Month: July 2024

Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission.

RINOs in the Missouri GOP are attempting to remove the pro-Trump delegates elected at the state convention in May.

At the GOP’s Missouri state convention in Springfield, Trump-supporting members of the GOP took over and prevented RINOs in the state from setting the agenda and the delegates for the RNC. This was reported on May 4.

BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Grassroot Revolution Overthrows RINOS at Missouri State GOP Convention

However, it appears that the RINOs were not done. Power at all costs is the motto of the RINOs and the Democrats – it’s the Uniparty mantra.

The Missouri Independent reports:

The Missouri Republican Party must replace 54 national convention delegates and alternates selected at its chaotic state convention because of “alarming irregularities” in the process, the Republican National Convention Committee on Contests ruled Friday.

The list of rejected delegates includes two of the major GOP candidates for governor, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and state Sen. Bill Eigel.

“The committee holds that the State Convention was not properly credentialed, and that any slate of delegates and alternate delegates adopted at the State Convention must be discarded,” states the report signed by Chairwoman Jeanne Luckey of Mississippi.

The committee acted after investigating complaints from state convention delegates Daniel O’Sullivan of St. Louis County and Derrick Good of Jefferson County.

They alleged delegates to the state convention were not properly credentialed as the convention was organized, that the rules for selecting the state’s at-large delegates were improperly changed during the convention and that some delegates were listed on more than one slate of names in violation of the rules.

The committee, after determining that the complaint about credentialing had merit, wrote that it did not need to consider the other complaints and made no ruling on them.

“Contestants have provided ample proof of alarming irregularities in the state convention’s credentialing procedures, including the absence of names on delegate lists, the distribution of delegate credentials to alternate delegates without confirming who they were replacing, and the failure to ensure alternate delegates were raised from the same counties as the delegates they were replacing, among other things,” the report stated.

The committee’s ruling gives the state party executive committee until 5 p.m. Friday to select a new set of at-large delegates and alternates.

Here is the signed page from the National GOP’s report.

GOP Trump supporters around the state are outraged. One group out of Cass County shared the following:

The Missouri SWAMP inside the Republican Party is trying to overrule the will of the Missouri citizens!

This past spring, Republicans across our state participated in county caucuses, congressional district caucuses, and a state convention. At that state convention on May 4th, the Missouri Republican Party, led by Chairman Nick Myers, made a horrendous mistake and completely fouled up the credentialing process. As a result of this huge series of mistakes, the Republican National Committee is set to completely invalidate the grassroots delegates and alternate delegates that were voted to attend the national convention and support Donald J Trump for President.

The MO GOP screwed up, but now they are trying to get another chance to select different delegates and alternate delegates. The people they want are all SWAMP creatures, not grassroots. There is a legal argument called the “Doctrine of Unclean Hands.” It simply states that someone who is at fault in a situation cannot benefit from that situation. Clearly, in this situation, Mr. Myers and the MO GOP screwed up, and the result was the loss of our delegates at the national convention. They should not get to choose delegates different from the state convention.

We cannot allow this to happen! We must rise up and tell Mr. Nick Myers that his actions are unacceptable! Mr. Meyers can make this RIGHT if he chooses to do so. We demand that the original 27 delegates and 27 alternates be resubmitted and allowed to vote for Donald J Trump for President.

Please contact Mr. Myers at chairman@mogop.com or by phone at (573) 606-0402. Tell Mr. Myers you want the grassroots delegates resubmitted.

Conservative group Freedom Principal Missouri shared the following:

The Freedom Principle MO is condemning actions by the Missouri GOP, led by State Committee Chair Nick Myers to overturn the results of the Missouri GOP convention on May 4th and steal the election of delegates to the Republican National Committee. “The Missouri GOP, led by the incompetent Nick Myers, screwed up the Missouri GOP Convention in May, resulting in Myers withdrawing his slate at the convention and a more conservative grassroots slate being elected, worked with other disgruntled RINOs committee members from St. Louis and Jefferson County Republican Central Committees to appeal the election of delegates to the RNC and overturn the results of that election,” said Byron Keelin, President of the Freedom Principle MO. “The State, St. Louis, and Jefferson County GOP are acting like Democrats and actively engaging in the stealing of an election.”

The Republican National Convention is set to invalidate the RNC slate of grassroots delegates and alternates because of an appeal by the Missouri GOP stemming from complaints filed by some committee members from the St. Louis County GOP and Jefferson County Republican Central Committees who were listed on the Missouri GOP Slate, submitted by Nick Myers to be delegates to the July 15 – 18 RNC Convention in Milwaukee. Myers was overwhelmingly defeated as Convention Chair by Sophie Shore after screwing up the GOP Convention causing a five-hour delay and resulting in the failure to pass a Republican Party Platform. “The Missouri GOP was totally incompetent, and it resulted in their leadership and their RINO slate being embarrassed by the grassroots delegates, many of whom are Freedom Principle MO members,” said Keelin.

The St. Louis County and Jefferson County GOP committee members appealed their defeat and the RNC is now set to comply with the Missouri GOP and completely invalidate the pro-Trump slate. “If anyone is to blame for their loss, the St. Louis County and Jefferson County Central Committee members should blame Nick Myers for withdrawing his slate,” said Keelin.

“The Convention Chair, Sophie Shore, gave Mr. Myers and his group an additional 45 minutes to resubmit a new slate, but they failed to do so. Now, they are acting like Democrats and want to steal the results of the election and disenfranchise pro-Trump delegates just ahead of the RNC Convention,” said Keelin.

“The Truly Grassroots for Trump slate was the only valid and complete slate elected at the GOP convention and they should be allowed to represent Missouri at the RNC Convention,” said Keelin. “The Freedom Principle MO is reaching out to the Trump campaign and trying to get them to step in and stop this stealing of the election.”

“Nick Myers’s incompetence is why the Missouri GOP is a national embarrassment. He should not be allowed to pick delegates or even be a delegate,” said Keelin. “What the Missouri GOP, the St. Louis County, and Jefferson County Republican Central Committees are doing is engaging in voter disenfranchisement to benefit themselves. The people involved in this stealing of an election are why voters are sick of the special interest-controlled RINOs in Jefferson City and elected a more conservative grassroots slate.” …

Here is their report:

FPMO Condemns Missouri GOP Efforts to Steal GOP Election Media by Joe Ho on Scribd

Senator Bill Eigel, who is running for governor, had this to share:

When I’m governor, the establishment is in big trouble. August 6th will be the last day the RINO Swamp in MO is able to simply run over and ignore the millions of Republicans represented at the state convention. There will be a reckoning. #mogov https://t.co/KyIYdt9AD4 pic.twitter.com/hEA6mjvOOn

— Bill Eigel (@BillEigel) July 2, 2024

The list of pro-Trump delegates selected by the GOP at the convention is as follows. They did nothing wrong and volunteered their time and effort to support President Trump at the RNC.

Please contact the man who messed this all up and encourage him to stop playing games and let the pro-Trump delegates selected at the GOP convention represent the state at the RNC.

Please contact Mr. Myers at chairman@mogop.com or by phone at (573) 606-0402. Tell Mr. Myers you want the grassroots delegates resubmitted.

STOP THE RINOS FROM STEALING THE 2024 NOMINATION FOR PRESIDENT AT THE RNC FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP.

The post Missouri RINOs Pull a Fast One — Remove the Pro-Trump Delegates Elected at the State Convention in May appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The illegal alien from Venezuela charged with the rape and murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray is the son of a former Maduro regime official.

Johan Jose Martinez Rangel, 22, is one of two men accused of Nungaray’s murder in Houston, Texas last month.

Yet it has now been revealed that he is the son of a former official for Venezuela’s socialist regime, making his illegal entry into the United States all the more egregious.

Mail Online reports:

Following Martinez Rangel’s arrest, Venezuelans from his home state of Guarico began flagging on social media that his mother Nazareth Rangel Palacios is a staunch supporter of Nicolas Maduro and served as a councilwoman for his party.

Venezuela’s electoral registry shows Martinez Rangel and Rangel Palacios share the same address in San Juan de Los Morros.

Rangel Palacios was a vocal militant for the ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, and was photographed with her son in pro-government events until he left the country in about 2018.

Rangel Martinez and Franklin Pena, 26, are accused of luring Nungaray to an area underneath a bridge before raping and murdering her. They later dumped her body in a creek.

As reported by The Gateway Pundit this week, the murder rate in socialist Venezuela has fallen to a 22-year-low as violent criminals have fled the country in search of fresh opportunities.

The South American country, which over the past decade has suffered one of the world’s most severe economic and humanitarian crises, has seen its own population plummet as millions of Venezuelans turn their backs on the socialist revolution started under the late Hugo Chavez.

However, this has also led to an exodus of large numbers of its violent criminals, many of whom have sought “refuge” in the U.S. at the invitation of the Bien regime. This in turn has allowed the rise of the country’s notorious Tren de Aragua gang, which now has operations across the United States.

 

The post REVEALED: Venezuelan Illegal Who Raped and Murdered 12-Year-Old Jocelyn Nungaray is Son of Maduro Regime Official appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Dave Brat and Brian Kennedy discuss the threat Communist China poses in the 2024 election – via the War Room

The biggest ‘tell’ in 2024 that Democrats plan on stealing the presidential election is Joe Biden.

Only a party confident in its vote-making apparatus would nominate such an unpopular, empty husk of a human being as its presidential candidate. They know it, and we know it.

After four years, the Republican Party has failed to eliminate or even confront the obvious Democrat Party voter fraud behemoth. It really is up to the MAGA voter to save the country in 2024.

On Tuesday, Brian Kennedy, the Chairman of the Committee on Present Danger: China, joined Dave Brat on The War Room. Kennedy warned the War Room audience that China is likely to assist Democrats in stealing the 2024 election away from President Donald Trump and American voters.

Brian Kennedy: When we’re here in the war room, this is not conservative entertainment. This is about fighting the political war America finds itself in today. One of the things that Steve wanted to do was to organize Conservatives, the MAGA movement, Republicans, to understand the war by Communist China against the United States. He and I and Frank Gaffney founded the Committee on the Present Danger back in February of 2019.

We have that song in the War Room, “Take Down the CCP.” I guarantee you there are millions of people in communist China figuring out today, how do you take down the United States. Unfortunately, we are ill-prepared to deal with that other than the people on the War Room and the MAGA movement more broadly, making sure we can make these arguments to the American people. I have this essay on the American mind, Americanmind.org, over at the Claremont Institute, where I’m arguing today that the odds of having a free and fair election are very, very slim, partly because Communist China can engage in political warfare against us. I’m among those people who think the election was stolen in 2020. I think most of this audience does, too. Most Americans do.

But I worry that the Communist Chinese could spend much of their 16 billion annual budget on intelligence and influence operations in the United States to be able to steal the 2024 election. Someone very important called recently and asked me who was going to win this election, whether it was Trump and Joe Biden or Trump and someone else. And I said, there’s 100% chance that there’s going to be an attempt to steal the election. There is a 95% chance they’ll succeed. But I myself have my money on the 5% because of the American people, if they understand it can be stolen, will go to unprecedented lengths to make sure either it is not or that they vote in such extraordinary numbers that they’ll be able to outvote the steal.

And so even though I think we’re going to win, and I very much agree with Kevin Roberts, that we’re going to save this country and change it back to what it should be, the amount of work we have to do between now and November will be unprecedented, and no one in the War Room should have any illusion that is a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump is going to win.

The debate performance, his debate the other day was fabulous. President Biden was, as everyone saw, awful. That does not mean that Biden won’t be the nominee. Even in a very feeble position like he is in, That doesn’t mean that the election couldn’t be stolen. We saw it in 2020. We could see it again in 2024.

I speculate in this essay that we know Communist China has all sorts factories and warehouses around the country, warehouses, primarily. But in those warehouses, why couldn’t they produce a million ballots in each of the seven swing states? And all the seven swing states are going to allow mail-in ballots, and nothing has been done by the Republican Party from 2020 to today to make sure that that’s not the case.

Why couldn’t Communist China produce ballots, counterfeit ballots, essentially? We know they can counterfeit $100 bills. They can, North Korea can, because that’s money. Why couldn’t Communist China counterfeit ballots? They have access to the paper, they have printing presses, they have the voter rolls, they have the PDFs of the ballots, they have artificial intelligence that can reproduce signatures. They can make a perfect counterfeit ballot.

We’ve done nothing to stop that. And so unless we vote in November in historic numbers, persuade people not merely to watch the War Room, but to actually to go door to door and get people to go and vote. If that does not happen, Joe Biden or some Democrat will be the President again. So I’m very optimistic that we can win, but Only if we go to unprecedented lengths to make sure that our countrymen understand what is at stake.

We are going to have to pray to God for guidance and work like hell to win this election.

One way we can counter fraud is to expose and eliminate the millions of phony registrations cluttering our voter rolls.

MAJOR WARNING: If Republicans Want to Win in 2024 We Have Less than Two Months to Clean Bloated Voter Rolls — August 7th Is Cut-Off Date

We have one month to get this done.

MAJOR WARNING: If Republicans Want to Win in 2024 We Have Less than Two Months to Clean Bloated Voter Rolls — August 7th Is Cut-Off Date

It’s time to take action.

The post Brian Kennedy on the 2024 Chinese Threat – “There’s 100% Chance That There’s Going to Be an Attempt to Steal the Election” (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Atlanta-based rapper Waka Flocka Flame made headlines after recently performing at Club Sky in Salt Lake City, Utah, and telling Biden supporters to “get out” of his concert.

“We’re going to see y’all at the Bingo game,” Flocka said to the people who didn’t like his command.

“We’re going to party right now for our f*cking President T24,” he added before performing his hit song “Grove Street Party.” As the song began, the DJ also shouted, “Trump 2024!” Most of the crowd appeared to enjoy his comments:

The rapper has long been a fan of President Trump.

Waka Flocka Flame last October came out with the message “TRUMP2024” on X and changed his profile picture to a photo of him standing with the President:

TRUMP2024

— Waka Flocka Flame (@WakaFlocka) October 16, 2023

#NewProfilePic pic.twitter.com/eRf4HeBI6A

— Waka Flocka Flame (@WakaFlocka) October 17, 2023

Additionally, in a 2020 Instagram comment, he signaled that he believes President Trump is a better President than Obama.

For any of the Communist leftists who are triggered over Waka Flocka’s call for Biden supporters to leave his concert, it can be recalled that “F*ck Donald Trump” rapper YG once tried to force a concert-goer to state his name and yell “F*ck Donald Trump” before kicking him out for refusing:

Unlike YG, Flocka wasn’t an asshole about it…

WATCH: Rapper Waka Flocka kicked all Joe Biden supporters from his concert

“All Joe Biden Voters, GET OUT!”

“We gonna party right now for T24 [Trump 2025]

@dom_lucre
pic.twitter.com/JCVtItnRaN

— George (@BehizyTweets) July 3, 2024

 

The post WATCH: “All The Joe Biden Voters Get Out!” – Rapper Waka Flocka Flame Kicks Biden Supporters Out of His Concert appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

A Democrat representative from Maine named Jared Golden stunned some people today, publishing a column in which he not only says that Trump is going to win the 2024 election, but also suggesting that this will NOT in fact, be a threat to democracy.

Given the world we live in today, it’s positively shocking to hear words like this coming from an elected Democrat.

Democrat party leaders may want to read the column and take Rep. Golden’s advice on calming down.

From the Bangor Daily News:

Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine

After the first presidential debate, lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee. Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise. It also didn’t rattle me as it has others, because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.

There are winners and losers in every election. Democrats’ post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy. I reject the premise. Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.

This Independence Day marks our nation’s 248th birthday. In that time, American democracy has withstood civil war, world wars, acts of terrorism and technological and societal changes that would make the Founders’ head spin…

I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams. We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them.

Just amazing.

In an op-Ed, Democrat Rep. Jared Golden of Maine writes: “Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine. Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.” pic.twitter.com/4k8jIo9Juh

— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) July 2, 2024

WOW!

Jared Golden finally responds to the debate disaster:

“Donald Trump is going to win the election and democracy will be just fine” pic.twitter.com/x39byNCUFb

— The Maine Wire (@TheMaineWire) July 2, 2024

This column will not win Mr. Golden any appearances on CNN or MSNBC but it should reassure the voters who put him in office that he is a reasonable man, something that is currently quite difficult to find on the left.

(Image:Source)

The post SHOCK! Democrat Rep. From Maine Writes Op-Ed: ‘Trump is Going to Win the Election and Democracy Will be Just Fine’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

As The Gateway Pundit reported in November 2020, the total number of “indefinitely confined” voters, or Express Votes ballots for individuals with disabilities, skyrocketed from around 60,000 in 2016 to over 240,000 in 2020.

The number of indefinitely confined voters in Wisconsin soared from 6% of total voters in 2016 to 11% of total voters in 2020.

No photo ID is required in Wisconsin for indefinitely confined voters.

A local Madison news outlet reported on the ‘indefinitely confined’ ballots from the 2020 election:

These voters are not required to show proof of a photo ID to vote absentee if they apply for a certification declaring them indefinitely confined whether it be due to age, physical illness, infirmity or they are disabled for an indefinite period.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) does not allow using the confined status as a way to avoid using a photo ID, instead, it’s an option thousands more voters used this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They don’t have to show a photo ID but it does not exempt them from voter registration, signing their absentee certificate and having a witness on their absentee ballot,” said Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief election official.

The MacIver Institute has more:

The total number of indefinitely confined voters in Wisconsin now stands at 243,900. Last year, the total number was only 72,000. That is an increase of 238% in just over a year.

Those voters enjoy a special perk when requesting an absentee ballot – they are exempt for the state’s voter ID law.“

Wisconsin officials blamed COVID for the surge in indefinitely confined voters in the state.

Democrats know this is an optimal way that allows them to cheat.

Now, a far-left judge from Dane County ruled that disabled Wisconsin voters can request and download electronic ballots,

The New York Post reported:

A Dane County Circuit Court judge who once said people who steal from big-box stores shouldn’t be prosecuted ruled that disabled Wisconsin voters can request and download electronic ballots, a change that could cause election-administration problems in the battleground state this November.

Judge Everett Mitchell, who also serves as a pastor in Madison and ran for state Supreme Court last year — losing in a four-way primary — issued a temporary injunction last week covering the Nov. 5 election, effectively modifying a portion of the election-administration landscape in a state that struggled with absentee-ballot tabulation in the last presidential election.

Voters with print disabilities who self-certify they cannot read or complete a ballot without assistance can request electronic ballots from their election clerks, which they can complete with the use of assistive technology and mail back, thanks to the injunction.

The post Leftie Judge in Wisconsin Alters Election Law — Rules Certain Voters Can Download Ballots Online without a Voter ID appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The forces of Maryland politics are conspiring to make a jackass out of your humble correspondent, which he doesn’t appreciate—he has that base covered all by himself. 

First we argued that Rep. David Trone, a grotesquely wealthy arriviste with bog-standard liberal politics, had it sewn up for the Democratic nomination for senate against Angela Alsobrooks. Trone’s polls were sagging as the primary approached, but Alsobrooks’s highest title to date is executive of Prince George’s County (not a name synonymous with good government in the Old Line State). Even Spiro Agnew, erstwhile Baltimore County executive, spent some time in the Governor’s Mansion before leaping into national politics. Alsobrooks walked away with it, 53 percent to 42—Trone didn’t even cover the spread. So be it. Every gambler loses some, for better or worse. We wrote about it.

We then predicted that the solidly popular former governor, Larry Hogan, would be in good shape to capture the seat for the Republicans in the general election. Preliminary polling had shown him in a dead heat or edging out both Trone and Alsobrooks. Hogan was a recognizable character in American politics, the red governor of a blue state. You wouldn’t want him for president, but he was probably a cut better than your Parris Glendenningses and Martin O’Malleys. He had run a budget surplus while actually improving services like the Motor Vehicles Administration and beating cancer, which is (we are told) a big sympathy-winner. The right wing of Maryland Republicans regarded him as a bit of a squish, especially after some high-profile differences with President Donald Trump, but it didn’t seem insurmountable in a cycle that has seen the 45th president dance away from social issues and endorse whatever centrists are willing to smoke the peace pipe.

It is now a month and a half later. The latest polling shows Hogan’s support in the mid-30s, more than 10 points behind Alsobrooks. So far from fielding a competitive showing against a weak candidate, Hogan is wandering into the realm of pain where people use words like “blowout” and “landslide” and (our favorite, watch for this one here when he loses) “massacre.”

Alsobrooks is still a weak candidate; the same poll that showed Hogan 11 points behind pegged her support at an anemic 48 percent. (This is in a state where there are more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.) So what happened?

A couple things. First, Hogan in mid-May vowed that he would be a pro-choice senator, coming out in favor of codifying Roe v. Wade at the federal level. The play here is obvious. The prevailing theory of Republican defeat in 2022 is that the Dobbs decision freaked out fiscally conservative (or at any rate, anti-tax) but socially liberal suburbanites. The first problem is that he had previously touted himself as a pro-life Catholic and as governor made marginal moves to restrict abortion access in the state. The Maryland Democrats have not forgotten. The second problem is that this disavows one of the GOP’s greatest victories at the federal level, and cuts against the party’s current states’ rights approach to the issue. Gratuitously, too—nobody is very worried that abortion is about to be banned in Maryland. 

Second, Hogan vocally repudiated Trump’s peace overtures, saying that he has “no interest” in an endorsement after the former president had said he would like to see Hogan win his race. The reasoning is analogous—the theory is that the Trump name is poison in the suburbs, so running away from it is the thing to do.

This is a penny-wise and pound-foolish approach. Trump is at the top of the party’s ticket, whether you like it or not; while the Maryland GOP relies on swinging suburbanites, the party’s rural bloc is all in on Trump. Your humble correspondent lives in the country. Outside the teeming college-town metropole of our county seat, the political (and physical) landscape is indistinguishable from the Pennsylvania exurbs that carried Trump to the presidency. These voters are the reason the GOP gubernatorial candidate in 2020 was a hardline lawyer involved in the former president’s election-fraud suits rather than Hogan’s anointed successor; they are a plurality of the state’s actual Republican base, such as it is. With a Trump endorsement, we suspect they would have held their nose to vote for Hogan (“the bald freak,” in local parlance). Without it—well, spite is a powerful thing. For the GOP to win statewide office, you need all those voters, as well as a share of the suburbs. 

Hogan has tacked to the center and overshot. A voter may reasonably ask, If the Republican candidate is at war with the party leadership and has repudiated a huge part of the national party’s successes and current program, why not just vote for the Democrat? 

Why not, indeed. A Republican cannot win by being Democrat Lite; there is a difference between moderating and pandering. The modal American voter isn’t infinitely wise, but he isn’t hopelessly dumb, either. He would rather vote for the real McCoy than a red carbon copy of the other guy—or sit it out. Trump’s 2024 campaign has been a canny, almost Nixonian study in balancing moderation and differentiation. On the other hand, Hogan appears to be making a beeline for the ash-heap with John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller.

The post Hogan Is Blowing the Maryland Senate Race appeared first on The American Conservative.

The Supreme Court’s term has ended, as it often does, with a bang—or series of bangs. The Court set off legal fireworks on many fronts, but the most enduringly significant decision handed down is probably Loper v. Raimondo. In that case, the Court overruled its 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which had established the legal doctrine that came to be known as “Chevron deference.” Under this doctrine, courts were required to defer to a federal administrative agency’s interpretation of the statutory law it enforces whenever a statute is sufficiently ambiguous—even if a court might have interpreted the statute differently. 

This effectively ceded enormous amounts of power to the administrative state, leaving ordinary citizens with little recourse to challenge the legal interpretations of the countless agencies that wield enormous power over their lives and livelihoods. Given the size and scope of the modern administrative state, this directly undermines the fundamental principle of republican government: consent of the governed. 

At issue in Loper was whether or not the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service had overstepped its legal authority in imposing significant monitoring costs on fishermen. The Biden administration defended deference to the regulating agency on the basis of the agency’s purported expertise. The fishermen, by contrast, argued that Congress has been incentivized by Chevron deference to do far less than is constitutionally required, instead delegating to administrative agencies the power to rule by fiat rather than law. The Court accepted this argument and overturned Chevron. It did so partly on the basis of the inherent judicial authority to interpret laws in the “Cases” and “Controversies” explicitly contemplated by the Constitution, and partly on the basis of the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which was passed to check the “zeal” of New Deal administrative agencies that led them to “excesses” beyond the four corners of the laws that gave them life. Chevron deference, the Court said in Loper, was directly contrary to the APA. Statutory ambiguities can no longer be read as implicit and broad delegations to administrative agencies.

According to Chief Justice John Roberts, “Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority….courts need not and under the APA may not defer to an agency interpretation of the law simply because a statute is ambiguous.” 

In dissent, Associate Justice Elena Kagan asked, “Who should give content to a statute when Congress’s instructions have run out? Should it be a court? Or should it be the agency Congress has charged with administering the statute? The answer Chevron gives is that it should usually be the agency, within the bounds of reasonableness.”

In hemming in the relatively unchecked power of federal bureaucrats, the decision in Loper has long been on the wish list of conservatives, classical liberals, and libertarians alike. And, indeed, it’s not hard to imagine benefits flowing directly from the decision, in the form of heightened judicial oversight of the administrative state. But it’s equally easy to imagine the decision delivering far less than many hope, and even masking and ultimately accelerating progressivism’s long march through our institutions. Conservatives must be careful what they wish for. 

Few know the story of how we got to Chevron and why many conservatives, including the likes of the late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, initially embraced it. Since the advent of the modern administrative state, presidents, Congress, the courts, and agencies themselves have tussled over who controls it, and the extent to which it must be accountable to the American people. FDR himself, contrary to many early progressives, came to have doubts about the independence of “the headless fourth branch of government.” 

As the 20th century wore on, both liberals and conservatives increasingly agreed on the necessity to control this fourth branch, albeit for different reasons. By the 1960s, liberals became suspicious of what they saw as a captured technocratic state operating without popular or judicial controls. They sought to enable interest groups, acting through courts, to control the levers of administrative power in pursuit of a variety of newly-fashioned social, political, economic, and environmental objectives. They often sued not simply to stop government action, but to demand it, in accordance with what they claimed were statutory objectives or constitutional mandates. In this endeavor, they relied on increasingly sympathetic federal courts staffed by progressive jurists to do their bidding. Through a variety of mechanisms, including loosened standing requirements and novel due process rulings, courts began to direct the organs of the administrative state to pursue progressive policy objectives. 

Meanwhile, the Nixon administration, equally suspicious of administrative independence, sought to re-politicize the massive New Deal/Great Society federal Leviathan. Nixon’s goal was to hold it accountable, through the office of the president, to the wishes of the American people. He was often stymied by the shift in the balance of power away from executive agencies to even more unaccountable federal courts. In a sense, both liberals and conservatives attempted to affect what they understood to be a “democratization” of the administrative state, each having lost the early progressives’ faith in apolitical “expertise.”

By the time the Chevron case was decided during the Reagan administration, many conservatives were fully on board with having courts step back from meddling in what they understood to be executive affairs. Progressive courts had hardly proved to be allies in reining in non-consensual administrative power. 

As Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch points out in a footnote to Loper, 

It should be recalled that, when Justice Scalia launched the Chevron revolution, there were many judges who “abhor[red] . . . ‘plain meaning’” and preferred instead to elevate “legislative history” and their own curated accounts of a law’s “purpose[s]” over enacted statutory text…Chevron, he predicted, would provide a new guardrail against that practice…As the Justice’s later writings show, he had the right diagnosis, just the wrong cure. The answer for judges eliding statutory terms is not deference to agencies that may seek to do the same, but a demand that all return to a more faithful adherence to the written law. That was, of course, another project Justice Scalia championed. And as we like to say, “we’re all textualists now.”

But are we all textualists now? Conservatives should be cautious about embracing the shift to judicial superintendence over administration that Loper demands. It might well have the effect of preventing salutary politicization of such decision making by future conservative administrations confronting an even more progressive judiciary. One of the effects of overturning Chevron will be to shift even more power toward lawyers within the administrative state, rather than political officers. Over much of the last century, courts have routinely proved to be as non-deferential to conservative preferences as they have to the text of the Constitution itself.

As conservatives should know—though many have forgotten the lesson—the most important question is not who wields power, but how much power is wielded. The goal of conservatives should be to reduce the size and scope of unaccountable bureaucracy, not celebrate who or what controls it. The fat lady that is the administrative state has not yet begun to sing.

The post Overturning Chevron May Prove Pyrrhic appeared first on The American Conservative.

Under President Joe Biden’s leadership, the Democrats have cast the presidential election as a fight for democracy.

How fitting then that a critical mass of Democrats are now contemplating jettisoning Biden, the winner of all the Democratic primaries, as the nominee and replacing him with someone who did not run and received as few as zero votes. All because they fear he will lose a democratic election in four months to former President Donald Trump.

Biden himself professes to be upset that the Supreme Court made it more likely that the voters determine Trump’s fitness to serve another term rather than another court proceeding, despite saying that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were apparent to anyone watching.

Now Biden himself could be denied an opportunity to face the voters by the same Democratic bigwigs who helped clear the primary field for him, if they can persuade him to drop out or incite a big enough mutiny among the Democratic convention delegates, more than 90 percent of whom are committed to him. The runner-up in the Democratic primaries was “uncommitted.”

The modern primary process is a relatively recent phenomenon, to be sure. Plenty of great presidents, from George Washington to Dwight Eisenhower, preceded it. But none of them were pushing for the abolition of the Electoral College, the legislative filibuster, or the Senate itself on democratic grounds, as can be said of many Democrats pushing for a return to the smoke-filled room.

If Democrats have their druthers, they would also dislodge Vice President Kamala Harris, who at least won the 2020 election alongside Biden, and replace her with a swing state-friendly ticket. But James Clyburn, the South Carolina Democrat and Congressional Black Caucus grandee who rescued Biden’s candidacy four years ago, has already signaled that is a nonstarter. It is not clear that anyone else could directly inherit and control Biden’s campaign cash, which is imperative now that Trump has picked up the fundraising pace.

As Democrats try to gently escort Biden into the good night now that he has apparently outlived his usefulness, leaked polling data from the Democratic firm OpenLabs purportedly shows Trump leading in the battlegrounds and gaining ground rapidly in the toss-up and heretofore reach states. This is consistent with what the post-debate national polling is showing and would endanger down-ballot Democrats.

Thus the Democrats are starting to flee the sinking ship. For the good of democracy, of course. Which suddenly might be fine after all! 

“Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that,” Trump-district Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) wrote in a remarkable op-ed. “Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.”

Democrats lost Golden’s district, good for one electoral vote, in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. Polls now show Biden could possibly lose Maine statewide. 

In the days leading up to the Biden debate disaster that suddenly made presidential decrepitude noticeable in polite company again, Democrats were focused on their other core issue for the 2024 election: the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, handed down two years ago.

The court’s majority decided that abortion policy should be decided democratically rather than by judicial fiat for the first time in nearly a half century, without imposing its own preferences on the whole country. The Democrats’ anti-Dobbs fervor sits uneasily alongside their democracy push. 

Of course, you can object to human rights issues being settled by majority vote, whether nationally or in the states, even if we disagree about the precise human rights question at stake. The Supreme Court’s junking of Chevron deference is really primarily about restoring power to the elected legislative branch that had gradually been taken by unelected bureaucrats.

As was the case with Dobbs, it is not always clear that the legislators will use this power wisely or that Republicans in particular are prepared to grapple with all the thorny issues involved. But it is their duty and one of the reasons Congress has devolved into a clown show in the first place is that for the rank-and-file, lawmaking is now a secondary concern to lawmaking.

The Constitution gives them better things to do.

It’s true that there is more to a free and democratic society, much less a constitutional republic, than conducting elections. We learned that, or at least should have, with the folly of Iraq and Hamas’ participation in that supposed tidal wave of democracy in Gaza during that time period.

But non-Democrats can be forgiven for wondering if the party’s commitment to the small-d variety is contingent upon the outcome.

As one Joe Biden once put it, “You can’t love your country only when you win.”

The post Democrats Flee A Ship Named Democracy appeared first on The American Conservative.

Biden’s corrupt Justice Department will continue to pursue the two lawfare cases against Trump past election day if Trump wins.

According to a leak to The Washington Post, Special Counsel Jack Smith will continue to file motions and possibly conduct a trial after Election Day if Trump wins in a race against the clock before Inauguration Day.

The Justice Department cannot charge a sitting president so they want to ‘get Trump’ before he is sworn in on January 20, 2025.

“Justice Department officials plan to pursue the criminal cases against Donald Trump past Election Day even if he wins, under the belief that department rules against charging or prosecuting a sitting president would not kick in until Inauguration Day in January, according to people familiar with the discussions” – WaPo reported.

“Current officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed the same sentiment — that if Trump wins the election, the clock on the two federal cases against him would keep ticking until Jan. 20, when he would be sworn in as the 47th president.” – The Washington Post reported.

Jack Smith’s cases against Trump got torpedoed following two landmark decisions by the Supreme Court.

The US Supreme Court last Friday delivered a devastating blow to Biden’s corrupt Justice Department and overturned the obstruction charge used to jail hundreds of January 6 defendants.

Biden’s corrupt DOJ charged more than 300 J6ers with 18 USC §1512(c)(2). Additionally, two of the four charges against Trump in Jack Smith’s DC case are conspiracy to obstruct so the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday torpedoed the special counsel’s case against Trump as well.

The Supreme Court earlier this year heard oral arguments in Fischer v. United States and at issue was statute 18 USC §1512(c)(2):

Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.

Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump holds up after the Supreme Court overturned the obstruction charge.

Additionally, the US Supreme Court on Monday ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core Constitutional powers.

Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts, according to the high court.

Jack Smith’s DC case against Trump will be delayed again as it bounces back down to the lower court to Judge Tanya Chutkan.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas also questioned Jack Smith’s authority as special counsel in his concurring opinion on the high court’s presidential immunity ruling.

Clarence Thomas questioned Jack Smith’s authority because he was a private citizen when he was tapped as a special prosecutor.

Justice Thomas also argued that Jack Smith is not senate confirmed. This is significant because Trump’s lawyers are also using this argument before Judge Cannon in a motion to dismiss Jack Smith’s classified documents case.

Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed the classified documents trial after the special counsel admitted to evidence tampering.

The post LEAK: Biden’s Corrupt DOJ will Pursue Lawfare Cases Against Trump Past Election Day – In a Race Against the Clock Before Inauguration Day – If He Wins appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.