The Biden Administration Has Redefined ‘Sex.’ What Does That Mean for Schools?

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke /

The Biden administration now says that “sex” means “gender identity.” So, what does this mean for K-12 teachers?

In a new regulation released last week, the Biden administration changed the definition of “sex” in a crucial civil rights law that was originally designed to protect women. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act says that schools cannot discriminate against individuals based on sex, which gave women better access to higher education and athletics.

But the Biden administration has swapped “sex” for “gender,” which will allow biological males access to females’ bathrooms, locker rooms, sports competitions, etc.

K-12 educators around the country are wondering what to do next, because this rule would have major implications for school facilities and athletic teams.

Washington wants schools to change their harassment policies, too, because the new rule says individuals could face charges of harassment if they address someone according to his or her sex instead of “gender” choice.

Our advice to educators: Wait.

The Biden administration’s rule violates numerous administrative laws and constitutional free-speech provisions, not to mention women’s civil rights. The rule goes into effect Aug. 1, and we forecast a long, hot summer of litigation that will stall and should ultimately overturn this rule.

The rule violates state laws that protect women’s athletics and prohibit men from competing in women’s sports. Louisiana Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley has already issued a letter to school officials in his state saying the rule violates their state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which keeps single-sex sports just that—for individuals of one sex to compete with each other: girls’ soccer for girls, boys’ basketball for boys, as schools have operated for generations.

“This rule runs contradictory to the entire foundation of Title IX,” Brumley wrote to teachers and principals. “The Title IX rule changes recklessly endanger students and seek to dismantle equal opportunities for females.” The lead education officials of Oklahoma and South Carolina have sent similar letters to educators in their states.

The rule also ignores research that finds health professionals do not know enough about the long-term effects of drugs and medicines being used to alter human bodies, including the biological functions of children. Earlier this month, England’s National Health Service released a report that the Times of London called “the world’s biggest review into the contested field of transgender health care.”

The release, called the Cass Report, found that scientists “have no good evidence” on the long-term outcomes from puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgeries that alter reproductive organs.

Young people in particular may feel “an urgency to transition,” the Cass Report said, but “young adults looking back at their younger selves would often advise slowing down.” The report’s authors said the effects of so-called gender interventions “needs to be better understood.”

The Independent Women’s Forum, an advocacy organization, has already announced its intent to sue the administration. The new rule “turns Title IX on its head through extra-statutory regulations,” the group said in a news release.

Public opinion sides with Brumley, the Cass Report, and the Independent Women’s Forum. A 2023 survey of Americans found that 55% of respondents said it is “morally wrong” to change your gender, an increase of 4 percentage points from 2021. In the same survey, 69% of Americans said that “transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their birth gender.”

Americans do not like watching videos on social media of middle-school girls getting thrown down by a boy in a basketball game or of a high school girl having her teeth knocked out while playing field hockey. Nor do any parents want their daughters to share a locker room with a boy.

The Biden administration is violating civil rights law and ignoring research and public opinion. School officials would do well to wait before changing school rules—both to see what happens in court and to protect students and teachers from this harmful policy.

Originally published by The Washington Times

What I Saw at This Pro-Palestine Encampment at Ivy League School - The Daily Signal

What I Saw at This Pro-Palestine Encampment at Ivy League School

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy /

PHILADELPHIA—Victoria Coates, a national security expert at The Heritage Foundation, traveled Thursday to the City of Brotherly Love with a cadre of security personnel to deliver this simple but now radical belief at the University of Pennsylvania: “Hating Jews is a bad idea.”

Following Coates’ remarks to the Penn Alumni Free Speech Alliance and the Open Discourse Coalition at UPenn, one of her alma maters, I headed over to the College Green, the campus quad, with two representatives from the university’s College Republicans chapter.

Earlier in the day, following a demonstration at City Hall, pro-Palestinian demonstrators had descended onto College Green and erected an encampment. 

By the time I arrived on the scene just after 7 p.m., the camp was in full swing, with anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protesters (not all of them students) forming a human chain around the green and chanting: “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! If we don’t get it? Shut it down!”

Almost immediately, I began to feel uneasy, almost as if I were being watched. I was right.

Within 20 minutes, numerous individuals who appeared to be event organizers approached me from all sides asking, “What are you doing here?” And: “Which media outlet are you with?”

I showed my credentials to each and explained that I was documenting the protest on behalf of The Daily Signal, a Washington, D.C.-based media organization. (I work for The Heritage Foundation, which founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)

Just when I felt like everything was OK, two protesters—a man wearing a bike helmet and mask and a woman wearing a keffiyeh—sped toward me and dictated that I had to film on the other side of the College Green, away from the encampment. It was for my own “safety,” they said.

I rebuffed the two protesters, asking why I wouldn’t be safe where I was. And I explained, again, that I was a member of the press, documenting events as they unfolded in real time.

For the rest of my time there, several Antifa-type individuals stalked my every move, walking in my shadow.

When I tried to approach the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel encampment, my pathway was blocked by two individuals, whom I later learned were called “marshals.”

I reminded these Antifa-types that they couldn’t prevent me from filming the protest. I was told that I couldn’t come within the “circle.”

The circle to which they referred was a yellow rope strung around the encampment. Yep, that’s it.

One of them asked me if it was “OK” if I stood away from the circle.

“But what if it’s not OK?” I responded.

He immediately replied: “The resistance won’t stop.”

The “resistance” being individuals, like him, who would confront and prevent me, possibly with force, from doing my job.

I spoke with two campus police officers, who confirmed that I was free to walk about the camp and that the individuals who confronted me most likely weren’t students but outside agitators.

I returned to the College Green later Thursday night. I was prevented, yet again, from documenting the protesters’ camp.

I asked one “marshal,” who was covering his face with a keffiyeh, whether he was a student at UPenn. He repeatedly replied, “That’s none of your business, man.”

While speaking with another protester who wouldn’t identify himself, I asked why so many pro-Palestinian demonstrators refuse to condemn Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that slaughtered over 1,200 people Oct. 7 in Israel. (Hamas also is the elected government of Palestinians in the adjacent Gaza Strip, and has been targeted there for eradication by the Israel Defense Forces since the massacre.)

We were interrupted by a protester, who said to the other one: “I wouldn’t continue engaging with these bad faith arguments that he thinks are good faith [arguments] because he has a very Western-centric perspective.”

Yes, condemning war crimes committed by a globally recognized terror organization is a “bad faith argument.”

The encampment survived the night and entered a second day.

The University of Pennsylvania hasn’t announced official plans to remove the pro-Palestine encampment. But university officials warned: “We will not permit protest and speech when it devolves into words and actions that violate Penn’s policies, disrupt university business, or contribute to an intimidating, hostile, or violent environment on our campus.”

The encampment at UPenn joins a wave of other disruptive, anti-Israel protests throughout the U.S.

From New York University to George Washington University in the nation’s capital, members of pro-Palestine student organizations and their affiliates may not want to show their faces. But they are more than willing to say the quiet part out loud.

Jonathan Turley Says Bragg’s Case Against Trump Is ‘Collapsing’ After Witness Testimony - The Daily Signal

Jonathan Turley Says Bragg’s Case Against Trump Is ‘Collapsing’ After Witness Testimony

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen /

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on Friday said the prosecution’s case against former President Donald Trump is failing as a key witness is benefiting the defense.

Trump is on trial facing 34 felony counts of allegedly falsifying business records in relation to a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election. The prosecution’s first witness, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, was helpful to Trump as the prosecution made mistakes that the defense capitalized on during cross-examination, Turley asserted on Fox News’ “Outnumbered.”

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“It’s a breakdown in the courtroom. They have a witness that is disassembling in front of them,” Turley said. “The prosecution never revealed to the jury in the direct that Pecker had actually killed stories for other celebrities, that he had been working on stories two decades before the election with Trump that he was suppressing. And now it’s only getting worse. Yesterday was really bad In terms of the cross-examination for the prosecution.”

“Today is much worse. I mean, here Pecker is saying that Trump didn’t want to purchase the story. Yesterday when he asked him about reimbursing [former Trump lawyer Michael] Cohen, he said he didn’t know anything about that.”

Pecker has testified about former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and the former president allegedly purchasing former playboy model Karen McDougal’s story of an alleged affair from the outlet, one of three instances the prosecution argues reveal an unlawful “conspiracy” to influence the 2016 election.

“I think the defense is doing a very good job, but I have to say that this is collapsing on its own weight,” he added. “You just have to stand back and let it fall. Just asking simple questions that the jury would want to know has left serious damage for the prosecution. These are not strange tangential questions, these are questions you would’ve expected the prosecution to ask as just the completion of their line of questioning. Like was Donald Trump the only one you did this for, when did you start to do this?”

Despite Pecker’s testimony not damaging Trump, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Friday suggested Judge Juan Merchan’s friendliness toward Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg could lead to jury bias against the former president.

“It’s one thing to be watching the trial through the media, if you are watching it on our channel, you hear me. You hear [Fox News legal editor] Kerri Kupec [Urbahn], you hear Jonathan Turley talk about the weaknesses of the case,” McCarthy said. “The jury is not getting that filter. The jury is getting the district attorney’s version of events and taking its cues from a judge who has been very friendly to the district attorney. So if you’re watching this with legal commentary, you know they’re not really proving a conspiracy in there and don’t really have federal campaign finance in there. But I don’t know that the jury knows that.”

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Marxists Come Out at George Washington University  - The Daily Signal

The Marxists Come Out at George Washington University 

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval /

“We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the United States of America,” said rally speaker Sean Blackmon, member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation 

What would George Washington think if you told him that a university bearing his name would one day be inculcating protesters who sought the demise of the United States? 

That reality was on full display Thursday night on the campus of George Washington University, located in Washington, D.C.

In a continuation of the encampments popping up on universities across the United States, leftists supporting Palestine gathered on George Washington University’s University Yard to share their views.

Although the rally was flooded with the anti-Israel rhetoric and chants Americans have become accustomed to hearing, speakers at this rally also used language connected with Marxism, focusing on oppression and oppressors. 

Based on what I’d heard, I’d say these protesters’ ultimate intentions go beyond the nation of Israel and extend to the goal of destroying the United States in particular and Western civilization generally. 

A recurring theme was that the United States, like Israel, is the oppressor. As a “settler colony,” it must be “brought to its knees.” 

Harkening back to the riots of 2020, protesters vilified law enforcement as oppressors for being protectors of “the rich” and “the capitalist ruling class.” 

At one point, a speaker blasphemously compared the deaths of Palestinians to the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. 

Ultimately, the protesters made clear what their goals are here in the United States: to smash the whole thing. 

What does America’s future look like if her universities, the grounds of education for so many young Americans, host protesters who champion her demise? 

Texas Shows How to Prevent a Campus Takeover - The Daily Signal

Texas Shows How to Prevent a Campus Takeover

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold /

Given the Marxist fixation with seizing power, it’s strange that woke university administrators can’t seem to use it better.

After all, they, not the students, are the legitimate authority on campus. For campus administrators who need remedial training on how to do their jobs, Texas provided a tutorial Wednesday when University of Texas at Austin students tried to establish a Gaza solidarity encampment there within sight of the state capitol building.

Here’s a six-step handbook to shutting down illegal campus takeovers, the Texas way.

Step 1: Make the Rules Clear

On Tuesday, the UT Austin Dean of Students notified the Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC) student organization that its planned protest event was “not permitted” due to its “declared intent to violate our policies and rules, and disrupt our campus operations.”

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“In the footsteps of our comrades at Rutgers-New Brunswick SJP, Tufts SJP, and Columbia SJP, we will take back our university,” PSC had declared on Instagram. In a separate post, PSC declared that “class is cancelled” and invited protestors to wear face masks, in violation of university rules.

In response to this evidence of PSC’s intentions, the administration responded, “Simply put, the University of Texas at Austin will not allow this campus to be ‘taken’ and protesters to derail our mission in ways that groups affiliated with your national organization have accomplished elsewhere.”

Therefore, they warned the PSC that “this event may not proceed as planned,” and “refusal to comply may result in arrest.”

Step 2: Activate Sufficient Personnel

Campus police departments are usually not equipped or staffed to effectively handle a large-scale protest. So UT administrators called in the cavalry. Shortly after the students’ scheduled walk-out at 11:40 a.m., Texas Highway Patrol officers arrived to reinforce UT Campus Police (UTCP). Half an hour later, 50 more state troopers arrived with riot gear, with one reporter suggesting they arrived from Houston, 160 miles away.

Step 3: Issue Lawful Orders to Contain and Disperse Protestors

UT Austin students gathered at Gregory Gymnasium and marched two blocks west to the campus’s South Mall. The southern portion of the South Mall is grassy, perfect for erecting a pop-up encampment. The northern portion is paved and leads up to the campus’s administration building, home to the UT Tower — the very location of one of America’s first mass shootings in 1966.

When the first state troopers arrived, they and UTCP erected a barrier fence and warned students they would be arrested for crossing it.

Once reinforcements arrived, law enforcement announced that the assembly was unlawful and that students had two minutes to disperse before they began making arrests. (Students complained that this was uncalled for, but the administration had already forbidden the event.)

Step 4: Arrest Those Who Refuse to Heed the Orders

After UT students refused to budge, law enforcement officers identified and arrested an organizer of the protest. Then they made a couple more arrests. Then they announced over loudspeaker that they would continue making arrests until the crowd followed their order to disperse.

At some point (either before or after arrests began), police attempted to push back the protestors, resulting in a shoving match on the plaza. Police eventually pushed the protesters eastward, away from the South Mall along W. 22nd St., where the police then blocked the road at a narrow gap between two campus buildings, Betts Hall and Garrison Hall. By 1:30 p.m., the protestors had regrouped by Brazos garage at “the corner of campus,” instead of in the center, according to a local reporter on the ground.

Step 5: Repeat as Necessary

UTCP and state troopers had won the first round, but the protestors were not finished yet. Less than an hour later, they returned to the South Mall (likely from the south, to avoid police positions) and began setting up tents as they had promised to do. The students also unfurled anti-Israel banners and carted in water and other supplies, suggesting they intended to remain for some time.

But proactive law enforcement nipped this sly maneuver in the bud. Students only had time to pitch a couple tents before the police approached. Once again, law enforcement officers formed a wall and began to push the students off of the green, in a rhythm described as “stop and start.” Occasionally this procedure was punctuated by an arrest, whenever a protestor gave sufficient cause, with approximately 10 protestors being arrested. By the end of the day, 90-odd law enforcement officials had clear the lawn of students, denying them their objective — to create a Columbia-style encampment there.

Of course, law enforcement officers couldn’t just stand on the field all evening. As soon as they departed, the protestors flooded back. Apparently their illegal activity returned too, and law enforcement had to clear the field more than once that evening. After business hours ended, UT Austin locked down buildings, closed roads, and relayed an order over the campus intercom system, ordering people to leave the South Mall on pain of arrest. The Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed they had made “more than 20” arrests by 6:20 p.m., but they updated that number to 34 arrests by 9 p.m.

Step 6: Permit Peaceful, Lawful Protests

UT President Jay Hartzell responded to the day’s drama by reiterating that the university “held firm, enforcing our rules while protecting the Constitutional right to free speech.” Police dispersed the protest, he said, because “the group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules. Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied.” He praised the law enforcement officers and support personnel “who exercised extraordinary restraint in the face of a difficult situation that is playing out at universities across the country.”

While “breaking our rules and policies and disrupting others’ ability to learn are not allowed,” Hartzell explained, “peaceful protests within our rules are acceptable.” “We’re not in the realm of free speech anymore,” agreed former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, dean of the Robertson School of Government at Regent University, on “Washington Watch.” “Once you’ve crossed the line into calling for violence, then it’s over. And we’re at that point.”

University faculty announced their opposition to the administration’s actions and pledged, “No business as usual tomorrow. No classes. No grading. No work. No assignments.” Protestors returned in greater numbers to the South Mall on Thursday afternoon, displacing a previously scheduled protest in favor of DEI.

In contrast to Wednesday’s protest, there was “very little law enforcement presence,” one reporter noted, and no attempt to disperse the protest. This is because the crowd was “peaceful, quiet,” and had not declared an intention to violate university policies by camping upon the mall.

Some students — betraying their sympathy with the “Defund the Police” crowd — tried to blame the scuffles that occurred on Wednesday on the presence of police. The protest “would have stayed peaceful” had officers not turned out in force, one UT junior suggested to a local news outlet. In other words, students would have encamped upon the South Mall unopposed if no one had been there to stop them. Students would not have disobeyed lawful orders had no such orders been given. No one would have resisted arrest if police had not tried to arrest them. A “peaceful” protest that cannot remain peaceful around law enforcement officers is not a peaceful protest.

Takeaways

Those arrested at the Wednesday protest will apparently not be prosecuted, due to Travis County’s far-left prosecutors. The arrestees were released on Thursday from Travis County jail, informing the media that their charges were either dropped or rejected. But hopefully the message was nevertheless received, that an attempt to create a Columbia-style encampment at UT Austin will not be successful.

In retrospect, Texas’s response may seem like a stitch in time. On Wednesday, California police also attempted to clear a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at the University of Southern California. After the protestors committed “acts of vandalism, defacing campus buildings and structures, as well as physical confrontation” with officers, according to USC Provost Andrew Guzman, police eventually arrested 93 individuals for trespassing, and the campus was closed “until further notice.” USC also decided to cancel its main commencement ceremony on Thursday until the security situation is under control.

There, students set up tents hours before the police intervened, giving time for student numbers to grow too large for the officers on-hand to manage (the Los Angeles Police Department only sent 20 officers). Officers also waited too long to make arrests; by the time they did so, protestors — many of whom were not even students — had gathered in sufficient numbers to surround a police vehicle for 20 minutes, until the police released someone they had detained.

Columbia University looks even more pitiful by comparison with Texas. “Sadly, Columbia’s administrators have chosen to let the threats, the fear and the intimidation of the mob rule to overtake American principles like free speech and the free exchange of ideas and the free exercise of religion,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a visit Wednesday. “Those who are perpetrating this violence should be arrested. And I’m here today joining my colleagues and calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”

Columbia University failed to prevent a pro-Hamas campus takeover twice in one week. Last Thursday, Columbia University called in the New York Police Department to arrest more than 100 students who set up an encampment. Yet students reestablished the encampment on Sunday, and Columbia now refuses to allow NYPD onto campus to protect Jewish students and professors from imminent danger. So hazardous did the situation become that Columbia switched to hybrid classes for the rest of the semester.

UT Austin is no conservative outlier. It recently retaliated against a professor who publicly criticized its costly DEI bureaucracy. It is so confused about biology that its Women’s Community Center’s stated mission “is to be a place for Longhorns of all genders to connect.” I could go on, but you get the picture. But the fact that UT Austin is just as woke as every other university only serves to further embarrass those who seem incapable of controlling their campuses. Campus administrators and law enforcement officers have the authority to maintain order and shut down illegal tent encampments — if only they have the courage to use it.

Restore Order and Crush the Campus Jihadist Thugs - The Daily Signal

Restore Order and Crush the Campus Jihadist Thugs

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold / Josh Hammer /

In his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, President George Washington reached a stirring conclusion: “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” 

Washington is rolling in his grave right now at Mount Vernon. 

Jews are so “afraid” at Columbia University that an Orthodox campus rabbi recently urged students to “return home as soon as possible.” The situation at many purportedly “elite” universities is dire, as jihadist mania supplants Black Lives Matter as the vogue, faux-moral cause rotting the minds of impressionable Gen Zers. 

Hamas’ useful campus idiots are, at best, blithering morons. They do not realize that Zionism — the Jewish people’s national liberation movement in their ancestral homeland — is the quintessence of the very “anticolonialism” and “indigenous people’s rights” they claim to champion. They are clueless about international law and how the doctrine of uti possidetis juris establishes that Israel has the best legal claim to Judea and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank). They know nothing about warfighting; John Spencer, head of urban warfare studies at West Point, has demonstrated that Israel’s combatant-to-civilian death ratio in Gaza since the war began is “historically low for modern urban warfare.” 

Why let inconvenient facts get in the way of the thrill one feels for supporting a chic social justice movement … er, genocidal terrorist organization? 

The activism now upending Columbia, Yale, Harvard and other morally bankrupt institutions is done in explicit support of a U.S. State Department-recognized foreign terrorist organization . Keffiyeh-wearing mini-jihadis at Columbia recently chanted “We are Hamas!” and “Long live Hamas!” Other agitators at Columbia called for Tel Aviv — a liberal secular city that will remain in Israeli hands under any possible future settlement with the Palestinian-Arabs — to be “burned to the ground.” At the University of Michigan (where my speech in November was shouted down by a pro-Hamas mob), student Hamasniks distributed a pamphlet that says “Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.” 

Give them credit for the candor. 

It gets worse. At Yale, a Jewish student was stabbed in the eye with a flagpole and was rushed to the hospital. At Columbia, a Jewish parent described her husband picking up their freshman daughter to remove her from the jihadist-infested campus grounds as akin to “refugees fleeing a war zone.” 
This is completely unacceptable. 

Jewish students have the same basic Title VI rights as everyone else. Those rights must be enforced. Much of the organized conduct now setting these campuses aflame also runs afoul of federal laws that ban, on the one hand, material support for terrorism on the one hand and, on the other hand, conspiracy to deprive individuals of their constitutional rights. Furthermore, much of the insanity now unfolding on campus under the guise of “speech” is not, as I recently argued in an Intercollegiate Studies Institute-hosted debate in Cambridge, Massachusetts, actually speech. Impersonating Hitler Youth by clamoring for Jewish genocide is not protected speech under any private university’s code of conduct. Displaying the Palestinian flag, moreover, is not an act of “speech” at all; it is conduct indistinguishable from waving a Nazi swastika. 

Where are elected officials to protect Jewish civil rights, administrators to suspend and expel miscreants, and prosecutors to press charges against jihadists? Incidentally, Students for Justice in Palestine, the outfit organizing much of the campus mayhem, is surely overdue for a massive terror financing prosecution a la the Holy Land Foundation trial of 2008. 

The basic formula for fighting back against Hamas’ useful campus idiots is simple: suspend, expel, arrest, prosecute and, as appropriate, deport the abominable mini-jihadis. 

It is also well past time to send in the National Guard. What we are dealing with right now on college campuses is a sprawling — systemic, one might say — conspiracy to deprive Jewish students of basic equal rights. The Hamas supporters today are the spiritual, functional and legal descendants of Orval Faubus at Little Rock Central High School in 1957. President Dwight Eisenhower was correct back then to send in the 101st Airborne Division to secure civil rights. That is needed once again. 

It is perhaps fitting that it is now Passover on the Jewish calendar. At our Seders earlier this week, we read in the Haggadah: “This is what has stood by our fathers and us! For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!” 

It has always been thus. 

But for now, order must be restored on campus by any means necessary. 

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

Judge’s Conflicted Political Ties Raise Eyebrows in Trump Trial - The Daily Signal

Judge’s Conflicted Political Ties Raise Eyebrows in Trump Trial

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold / Josh Hammer / Deroy Murdock /

“THIS SCAM ‘RUSHED’ TRIAL IS BEING PRESIDED OVER BY POSSIBLY THE MOST CONFLICTED JUDGE IN JUDICIAL HISTORY,” former President Donald J. Trump declared with characteristic understatement via Truth Social. Trump added that Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan “MUST BE REMOVED FROM THIS HOAX IMMEDIATELY.”

Whether Merchan is “the most conflicted judge” ever is debatable. However, he surely belongs in the Conflicted Jurist Hall of Fame.

In fact, Merchan is awash in conflicts of interest in Trump’s “hush money” trial.

First, the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, is a Democratic Party activist. Before her LinkedIn page went private, it listed her as director of digital persuasion for the Kamala Harris for the People campaign in 2019.

Loren Merchan has been president of Authentic Campaigns, a digital marketing and communications operation whose clients include left-wing causes and Democratic governors, congressmen, senators, and presidential candidates. The company’s website invokes Trump’s name to generate new business:

Trump’s attorneys estimate that Authentic has scored $18 million from its clients since April 2023, when hard-Left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump.

Under New York State’s Judiciary Law Article 2 §14, Juan Merchan, Loren Merchan’s first-degree blood relative, should recuse himself since “he is related by consanguinity or affinity to any party to the controversy within the sixth degree.” 

Second, even if this law included an “I don’t discuss business with my daughter” clause, Merchan is a Democrat donor. According to CNN, Merchan contributed $15 earmarked for Biden’s campaign and $10 each to the Progressive Turnout Project and its Stop Republicans PAC.

“$35?” Trump haters laugh. “You call that a donation?”

Well, visualize Hillary Clinton finally on trial for her countless alleged crimes. Imagine that her judge donated $15 to Trump 2016 and $10 each to the Conservative Turnout Project and Stop Democrats PAC.

Trump haters would stop laughing.

Third, unlike federal judicial assignments, the chief administrative judge picked Merchan for Trump’s trial due to his supervision of other Trump-related cases. This needlessly deepens suspicions.

“There was not a random selection of a judge in this case, and there should have been,” former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Christopher Brennan told The Wall Street Journal. “He actually should be the last person selected, given the potential conflict.”

Here’s how these conflicts could unfold:

Genuinely or apparently conflicted, Juan Merchan should yield to a judge who focuses strictly on the law, the evidence, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation. 

FBI Director Accused of Hypocrisy for Monitoring Conservatives but Not Pro-Hamas Protests - The Daily Signal

FBI Director Accused of Hypocrisy for Monitoring Conservatives but Not Pro-Hamas Protests

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold / Josh Hammer / Deroy Murdock / S.A. McCarthy /

The director of the FBI is being accused of hypocrisy for allowing the targeting of concerned parents, Trump supporters, and American Catholics but not “monitoring” pro-Hamas rallies and protests on college campuses.

Director Christopher Wray was asked in an interview on Tuesday about “actively monitoring” the rallies erupting across college and university campuses, which have become the subject of controversy and condemnation from even senior government officials. Wray replied, “We don’t monitor protests.” He added, “But we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence.”

Social media users reacted, accusing Wray of hypocrisy. Conservative podcast host Graham Allen quoted Wray saying, “We don’t monitor protests,” and wrote:

Author and conservative media commentator Jesse Kelly pointed out the FBI’s failure to investigate the vandalizing and firebombing of pregnancy resource centers, commenting:

Numerous social media users posted photos of known or suspected FBI agents undercover at pro-Trump rallies, alleged that the FBI embedded undercover agents at the Jan. 6, 2021 rally at the U.S. Capitol building, or noted the FBI’s designation of parents protesting school board meetings or “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic terror threats. Referring to the infamous memo from the FBI’s Richmond field office, detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on Catholic parishes, one user commented, “I guess they are too busy monitoring Catholic churches.”

The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government previously castigated the FBI’s memo for its reliance on biased sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists “radical traditionalist Catholics” as a hate group, alongside neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The controversial memo, leaked early in 2023, labeled American Catholics who attend the Tridentine Mass (the form of the Mass common prior to 1969) as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVEs). The memo’s creation included communication with other FBI field offices, interviews with at least one priest and a choir director, and the approval of senior FBI lawyers. The House Committee warned, “The FBI must be held accountable for its actions. It is not enough for the FBI to investigate itself and remedy its own wrongdoings, especially when it involves law-enforcement overreach involving fundamental religious freedoms.”

But that’s what the FBI appears to have done. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz submitted a report to Congress absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in the drafting and circulating of the memo. Horowitz wrote, “Our review did not find evidence that anyone ordered or directed Analyst 1 or 2 to find a link between RMVEs and any specific religion or political affiliation, including Church 1, or that there was any underlying policy direction concerning such a link.” The report added, “Additionally, our review of emails, instant messages, and text messages for Analysts 1 and 2 during the relevant time period did not identify any evidence of discriminatory or inappropriate comments by them about Church 1, or individuals who practiced a particular religious faith or held specific political beliefs.”

Previously, both Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland have stonewalled Congress in response to requests to interview FBI agents and analysts responsible for drafting and circulating the memo.

Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The FBI shouldn’t be monitoring most protests, but when massive demonstrations are shutting down higher education institutions that threaten fellow students and incorporate genocidal slogans like ‘From the river to the sea,’ that all should pique the interest of federal law enforcement.”

She continued, “Wray’s comments are yet another hit to the FBI’s credibility after the Department of Justice’s inspector general held last week that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing when it was looking into ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ that they alleged were connected to ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.’”

Del Turco added, “The FBI’s heightened concern over traditional Catholics appears especially absurd when considering the agency’s total disinterest in protestors who are threatening Jewish students on college campuses.”

Currently, pro-Hamas rallies are taking place at schools such as Ohio State University and the Ivy League Columbia and Yale universities.

Iran’s Nightmares - The Daily Signal

Iran’s Nightmares

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold / Josh Hammer / Deroy Murdock / S.A. McCarthy / Victor Davis Hanson /

Details of Israel’s recent limited retaliatory strike against Iran‘s antiaircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.

Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design.

Israel showed Iran it could take out the very antimissile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped.

By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99% of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.

Moreover, it was reported that more than 50% of Iran’s roughly 115 to 120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s nonstop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.

Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.

Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the U.S., the U.K., and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.

Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?

And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.

Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100% certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.

Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.

It should be harder for the theocracy in Tehran to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran’s successfully nuking the Jewish state.

The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.

Iran must now fear that if it launched two or three nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by Israel’s tripartite antimissile defense system.

Add it all up and Iran’s attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time Iran threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which Iran’s own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.

Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.

And the long-suffering Iranian people?

The truth will come out that Iran’s own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.

So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off-limits.

And Iranians will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.

As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.

(C) 2024 Tribune Content Agency LLC

Big Questions Before Supreme Court in Trump’s Presidential Immunity Case - The Daily Signal

Big Questions Before Supreme Court in Trump’s Presidential Immunity Case

Jonathan Butcher / Lindsey Burke / Tim Kennedy / Jason Cohen / Christian Lasval / Joshua Arnold / Josh Hammer / Deroy Murdock / S.A. McCarthy / Victor Davis Hanson / Virginia Allen /

The nine Supreme Court justices have a major question before them. Is a current or former president immune from prosecution? 

Former President Donald Trump is facing prosecution for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump argues that his actions as president are protected from prosecution under presidential immunity. 

Trump lawyer John Sauer argued Thursday before the Supreme Court that unless a president is first impeached and convicted by the Senate, he is immune from prosecution, explains John Malcolm, senior legal fellow and vice president for the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)

Now, Malcolm says, the justices have to answer three questions in order to make a decision in the Trump case: 

One, is there a blanket immunity for a president’s official actions because he was not impeached and convicted by the Senate?

Two, what is a private action and what is an official action?

And three, if the court rejects John Sauer’s, absolute immunity argument, will there be any other kind of immunity that might attach to an official action?

Malcolm joins this episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how the Supreme Court justices may rule based on the questions they asked Thursday during oral argument. 

Listen to the podcast below: