservatives-congress-should-josh-hammer">culture war</a>. The speech excoriated the pernicious influence of the militant secularists who seek to chase religion wholly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-social-conservatives-must-defend-the-intrinsic-good-of-religion">out of the public square</a>. The speech was nothing short of extraordinary. As legendary jurisprudential theorist Hadley Arkes <a href="https://americanmind.org/essays/bill-barr-gives-a-speech/">put it</a>, Barr &#8220;dr[ew] deeply on some of the best things said and done in the [Western] tradition running back to Athens as well as Jerusalem.&#8221; Barr directly channeled President John Adams&#8217; admonition that &#8220;[o]ur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious [p]eople&#8221; and that it is &#8220;wholly inadequate&#8221; for anyone else. To be sure, the Left shrieked and howled at Barr&#8217;s channeling the <a href="http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Alexis.de.Tocqueville.Quote.8AF2">very best of our distinctly American political tradition</a> — an all-too easily foreseen reaction that, as Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn <a href="http://libertytree.ca/quotes/Alexis.de.Tocqueville.Quote.8AF2">wrote</a>, nonetheless &#8220;is highly revealing of the absolutism of secularist opponents determined to marginalize and destroy anyone who dares dissent from their own uncompromising orthodoxy.&#8221;
To synthesize, the attorney general has spent the last two months both lambasting the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-pence-promises-challenge-nationwide-josh-hammer">preeminent</a> malignant tumor afflicting our constitutional fabric — that of separation of powers-distorting &#8220;nationwide injunctions&#8221; — and unabashedly siding with oppressed religious Americans in their defensive cultural struggle against revanchist secularists who refuse to countenance religion as anything other than vestigial bigotry wholly unfit for inclusion in polite society. Nothing else in our self-governing republic matters unless and until the scourge of rogue &#8220;nationwide injunctions&#8221; is curtailed and, ultimately, eliminated. The attorney general has now expressly telegraphed to the other nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court not named Clarence Thomas that he agrees with Clarence Thomas on these injunctions&#8217; lawlessness. The attorney general, furthermore, has signaled his clear sympathizing with the group of Americans today who are most consistently under cultural and legal siege from the ascendant, institutionally supported forces of overt secularism run amok: Religious Americans.
America is better off for having an attorney general, much like Ed Meese during the Reagan administration, who is so willing to expressly put his thumb on the scale of constitutional order, truth, and justice alike. America is better off for having Bill Barr.

Attorney General William Barr

HAMMER: America Is Better Off For Having Bill Barr

Department of Justice

Supreme Court

William Barr

A new bipartisan piece of legislation, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4189/text?r=4&amp;s=1">Homeland and Cyber Threat Act</a>, seeks to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) to allow U.S. citizens to sue foreign governments for injuries sustained from foreign government-sponsored cyberattacks. As explained yesterday in an op-ed in <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/467226-americans-deserve-protection-from-foreign-sponsored-hacking">The Hill</a> from the bill&#8217;s sponsors, Reps. Jack Bergman (R-MI) and Andy Kim (D-NJ), the bill &#8220;carves out a cyberattack exception to the blanket immunity of foreign governments — including foreign officials, employees, or agents — provided by FSIA with regard to money damages sought by a national of the United States for personal injury, harm to reputation, or damage to or loss of property resulting from cyberattacks.&#8221;
The congressmen point out how, under extant law and federal courts&#8217; interpretation of that law, foreign governments are generally immune from U.S. plaintiffs&#8217; legal actions. Accordingly, the Homeland and Cyber Threat Act would close this legal safe harbor and endeavor to hold hostile foreign governments accountable for their destructive actions against American citizens. The congressmen <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/467226-americans-deserve-protection-from-foreign-sponsored-hacking">argue</a> that times have sufficiently changed since the passage of the FSIA so as to make necessary such a legislative tweak:
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This legislation would go a long way towards providing much-needed legal protection to victims of foreign-sponsored cyberattacks. Foreign governments have been hacking into private data systems to influence politics and policy in the United States for a long time; it is time for Congress to enact a cyberattack exception to FSIA that protects the privacy and property of Americans. The bill would give victims of foreign-sponsored cyberattacks effective recourse to the courts for the first time, and it will hold foreign governments and their agents responsible for these harmful activities.
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As of now, the bill has <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4189/cosponsors?r=4&amp;s=1">10 cosponsors</a>: Five Democrats and five Republicans apiece. The cosponsors include some notable far-left progressives, such as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), and some notable hard-right conservatives, such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
The FSIA was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Sovereign_Immunities_Act">passed in 1976</a>, which was well before the commercial and popular rise of the Internet.
The new bill <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/4189/text?r=4&amp;s=1">lists each of the following</a> as foreign government-sponsored activities that could potentially justify a lawsuit, assuming also that a U.S. citizen has sustained &#8220;personal injury, harm to reputation, or damage to or loss of property&#8221;:
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(1) Unauthorized access to or access exceeding authorization to a computer located in the United States.
(2) Unauthorized access to confidential, electronic stored information located in the United States.
(3) The transmission of a program, information, code, or command to a computer located in the United States, which, as a result of such conduct, causes damage without authorization.
(4) The use, dissemination, or disclosure, without consent, of any information obtained by means of any activity described in paragraph (1), (2), or (3).
(5) The provision of material support or resources for any activity described in paragraph (1), (2), (3), or (4), including by an official, employee, or agent of such foreign state.
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Truly bipartisan pieces of legislation are undoubtedly rare, in today&#8217;s Congress. But much like the issue of holding Big Tech accountable, it seems that the issue of holding hostile foreign governments accountable for cyberattacks could be another issue that gains bipartisan acclaim.

Network security system

Bipartisan Bill Seeks To Hold Foreign Governments Accountable For Hacking Americans

Cyberattack

Lawsuit

National Security

&#8220;Slippery slope theory is a form of logical fallacy.&#8221; – Knaves and fools
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The concerted social push is now unequivocally on to normalize non-monogamous, polyamorous relationships.
Just yesterday, CBS News ran a rather disturbing <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/polyamory-relationships-not-just-one-big-orgy-stigma-of-consensual-non-monogamy-cbsn-originals/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&amp;linkId=75870278">story</a> entitled, &#8220;Not Just &#8216;One Big Orgy&#8217;: Fighting The Stigma Of Consensual Non-Monogamy.&#8221;
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Not just &quot;one big orgy&quot;: Fighting the stigma of consensual non-monogamy <a href="https://t.co/iULDO3NPZ5">https://t.co/iULDO3NPZ5</a> <a href="https://t.co/mbyjkOzYmS">pic.twitter.com/mbyjkOzYmS</a>
&mdash; CBS News (@CBSNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1187509000516132870?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
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The article, we are informed, is timed to coincide with CBS News&#8217; premiering this weekend an original glowing documentary entitled, &#8220;Speaking Frankly: Non-Monogamy.&#8221; The article not-so-subtly attempts to guilt-trip the reader to care more about the purported woes of polyamorous <del>couples</del> people: &#8220;It is illegal in all 50 states to be married to more than one person — which is known as polygamy, not polyamory,&#8221; the reader is told. &#8220;Polyamorous people who try different kinds of arrangements — such as a married couple with steady outside partners — run into their own legal problems.&#8221;
The timing of the CBS News and concomitant documentary overlaps rather naturally with the lascivious new sex scandal involving Congresswoman Katie Hill, Democrat of California. As The Daily Wire has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-democrat-katie-hill-under-investigation-over-sex-scandal">reported</a>, Hill is now under congressional investigation over allegations she engaged in a &#8220;throuple&#8221; sexual relationship with her estranged husband and an erstwhile female campaign staffer, in addition to a separate affair with a congressional staffer. But it is also worth nothing that as far back as 2012, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyamory:_Married_%26_Dating">&#8220;Polyamory: Married &amp; Dating&#8221;</a> became a relatively popular reality TV series. Vice, furthermore, wrote a laudatory <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43y4kd/polyamorists-are-secretive-stigmatized-and-highly-satisfied">piece</a> in 2017 on polyamory entitled, &#8220;Polyamorists Are Secretive, Stigmatized, And Highly Satisfied.&#8221;
Well.
I am only 30 years old, and even I am old enough to remember how leftists and social libertarians alike repeatedly assured us social conservatives that the popular legalization — and, subsequently, imposed constitutionalization via <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf">risible black-robed fiat</a> — of same-sex nuptials would lead to neither a normalization of non-monogamous relationships nor a push for polygamous &#8220;marriage&#8221; itself. Never mind that social conservatives, led by the veritable <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Marriage-Man-Woman-Defense/dp/1594036225">&#8220;What Is Marriage?&#8221;</a>-authoring triumvirate of Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George, quite persuasively pointed out that the only reason human civilization ever came around to the number &#8220;two&#8221; as rightfully constituting a marriage is because it takes precisely two individuals — one biological male and one biological female — to create human offspring. Never mind that social conservatives quite persuasively pointed out that once you remove biologically based sexual complementarity from the definition of marriage, the removal of that underlying number &#8220;two&#8221; would also logically follow. Never mind that social conservatives, led by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, <a href="https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/the-wild-ideas-of-social-conservatives/">persuasively argued</a> that slippery slope social theory is not a &#8220;logical fallacy&#8221; — it is demonstrably borne out by real, tangible civilizational results over the span of at least the past half-century.
We are now here. The push for de-stigmatized polyamory — and, to be sure, the push quite soon for legalized polygamous &#8220;marriage&#8221; — is already unfolding right before our eyes. Purportedly &#8220;objective&#8221; CBS News, after all, is now publishing non-opinion section journalistic content that tries to shame monogamous readers into sympathizing with the legal &#8220;plight&#8221; of the polyamorous.
Those who reliably informed social conservatives that the de-coupling of sexual complementarity from the definition of marriage would not lead to such an obvious eventual social trend ought to now be held accountable for their merely shoddy prognoses, if they are to be given the benefit of the doubt — or their intellectual disingenuousness, if they are not to be given the benefit of the doubt. That would include <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/122042/polygamy-and-same-sex-marriage-arent-arguments-against-each-other">Andrew Sullivan</a> as far back as 1996 and any number of prominent pundits in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision year of 2015 — including  <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/polygamy-not-next-gay-marriage-119614">Jonathan Rauch</a>, <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/06/is-polygamy-next-after-gay-marriage-chief-justice-roberts-obergefell-dissent-says-yes.html">William Saletan</a>, and <a href="https://time.com/3942139/polygamy-is-not-next/">Cathy Young</a>. Each and every one of these pundits and social theorists ought to be challenged and asked why he or she did not possess the logic- and common sense-based prescience to foresee what was so obvious to some of us.
In the interim, those of us who still proudly self-identify as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-social-conservatives-must-defend-the-intrinsic-good-of-religion">social conservatives</a> ought to dig in our heels. We have a new pernicious civilizational trend to fight, and it is happening right now.

same-sex couple

HAMMER: Remember Those Who Told Us Gay Marriage Would Not Lead To Polyamory? They Were Wrong.

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Polygamy

Same-Sex Marriage

Traditional Marriage

As of right now, most national head-to-head polls for the 2020 presidential general election show President Donald Trump losing to his Democratic Party presidential primary rivals. This trend generally holds, regardless of whether the nominee is any of the leading top three Democratic candidates: Former Vice President <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html">Joe Biden</a>, Sen. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_warren-6251.html">Elizabeth Warren</a> (D-MA), or Sen. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html">Bernie Sanders</a> (I-VT).
While the Trump campaign might be tempted to rest on its laurels and sneer at the polls based upon a look back at the perceived polling debacle that was the 2016 presidential election, such a move would be just as haughty as it is myopic. As Harry Enten&#8217;s <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-just-a-normal-polling-error-behind-clinton/">article</a> from November 4, 2016 — that would be four days before the general election — presciently pointed out, in retrospect, polling from the 2016 election cycle was not actually irreconcilable with a Trump victory. Trump obviously trailed Hillary Clinton in the polls, but his victory was actually not outside the realm of polling feasibility — or even outside the realm of polling reasonableness.
As such, the 2020 Trump re-election campaign would be wise to focus on what it can do to win over a larger share of independent, moderate, and suburban voters. In doing so, the Trump campaign would be wise to look back to a much-ballyhooed part of Karl Rove&#8217;s 2004 blueprint for George W. Bush&#8217;s re-election: Specifically, that campaign&#8217;s ingenious focus on the &#8220;<a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/security-moms-bushs-secret-election-weapon-gl6jc8cxr7j">security mom</a>.&#8221; The mythical &#8220;security mom,&#8221; at the time, was symbolized by the proverbial suburban mother who was worried about revanchist Islamist terrorism and sought to protect her home and family against those who would seek to kill us.
Although some of the specific animating issues have changed over the past 15 years, there is tremendous potential this election cycle for Trump to deploy similar messaging and reach out to a similar sect of voters.
Violent crime in America, despite overall dramatically declining since the 1990s, has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-in-defense-of-prosecutors">unfortunately spiked</a> over the past few years. Why isn&#8217;t Trump formally renouncing the <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191004/he-was-released-early-from-prison-in-february-now-hes-wanted-for-murder-on-federal-hill">harrowing</a> First Step Act jailbreak law, the passage of which he apparently already <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-reportedly-regrets-passage-jailbreak-first-step-act-gullible-conservatives-supported/">regrets</a>, and doubling down on &#8220;Willie Horton&#8221;-style anti-crime messaging?
Left-wing Democrats are campaigning harder than ever on anti-Second Amendment, gun-grabbing policy proposals. Why isn&#8217;t Trump leading Republicans on a 2020 platform of cracking down on the gun felons that <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/html/decriminalization-delusion-14037.html">light-on-crime</a> jurisdictions like California seem <a href="https://calmatters.org/gun-violence/2019/10/felons-firearms-california-federal-charges-gun-control-newsom/">hellbent on unleashing</a> upon the general public?
The global jihad — as embodied both by the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-designating-muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-josh-hammer">Muslim Brotherhood</a>, the mother&#8217;s milk of Sunni jihad, as well as more public-facing Islamist outfits like al-Qaeda and Islamic State — continues, 18 years after 9/11, to pose a threat to the U.S. homeland. Why isn&#8217;t Trump running on a platform of discussing not just the wall and border security, but also the arguably even more indispensable issue of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-border-wall-nice-interior-enforcement-nicer-josh-hammer">interior visa enforcement</a>? What about the need to radically <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-never-forget-911-we-need-rethink-how-we-josh-hammer">restructure our immigration policy</a> away from letting in largely unvetted populations of Middle Easterners?
Across the nation, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">neo-Confederate</a> &#8220;sanctuary&#8221; jurisdictions employ anti-<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlevi">Supremacy Clause</a> erroneous legal &#8220;reasoning&#8221; to defy <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiHsv7v4LXjAhWTHM0KHZKMB7gQFjAAegQIAxAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.law.cornell.edu%2Fuscode%2Ftext%2F8%2F1324&amp;usg=AOvVaw2EunpYa249SvA-oBwwFrS2">federal immigration law</a>, ignore ICE detainers on <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/another-illegal-alien-arrested-brutal-rape-notorious-sanctuary-montgomery-county/">violent criminal aliens</a>, and aid and abet the work of the transnational Mexican cartels that traffick drugs and criminals alike into the homeland. Why isn&#8217;t Trump proposing more aggressive policies to strip federal funding away from sanctuary jurisdictions and effectively message to suburban voters that the government will act to help prevent MS-13 thugs from terrorizing their neighborhoods?
There are a myriad other examples, to be sure. But to maximize its 2020 re-election chances, the Trump campaign ought to focus more intensively on appealing to moderates and suburban swing voters. In order to do so, there is no better platform than a safety and security agenda tailored to the very &#8220;security moms&#8221; that President Bush so effectively courted in 2004.

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HAMMER: Trump Needs To Focus On A Safety And Security Agenda For 2020

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

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MS-13 Gang

Violent crime in America, despite experiencing an overall <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/1tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_1_crime_in_the_united_states_by_volume_and_rate_per_100000_inhabitants_1993-2012.xls">dramatic decline</a> since the 1990s, has started to <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/25-years-crime-wave-back-republicans-refuse-talk/">surge back</a> over the past few years. Amidst this distressing social trend, alas, America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/rnc-blasts-kamala-harris-not-pro-criminal-enough/">erstwhile</a> &#8220;law-and-order&#8221;/tough-on-crime political party has been ideologically and financially captured by pro-criminal libertarians who ally with the Left to spout hackneyed, outmoded orthodoxies like the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-dont-let-kim-kardashian-fool-you-america-josh-hammer">alleged (non-)issue</a> of &#8220;mass incarceration.&#8221; The most tangible result of this unholy alliance was the bipartisan 2018 passage of the harrowing First Step Act jailbreak law — a law enactment which President Donald Trump, viewing the <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191004/he-was-released-early-from-prison-in-february-now-hes-wanted-for-murder-on-federal-hill">murderous early results</a>, apparently already <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-reportedly-regrets-passage-jailbreak-first-step-act-gullible-conservatives-supported/">regrets</a>.
Alas, the leftist/libertarian alliance on &#8220;criminal justice&#8221; issues, just highlighted during last night&#8217;s Democratic Party presidential primary debate when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) touted her work with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on the crime-abetting issue of &#8220;<a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/jailbreak-epidemic-gang-member-released-6k-bail-now-accused-raping-12-year-old-girl/">bail reform</a>,&#8221;continues unabated. Which brings us to prominent libertarian lawyer/legal commentator <a href="https://www.cato.org/people/clark-neily">Clark Neily</a>, who has been on a roll, of late. Neily, who spent years with the rabidly <a href="https://ij.org/center-for-judicial-engagement/">pro-judicial power</a> libertarian legal group <a href="https://ij.org">Institute for Justice,</a> now works for the equally <a href="https://www.cato.org/blog/proper-judging-means-principled-engagement-not-judicial-deference">pro-judicial power</a> libertarian Cato Institute. Neily&#8217;s title at Cato is &#8220;Vice President for Criminal Justice&#8221; and, based on his recent musings, he appears to embody the zealous leftist/libertarian jailbreak alliance.
The precise target of Neily&#8217;s recent ire is the prosecutor. More specifically, Neily is convinced that far too many prosecutors become federal judges — and that not nearly enough criminal defense attorneys become federal judges. In a highly revealing but nonetheless sober-minded recognition of his core readership for such anti-prosecutorial musings, Neily has published on the subject at both <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/studies/are-disproportionate-number-federal-judges-former-government-advocates">Cato</a> and, just this week, at left-wing <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/too-many-prosecutors-federal-judiciary.html">Slate</a>. The latter piece goes so far as to call for an outright &#8220;moratorium&#8221; on the nomination of former prosecutors to the federal bench.
I am not a former prosecutor. But I do have the benefit of education at a top law school and the experience of serving as a law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. And I believe Neily is severely misguided in his anti-prosecutor crusade.
Crucially, Neily&#8217;s Cato <a href="https://www.cato.org/publications/studies/are-disproportionate-number-federal-judges-former-government-advocates#summary-previous-studies">study</a> makes no attempt whatsoever to control for education, intellect, or legal credentials. To many lay observers, this may seem anodyne — after all, can&#8217;t former prosecutors and defense attorneys/public defenders, as classes of attorneys, be presumed to have roughly equivalent legal acumens and credentials? Well, no. For generations, gifted law students of all political stripes have seen the prosecutorial career path — be it via the Department of Justice (DOJ), local U.S. attorney&#8217;s offices, state attorneys general offices, or even local district attorneys — as a prominent avenue for vocational success. The DOJ <a href="https://www.justice.gov/legal-careers/entry-level-attorneys">Honors Program</a> has long been viewed as one of the most prestigious entry-level attorney tracks in the nation, and scores of lawyers hoping to one day be considered for a federal judgeship have routinely sought U.S. attorney&#8217;s office experience as a means of padding their resumes and evincing a demonstrable commitment to public service. Again, this holds true for lawyers and judges of all political persuasions and partisan affiliations: As but two prominent examples for those on the Left, 2016 failed Barack Obama U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland is a former federal prosecutor and current presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is a former California attorney general.
This is simply not nearly as broadly true for those who pursue careers in the criminal defense bar — be they in private practice or working as public defenders. Leftists and libertarians can gnash their teeth and wail all they&#8217;d like, but the reality, as I <a href="https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1176324820771819520">tweeted</a> last month, is that in no sane world is the median defense lawyer of the same acumen and credentials as the median prosecutor. Representing drug traffickers, gangbangers, and felons in possession of firearms is not a dream job. Again, my claim is that this holds true for prosecutors and the defense bar, viewed as a class — obviously, there will be innumerable individual dispensations to such a broad rule, when comparing class sizes of this magnitude. But anecdotally, based on (1) my own personal experience knowing many individuals who have become prosecutors and defense lawyers, (2) my own law clerk experience and thinking back to a comparison of the median prosecutor&#8217;s brief and oral argument versus the median defense attorney&#8217;s brief and oral argument, and (3) discussing the issue with other former federal appellate law clerk friends, I feel eminently comfortable making such a claim. We should feel comfortable establishing a rebuttable presumption that prosecutors, considered as a class, have superior legal credentials to defense attorneys. Based purely on my own experience, I cannot even begin to count the volume of public defender&#8217;s office legal briefs I read that were of an immensely shoddy quality.
At a bare minimum, libertarians and leftists who would seek to place a moratorium on nominating prosecutors to federal judgeships ought to be asked how they can be so sure that they are not sacrificing legal acumen or credentials. I understand that such logic is arguably circular — anti-prosecutor libertarians and leftists could respond that such a moratorium may prophylactically disincentivize smart law school graduates who may aspire for judgeships from pursuing prosecutorial careers. But the salient point is that the general prestige of many prosecutorial career paths is so deeply ingrained in our legal culture. That is not something that can be easily reversed, and I highly suspect the criminal defense bar and its apologists have no particularly compelling argument to offer for how they might be able to do so.
Prosecutors do not write our nation&#8217;s criminal statutes — they merely enforce them. To the extent leftists and libertarians — hooked as they are on the anachronistic talking points of &#8220;mass incarceration&#8221; and &#8220;low-level non-violent offenders&#8221; — have substantive issues with our criminal statutes, they ought to lobby policymakers. By all accounts, considering both <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/news/needs-leftists-gop-texas-gov-greg-abbott-endorses-radical-ban-box-pro-criminal-mandate-employers/">state-level initiatives</a> and the aforementioned First Step Act, the pro-jailbreak cabal is quite successful in its lobbying efforts. Pro-jailbreak forces are wrong, on the policy merits, but that is an issue that can be debated in the political space. But it would be dangerous for justice and the rule of law, absent pro-jailbreak forces&#8217; ability to overcome the rebuttable presumption about the credentials of disparate vocational classes, for such forces to also take out their frustrations as part of the judicial nominations process.

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Josh Hammer

Articles by Josh Hammer