Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether President Joe Biden’s alleged cognitive decline enabled unelected staff to enact far-left policies without his informed approval.
According to a letter from Bailey, “Biden’s mental decline is famous,” and staffers “may have exploited Biden’s incapacity so they could issue orders without an accountable President of sound mind approving them.”
He contends that such orders, including mass commutations and pardons for convicted criminals, would be “null and void” if Biden never knowingly approved them.
Bailey cites House Speaker Mike Johnson’s account of Biden’s mental decline heavily impacting his effectiveness as an executive: “Biden did not know what orders he was signing.”
“In January 2024, when Johnson asked Biden about a moratorium on energy exports to Europe, Biden informed Johnson that he thought he had merely signed an order authorizing a study on exports,” Bailey said.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨BREAKING: I am demanding the DOJ investigated whether President Biden’s cognitive decline allowed unelected staff to push through radical policy without his knowing approval.
If true, these executive orders, pardons, and all other actions are unconstitutional and legally void. <a href="https://t.co/pOhATRfw2j">pic.twitter.com/pOhATRfw2j</a>
&mdash; Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) <a href="https://twitter.com/AGAndrewBailey/status/1897388657557885403?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Special Counsel Robert K. Hur released a 345-page report in February on Biden’s handling of classified documents, where Hur detailed early indications of the decline that would eventually lead Biden to drop out of the race just a few months later, as Bailey notes in the letter.
In what was described as &#8220;[t]he loudest public alarm about Joe Biden&#8217;s mental acuity,&#8221; Special Counsel Hur described Biden as an &#8220;elderly man with a poor memory&#8221; who could not even remember when he was Vice President or, even within several years, when his son passed away,” Bailey said about Hur’s report.
In the end, Hur declined to charge Biden, not necessarily for a lack of evidence, but for a seeming lack of competence as a &#8220;well-meaning, elderly man&#8221; with a &#8220;poor memory.”
Bailey points out, “If Biden could not even form a mens rea [criminal intent] for allegedly criminal activity (a low bar), how can anyone have confidence he had the capacity to make decisions as the chief executive of the United States?”
According to high-profile DNC fundraiser Lindy Li, quoted in the letter, “the people who ran our country for the last four years” were his staff, his wife, and his son, Hunter Biden.
Bailey further claims that prominent Democrats and senior staffers, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, heavily restricted Biden’s interactions, creating conditions under which unelected aides could assume disproportionate influence over policy.
Whether the president was fully aware when authorizing key decisions can pose significant constitutional questions and impact the balance of power among the executive branch, Congress, and individual states, with Bailey in particular pointing to Biden vacating the death sentences of several inmates who committed their offenses in Missouri.
And, if it is found that Biden was not competent, “As the Supreme Court recently held, States like Missouri can criminally try individuals under state law even if they already were prosecuted under federal law. States like Missouri need to know whether to pursue that path or similar paths.”
Likewise, the letter references a series of clemencies for roughly 2,500 people described as “non-violent.” Among them, it says, was an individual convicted in the killing of a mother and her 8-year-old child, heightening questions about whether authorities might revisit similar cases if the president himself was not competently directing those actions.
Bailey concludes, “I fear that Mr. Biden, while he held the office of President, did so in name only and was a mere puppet for far-left, unelected staffers. The people deserve to know the truth.”

President Biden Holds News Conference Day After Midterm Elections

Missouri AG Bailey Questions Constitutionality Of Biden Orders, Citing Mental Decline

Biden Campaign

Biden-Harris administration

Constitution

Department of Justice

Joe Biden

Trump Administration

Whenever a new administration takes over the White House, a lot of major changes are obviously going to take place. I&#8217;ve covered many of these changes already in the past few weeks, Trump&#8217;s executive orders and so on. But there are also some minor changes that no one really talks about, even though they may have symbolic significance.
In particular, one of the first moves Trump made when he first took office, back in 2017, was to <a href="https://time.com/4649081/andrew-jackson-donald-trump-portrait/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">install</a> a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office. Jackson was a war hero who served in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, when he led American troops to a historic victory in New Orleans. Jackson was also a populist who wanted the United States to expand and grow its borders because he believed it would benefit the average American. And so, for four years, Jackson&#8217;s portrait remained in the Oval Office.
Then, the minute he became president, Joe Biden quickly removed the portrait. No one in Biden&#8217;s administration could stand to look at Andrew Jackson. They didn&#8217;t destroy the portrait, however, they apparently just put it in storage. So now, four years later, the game of &#8220;Andrew Jackson tug-of-war&#8221; is continuing. The portrait is officially back.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨 First view of the new Oval Office &#8211; ANDREW JACKSON and ABRAHAM LINCOLN can be spotted on the walls. <a href="https://t.co/4r1j2QWHRM">pic.twitter.com/4r1j2QWHRM</a>
&mdash; Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1881429685944635531?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
As you can see from this photo from the Oval Office a couple of weeks ago, Abe Lincoln is on the left, and Jackson is on the right. If you ask a typical Biden supporter about this, they&#8217;ll tell you that this is an outrage, because Andrew Jackson was a slave owner, and on top of that, he wasn&#8217;t exactly a big fan of the Indians. And therefore, he&#8217;s canceled.
That explanation, however, actually misses one of the defining moments of Jackson&#8217;s presidency. A moment that, very soon, could have a lot of relevance for the second Trump term. I am referring to a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1832 which held that the Cherokee Indians were a sovereign nation that had the right to govern themselves, without interference from the states. This was a ruling that threatened to disrupt Jackson&#8217;s plans for American expansion to the West. It was also a major blow to the concept of states&#8217; rights, and it would have significant ramifications for Georgia in particular. Of course, as Jackson saw it, it was also an unlawful ruling. In response to this decision, according to various accounts, Jackson uttered some version of: “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.&#8221;
In other words, when a court — even the Supreme Court — exceeds the limits of its authority, then there&#8217;s no requirement that anyone follow the court&#8217;s rulings. There&#8217;s certainly no way for the courts to compel the executive branch to do anything. So if a court ever goes rogue, and begins to issue rulings that flagrantly disregard the Constitution — as well as the outcome that a majority of Americans want — that&#8217;s how you deal with it. Jackson set that precedent. A century later, FDR built on that idea. When the courts began striking down his New Deal legislation, he threatened to pack the courts. Very quickly, the Supreme Court backed down and started upholding some of those laws.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1535-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
Depending on who you ask, Andrew Jackson and FDR were either villains or heroes in these stories. Either way, their actions illustrate an important point: In our system of checks and balances, everything depends on legitimacy. If courts are seen as legitimate, then their orders are enforced. If courts are seen as illegitimate, then nothing they do really matters. Donald Trump, as a student of Andrew Jackson, certainly understands that. We can assume judges understand this principle as well.
That&#8217;s why the flood of federal injunctions that have already been issued in Trump&#8217;s second term are best understood as a deliberate provocation by the judiciary. Every other day, an unelected federal judge — usually a Left-wing judge — is issuing a nationwide injunction, barring some aspect of Trump&#8217;s agenda. This is happening so frequently that most people don&#8217;t understand the scale of the problem.
So let me run down a non-exhaustive list of some of these injunctions:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Biden judge blocked Trump&#8217;s halt on federal grant spending. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Clinton judge in Massachusetts blocked Trump&#8217;s plan to issue buyouts to federal workers, and also blocked the Trump administration from transferring a trans-identifying man to a man&#8217;s prison facility, where he belongs. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">An Obama judge in New York blocked both DOGE and the Treasury secretary himself from accessing internal Treasury records. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Biden judge in Massachusetts blocked Trump from cutting billions of dollars in fraudulent spending that was earmarked for scientific research, including wasteful overhead, as we discussed yesterday. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Another judge in Washington DC, appointed by Trump, halted the suspension of USAID workers, who were spending billions of dollars orchestrating foreign coups and sponsoring transgender theater. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">An Obama judge in D.C. ordered Trump to reinstate the head of a Special Counsel office. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Reagan judge in D.C. blocked prison officials from transferring trans-identifying men to men&#8217;s prisons. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Three judges — including Biden, Bush and Reagan judges, in New Hampshire, Washington and Maryland — blocked Trump&#8217;s executive order ending birthright citizenship. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">And most recently, a D.C. judge named John Bates issued what may be the single most obviously unconstitutional ruling ever written by a federal judge.</li>
</ul>
Before we get into that last ruling, let&#8217;s take stock of the sheer magnitude of orders listed here, and where they&#8217;re coming from. Without exception, these are judges located in Left-wing jurisdictions. Most of them were appointed by Democrats. And in every case, they&#8217;re unilaterally issuing emergency temporary restraining orders, which are supposed to be an &#8220;extraordinary and drastic remedy,&#8221; according to established legal precedent. If you&#8217;re trying to portray the courts as legitimate, nonpartisan institutions, this simply does not look good. In fact, it&#8217;s a travesty. And it gets much worse when you look at what these rulings are saying. So let&#8217;s go back to the ruling by John Bates.
This ruling prevents the Trump administration from removing content from websites that the Trump administration controls. In fact, the ruling goes further than that, it requires the Trump administration to keep old content from the Biden administration online. That is not an exaggeration. The order, by its own terms, bans the Trump administration from, &#8220;removing or modifying health-related webpages and datasets,&#8221; while also compelling the administration to, &#8220;restore webpages and datasets that they have already removed or modified.&#8221; In other words, an unelected federal judge has just named himself the official web editor of the entire federal government. He&#8217;s saying in effect that the executive branch has no power whatsoever. They can&#8217;t even control what they&#8217;re putting on the internet. Trump, as the president of the United States, and most powerful man in the world, actually doesn&#8217;t even have the power to make alterations to a website.
Specifically, the ruling comes in response to the Trump administration&#8217;s executive order ending gender ideology in the federal government. Pursuant to that order, the administration removed a lot of content from websites that are run by the CDC, HHS, FDA, and so on. Some of that content was related to sex-changes and cross-sex hormones. Some of it included activist research on the risk of suicide among trans-identifying individuals, which of course has been used to justify child castration — instead of treating their obvious mental health condition. Some of the materials had to do with nonsense concepts like &#8220;environmental justice.&#8221; Some of it was about drugs that gay people can take in order to prevent the spread of HIV while they&#8217;re engaging in reckless and dangerous sexual activity. And on and on. Whatever you think of these materials — and you should think they&#8217;re garbage — it&#8217;s clearly within the federal government&#8217;s purview to delete them from their own websites. That is why we have elections.
But Judge Bates disagreed. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/11/judge-orders-cdc-websites-restored/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">He ruled</a> that, “By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.&#8221; He goes on to say that the administration has violated something called the &#8220;Paperwork Reduction Act,&#8221; which is a law that no one knows anything about, or cares about in any way, shape or form.
There&#8217;s more to the ruling, but let&#8217;s stop there and address this part of it. He&#8217;s saying that there&#8217;s &#8220;no explanation&#8221; for why this content was removed. So apparently we can&#8217;t &#8220;reduce&#8221; this particular &#8220;paperwork.&#8221; This would be a compelling argument if the judge were, say, living in a cave with no internet access, or access to newspapers or other human interaction, for the past decade or so. But everyone else understands exactly why the Trump administration is gutting these websites. As we discussed yesterday, activists have taken over scientific and medical research in this country. They have promoted child butchery and other obviously immoral practices, which the overwhelming majority of Americans reject. Trump ran against all of that and he won a resounding victory. That&#8217;s all the &#8220;explanation&#8221; the federal judge should require.
Then the judge goes on to offer another explanation for his ruling. Again, from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/02/11/judge-orders-cdc-websites-restored/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the decision</a>: 
<blockquote>If those doctors cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions.</blockquote>
The judge is now claiming that doctors are reliant on government websites in order to treat their patients. As proof of this, he cites a doctor from Yale who says it now takes her a little longer to prescribe contraception to her patients. Without these websites, she&#8217;s totally clueless. Her medical school training wasn&#8217;t enough; her residency wasn&#8217;t enough; her years of practice weren&#8217;t enough; her access to thousands of research papers isn&#8217;t enough. She needs a small handful of government websites in order to do her job, apparently. Now, if we take this claim literally, of course it means that this doctor is incompetent to practice medicine. Instead, the judge takes it as proof that he needs to dictate what content goes on the internet.
If you go through any of the other 10 million injunctions that judges have filed against Trump so far, you&#8217;ll find that this kind of reasoning — as egregious as it is — is pretty much the norm. Judges are taking anecdotal claims from activists, and they&#8217;re using them to throw up roadblocks in the way of the new administration. And they&#8217;re doing it so that CNN can report that Trump is causing a &#8220;constitutional crisis,&#8221; when in fact the judges are the ones doing that. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&gt;&gt; <a href="https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@kaitlancollins</a>: &quot;We are three weeks into the second Trump presidency, three weeks, and tonight, there are warnings that the U.S. is dangerously close to a constitutional crisis.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/PCHCm6MmRf">pic.twitter.com/PCHCm6MmRf</a>
&mdash; Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1889144671231693086?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
As you just heard, there are hints in that reporting that the Trump administration may not comply with some of these orders. Trump himself hasn&#8217;t come out and said that. He&#8217;s apparently weighing his options at this point. But as this continues — which it inevitably will — the Andrew Jackson solution is going to become more and more appealing. And ultimately it will be necessary.
To be very clear about this: There is nothing in the constitution that gives any random federal judge absolute power to override anything the president does or any decision he makes at any time. If a single judge in a place like New Hampshire or Washington can decide that the president can&#8217;t reduce foreign aid, or fire his own employees, or kick men out of women&#8217;s prisons, or even control the content that&#8217;s posted on government websites, then essentially the president has no power at all. That&#8217;s the result the Left obviously wants. And now that the deep state and the career bureaucrats are being terminated, they see the courts as their only hope.
That&#8217;s why Chuck Schumer (D-NY) just spoke on the floor of the Senate, declaring that courts are essentially infallible, and their rulings must always be honored. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 Schumer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MwdXu6Ro1d4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
If you remember just a couple of years back, Democrats like Schumer were standing in front of the Supreme Court, threatening individual judges over their rulings. AOC was telling Anderson Cooper that Biden should just ignore Supreme Court rulings — and he did. He admitted that the Court had struck down his plan to cancel student loans, so he just went ahead and implemented it anyway. Now these same Democrats are maintaining that judges should never be questioned, under any circumstances.
The reality of course is somewhere in the middle. Judges are not infallible. They can deliberately and maliciously violate the Constitution, just like anyone else can. And when that happens — when a judicial coup is underway — a response is necessary. We&#8217;re not talking about one or two bad rulings here. We&#8217;re not talking about rulings that block a handful of policy goals or anything like that. We&#8217;re at the point where the president is not being allowed to do anything. He can&#8217;t even edit a website anymore. Left-wing judges are issuing emergency injunctions without even deciding actual cases.
The only way to get us out from under this judicial tyranny is for Trump to disregard these orders and for Congress to impeach the judges responsible for them. Throughout our history, there have only been a handful of times when presidents have needed to consider drastic action like this. The country was clearly better off because Andrew Jackson did it. And now, two centuries later, it&#8217;s equally clear that this country would be better off if the Trump administration followed in Jackson&#8217;s footsteps and dared these judges to enforce these rulings. They couldn&#8217;t do it, obviously. They would complain and issue more injunctions and more opinions. Meanwhile, the rest of us — people who want to see this country improve — will get exactly what we voted for.

TOPSHOT-US-JORDAN-DIPLOMACY-TRUMP-ABDULLAH II

Tyrannical, Power Hungry Judges Attempt To Seize Total Control Of The Government

Abraham Lincoln

Andrew Jackson

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Donald Trump

Federal Government

Judges

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Opinion

President Trump

While Democrats are screaming that the Trump administration is fomenting a “constitutional crisis” by contending that leftist activist judges are impeding the administration’s agenda, they were singing a different tune during the Biden administration, when they were only too willing to advise ignoring judges’ rulings.
On January 31, District Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island issued a <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.58912/gov.uscourts.rid.58912.50.0_2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">temporary restraining order</a> blocking the Trump administration from freezing payments for grants and other programs.
On Sunday night, President Trump said, “Well, you&#8217;ve got some very bad rulings, and it&#8217;s a shame to see it, frankly. They want to sort of tell everybody how to run the country when they say that certain people in charge of massive agencies or people doing very, very &#8212; important people, smart people &#8212; doing investigations of fraud, and they don&#8217;t talk about what you&#8217;re looking at. All they just say is, oh, it&#8217;s unconstitutional. Judges should be ruling; they shouldn&#8217;t be dictating what you&#8217;re supposed to be doing.”
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Vice-President Vance <a href="https://x.com/JDVance/status/1888607143030391287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">echoed</a>. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that&#8217;s also illegal. Judges aren&#8217;t allowed to control the executive&#8217;s legitimate power.”
On Monday, McConnell accused the Trump administration of ignoring his order, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/02/10/nx-s1-5292342/trump-federal-funding-freeze-restraining-order" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arguing</a> that the Trump administration was working “to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” adding that the freeze was “likely unconstitutional and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.”
Democrats and their allies in the media then heightened their rhetoric. &#8220;This isn&#8217;t hyperbole to say that we are staring the death of democracy in the eyes, right now,&#8221; Democrat Senator Chris Murphy (CT) exclaimed Monday night. “The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings. Criminal court rulings, civil court rulings and constitutional court rulings. No one is above the law. And whether we like it or not, the courts interpret the law.”
“If the President of the United States says, ‘You know what, I don&#8217;t care what the courts say, I&#8217;m going to do whatever the hell I want,’ that&#8217;s essentially the end of the rule of law,” he declared. “Because if the President isn&#8217;t bound by our laws and the Constitution, then why would anybody else be bound by our laws and the Constitution? &#8230;. If they were to openly declare that because they disagree with, for instance, a court&#8217;s order to reopen USAID, or to get Elon Musk out of the Treasury Department, simply because on the merits, they disagree with the court&#8217;s ruling, then you are clearly in the most serious constitutional crisis.”
Legacy media outlets are following the Democrats&#8217; lead on the issue. “Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk and others in the Trump administration are openly challenging the centuries-old power of the nation’s judiciary, foreshadowing a possible constitutional breakdown of American government,” CNN&#8217;s chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/politics/constitutional-crisis-trump-overhaul-analysis-biskupic/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asserted</a>.
The New York Times joined the effort in an article titled, “Trump’s Actions Have Created a Constitutional Crisis, Scholars Say.” “Law professors have long debated what the term means. But now many have concluded that the nation faces a reckoning as President Trump tests the boundaries of executive power,” the Times&#8217; Adam Liptak <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/us/politics/trump-constitutional-crisis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.
Yet Democrats and their allies in the media took a very different approach when Biden was in office. In February 2023, Democrat Senator Ron Wyden (OR) <a href="https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-delivers-floor-speech-calling-on-president-biden-and-the-fda-to-keep-mifepristone-on-the-market-regardless-of-outcome-in-texas-case" target="_blank" rel="noopener">advised</a> the Biden administration to ignore a Texas judge’s ruling on abortion, stating:
<blockquote>
There are moments in history where Americans and their leaders must look at circumstances like this one and say, “Enough.” &#8230; A judge’s rulings stand because elected leaders and citizens have agreed that abiding by them is right and necessary to uphold the rule of law. That’s part of the social contract in America. 
But the judiciary must uphold its end of the social contract too. It must follow the rule of law and earn the confidence of the American people continually, every day, every month, every year. The awful reality is, from the moment this case landed in front of Judge Kacsmaryk, it’s been a rigged game all along. It’s illegitimate. The case is an affront to the Constitution and to the rule of law in the United States of America. 
So here’s what must happen if and when Judge Kacsmaryk issues his nationwide injunction halting access to mifepristone. 
President Biden and the FDA must ignore it. 
</blockquote>
New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-aoc-lashes-out-at-abortion-pill-decision-says-biden-should-ignore-this-ruling/">echoed</a> the call to ignore the court two months later, <a href="https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1889337281518969102">telling</a> Anderson Cooper of CNN: &#8220;I think we&#8217;ve been preparing and anticipating for there being these egregious overreaches by members of the judiciary appointed by a right-wing Republican Party, whose goal for a very long time was to just pack these Courts with partisan Judges often under qualified or completely unqualified for the for their role. And so there has been thought I believe given to this. Senator Ron Wyden has already issued statements, for example, advising what we should do in situations like this, which I concur, which is that I believe that the Biden administration should ignore this ruling.&#8221;

Baby crying, screaming and howling, close-up

Dems Cry ‘Constitutional Crisis’ If Trump Ignores Leftist Judges. Here’s What They Told Biden.

Biden Administration

Democrats

Judiciary

How much difference can one word make? 
 
Some Virginia legislators seem curiously eager to find out—and if they do, the people of the commonwealth may be worse for the experiment. 
 
Senate Joint Resolution 249 (and its House counterpart, H.J. 9) is now working its way through the state’s General Assembly. If enacted by two consecutive legislatures and approved by the people, the proposed amendment would alter Virginia’s constitution to say that any lawful marriage must be recognized by state and local officials without regard to sex, race, or—and here’s that ominous word—“gender.”
What’s the difference between “gender” and “sex?” Well, the latter is fixed: a person is born and remains either a man or a woman. The former is fluid, distilled from the notion that one’s sexual identification is somehow different from (and more important than) one’s natural biology … and can change sometimes even over the course of a day.
Amending the state’s foundational document to put gender in the same category as sex and race in issuing marriage licenses would be a radical step—and there are five reasons for state legislators to think twice before taking it, especially now during National Marriage Week.
<h3>First, when government officials elevate gender and gender identity in law, we’ve seen chaos and the abuse of longstanding fundamental rights.</h3>
Look at some of the biggest cultural issues in America today: men in women’s sports, school officials withholding information from parents about their child’s gender confusion, and activists pushing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children. These were born out of legally separating sex from gender identity. Bad ideas—especially those enshrined in the constitution—have victims. And more often than not, it’s our children who suffer the most.
<h3>Second, passing this amendment will issue activist judges a license to pursue a radical agenda. </h3>
Adding “gender” to the Virginia Constitution could give these judges a basis for pushing a more comprehensive constitutional embrace of “gender” and potentially block legislators from passing laws that accurately reflect the distinctions between women and men.
<h3>Third, the amendment is unnecessary.</h3>
The sponsors of this resolution profess concern that rights to interracial and same-sex marriage might somehow be taken away. But both are already protected by federal law: Interracial marriage was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Loving decision (1967); same-sex unions were affirmed in the high court’s Obergefell ruling (2015). What’s more, the Virginia General Assembly passed a law last year virtually identical to the one in question. What they want this amendment to do has already been done—and the legislators pushing this resolution have to know that. Which means …
<h3>Fourth, they must have another reason for pushing it.</h3>
If these legislators are—as they claim—only worried about preserving same-sex marriage, they could have just added the word “sex” to their proposed amendment. A person’s gender identity has never been the basis for holding back a marriage license. The whole argument for same-sex unions was to change the historic definition of marriage as the legal binding of two people of the opposite biological sex. Gender has never come into the discussion.
<h3>Fifth, this resolution includes a conspicuous exclusion. A prior version included religious liberty protections, but they were removed.</h3>
What can the reason be for excising religious liberty guarantees from the proposed amendment? Those protections ensure that those who sincerely believe marriage is the sacred union of one man and one woman are not compelled to assist or participate in other celebrations of marriage. The religious protections that were part of that near-identical law passed last year drew significant ire from opponents during a hearing related to the bill and now have been eliminated from the language under consideration. There’s no reason for that omission, apart from a deliberate intent to curtail religious freedom in regard to this issue.
All of which raises a lot of questions about the intentions of those sponsoring this far-reaching resolution. And those concerns give Virginians who value the rights, health, and safety of women—of engaged and caring parents wanting the best for their children—and of conscientious people of faith—a lot of reasons to look closely at Senate Joint Resolution 249 and its House companion. 
 
One word, carefully placed, could bring a great deal of unwanted change to Virginia. Here’s hoping a word to the wise is timely enough to change that.
 * * *
Gregory S. Baylor is senior counsel and director of the Center for Religious Schools with <a href="http://www.adflegal.org/">Alliance Defending Freedom</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/ADFLegal">@ADFLegal</a>).
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Richmond Virginia State Capitol

How A Single Word Is Poised To Play Havoc With Virginia’s Laws, Culture

How A Single Word Is Poised To Play Havoc With Virginia's Laws, Culture

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF)

Gender

Gender Identity

Marriage

Transgender

Virginia

Today is the first day of the second Trump administration. That&#8217;s a sentence that, just four years ago, would&#8217;ve been hard, if not impossible, to imagine saying out loud. In order to prevent today&#8217;s inauguration, Trump was indicted multiple times, defamed, sued, kicked off the ballot in multiple states, and ultimately shot in the head. But against all odds, none of those tactics worked and as a result, Donald Trump is currently, once again, the president of the United States.
There are a lot of ways you can measure the extent of the historic transformation that this country is about to undergo. You could look at the hundreds of executive orders that Trump is signing today — orders that will enable oil drilling, end DEI in the military, establish the Department of Government Efficiency, secure the border, and so on. You could also look at how our culture is clearly changing, as evidenced by the steady stream of tech executives and celebrities who are now publicly supporting Trump. Censorship, open borders, and political oppression aren&#8217;t appealing to most Americans. And now their government will finally reflect that.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1518-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
But maybe the best way to measure our country&#8217;s imminent transformation is to pay attention to what the Biden administration did on their way out the door. The contrast tells the whole story. With very little fanfare, and with no legal authority whatsoever, just days ago, the Biden administration announced that it has the unilateral authority to amend the U.S. Constitution. They went ahead and declared that we have 28 amendments now, instead of 27.
Before I get into the specifics of the amendment these people think they&#8217;ve added to the Constitution, let&#8217;s be clear about something: Amending the U.S. Constitution is one of the most difficult and carefully considered actions the American people can take. The framers made sure of that. It&#8217;s supposed to require a near-total buy-in of the country. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s only happened 27 times in our history. And the Biden administration, just before leaving office for good, decided to pre-empt that entire process, and give all of that authority to themselves. They did it at a time when their political capital was at its lowest. They did it after Americans made it very clear that they&#8217;re tired of this administration, and want them out of office.
That is the contrast between the Biden administration and the current Trump administration. That is the transformation we&#8217;re undergoing right now as a country. We are moving from lawlessness and authoritarianism, back to the system of Constitutional order that&#8217;s held this country together for centuries.
In case you missed this unprecedented and frankly very bizarre power grab, here&#8217;s Joe Biden the other day, announcing out of nowhere that we now have a new 28th amendment, called the &#8220;Equal Rights Amendment.&#8221; It&#8217;s supposedly our first new amendment in more than three decades. Watch:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Biden thinks he can unilaterally declare a 28th Amendment to the Constitution — which, of course, he can&#39;t do because it wasn&#39;t ratified in time. <a href="https://t.co/q0VloRY0JA">pic.twitter.com/q0VloRY0JA</a>
&mdash; RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1880333008752021912?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Normally, in the final days of a presidential administration, you pretty much know what to expect. You&#8217;ll get a farewell address. Moving vans will arrive at the White House. There will be a bunch of questionable pardons. And then they&#8217;ll leave. But this time, they&#8217;re throwing in a constitutional amendment on their way out. They&#8217;re altering the founding document of the entire country. And they&#8217;re doing it in the same way that Michael Scott declared bankruptcy in &#8220;The Office.&#8221; By just standing up and literally declaring it. Though I have to admit, I never thought &#8220;The Office&#8221; would provide the precedent for the president of the United States to amend the Constitution. But here we are.
Of course, what makes this whole situation even more disturbing is that everyone knows that Joe Biden didn&#8217;t come up with the idea to suddenly ratify a new amendment. Whoever&#8217;s running the government decided to do this — and it stands to reason that they did it for a reason. So why would some unnamed bureaucrats in an unpopular, outgoing Democrat administration decide to do something like this?
That&#8217;s a question worth digging into. In case you&#8217;re not familiar with the background of the so-called &#8220;Equal Rights Amendment,&#8221; here it is. It was first introduced in Congress in 1923, and it guarantees that everyone will receive equal treatment under the law, regardless of their sex. Of course, we already had an Equal Protection Clause in the Constitution. But various factions in the feminist movement thought they needed an additional guarantee of equality for one reason or another. (Meanwhile, other factions actually wanted women to have more rights than men, so they opposed the amendment).
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In any event, that&#8217;s what began the process of making the so-called &#8220;Equal Rights Amendment&#8221; into an actual amendment. Congress approved it, and sent it to the states. And under our Constitution, three-fourths of state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to take effect. Additionally, Congress set a seven-year deadline for ratification, which expired in 1979.
By 1979, three-fourths of state legislatures had not, in fact, ratified the amendment. In fact, several states that initially ratified it, ended up rescinding their ratification. So that&#8217;s it. Or at least, it should be it. As the DOJ announced in 2020, &#8220;We conclude that Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a deadline on the ratification of the ERA and, because that deadline has expired, the ERA Resolution is no longer pending before the States.&#8221; Then, in 2022, under the Biden administration, the DOJ affirmed that decision.
That same year, Kamala Harris put out <a href="https://x.com/VP46Archive/status/1486752613475356673">this tweet</a>: 
<blockquote>The principle of gender equality belongs in our Constitution. The President and I are calling on Congress to pass a resolution recognizing ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. The time has come.</blockquote>
That never happened, either. But last week, in defiance of its own DOJ and its own prior statements, the Biden administration decided to just come out and announce that the 28th Amendment is somehow real. As Kamala Harris put it: &#8220;The Equal Rights Amendment is the 28th Amendment, and it is the law of the land.&#8221;
So, this still leaves the question: What exactly is going on here? Some people have pointed out that the national archivist, who has the responsibility of officially publishing amendments, isn&#8217;t actually doing so. And the Biden administration isn&#8217;t ordering the archivist to do it, either — which may indicate that they understand this is all a meaningless political stunt. Maybe they just want to rile up the base in their last days in office, for some reason. That would be completely pointless, obviously. But then again, these people obviously don&#8217;t have the best political instincts.
But there&#8217;s reason to think they&#8217;re going for something else. All weekend, a bunch of high-profile Democrats put out tweets, in lockstep, praising this new fake &#8220;amendment.&#8221; But one of those Democrats — Kirsten Gillibrand — gave the game away. She hinted, very strongly, at the Democrats&#8217; goal here.
Here&#8217;s what <a href="https://x.com/SenGillibrand/status/1880292668611162502">she wrote</a>:
<blockquote>This is an incredible moment for reproductive freedom, and a historic day for equality – especially with Americans facing the further degradation of reproductive freedom as the incoming administration takes power. Now, women living in states with restrictions on their reproductive freedoms can – and should – file suits to overturn these unconstitutional laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. I know they will have ample support as they seek justice, and I promise to stand by their side in this fight.</blockquote>
So that&#8217;s the tell. Gillibrand is spelling it out. The goal is to give activists a pretext to file lawsuits against abortion bans. Here&#8217;s what they want to argue: Abortion bans discriminate on the basis of sex, because they only affect women. And therefore, they violate this new Constitutional amendment, and must be struck down.
There are about a million problems with this argument. For one thing, the hypocrisy is so off-the-charts that it&#8217;s comical. Democrats have spent the last decade telling us that &#8220;men can get pregnant.&#8221; And now, they&#8217;re insisting that abortion bans discriminate against women on the basis of sex, because only women can get pregnant. Once again, they&#8217;re trying to have it both ways.
<h3><a href="https://www.amiracist.com/?_gl=1*jtghwp*_gcl_au*ODQ1NjYzNTg2LjE3Mjg5MDk3OTE.*_ga*MTc2NzM0NDQ2NS4xNzI4OTA5Nzkx*_ga_CZKR9ZYKJP*MTczMDEyMDgwOS40OS4xLjE3MzAxMjA4MzkuMzAuMC4w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MATT WALSH&#8217;S &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; NOW STREAMING ON DAILYWIRE+</a></h3>
But there&#8217;s an even bigger issue for Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand, which is that the Dobbs decision explicitly held that laws against abortion do not constitute &#8220;sex discrimination.&#8221; The Supreme Court could not have been more clear about this.
From the majority opinion by Justice Alito: &#8220;A State’s regulation of abortion is not a sex-based classification.&#8221;
In other words, even if Democrat activists do go to court, and manage to convince a Left-wing judge in California that this fake amendment is real, it still doesn&#8217;t matter — because the Supreme Court has already ruled that it&#8217;s not &#8220;sex discrimination&#8221; to prevent a child from being slaughtered.
What this means is that, on their way out the door, Democrats have done a fantastic job illustrating why they&#8217;re no longer in power. They have demonstrated, once again, that they have no regard whatsoever for the Constitution they&#8217;re supposedly sworn to protect. And at the same time, they&#8217;ve demonstrated their complete incompetence — because even if this bizarre, last-minute scheme had actually convinced anyone that we now have a 28th Amendment to the Constitution, it still wouldn&#8217;t overturn abortion bans anywhere. This fake amendment is the perfect capstone to Joe Biden&#8217;s four years in office. It is fundamentally anti-American, illegal and laughably corrupt. And just like this fake amendment, after today, no one will have any reason to think about the Biden administration ever again.

US-POLITICS-TRUMP-INAUGURATION

Joe Biden Makes One Last Insane Power Grab Before Leaving For Good

Congress

Equality

Inauguration

Kamala Harris

U.S. House of Representatives

The following is an edited transcript of an interview on an <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Exclusive edition of Morning Wire</a>. Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley sits down with CEO, president, and general counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, Kristen Waggoner, and Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon about a new lawsuit over censorship.
Earlier this month, California’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-set-out-to-ban-memes-to-protect-their-power" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gavin Newsom signed</a> first-in-the-nation “deepfake” laws – a move that came just weeks after he said a Kamala Harris online parody video should be “illegal.” While the Democrat governor’s office is celebrating the laws as a “safeguard” against the use of “deceptive” digital content, conservatives say this is a massive violation of free speech.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us now to discuss for the first time the lawsuit they have just filed today against the state of California is Seth Dillon, CEO of the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/babylon-bee">Babylon Bee</a>, and Kristen Waggoner, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Seth and Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. Now you’ve partnered to sue over these new laws just recently signed by Governor Newsom. First, Seth, I’d like to ask you, why did you feel compelled to bring this lawsuit?
SETH: Well, I guess a number of things. We started out the Bee as a comedy site that&#8217;s mission was just to tell jokes on the internet. And over the course of the last several years – you know, the Bee’s been around for eight years now, if you can believe that – and for most of that time for the last six years, we&#8217;ve been battling either big state, big tech censorship or state laws that clamp down on speech with either rules against misinformation, rules against hate speech, laws now that we see popping up trying to prevent parody, the use of deep fakes, memes, things of that nature. And so we&#8217;re concerned about freedom of speech first and foremost, but we&#8217;re also concerned about our business, and when you&#8217;re doing satire, when you&#8217;re parodying people, you&#8217;re adopting their voice, you&#8217;re adopting their likeness. Satirical articles are meant to look like real articles and that&#8217;s the hook that pulls you in and then you hit them with a punchline. So, Babylon Bee&#8217;s content requires that we engage in this satire, where we&#8217;re adopting a voice and a viewpoint and using that to mock and ridicule a subject. And this law in particular – well, there are a couple of laws in play here – but one of them affects content creators, specifically satirists and people doing parody by requiring them to put disclaimers to let you know that this is parody that you&#8217;re reading right now – which completely stifles and kills the joke. It disrupts our ability to do what we do the way that we do it, in the voice we do it in. And so that&#8217;s very problematic for us. If we&#8217;re unable to publish satire without putting disclaimers all over it, and we&#8217;re going to face potentially penalties if we don&#8217;t do that, then that&#8217;s a very serious issue too. So we&#8217;re fighting back in every way we can against laws that clamp down on speech. So this is just one more, this is just the latest example of an effort where the state is now basically turning these social platforms into an arm of their censorship apparatus and coming after satirists like us very aggressively. So, we see that as an important thing that needs to be pushed back on.
JOHN: Right – and this brings us to the legal arguments here. Kristen, can you lay out the legal case that you&#8217;re bringing against California?
KRISTEN: I can. These laws that were passed in California target core political speech. These laws were passed by politicians to protect politicians from speech that they don&#8217;t like. I&#8217;ll point to two in particular. The first law is used to punish speakers for posting political commentary online that the government doesn&#8217;t like, decides is materially deceptive content, and it is targeting that content that affects candidates or election officials and what they say might harm their chances of getting elected. It also allows anybody to file a lawsuit if they want to file a lawsuit regarding a post. So in addition to what Seth talked about with regard to these disclaimers that actually defeat the whole point of the joke, they also subject all kinds of people – me and you – to saying, ”Well, should I repost this or not? Because what if it gets me sued?” It&#8217;s deeply disturbing and sets a roadmap for widespread censorship across the nation.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Seth Dillon and Kristen Waggoner on Morning Wire</a></h3>
JOHN: So this isn&#8217;t just for companies. This is for individuals. This applies to individuals posting any content online, even reposting content. Is that correct?
KRISTEN: Yes, that&#8217;s correct.
JOHN: So this really opens the floodgates legally. Have we seen anything similar to this in any other states?
KRISTEN: We&#8217;ve seen censorship writ large in Western democracies now outside of the United States. And I think it&#8217;s important for Americans to understand that the United States is the last country in the Western world, among Western democracies, to protect free speech, to protect core political speech. The last people who should be doing the fact-checking are the political candidates and Gavin Newsom – and that&#8217;s what these laws do. They&#8217;re incompatible with self-government and democracy.
JOHN: How much of a burden is this to the platforms – this is a threat to the platforms as well if the state decides they&#8217;re not properly policing content, correct? 
KRISTEN: It&#8217;s absolutely a threat. It is a roadmap to widespread censorship. There&#8217;s no question about it, and there is no law that has gone this far. If we want to maintain a free society, if we want self-government, if we want democracy, then we can&#8217;t allow Gavin Newsom to tell us what we can post and what we can&#8217;t post.
JOHN: Elon Musk’s platform X is obviously fighting against censorship laws. Are any other platforms pushing back on these new laws? 
KRISTEN: Yes, I believe there will be more platforms that will push back on it. One of the problems with this law is that it&#8217;s so vague. In certain parts, it&#8217;s even hard to know what it says. And if the lawyers are having trouble explaining it, imagine what the average person is going to have to do to be able to repost something and feel like they won&#8217;t get sued for it. So there is one lawsuit that&#8217;s pending right now related to a post, and this is the second lawsuit. And I expect you&#8217;ll see more. I hope you will see more.
JOHN: Now you brought up fact-checking. I know this is something that Seth has talked about a lot, and here at The Daily Wire, obviously, we&#8217;ve dealt with this firsthand. We have a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-slaps-down-biden-administrations-attempt-to-dismiss-daily-wire-censorship-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">current lawsuit</a> related to the Biden administration’s collusion with fact-checking groups. Central to this is the idea that the state can actually identify what is true or not true, and that they are the arbiters of that. What is the legal case against that kind of suppression via “fact-checking”?
KRISTEN: The legal case is that the free speech clause of the First Amendment in the United States Constitution — as well as a number of state constitutions — protects our right as Americans to be able to decide what is true, what is false, what is worthy of being said in the public square. We necessarily understand that if you allow the government to decide what speech is worthy of being given voice to, you are not only impairing the right to self-government and to impose a check on government officials, but you&#8217;re also impairing the pursuit of truth and social progress. We know in particular satire and parody have been used since the days of Voltaire and George Washington and Aristotle. Political satire has been used to reveal truth, to shock people into considering things in a new way. It serves a vibrant purpose, particularly in public debate.
JOHN: Now the argument presented by advocates of these censorship laws often focuses on “misinformation” – that “misinformation” is dangerous for the public. We saw a lot of this during the COVID era. But you see this really highlighted in satirical content, in particular. The Babylon Bee has really led the way on this issue, highlighting the fact that this distinction between satire and straight news is not made – often in a very disingenuous way by the people that have the authority to block content on social media platforms. Seth, how have you seen this play out writ large in the last few years?
SETH: Well, it&#8217;s funny you mentioned COVID. That whole scenario seemed like satire to me as I was watching it, and then watching the excuses they were making for the censorship. You remember they were telling you what you were and weren&#8217;t allowed to say based on whatever the prevailing narrative was. Whatever the CDC says you&#8217;re allowed to say or whatever Fauci says you&#8217;re allowed to say, that&#8217;s permitted, but you can&#8217;t challenge that. Then, later on, as the facts changed and people realized some of the things that they were saying were wrong— it was actually the case that many people had been speaking the truth and had been censored. And it just really highlights the fundamental problem with trying to decide up front what the truth is. Kristen mentioned a moment ago the utility of being able to speak freely. Part of that is truth seeking. You have to be able to debate ideas and challenge ideas rather than just arbitrarily deciding at any given moment in time what&#8217;s true. If knowledge changes over time, then it may turn out that you&#8217;re censoring people who are speaking the truth today. And that&#8217;s exactly what we saw with COVID. That is actually a knockdown argument against censorship for what they were doing with COVID and the way that the facts actually played out and disrupted some of those narratives. And so with “misinformation,” we&#8217;ve seen our jokes fact-checked so many times and we&#8217;ve been threatened with de-platforming and demonetization so many times by a number of these different platforms.There are state laws that are trying to clamp down on the spread of misinformation or on hate speech. And so, on the one hand we want to just kind of mock and make fun of that stuff, and on the other, we have to take it very seriously and push back with legal challenges when necessary.
JOHN: ADF is really leading the charge on those challenges. Kristen, what other kinds of cases are related to this that your team has been a part of? 
KRISTEN: Well, we&#8217;ve seen government censorship play out here in the United States. First of all, in cases like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cake Shop, where laws have been weaponized to force people to say things that they don&#8217;t believe and to face severe punishment in some states, even jail time for declining to speak messages about marriage and other topics. Then, we have moved to instances where pregnancy resource centers, for example, are facing assaults right now to have to refer to abortion — or to essentially express speech that violates their pro-life beliefs. We have a case right now at the US Supreme Court that we&#8217;re asking the Court to hear involving the right of a young boy in school who simply wants to say that there are two genders on his T-shirt when all of his colleagues are wearing things that suggest otherwise. So we are seeing this across the spectrum. We litigate more cases in this area than anyone else. But I also want to highlight the international perspective right now, because we have cases on five continents. We have congressmen in Mexico we&#8217;re defending; someone on death row in Nigeria. We had a trial this week in the UK for someone who engaged in silent prayer. Peru just had a criminal conviction, a case that we won this last week. So this is an all out assault by government officials. The World Economic Forum right now says its greatest threat is “misinformation” and “disinformation.” And when the public hears those words, they should understand what that means is government censorship. Someone who wants control will first take away the right to speak freely, and our First Amendment says that it&#8217;s up to the American people to decide and to think for themselves in the context, particularly of political debates. And we need to make sure that stays the same way and that those laws are upheld, despite what California&#8217;s trying to do here. One last thing on this that we haven&#8217;t even touched on is that this California law actually sets up social media platforms to be snitches on people. A second law actually requires these platforms to accept complaints and then to censor speech, even when they don&#8217;t want to censor speech. So it is Orwellian in nature.
JOHN: So this California law turns Americans against each other, sort of weaponizing them with this “misinformation” clause. Now this case focuses on satire. Is this an original case in some ways? How much has satire played into the legal history of censorship laws?
KRISTEN: We have not seen any law like this in the United States. Now perhaps there&#8217;s some that I&#8217;m unaware of, but we&#8217;ve seen no similar law where it has been targeted in this way through a state law. And frankly, in terms of the Western democracy and the laws that we&#8217;re seeing, they&#8217;re far more draconian. We can look at Brazil right now, where we have a petition before the Inter-American Commission — they&#8217;re just simply taking X down altogether. But this is the way it starts. These are code words that allow government officials and political opponents to sue over speech that they just don&#8217;t like.
SETH: Yes.What she said a minute ago was right on point. It&#8217;s when they use words like trying to crack down on “misinformation” and “hate speech,” these attempts at content moderation, they are euphemisms for censorship. What they&#8217;re trying to do is guard certain narratives, not the truth. And they often end up guarding those narratives at the expense of the truth.
JOHN: Final question, to return to California. What&#8217;s next for this case? And do you think these laws have any chance of standing up in court?
KRISTEN: We will be filing the case that will go up through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. We will be asking the trial court for a preliminary injunction and then a permanent injunction to stop these laws from going into effect. It&#8217;s difficult to say what will happen in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals up through the federal system in California, but I do believe, I am optimistic that the United States Supreme Court will stand up for free speech. But time will tell. It takes a lot of time, a lot of resources, and courage by groups and people like Seth and the Babylon Bee to stand up, because again, under this law, you and I can get sued for posting a parody or a satire, some type of joke – and that&#8217;s chilling.
JOHN: Well, we certainly will be tracking your lawsuit, as its outcome impacts, well, all of us. Seth and Kristen, thank you so much for joining us. 
SETH: Thank you for having us.
KRISTEN: Thank you.
JOHN: That was Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, and Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom – and this has been an Exclusive edition of Morning Wire. 
***
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/exclusive-babylon-bee-sues-california-over-deepfake-laws">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Seth Dillon and Kristen Waggoner on Morning Wire</a></h4>

MixCollage-30-Sep-2024-08-55-AM-7648

Babylon Bee CEO Lays Out His Lawsuit Against California: Parody Restrictions Are ‘Censorship’

Babylon Bee CEO Lays Out His Lawsuit Against California: Parody Restrictions Are 'Censorship'

Babylon Bee

Bill of Rights

California

Censorship

Free Speech

Gavin Newsom

interview

Morning Wire

Satire

Podcaster <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/joe-rogan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joe Rogan</a> absolutely destroyed a recent New York Times headline that warned about the dangers of the U.S. Constitution, suggesting that there’s no amount of “gaslighting” the news organization could do to make him see their side.
During “The Joe Rogan Experience” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOQdjgdRcfA" target="_blank" rel="noopener">podcast</a>, Rogan and his guest evolutionary biologist, podcaster, and author Dr. Bret Weinstein talked about the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/31/books/review/constitution-secession-democracy-crisis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headline</a> that read, “The Constitution Is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?”
“One of the biggest threats to America’s politics might be the country’s founding document,” the subheadline added.
“This isn’t the Babylon Bee,” Rogan told his guest, referencing the satire news source. “This is an actual New York Times article.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Joe Rogan Experience #2198 - Bret Weinstein" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iOQdjgdRcfA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
“This is so crazy. It&#8217;s really hard to believe that someone would print this and the New York Times would say ‘yeah we like it, put it out there,'&#8221; he added, reading the headline and subhead. “What the f*** are you talking about?”
“One of the biggest threats to America&#8217;s politics might be one of the greatest documents that any country was ever founded on if not the greatest ever,” Rogan continued. “That could be a threat to America&#8217;s politics? What politics are we talking about?”
Rogan asked how the NYT could “possibly gaslight me enough to go along with you on this?”
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1723831707612000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0pyrv88A5nsmWM2F2Wr9As">Tickets for “Am I Racist?” are on sale NOW! Buy here for a theater near you.</a>
Weinstein called it “incredible,” noting how on one hand, it was “completely predictable” because “there&#8217;s obviously an authoritarian force there that just grinds its teeth at night over the Constitution and the fact that it prevents it from doing things that it just wants to do.”
“So, of course they&#8217;re, like, scratching their heads like, ‘can we come up with an argument for why it might be time to get rid of that thing?&#8217; And of course, if you&#8217;re a normal thinking person, this is complete insanity,” he added. “But if you&#8217;re a New York Times reader, I&#8217;m sure that fits with the kind of ethos that&#8217;s been cultivated.”
The podcast host then suggested this is why a person like former President Donald Trump is so important to the Left because they can claim his return to the White House is a so-called “imminent threat,&#8221; allowing them to justify headlines that claim the Constitution is “dangerous&#8221; or that it&#8217;s time to get rid of things like the First and Second Amendments.

Joe Rogan Questions Everything – Season 1

‘What The F***’: Joe Rogan Destroys NYT Headline Warning About Dangers Of Constitution

'What The F***': Joe Rogan Destroys NYT Headline Warning About Dangers Of Constitution

Celebrities

Entertainment

First Amendment

Joe Rogan

New York Times

U.S.

Many radical positions of Minnesota Governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/tim-walz" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tim Walz</a>, now Kamala Harris’s running mate, are well documented, but a lesser-known measure shows his support for a dangerous scheme to manipulate future presidential elections.
Last May, Walz signed a massive spending <a href="https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF1830&amp;version=latest&amp;session=ls93&amp;session_year=2023&amp;session_number=0&amp;format=pdf">bill</a> with a curious provision tucked near the end: the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPV). This “<a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/logrolling/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">log rolling</a>” was necessary because even some Democrats in the Minnesota Legislature opposed to the scheme. Putting it in a “must pass” bill was the only way to force the anti-Electoral College compact through the legislature so that Walz could sign it.
Here’s how I described the compact in a recent <a href="https://amzn.to/46K0fWR">book</a>: 
<blockquote>The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, or NPV, takes advantage of the flexibility granted to state legislatures in the Constitution: “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” The original intent is to allow legislators to determine how best to represent their state in presidential elections. The Electors represent the state—not just the legislature—even though the latter has power to direct the manner of appointment. But NPV supporters argue that this power allows legislatures to ignore their own state’s voters and instead appoint Electors based on the popular vote nationwide. This is what the compact would require states to do. 
Of course, no state would do this unilaterally, so NPV has a “trigger”: it only takes effect if adopted by enough states that they control 270 electoral votes—in other words, a majority that would control the outcome of presidential elections.</blockquote>
Today, Minnesota is one of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/electoral-college/the-status-of-npv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">17 states</a> (all blue states) and DC that have joined the NPV compact. Together they control 209 electoral votes, which puts it more than three-fourths of the way to taking effect.
Should it reach that threshold, there are ample reasons why judges should strike NPV down. For starters, it ignores the requirement for Congress to <a href="https://saveourstates.com/blog/npv-compact-quirks-ignoring-non-compact-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener">consent to compacts</a>, co-mingles votes from states with different <a href="https://saveourstates.com/blog/unfinished-recounts-and-litigation-could-thwart-the-compact" target="_blank" rel="noopener">election laws</a>, and subverts the core purpose of the constitutional provisions at issue. Yet judges often sidestep election issues to avoid appearing partisan.
If NPV did take effect, it would be a disaster for everyone—except perhaps the far-Left. Consider that NPV gives states more power for having more votes, no matter what. A state that looks the other way when <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nearly-all-house-dems-vote-against-bill-requiring-voters-prove-citizenship">non-citizens vote</a> would have more say in who becomes president. California could simply lower its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-city-to-decide-on-lowering-voting-age-for-certain-elections">voting age</a>—it has more 16 and 17 year olds than there are registered voters in several entire states.
Even worse, NPV state officials might get choosy about accepting vote results from other states. Would the California Secretary of State really accept results from Texas if it meant giving 54 electoral votes to the Republican ticket? And what if her progressive voter base was convinced that elections in red states were somehow <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">illegitimate</a>?
The Electoral College is a brilliant system that works even better than the American Founders thought it would. So well, in fact, that Germany and India have their own versions of electoral colleges in the constitutions they wrote in the middle of the twentieth century. It prevents regional candidates from winning and forces political parties to build vast, diverse coalitions.
The NPV compact would undo all this. It’s revealing that politicians like Tim Walz would rather manipulate the election process than figure out how to attract more voters into their coalition. Like Walz, the NPV Compact is sometimes presented as moderate when it is, in fact, a tool of the far-Left and a threat to our constitutional order.
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Trent England is founder and executive director of <a href="https://saveourstates.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Save Our States</a> and a producer of the film <a href="https://www.safeguard.film/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Safeguard: An Electoral College Story</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Democrats and advocates celebrate $72 billion budget

Tim Walz Is Part Of Effort To Rig The Electoral College

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On his latest episode of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/facts-ep-16-the-25th-amendment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facts</a>,” Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro analyzed President Joe Biden’s abrupt ending to his campaign last month and how it raises further questions about his fitness to serve and the potential invocation of the 25th Amendment.
Biden has maintained that he still has the fitness to serve as president despite announcing via social media on July 21 that he was ending his re-election campaign. Shapiro laid out what would happen if those around Biden disagreed with his assessment of his mental and physical capabilities, or “if he falls ill, or God forbid, falls into a coma.” 
“The need for a clear line of presidential succession became evident early in American history. The original constitution was vague at best about what would happen if the president died, resigned, or became incapacitated,” Shapiro said. This ambiguity was first tested in 1841 when President William Henry Harrison died just a month into his term. Vice President John Tyler boldly declared himself the new president. Setting a precedent known as the Tyler Precedent.” 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/facts-ep-16-the-25th-amendment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH THE LATEST EPISODE OF &#8216;FACTS&#8217; </a>
Throughout history, presidents have faced health scares on multiple occasions, including in 1919 when President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated due to a stroke. Wilson’s wife and doctor hid his health condition from the public, “effectively leaving the nation without a functioning president,” Shapiro noted. 
“The need for a formal process became even more urgent during the Cold War era, particularly after President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a heart attack and a stroke in the 1950s. Eisenhower, made informal arrangements with Vice President Richard Nixon, but these were not legally binding,” the Daily Wire host said. 
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 forced Congress to act and led to the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967.
“The 25th Amendment has four sections. Section one: If the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, the Vice President becomes the president,” Shapiro said. “Section two: If there&#8217;s a vacancy in the vice presidency, the president nominates a new vice president, who must be confirmed by a majority vote of both houses of Congress. 
“Section three: The president can voluntarily transfer power to the Vice President by notifying both the Senate and the House. The Vice President becomes the acting president until the president declares that he or she is able to resume his or her duties,” he added. “Section four: The Vice President and a majority of the cabinet can declare the president unable to discharge his or her duties, making the Vice president the acting president. The president can challenge this declaration. Congress must decide the issue with the two-thirds vote within 21 days.” 
<a href="http://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.amiracist.com&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1722626094761000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3s4PU2t9VgUHTMpivaKLFE">WATCH THE TRAILER FOR &#8216;AM I RACIST?&#8217; — MATT WALSH&#8217;S EXPOSÉ ON DEI</a> 

The 25th Amendment has been invoked multiple times since its ratification — first in 1973 after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned and section two of the amendment was invoked to allow President Richard Nixon to nominate Gerald Ford to fill the vice presidency. President Ronald Reagan invoked section three of the 25th Amendment in 1985 when he underwent surgery, transferring presidential powers to Vice President George H.W. Bush. 
“Reagan&#8217;s willingness to invoke the amendment underscored its importance in addressing issues of presidential incapacity, even for short durations,” Shapiro said. “And the smooth transition back to Reagan&#8217;s administration after his recovery demonstrated the amendment&#8217;s efficacy in maintaining stability and continuity in the executive branch.”
President George W. Bush similarly invoked section three of the 25th Amendment during procedures in 2002 and 2007. 
“Let&#8217;s say that Joe Biden becomes incapacitated, suddenly he falls into a coma and is unable to communicate his inability to govern. This is where section four of the 25th amendment comes into play,” said Shapiro.
“Right now, should Kamala Harris invoke the 25th amendment? Well, it doesn&#8217;t appear that Joe Biden is with it. So it&#8217;s an open question,” he added. “No matter what happens, the 25th Amendment ensures the executive branch can maintain continuous and effective leadership even in the face of presidential incapacitation, whether through a voluntary or involuntary transfer of power.”

Ben Shapiro Facts

What Happens If Biden Resigns? Ben Shapiro’s Latest ‘Facts’ Episode Highlights Importance Of The 25th Amendment

Ben Shapiro

The Louisiana governor signed into law legislation that requires a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms. 
And the Left absolutely lost its mind. 
The ACLU, who used to stand for free speech but now stands for radical leftism, immediately announced this was unconstitutional and they were going to stand up against it. 
CNN&#8217;s Elie Honig was asked if the display violated the First Amendment. He replied: 
<blockquote>Yes, flagrantly, in my view. If you wanted a perfect example of what the First Amendment prohibits, I think this is it. The First Amendment says Congress, government, shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, meaning state entities can&#8217;t do things that endorse any particular religion or religiosity in general. 
 
And if you look at those 10, there are some — I know one of the defenses is, well, these are themes that are consistent throughout civilized society and throughout religion. Shall not kill, number six, I&#8217;m cheating, because I&#8217;m looking. But you know, don&#8217;t kill, don&#8217;t rob, don&#8217;t steal, that kind of thing. But there are some Commandments that are inherently religious. Observe the Sabbath day. I&#8217;m the only God that you may worship. So, it&#8217;s an inherently religious document.</blockquote>
Here is the problem with this particular argument: The United States is not a fundamentally secular country. 
The First Amendment was designed to guarantee the practice of religion against the federal government. The idea that there is a separation wall between church and state in the sense that religion was never supposed to impact people&#8217;s values in how they vote, or religion could never be promoted in the public square, or religion could never be promoted against irreligion generally by the government is also untrue. There is no historical basis for this. 
The First Amendment specifically says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This was never originally supposed to be implemented in the states. It took all the way until the 1940s for the Supreme Court to declare that this was now going to be applied at the state level.
In fact, nine of the 13 colonies had established churches at the time of the Revolutionary War. Connecticut maintained its Congregationalist church, a state-sponsored church, until 1818. New Hampshire had one until 1819. Massachusetts had one until 1833.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1988-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
Well past the establishment of the First Amendment, there were states in the United States that established religions. Why? Because the goal here was to stop the federal government from establishing its own generalized religion that would prohibit people at the state level from having their own religions.
The idea that secularism was supposed to predominate in the United States is obviously untrue; none of the Founders believed that. Even the Founders who leaned toward atheism tended to believe religion had an extraordinarily positive effect on the body politic. The promotion of religion generally was considered a good thing by the Founding Fathers.
As President, John Adams wrote <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a letter</a> to the Massachusetts militia, saying: 
<blockquote>We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government for any other.</blockquote>
George Washington <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/george-washington-first-inaugural-address-1789" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in his first inaugural address: 
<blockquote>The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality … there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness. </blockquote>
Thomas Jefferson, the guy everyone talks about in terms of coining the phrase “separation between church and state,” <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jefferson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recognized</a> “the moral branch of religion” as “how to live well and worthily in society.”
But for the last several decades, the courts have done something that is completely unprecedented and stupid: They have read the establishment clause and the free exercise clause as being opposed to one another.
The Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
There are two ways to read that, and the Supreme Court has read this in the dumbest possible way. One way is that Congress shall not prohibit you from freely exercising a religion. The second way is that Congress shall not establish any religion. And the Court has read them completely separately.
What that&#8217;s done is put them in conflict with one another because it turns out that if you express your religion freely in the public square, then the Supreme Court might say you&#8217;re violating the establishment clause.
But that&#8217;s never how these provisions were meant to be read. They were meant to be read in tandem. The basic idea was that you couldn&#8217;t establish any religion as the official religion of the United States, because in doing so, you would quash the free exercise of people of other religions via compulsion.
That is what the Constitution was designed to prohibit: compulsion in religion.
But there&#8217;s nothing compulsory about a sign on a classroom wall. If there were something compulsory about a sign on a classroom wall, there&#8217;d be all sorts of serious free speech issues in a classroom because it turns out classroom walls are filled with all sorts of stuff.
The argument is made that if I walk into a public school and there is a sign that quotes the Bible in a nondenominational way, it still violates my free speech. And the Ten Commandments are nondenominational because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all agree that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses, and they agree on the content of the Ten Commandments. 
In 1971, the Supreme Court took up the case Lemon v. Kurtzman. And they came up with an incredibly stupid test to determine whether some sort of government action violated the separation of church and state. They said that any law had to fulfill three conditions. One, it had to have a secular purpose. Two, it had to have a predominantly secular effect. And three, it had to not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.
When you read that, it is, on its face, nonsensical. It basically doesn&#8217;t set any standard at all because you can make an argument for virtually any religious display that it both violates the Lemon test and also does not violate the Lemon test.
In 1980, when the Supreme Court ruled in Stone v. Graham, there was a law that required classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, and the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional because it had no secular legislative purpose. They said the Ten Commandments convey a religious undertone because they include the religious duties of believers worshiping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord&#8217;s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath day. 
But that was based on a fundamental misreading that is enshrined in Lemon, that the government of the United States has to take no position between religion and irreligion, that the government of the United States has no interest in promoting public morality via generalized religion, that the government has to be absolutely agnostic about whether it is promoting the Ten Commandments or whether it is promoting paganism. 
In 2005, there was a similar case about a public display of the Ten Commandments. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented in this case. He <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-1693.ZD.html">wrote</a>, “What distinguishes the rule of law from the dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.”
He was ripping the Lemon test. He was saying there&#8217;s no consistently applied principle. He continued:
<blockquote>That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that–thumbs up or thumbs down–as their personal preferences dictate. … the Court acknowledges that the “Establishment Clause doctrine” it purports to be applying “lacks the comfort of categorical absolutes.” What the Court means by this lovely euphemism is that sometimes the Court chooses to decide cases on the principle that government cannot favor religion, and sometimes it does not. …
Besides appealing to the demonstrably false principle that the government cannot favor religion over irreligion, today’s opinion suggests that the posting of the Ten Commandments violates the principle that the government cannot favor one religion over another. That is indeed a valid principle where public aid or assistance to religion is concerned, or where the free exercise of religion is at issue … but it necessarily applies in a more limited sense to public acknowledgment of the Creator. 
If religion in the public forum had to be entirely nondenominational, there could be no religion in the public forum at all. One cannot say the word “God,” or “the Almighty,” one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiving, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no attention to human affairs. With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.</blockquote>
In other words, every time Joe Biden finishes his speech and says, “God bless our troops,” why isn&#8217;t that an establishment of religion in the same way it would theoretically be an establishment religion to put the Ten Commandments in a public school classroom? 
The answer is because it&#8217;s not establishing religion. Biden isn&#8217;t forcing you to do anything, and neither is the sign on the public school classroom. It is encouraging you to abide by the central fundamental moral premises of the West.
The attempt to remove the Ten Commandments says more about the society than the attempt to replace them. All of Western civilization is based on a merger of Judeo-Christian ethics found in the Old and the New Testaments and Greek reason.
Here’s why the Ten Commandments are important: They take certain fundamental principles and put them beyond the scope of debate, which is good. You don&#8217;t want to live in a society where “thou shalt not kill” is a debatable proposition. How about “honor thy parents”? We&#8217;re now a society that does not honor our parents and scorns our parents as racists and bigots and white supremacist and vestiges of the past.
How about “do not bear false witness”? We live in a society in which you are allowed to bear false witness so long as the political motivations of the person against whom you are bearing the false witness are suspect.
A society that abides by the Ten Commandments is going to be better than a society that does not.
The centralizing philosophy of the United States used to be grounded in Judeo-Christian virtue. That is why it is good to put the Ten Commandments back up on the wall. Not everyone will abide by them, but they will remind people that a functional society has to have a functional philosophy.
And the most functional philosophy over the last several thousand years has sprung from those Ten Commandments.

Ten Commandments Standing In The Desert

Bring Back The Ten Commandments

Judeo-Christian Values

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A judge in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/washington" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington</a> ruled that the state’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds is unconstitutional, but the state Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal to pause the judge’s decision, meaning the restriction stays in effect for now.
On Monday, Cowlitz County Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24536660-state-of-washington-v-gators-custom-guns-inc-ruling-and-orders-23-2-00897-08" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ruled</a> in favor of a Washington gun shop that sued the state after lawmakers banned magazines holding more than 10 rounds in 2022. Bashor rejected the state&#8217;s arguments that the magazines were not suitable for self-defense and that the legislation was common sense. 
“This Court must find there exists no set of facts where the Court can find such a generalized ban or restriction on an am (or an instrument that facilitates self-defense) as constitutional under the Washington Constitution,” Bashor <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24536660-state-of-washington-v-gators-custom-guns-inc-ruling-and-orders-23-2-00897-08">wrote</a> in his 55-page decision. “The United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights exist to define the outer limits of what Legislatures and Courts are allowed to do. Amending the Constitution and Bill of Rights cannot be done simply by enacting a law, or by a pronouncement from a Court.&#8221;
Bashor added that he found that large capacity magazines (LCMS) are classified as arms under the State Constitution and that members of the public commonly owned them for lawful purposes. 
“The State has not provided evidence that LCMs are NOT commonly and lawfully owned or possessed by civilians for lawful purposes, including self-defense. The State: instead chose to provide expert opinions concluding only that LCMs are not commonly ‘fired for self-defense purposes’, or are not the best choice for self-defense, neither of which are relevant metrics,” he wrote. 
Bashor, who has been a judge in the rural county since 2011, also pointed to the Founding Fathers in his decision. 
“There was no appetite to limit gun rights by the Founders. Though the specific technology available today may not have been envisioned, the Founders expected technological advancements,” Bashor wrote. “The result is few, if any, historical analogue laws by which a state can justify a modern firearms regulation.”
After Bashor&#8217;s ruling, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/was-ban-on-high-capacity-gun-magazines-ruled-unconstitutional/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> an emergency appeal before the state’s high court, arguing magazine capacity limits are constitutional. 
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“Every court in Washington and across the country to consider challenges to a ban on the sale of high-capacity magazines under the U.S. or Washington Constitution has either rejected that challenge or been overruled. This law is constitutional,” Ferguson said. 
Washington State Supreme Court Commissioner Michael Johnston sided with Ferguson, keeping the law in effect while the appeal continued. 
The magazine restriction was one of the many gun control policies adopted in recent years by Washington’s Democratic-controlled legislature and Democratic Governor Jay Inslee, including a ban on the sale of AR-15s and similar rifles.

State Of Illinois Passes Illinois  Assault Weapons Ban

Judge Says Washington’s Restrictions On Gun Magazine Capacity Are Unconstitutional

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President Biden’s refusal to enforce our southern border has wreaked havoc in Texas and it is spreading across the country. Texas has boldly taken matters into its own hands to protect its citizens. The conflict between Texas and the Federal government is coming to a head with the Supreme Court, at least initially, siding with the Biden administration. No one can predict exactly what will happen, but we are certainly heading toward a tipping point in American history.
Last week, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/25-republican-governors-band-together-to-support-texas-in-its-fight-to-secure-the-border">25 governors</a> from around the country signed a statement of solidarity with Gov. Abbott and the state of Texas, supporting Texas’ right and duty to secure the southern border with Mexico. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen anything like this in American politics. Even the very moderate Gov. Chris Sununu from New Hampshire signed on to the letter.
According to <a href="https://www.governor.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt336/files/inline-documents/sonh/20221219-biden-letter-public-health-emergency.pdf">the statement</a> signed by the governors and issued jointly:
<blockquote>President Biden and his Administration have left Americans and our country completely vulnerable to unprecedented illegal immigration pouring across the Southern border. Instead of upholding the rule of law and securing the border, the Biden Administration has attacked and sued Texas for stepping up to protect American citizens from historic levels of illegal immigrants, deadly drugs like fentanyl, and terrorists entering our country. </blockquote>
It is not just the states who are rising up to counter the lawless Biden administration, there are confirmed reports of vigilantes engaging (and more forming) to stop this invasion. This is not simply an isolated incident of federal misuse of power bringing the country to the verge of coming apart. This travesty at our border, pitting states against a seemingly united front of federal and judicial power, may very well be the spark that will fracture our nation. Or can we avert this calamity?
Thanks to the wisdom of our founders, who anticipated existential conflicts between Washington and the states, the answer lies in our Constitution. It may surprise some to learn that our founders believed in federalism and a system of checks and balances. That’s why in Article V of the Constitution they gave the states the ultimate authority to counter a tyrannical federal government.
Today, out of the 34 necessary states, 19 have passed an application for a convention of states under Article V to adopt amendments that would restrain the scope and power of the federal government. Under this application, an amendment could (and should) be proposed and ratified allowing the states joint jurisdiction over our international borders with respect to border crossings. The states should be specifically enabled to pass and enforce laws to prevent people from entering their state and the country illegally.
Under our Constitution, it is clear that the states don’t need to beg the federal government to protect their legitimate sovereign interests, like protecting the safety of their people. Article V of the Constitution gives the states the power to amend the Constitution to protect the people from both federal abuse or misuse of power without the permission or involvement of the President or Congress. If 15 more state legislatures would assert their authority, Texas could go from razor wire and court pleadings to giving themselves the power to protect their citizens.
The founders most feared an authoritarian central government, so they created a Constitution where the states, not the federal government, were at the top of the food chain. They also realized that such steps should not be taken on a whim or without broad consensus, so any amendment proposed at a convention of states would need to be ratified by 38 states to be added to the constitution.
With all due respect to the states supporting Texas, a letter complaining to the president when the states hold the right to correct this problem themselves, is being seen for what it is, weakness not strength. For decades, states have let the federal government run roughshod over them and their citizens. It should come as no surprise that the people are leading the charge and forcing state politicians to finally push back.
If all of those states were serious about the letter they signed they would act and fire a shot across the bow of the massive federal ship of state and immediately pass a resolution to begin the process of securing our borders and our freedoms, while striking a blow against our increasingly authoritarian federal government.
* * *
Mark Meckler is the co-founder and President of Convention of States Action. @MarkMeckler
Rick Santorum is a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, two time Presidential candidate and a Senior Advisor to Convention of States Action. @RickSantorum
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Migrants Continue To Cross Mexico U.S. Border As D.C. Lawmakers Continue To Debate Border Funding

Why Texas Does Not Need To Beg The Feds To Protect Its Interests

Border Crisis

Greg Abbott

Texas