Mike Huckabee

Documentary filmmaker and conservative activist Chris Rufo has been effectively exposing Critical Race Theory for what it is, sounding the warning for the past year, and, naturally, the “woke” left can’t stand that. So the WASHINGTON POST did a long hit piece on him. The slant of it was that the teaching of Critical Race Theory was being used by Republicans not because it’s evil and racist (which it is) but because they see “political promise” in making it a wedge issue to use for taking back Congress in 2022. And they made Rufo out to seem manipulative when he’s simply running a public persuasion campaign –- not by lying about CRT but by telling the truth about it.

Rufo challenged what they'd said, and WAPO ended up having to retract or add six paragraphs from their story. They had to reverse one of their key accusations against him. They even had to admit to out-and-out fabricating a timeline of events that was central to their story. They also had to admit they didn’t have an audio recording or transcript of the (fake) quotes they had used.

https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1407151635214700545

Still, the “clarification” they printed at the end of their revised story really downplays the problems with their piece. All they said was this:

“This report has been changed to clarify the sequence of events that followed Rufo’s appearance on FOX NEWS last summer. In addition, the story adds a clarification from the Cupertino superintendent that a lesson was presented once before it was canceled.”

When Rufo also called out Joy Reid of MSNBC for denouncing him “by name multiple times” and suggested she lacked the courage to invite him on her show, Reid –- who is perhaps the most racist person on television if it can narrowed down to just one –- tweeted, “This is a weirdly aggressive way to get yourself on TV, Christopher...Why not just contact my booking producers like a normal person, rather than going with the White Man Demands option? I had never even heard of you until @oneunderscore_piece exposing your plot to rebrand CRT.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-issues-clarifications-on-chris-rufo-story

“White Man Demands”? Told you, this person views everything from the lens of her own bigotry.

Rufo appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show Tuesday night. “I’m eating these hit pieces for breakfast,” he said. “It’s really not fazing me at all.” He’s focused like a laser on his mission.

He said WAPO had assigned three reporters and spent three weeks to try and undermine him but that this had “backfired spectacularly.”

So, “it doesn’t bother me one bit,” he said. “I think it really shows that we’re having an impact. We’ve woken up millions of parents to the dangers of Critical Race Theory. They’re now starting to take action in school boards across the country. And these neo-racist bigots are starting to get worried.”

He added that it’s important to recognize the difference between “equality” and “equity.” The former means equal protection under the law, while the latter, though it might sound good and soft and fuzzy, really means “something totally different” –- it means that they’re trying to divide and conquer by forcing groups to compete against each other.

“They’re using active racial discrimination,” he said, “which they call ‘anti-racist discrimination,’ to try to achieve equality of outcomes.” When regimes in the 20th century tried to set up this kind of society, “it left body counts in the tens of millions, and we shouldn’t try it here. There’s no chance that it will succeed. And we have to know exactly where it’s starting, which is in our schools."

Rufo is slightly off about one thing: historians will say, the body count was in the HUNDREDS of millions. And the slaughter continues to this day in some countries.

In related news, two parents were arrested Tuesday at a meeting of the Loudoun County, Virginia, school board. One who didn’t want to go quietly was roughed up and tackled to the floor. They had come “because they had been given space to speak,” Tucker Carlson reported, but so many angry parents had shown up to put the “loud” in “Loudoun” and protest the teaching of Critical Race Theory and also a proposed new transgender policy that the school board, after first calling for a five-minute recess to let things cool down, chose to adjourn the meeting and send everybody home. That didn’t sit well with some of the parents who had wanted to speak. Police were there to arrest for trespassing the ones who wouldn’t leave, and it got contentious.

More coverage on Laura Ingraham’s show and on FOX NEWS early Wednesday morning showed complete bedlam in the meeting hall, with parents demanding board members resign over their support of CRT. A total of 259 parents were signed up to make public comment, and only 51 got to speak. When board members filed out of the room after adjourning, parents chanted, “Shame on you! Shame on you!” and also sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-loudoun-county-school-board-mulls-transgender-critical-race-theory-policies

One after another, while they had the chance, parents took to the microphone. Demographically, it was a largely white crowd, but not all-white. Black parents are upset by this as well, as it teaches black children that they are victims and losers who need intervention to do as well as others. “My child is not oppressed,” said one mother who is black, “and don’t assume that. As long as you Marxists push your unconstitutional agenda, my child --- she will not be returning back to Loudon County schools.” The room erupted in cheers.

Video of the entire event is here.

https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/crazy-scenes-from-loudon-county-school-board-meeting/

This was a rowdy crowd, and it would have been better not to see fighting and booing. But this illustrates what happens when people get pushed too far, especially where their kids are concerned. Parents are realizing that when it comes to the education of their kids, school boards aren’t even giving them a seat at the table. But school boards are answerable to THEM. Policies they vehemently disagree with are being shoved down their throats by progressives who just keep moving the goal post further and further left, and parents, in particular, are sick of it.

FOX & FRIENDS on Wednesday morning interviewed one of the parents. “We do not want to co-parent with our government,” Rachel Pisani said, concerned that kids are being indoctrinated. This board, she says, is planning to fire any teacher who isn’t on board with their cultural message. And during Tuesday’s meeting, she said, they cut off speakers with whom they disagreed. But she vowed that the protests by this “army of moms” will not stop until they are heard. The goal of these parents now is to recall and replace six of the nine members of the school board.

It's great to see that pushing back against the radical left agenda is waking more people up. Parents need to stay pedal-to-the-metal on this and any other school issue they have a problem with. To borrow a word from President Trump, it seems that finally, on the issue of Critical Race Theory, we are...WINNING!

Mike Huckabee

Sen. Joe Manchin is proposing a compromise voting law bill in place of the Democrats’ “For The People Act” (aka, the Legalize Vote Fraud Act.) Republicans are unlikely to support it, and unless Manchin also reverses himself on killing the filibuster, we can all hope and pray that this naked power grab by Democrats to try to federalize elections and cement themselves into power forever will die the death it deserves.

And even if Manchin does reverse himself on the filibuster (which he insists he won’t), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema reiterated that she’s not willing to kill it, either. She pointed out that without the filibuster, laws could be reversed every time the majority switches sides.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kyrsten-sinema-op-ed-dems-hypocritical-end-filibuster

One of the more amusing sideshows is watching Stacey Abrams reverse herself to back the Manchin plan (thinking it’s the best they’ll be able to get) and claiming that, why, she NEVER said that voter ID laws are racist! Where did anyone get that crazy idea? She told CNN (the only place where interviewers could hear something like this and not do a spit-take):

“That’s one of the fallacies of Republican talking points that have been deeply disturbing. No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.”

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/stacey-abrams-now-claims-she-was-never-against-voter-id/

Wow. This is from the Democrats’ official face of denouncing voter ID and other election integrity laws as racist. It’s not surprising, though; as I said on Sean Hannity’s show last night, she’s had more flip-flops than a Jimmy Buffett concert. But why on this one, her core issue?

https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2021/06/21/landslide-80-support-photo-id-for-voting-including-62-of-democrats-and-overwhelming-share-of-minorities-n398076

As this article at the HotAir blog suggests, it may be due to a new Monmouth University poll. Polls have long shown that the Democrats were on the wrong side of most Americans in opposing voter ID. But the new poll shows that more minorities support voter ID laws than whites (by 84-77%) and more people who make under $50,000 support them than people who make over $100,000 (81-76%.) Note that all those groups heavily support voter ID laws. Even 56% of self-identified liberals support them! Opposing voter ID laws is the lower of all loser issues. It’s like coming out against mom, apple pie and the flag, all of which Democrats have also done.

This article suggests that Abrams and the Democrats may have been looking for any excuse to leap off this losing horse, and Manchin’s compromise fit the bill. Now, they just have to see if their dominance of the news and social media is powerful enough to bamboozle Americans into believing that they actually never opposed the thing they’ve been loudly denouncing for the past year.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/06/21/the-wapos-spin-on-stacey-abrams-sudden-voter-id-flip-flop-is-something-else-n400438

By the way, it’s always worth a reminder: Stacey Abrams lost the 2018 Georgia Governor’s election by 50,000 votes. Since then, she’s repeatedly cast doubt on the fairness of the election and spoken as if she were the cheated, rightful winner. Democrats have responded not by accusing her of attacking democracy or spreading a “big lie,” but by celebrating and elevating her to a position as their leading spokesperson for blocking election integrity laws and trying to nationalize elections.

Mike Huckabee

Gordon Chang, expert on China and author of THE GREAT U.S. - CHINA TECH WAR, appeared on TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT Monday to speak further on the likelihood that Dong Jingwei, the 57-year-old head of counterintelligence for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, had flown from Hong Kong to California on February 10 and defected to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, bringing with him a treasure trove of secret information.

Chang reiterated that he thinks the story is true.

China is denying that this happened, of course, and both BEIJING DAILY and the Hong Kong publication SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST have reported that Dong is in China doing whatever spooky things he normally does in the land of Chinese spooks, such as giving presentations at spy-catcher seminars.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3137958/top-chinese-spy-catcher-dong-jingwei-warns-agents-look-out

Chang does not believe their reports, as “China has every reason in the world to parade this guy in front of the cameras. That would squelch all sorts of rumors that are damaging to the regime. Now, China hasn’t done that, and that to me says that we have him, and that he, in fact, defected.”

Incidentally, the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST story makes reference to the “new anti-espionage regulation released in April” that applies to “not only Chinese government departments, but also social groups and businesses, supplemented with lists of Chinese entities that are assigned counter-espionage responsibilities.” This onerous new law has received very little press in the United States, so I'm taking the opportunity here to describe it. Under this law, once entities been designated by the government, they're required to watch for and prevent foreign espionage activity. They must “vet and train personnel, particularly ahead of foreign trips, after which they must be debriefed about any national security issues.” This law treats even universities and private businesses as if they’re “sensitive government agencies.”

https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/2021/04/26/china-targets-foreign-spies-and-hostile-forces-with-new-anti-espionage-rules/

More on this soon, but for now, back to the Chang interview. Tucker brought up the fact that the media are suddenly changing their tune on the origin of the virus, as if they knew...somehow...they could no longer get away with spouting their original fairy tale about bat soup. And Chang noted what seems to be a similar shift of opinion among officials of the Biden administration. This story out of Australia mentions that same shift as evidence that the defection probably happened.

https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/chinese-spy-dong-jingwei-defects-to-the-west-while-offering-covid-secrets/news-story/d61277b586d043c6942bcce7b8b70d44

Chang said this could be due to any of a number of things, perhaps political pressure, but he thinks it’s because they now have evidence of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Even more important is the information that the Chinese military was working with that lab as part of its bioweapons program.

As for China intentionally releasing the virus, Chang believes this scenario is possible but unlikely, given that they didn’t yet have a vaccine. He thinks it was a mistake, and that China “wasn’t able to contain it.” On the other hand, he noted that while foreigners typically believe the leak was accidental, Chinese nationals are more likely to think it was released on purpose. They know their government all too well.

We came across another report from that same Australian news outlet that provides a lot of context for this alleged defection. It says that no “convincing” photo of Dong has been released since last September, and the one that's purported to be him isn't persuading anyone. This story also includes some intriguing background on Dong’s daughter.

https://www.news.com.au/world/asia/who-is-dong-jingwei-why-us-china-wont-prove-they-have-spymaster/news-story/dc431d5bd5c547bae82c71e769cbc29f

All we’d seen in the press about Dong Yang was that she'd been studying at a California university, but now there’s more: She’s reportedly the ex-wife of Alibaba executive Jiang Fan. Alibaba, an international tech firm, has been in the crosshairs of the CCP in recent months. The company is being scrutinized for alleged “antitrust” and “corruption” issues. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s CEO, “disappeared” for several weeks earlier this year.

Since that time, Ma has reportedly “embraced supervision.” (Ah, there’s a euphemism for you.) And he rarely appears in public or makes public statements. The CCP appears to be cracking down in general on billionaires and academics. Interesting case in point: at the same time we were hearing denials of a nuclear accident of some kind at the China Taishan power plant, one of its leading nuclear scientists, Vice President of Harbin Engineering University Zhang Zhijian, reportedly “fell” from his building. No details were given.

Another billionaire, the chairman of a Chinese high-tech firm, got in hot water and was ordered to “keep a low profile” after publishing a historic poem as part of a media campaign. This poem was critical of an ancient emperor. In China, criticism of emperors is banned on social media, as it could be interpreted as criticism of their current leader-for-life, Xi Jinping.

(Wow, you thought censorship on American social media was bad! On the other hand, this story gives us a peek at just how bad it can get, and almost certainly WILL get if we don’t weaken the power of Big Tech.)

Another billionaire, this one in agriculture, lost control of his business after being arrested over a minor property dispute. He’s since been charged with “seeking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

So our speculation is that this kind of crackdown by the CCP might have had some impact on Dong’s daughter, considering her ties, and might even have something to do with the defection. Just a hypothesis. We’ll see if anyone else makes this connection.

I’ll leave you with the words being (falsely?) attributed to Dong from that seminar, as they relate to the way China is cracking down on business moguls and, ironically, might even describe what Dong himself has done by defecting: “In particular, some individuals are willing to be ‘internal traitors,’ secretly colluding with foreign spies and intelligence agencies and hostile forces to engage in anti-China activities. Individuals ‘act behind the scenes’ and send funds to hostile forces through illegal channels to support anti-China activities. These ‘traitors’ and behind-the-scenes gold masters’ have severely endangered the country’s political security. They will eventually be nailed to the pillar of shame in history.”

Translation: we need to keep this man, and his daughter, safe.

Mike Huckabee

Courtesy of Instapundit and Brian Reidl of the Manhattan Institute, here’s some news that corporate CEOs should ponder long and hard before going “woke” to appease the Twitter mob.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/457159/

According to Pew Research, Democrats outnumber Republicans on Twitter by 15 percentage points. If Twitter were a state, that would tie it with Hawaii and Vermont for most liberal state. But it gets worse: only 10% of Twitter users post 92% of all tweets. Among those active users, Democrats outnumber Republicans by 43 percentage points. If Twitter were a Congressional district, that would make it the second-most leftwing district in America.

And 3% of Twitter users post 90% of all tweets, so you can only imagine how far left of most Americans their tweets are.

If you’re a CEO who’s making business decisions based on what people say about you on Twitter, you might as well just run your company by asking yourself, “What would Ilhan Omar do?” And I think we know what she would do: she’d put you into bankruptcy.

Mike Huckabee

Seth Barrett Tillman, a law lecturer at the National University of Ireland, dug up an eye-opening Newsweek article from January 18, 2018. Currently, Trump supporters who think the election was rigged are being silenced and vilified as delusional for thinking that the results could be overturned and Trump become President again. I’m not saying that could happen, but this article reminds us that many Democrats had a very different attitude when they thought the Mueller probe might prove that Russia rigged the 2016 election for Trump.

https://twitter.com/SethBTillman/status/1406665439288176644

The article quotes Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig as saying that if it was proven Trump conspired with Russia to steal the election (spoiler alert: it wasn’t, and he didn’t), both he and Mike Pence should resign or be impeached. That would make then-House Speaker Paul Ryan President, and he should nominate Hillary Clinton, "the person defeated by the treason of his own party, and then step aside, and let her become President.”

Lessig admitted that there is no “mechanism for correcting the criminal results of the previous election," and he wasn’t saying this should happen, just that it could.

The important point is that only three years ago, questioning the validity of the previous Presidential election wasn’t treason or insurrection, it was free speech. And fantasizing about the current President being forced to step down and replaced by his former opponent because the election was rigged wasn’t a conspiracy theory so crazy that anyone who even mentioned it had to be censored, monitored and investigated. It was something that Harvard professors openly discussed in mainstream media outlets.

Gee, I wonder what changed in so short a time?

Mike Huckabee

It reads like a stunning political spy thriller, but what we’re learning after China’s head of intelligence apparently defected to the West is proving to be more of a true crime story.

RedState.com took the news about the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) working with defector Dong Jingwei of China’s Ministry of State Security beyond the “rumor” stage, but it was still so wild that the appropriate initial response was skepticism. RedState’s sources, however, appear to be sound. And if this story is true, it makes Dong the highest-level defector in the history of the People’s Republic of China.

RedState has doubled down on their story, saying they've confirmed the name of this official and the nature of the work he had been doing. Reportedly, he defected from China in mid-February after flying from Hong Kong to the United States to visit his daughter, Dong Yang, who was attending a university in California. Once his plane had landed, he contacted the DIA and told them of his plans to defect and also of the information he had with him. According to publicly available records, since April 2018 he has been the head of the Ministry of State Security’s counterintelligence activities in China. Translation: he was China's #1 spy-catcher. It makes sense to think that if anyone would know how to defect without getting caught, it's this guy.

According to RedState’s sources, Dong “hid in plain sight” for about two weeks while waiting to go safely into DIA custody. Presumably, his daughter was taken into custody as well.

CCP officials reportedly have demanded that Dong be returned. Sources say that Secretary of State Andrew Blinken was not aware at the time that Dong was in America, and so he told the Chinese what he thought was true: that we didn’t have Dong. In fact, it seems that until the last three or four weeks, NO ONE outside the DIA knew Dong had defected. Until then, they were vetting the information he had passed to them.

RedState reports that Dong has provided the following information to the DIA. If you haven’t seen this list, prepare to be blown away:

--- Early pathogenic studies of the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).

--- Models of predicted COVID-19 spread and damage to the U.S. and the world. Perhaps this "Exhibit A" will be the most infuriating of all.

--- Financial records relating to the exact organizations and governments that funded research on SARS-CoV-2 and other biological warfare.

–- Names of U.S. citizens who provide intel to China. Let's see 'em.

–- Names of Chinese spies working in the U.S. and/or attending American universities. This promises to be a long list.

–- Financial records showing U.S. business people and public officials who have received money from the Chinese government. I assume that means "besides Hunter Biden."

–- Details of meetings U.S. government officials had, perhaps unwittingly, with Chinese spies and members of Russia’s SVR (External Intelligence Service).

–- Details of how the Chinese gained access to a CIA communications system, which led to the deaths of dozens of Chinese people who had been working with the CIA.

Oh, wait –- there’s more! According to RedState, Dong has also provided the DIA with copies of the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop, revealing all the scuzz the Chinese government has on Hunter, his nefarious personal habits and his business dealings with Chinese entities. His father’s, too. It was common sense to assume China had it all, and apparently they do.

In a revelation that should surprise no one, Dong reportedly told the DIA that at least a third of Chinese students attending American universities are intel assets, with many living under pseudonyms to hide the fact that they are children of high-ranking military and CCP leaders.

RedState says they have “high confidence” in their reporting because, in the days since their original report, others are starting to investigate some of the claims. Sources continue to tell RedState that “This defector has the rest of the intelligence community and the LEO [law enforcement officer] community scared sh**less.”

Here’s their full update.

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/17/breaking-chinese-defector-confirmed-as-top-counterintelligence-official-n398374

Gordon Chang, FOX NEWS analyst and author of THE COMING COLLAPSE OF CHINA, takes this report very seriously indeed, telling NEWSMAX on Saturday that if the information Dong has about the Wuhan Institute of Virology is proven true, it could “even lead to the fall of the Communist Party.” There has been no official response from China, but according to Chang, Beijing appears to be in a panic.

“This is so explosive it could lead to a chain of events which would sever relations between China and the United States,” said Chang.

Some experts have denied the reports, however, and Chang said the SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST has reported that Dong is still in China and even gave a talk on Friday about catching foreign spies (Dong’s specialty). But Chang also said that those accounts do not seem credible.

And why did this Chinese defector deal exclusively with the Defense Intel Agency, rather than other agencies? Chang believes it’s because those other units of our government have been “penetrated by the Chinese Ministry of State” security agents (spies). He said it appears China “has penetrated most units of the U.S. government, indeed, state governments as well.”

This is consistent with what RedState has reported; namely, that “Dong has extremely embarrassing and damaging information about our intelligence community and government officials in the ‘terabytes of data’ he’s provided to the DIA.” Sure makes you wonder how many “Fang Fangs” are out there, and how many Eric Swalwells. Recall that Swalwell is a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Chang also believes that Dong’s role as chief spy-catcher would put him close to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “This is really important,” Chang said, “because what this does [is] blow open the Chinese political system.” Xi could be blamed and overthrown in the blink of an eye. “This could cause the Communist Party to lose the stability that apparently people think it has,” Chang said. That’s why the CCP leadership is so enraged.

The full story of Chang’s interview with NEWSMAX is here.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/gordon-chang-chinese-spy-dong-jingwei-spy/2021/06/19/id/1025698/?ns_mail_uid=f9499f75-6002-4e3d-a92a-60873ae4921d&ns_mail_job=DM230171_06192021&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010504yivob3

Finally, Dan Bongino’s Friday podcast led off with this story, stressing the extreme significance of what the DIA might be learning from the defector. You can see it on Rumble, here.

https://rumble.com/viprxp-ep.-1545-did-a-spy-defector-from-china-prove-trump-right-the-dan-bongino-sh.html

Bongino points out that what Dong is offering about the origin and spread of the virus confirms much of what Trump has said for many months. Not wanting to prove Trump right is probably the main reason why full reports on this story will be few and far between, not to mention twisted beyond recognition in order to pass muster with social media. But we’ll bring them hot and fresh and factual, as we look forward to telling the real story.

Addendum: Sunday night, reporter Jennifer Van Laar, who broke the story of the Chinese defector in RedState.com, commented on the media strategy for dealing with it.

Van Laar offers a detailed, chronological and quite fascinating account in a “VIP” article on RedState.com.

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/20/reactions-to-redstates-exclusive-reporting-on-chinese-defector-dong-jingwei-show-disturbing-pattern-n399583

I’ll summarize: Van Laar stands by her reporting and says that as the story has developed, “the reactions are an interesting and disturbing insight into how those with their own agendas attempt to shape the narrative and marginalize those who won’t go along with that narrative.” She says the “former spook community” (I love that characterization) “went from saying RedState’s reporting was completely untrue and used to attack Dr. Fauci, to admitting that parts of it could be true, to taking credit for the reporting.”

She describes the strategy: “First, ignore. Then, attack the source’s credibility. Then, leak information to take the story in a different direction. If none of that works, again attack the source’s credibility and attempt to introduce contradictory evidence. If that doesn’t work, claim ownership of the story and start shaping your own narrative.”

Van Laar will be appearing Tuesday on The Chris Salcedo Show on NEWSMAX to go over the latest developments, which, of course, we’ll bring to you here.

Mike Huckabee

President Biden and DC Democrats seem to want to keep subsidizing unemployment forever, or at least through September 6th, but many states are sick of it. Sunday, nine more states (Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming) will join Iowa, Mississippi and Missouri in cutting off the extra $300 a week in pandemic unemployment benefits.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nine-states-end-pandemic-unemployment-bonuses-saturday/

With the pandemic ending and businesses reopening, 9.3 million jobs were created in April. But many employers say they can’t get people to apply because they’re currently paid more to stay home than to take an entry level job. The benefits are especially lavish in blue states. For instance, in Massachusetts, someone on unemployment can make up to $1,155 a week, or the equivalent of $60,060 a year for not working, plus state-paid food and medical support. Why accept a job and take a pay cut?

Biden insists that there’s no connection between these payments and continuing unemployment despite plenty of job openings, and Democrats claim there are still many people who can’t find a job and need the support. But we’ll soon know for sure, thanks to the laboratory of the states. By the end of July, more than half the nation (26 states) will have ended the bonus pay. Only one of those states has a Democrat Governor (Louisiana.)

By comparing the red and blue states, we’ll soon know whether unemployment remains higher in states that subsidize it. And if we see a sudden exodus of people moving from red to blue states, we can be pretty certain that’s the only reason.

Note to anyone seeking to extend unemployment: don’t move to California because even they’re tired of people taking money and not even looking for work.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2021/06/18/california-employment-development-department-will-require-ui-claimants-to-search-for-work-n398937

Mike Huckabee

Among the many campaign promises made by President Biden that are falling like the leaves in autumn is his claim that he would restore ethics and integrity to the White House. That’s working out about as well as Obama’s laughable claim of having “the most transparent Administration in history.”

Of course, there’s Hunter Biden, the gift that keeps on giving to authors of novels about international financial chicanery who need new plots…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/jason-chaffetz-hunter-bidens-art-scam-e2-80-93-with-his-work-selling-for-24500k-we-need-to-know-whos-buying/ar-AAL9Uzp

…And the continuing questions about his dad’s alleged involvement in Hunter’s schemes.

https://www.westernjournal.com/evidence-now-fbi-hands-reveals-hunter-bidens-shameless-plans-exploit-world-chaos/

But even putting the prodigal son (and his uncle) aside, one of the top criteria for job placement in the White House appears to be nepotism.

https://www.westernjournal.com/disgusted-obama-ethics-official-tears-biden-admin-nepotism-scandal/

Biden’s staff includes so many privileged recent graduates with no experience but relatives in high places that Walter Shaub, Obama’s former director of the Office of Government Ethics (yes, there is one of those!), called it “pathetic” and ranted, “I’m disgusted!” Shaub previously blasted Trump for giving important jobs to relatives, like tasking son-in-law Jared Cushner with crafting Middle East peace deals (I’d say he did a darn good job that Biden’s now destroying, but that’s another topic.) But Shaub actually believed that Biden was going to prioritize strict ethics.

He concluded, “Do I sound bitter? HELL, YEAH, I’M BITTER! I’m the stupid moron who fell for his false promises. I wasn’t naive enough to think he’d be a transformative president. He told us he’d be plain vanilla. But I thought there was momentum behind his ethics promises. Boy, was I stupid.”

Well, that’s something I think we can all agree on. And I hate to break it to you, but if you thought Biden was going to be “plain vanilla” and not try to “transform America,” then you fell for another false promise.

And speaking of falling for false campaign promises, you didn’t really believe Biden was going to spend trillions upon trillions of dollars and only raise taxes on the ultra-rich, did you? If so, I’ve got some prime real estate in Siberia that I’d like to sell you.

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-families-joe-biden-disgusted-twisted-death-tax/

Mike Huckabee

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who were facing felony charges for brandishing rifles to warn off protesters who were trespassing on their property and threatening them, agreed to plead guilty to much-lesser misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree assault and second-degree harassment, respectively. They have to pay fines of $750 and $2,000, and relinquish the two rifles, but they will serve no jail time.

https://www.westernjournal.com/mccloskeys-plead-guilty-come-swinging-fiery-statement-god/

Mark McCloskey took it as a victory and remained defiant, saying, “The prosecutor dropped every charge except for alleging that I purposely placed other people in imminent risk of physical injury, right, and I sure as heck did… That’s what the guns were there for and I’d do it again any time the mob approaches me…In other words, I stood out on the porch with my rifle and made them back up. And that’s what I’d do again. If that’s a crime in Missouri, by G** I did it, and I’d do it again.”

As the story notes, many people, including Gov. Mike Parson, don’t think it’s a just settlement, and you can add me to that. The McCloskeys did nothing wrong, and they shouldn’t have to pay a cent in fines, give up their guns or have anything on their records. They merely showed weapons (didn’t fire them or even point them at anyone) to protect themselves from threatening trespassers. They were well within their Second Amendment rights to do so. If anyone should have faced charges, it was the trespassers. But in blue cities, up is now down, left is right, and criminals are let go while citizens and cops are prosecuted. It’s the New Abnormal.

The story says that Gov. Parson is “evaluating the situation.” I don’t know what he can do, since they agreed to take the deal to end the legal harassment. But a good start would be to immediately expunge their misdemeanor criminal records.

Mike Huckabee

This is something I hope to see happening a lot more often, and I hope it’s so successful that it inspires many more such actions: a group of Coca-Cola shareholders has sent a letter to the board, warning that their woke, racist “anti-racist” policies are putting the company and the shareholders at material risk of liability for unlawful racial discrimination.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/concerned-shareholders-take-action-against-cokes-racist-demands.php

The letter warns that if their concerns are not addressed within 30 business days, “the Stockholders will be forced to seek judicial relief to protect Coke and the Stockholders’ interests in the company from your continued breaches of your fiduciary duties.” Maybe that will remind the board of what their job really is.

And speaking of companies that risk bankruptcy for leftist virtue signaling, Victoria’s Secret has dived headfirst into the empty swimming pool of wokeness. Signaling guilt and shame for ever selling lingerie that was appealing to the “male gaze,” Victoria’s Secret has hired a new spokesperson – outspoken leftist, anti-Trump, lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe – who has a history of denouncing the company, everything it stands for and traditionally sexy feminine clothing in general. It’s also replacing its “Victoria’s Secret Angels” models with a group of woke icons, including a trans woman. That gives a new meaning to “Victoria’s Secret.”

The company’s execs claim this will help them “regain relevance” and rebrand for the future. If I had to predict what that new lingerie brand will be called, I’d guess “Chapter 11.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/victorias-secret-replaces-angels-with-megan-rapinoe-other-gender-equity-campaigners

Mike Huckabee

Good morning!

Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff! 

Today's newsletter includes:

• Bible Verse of the Day
• Still Defiant In St. Louis
• A Mixed Bag Of Decisions From The Supreme Court
• Entire Police Team Quits In Disgust
• Woke Policies Put This Company At Material Risk Of Liability For Unlawful Racial Discrimination
• Who Is The Real Threat?
• Arson Is Bad

Thank you again for subscribing!  To read this newsletter on my website, go here.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

DAILY BIBLE VERSE

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Still Defiant In St. Louis

By Mike Huckabee

Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who were facing felony charges for brandishing rifles to warn off protesters who were trespassing on their property and threatening them, agreed to plead guilty to much-lesser misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree assault and second-degree harassment, respectively. They have to pay fines of $750 and $2,000, and relinquish the two rifles, but they will serve no jail time.

https://www.westernjournal.com/mccloskeys-plead-guilty-come-swinging-fiery-statement-god/

Mark McCloskey took it as a victory and remained defiant, saying, “The prosecutor dropped every charge except for alleging that I purposely placed other people in imminent risk of physical injury, right, and I sure as heck did… That’s what the guns were there for and I’d do it again any time the mob approaches me…In other words, I stood out on the porch with my rifle and made them back up. And that’s what I’d do again. If that’s a crime in Missouri, by G** I did it, and I’d do it again.”

As the story notes, many people, including Gov. Mike Parson, don’t think it’s a just settlement, and you can add me to that. The McCloskeys did nothing wrong, and they shouldn’t have to pay a cent in fines, give up their guns or have anything on their records. They merely showed weapons (didn’t fire them or even point them at anyone) to protect themselves from threatening trespassers. They were well within their Second Amendment rights to do so. If anyone should have faced charges, it was the trespassers. But in blue cities, up is now down, left is right, and criminals are let go while citizens and cops are prosecuted. It’s the New Abnormal.

The story says that Gov. Parson is “evaluating the situation.” I don’t know what he can do, since they agreed to take the deal to end the legal harassment. But a good start would be to immediately expunge their misdemeanor criminal records.

A Mixed Bag Of Decisions From The Supreme Court

By Mike Huckabee

Thursday brought a mixed bag of decisions from the Supreme Court. On the plus side, in a surprising unanimous 9-0 decision, the SCOTUS ruled that Philadelphia cannot exclude a Catholic services organization from providing adoption services through its system because their religious beliefs bar them from arranging adoptions for same-sex couples. There are more details at the link. The decision was fairly narrow, and conservatives on the Court thought that there should have been more clarity to clean up the conflicts between previous related decisions and First Amendment rights.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/06/18/the-roberts-court-punts-on-religious-liberty-again-n398562

However, for the third time, the SCOTUS rejected an attempt to get rid of Obamacare, this time filed by 18 states. In a 7-2 ruling, the Court said that the states “lack standing” to sue because they suffered no direct harm. “Lack of standing” seems to have become the Court’s go-to excuse for not examining controversial issues that need to be settled.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2021/06/17/scotus-n2591129

In a stinging dissent, Justice Alito scolded the Court for its creative efforts to keep pulling reasons out of the air to preserve Obamacare. He noted that if it costs the states $1, then they have standing to sue, but it costs them billions in Medicaid funds, yet they don’t have standing to sue? Alito wrote:

“No one can fail to be impressed by the lengths to which this Court has been willing to go to defend the ACA against all threats. A penalty is a tax. The United States is a State. And 18 States who bear costly burdens under the ACA cannot even get a foot in the door to raise a constitutional challenge. So a tax that does not tax is allowed to stand and support one of the biggest Government programs in our Nation’s history. Fans of judicial inventiveness will applaud once again. But I must respectfully dissent.”

I’ve decided that Obamacare is the Bill and Hillary Clinton of health care legislation. No matter how bad it is or how much trouble it causes, someone in a powerful position will always intervene to protect it, even if it requires twisting the law like a pretzel.

Entire Police Team Quits In Disgust

By Mike Huckabee

You might want to keep the besieged, outnumbered, law-abiding citizens of Portland, Oregon, in your prayers, because the entire police rapid response team that deals with rioters has just quit in disgust.

https://www.westernjournal.com/portland-now-antifas-mercy-entire-riot-control-squad-resigns-disgust/

The police are fed up with the leftist DA and other city officials letting violent rioters run wild or be released without consequences while they prosecute police officers for doing their job. So all 50 volunteer members of the team that deals with disasters both natural and manmade (like Portland’s city government) resigned. They say they will go back to doing their regular duties only, but I wonder how long even that will last. I can’t imagine there’s any cop in Portland who doesn’t have his or her resume out to at least a dozen other cities by now.

Woke Policies Put This Company At Material Risk Of Liability For Unlawful Racial Discrimination

By Mike Huckabee

This is something I hope to see happening a lot more often, and I hope it’s so successful that it inspires many more such actions: a group of Coca-Cola shareholders has sent a letter to the board, warning that their woke, racist “anti-racist” policies are putting the company and the shareholders at material risk of liability for unlawful racial discrimination.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/concerned-shareholders-take-action-against-cokes-racist-demands.php

The letter warns that if their concerns are not addressed within 30 business days, “the Stockholders will be forced to seek judicial relief to protect Coke and the Stockholders’ interests in the company from your continued breaches of your fiduciary duties.” Maybe that will remind the board of what their job really is.

And speaking of companies that risk bankruptcy for leftist virtue signaling, Victoria’s Secret has dived headfirst into the empty swimming pool of wokeness. Signaling guilt and shame for ever selling lingerie that was appealing to the “male gaze,” Victoria’s Secret has hired a new spokesperson – outspoken leftist, anti-Trump, lesbian soccer player Megan Rapinoe – who has a history of denouncing the company, everything it stands for and traditionally sexy feminine clothing in general. It’s also replacing its “Victoria’s Secret Angels” models with a group of woke icons, including a trans woman. That gives a new meaning to “Victoria’s Secret.”

The company’s execs claim this will help them “regain relevance” and rebrand for the future. If I had to predict what that new lingerie brand will be called, I’d guess “Chapter 11.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/victorias-secret-replaces-angels-with-megan-rapinoe-other-gender-equity-campaigners

Mike Huckabee

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops met Wednesday to discuss rules on whether Catholic politicians such as President Biden or Speaker Pelosi, who defy the church’s beliefs on issues such as abortion, should receive Holy Communion. Church leaders are under heavy pressure from the media to ignore their sacred beliefs for political expediency. But they might want to consider what their parishioners think about that.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/bishops-beware-74-say-no-communion-for-biden

The group CatholicVote surveyed regular churchgoers to ask if politicians who don’t follow church teachings should receive Communion. Seventy-four percent said such politicians shouldn’t present themselves to priests for Communion. And 83% said Catholic politicians create confusion and discord among believers when they advocate for things the church considers gravely immoral, such as abortion.

The poll didn’t establish whether Catholics think priests should refuse Communion to these politicians. But it should tell the Bishops that while the secular media may howl if they do, most Catholics in their congregations still think God’s laws apply to everyone.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

The best thing that can be said about President Biden’s G7 summit and his meeting with Vladimir Putin is that it’s finally over, so no more damage can be done. Maybe the whole thing was just a planned attempt to make the border look like less of a disaster in comparison. Here’s a round-up of how his trip went, and prepare to get dizzy from shaking your head in disbelief.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/06/17/bidens-final-whine-to-the-press-in-geneva-n398107

And yes: Biden actually gave Putin a list of 16 pieces of America’s critical infrastructure that Russia had better not target. Which gives rise to two questions:

1. Does that mean it’s okay if the Russians take down any other piece of American infrastructure?

2. Why does Putin bother paying spies when our own President will hand him a list of our most vital and vulnerable pieces of infrastructure for free?

How did we go from having a President who wrote “The Art of the Deal” to having one who gives away the entire farm before he even opens his mouth?

Biden finished his trip by whining that the press is too negative and never asks a positive question. This about a press corps that ignores all his scandals and disasters while asking about his favorite ice cream flavors. CNN even tried to put a positive spin on his meltdown at their own reporter!

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/06/16/cnn-rewrites-reality-on-biden-losing-it-at-their-reporter-n397870

Can you imagine him having to stand up to the daily hostile barrage that Trump got from the press? He would literally melt like the Nazis at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark!”

Mike Huckabee

I don’t often agree with the politics of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, who is known for ranting against Trump and pushing a boycott of Israel. But when someone’s right, I give him props for it. And boy, is he right about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. (Warning: rock star-level profanity at the link.)

https://www.dailywire.com/news/f-you-no-fing-way-pink-floyd-co-founder-rejects-instagrams-request-to-use-his-song

Waters got a request from Facebook-owned Instagram to use his song “Another Brick in the Wall” in a commercial. His response: “(Bleep) you! No (bleeping) way!” At a press event to promote the release of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Waters said they want to use his song “to make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is so that it can continue to censor all of us in this room, and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out to the general public, so the general public could go, ‘What? What?’” (Ironically, that songs’ lyrics include “We don’t need no education,” so it would be perfect for a social media site that censors voices who shatter its preferred narratives.)

He went on to ask how this “little (bleep)” Zuckerberg, who started off by creating a platform where college guys ranked women by their looks, got any power…“and yet, here he is, one of the most powerful idiots in the world.” Waters said he at least has a little power over who uses his songs, and he will not be a party to “this insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything.”

I’m not that big a Pink Floyd fan, but I suddenly feel an urge to put on “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Rep. Eric Swalwell filed a ridiculous nuisance lawsuit against President Trump, his son Don Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks, claiming that they incited violent rioters to attack the Capitol on January 6th. Since then, Swalwell has repeatedly claimed that Brooks is hiding from process servers to avoid his subpoena.

This has led to some funny tweets from Brooks, pointing out that he’s shared the House floor with Swalwell over a hundred times since January. He’s posted photos of himself “hiding out” in public places, including one at his granddaughter’s birthday party where he’s wearing a sign on his cap reading, “I am not Mo.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/arrest-warrant-issued-swalwell-minion-followed-gop-reps-wife-home/

But the story turned serious when Swalwell actually sent an aide to serve a subpoena, and the man trespassed on Brooks’ property and chased his frightened wife into their house. Now, she’s filed a lawsuit and the Brooks family has made an arrest complaint. Swalwell’s camp tried to deny the claim, but it was all captured on security video. Brooks says he is putting anyone who would threaten his family “on notice that we will pursue illegal actions to the fullest extent of the law.”

So to sum up: because Swalwell tried to score publicity points by filing a bogus lawsuit falsely accusing Brooks of threatening his security, Swalwell's aide is now facing charges and a real lawsuit for actually threatening Brooks’ security.

On my TBN TV show recently, I had a story about how Australia’s oldest man credited his longevity to eating chicken brains, and I joked that they were about as small as Eric Swalwell’s brain. I might have to take that back. After reading this story, it doesn’t seem like a joke anymore. It just seems like an insult to chickens.

Mike Huckabee

You can certainly tell the Democrats are back in power with the announcement that the Biden Department of “Justice” will investigate...(no, not the violent communist radicals of Antifa...) the Trump Department of Justice.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-doj-announces-opening-probe-trumps-doj/

They want to investigate the way the Trump DOJ investigated Congress members such as Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff who were suspected of leaking classified information to the media. You’d think that an actual Department of Justice would be more concerned with investigating the leaks of classified information. (Ironically, this relates to a partisan investigation of Trump that was found to be groundless, but that never stopped the Democrats from launching another partisan investigation and another and another…)

From the story:

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the effort to track down leakers was ‘yet another egregious assault on our democracy waged by the former president.’ Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said they want (former Attorney General Bill) Barr and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appear before Congress to answer questions about the issue. ‘This appalling politicization of the Department of Justice by Donald Trump and his sycophants must be investigated immediately by both the DOJ Inspector General and Congress,’ they said in a statement.”

And if anyone knows about the appalling politicization of government agencies, it’s those two.

But as long as we’re digging into how the DOJ’s of past Administrations investigated alleged leakers of classified information, why stop with Trump’s alleged “egregious assault on our democracy”? How about the Obama DOJ that secretly obtained phone and email records from reporter James Rosen to try to identify his source for a story on North Korea, or that spied on the records from more than 20 phone lines of A.P. reporters to try to find out their source for a story from Yemen?

That sparked bipartisan outrage at the time over Obama’s “unprecedented war on journalism.” But while Obama later backtracked and promised a change in policy, at the time he said he would make “no apologies” for investigations into national security-related leaks. As Yahoo News reported in 2013, “The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many leakers as all previous administrations combined.”

Reporters at least have the First Amendment freedom of the press to protect them. What special provisions in the law prevent the investigation of Congress members who are suspected of leaking classified information? I’ll pass along the answer to that as soon as Chuck or Nancy call me with it.

Mike Huckabee

I told you about the claim by Redstate.com that the Defense Intelligence Agency had been working with a defector from China who held the highest level in the government of any Chinese defector ever. This defector reportedly was providing information on the origins of COVID-19 and other sensitive topics, and the DIA had kept this a secret even from other agencies such as the CIA and FBI out of concerns that they were infiltrated by Chinese spies.

Well, Redstate now claims that the defector has been identified as Dong Jingwei, a longtime official in China’s Ministry of State Security, responsible for counterintelligence efforts.

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2021/06/17/breaking-chinese-defector-confirmed-as-top-counterintelligence-official-n398374

Dong has reportedly provided the DNI with electronic files containing massive amounts of sensitive information, the equivalent of millions of documents, on everything from China’s special weapons systems to the Chinese military’s operation of the Wuhan virus lab to the identities of Chinese spies and sources in the US.

Some official sources are poo-pooing the story, calling it a rumor or downplaying its importance if it is true. But according to Redstate, now that the name of the alleged defector has been published, the rest of the intelligence community is “scared (bleep)less.”

Read the entire article. This is either the most interesting work of spy fiction since Ian Fleming or it’s the biggest foreign intelligence bombshell in decades. I have a feeling we’ll find out which sooner rather than later. One clue will be to watch China and see how desperate they are to get Dong back to Beijing.

Mike Huckabee

In a related story, it’s great to see parents in San Francisco fighting back against the leftist/immoral assault on their children, since San Francisco is ground zero of a movement that’s spreading across America under names like “Drag Queen Story Hour.” The media has lavished that movement with fawning publicity, and it sells itself as a local, independent grassroots movement to promote “tolerance.” But as the Federalist reports, it’s actually well-funded by a number of wealthy interests.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/17/san-francisco-leftists-are-funding-your-local-librarys-drag-queen-story-hour/

It’s also brought young children into close physical contact with at least three convicted sex criminals, two of whom are convicted pedophiles, and its events have been sponsored by a man who’s been charged with seven counts of possession of child pornography.

Another way that parents are fighting back against the LGBTQ+++ indoctrination of children is by turning off media outlets that are pushing Pride Month as if it were a paid sponsor. I told you about the inappropriate propaganda infesting the children’s channel Nickelodeon (right down to a cartoon beaver with bandages on its chest, apparently to signal that it had its breasts removed as part of its gender transition.) Well, apparently, while these media outlets have gotten “woke,” parents have also woken up to what’s being fed into their children’s heads, and they’re turning off the electronic babysitter/brainwashing machine.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/nickelodeon-ratings-crash-amid-lgbtq-push

There’s a saying about companies that prioritize pushing political messages over serving their customers: “Get woke, go broke.” Well, Nickelodeon’s ratings have broken through the basement, ripped up the basement floor, and dug a hole in the basement. In 2017, the channel averaged 1.3 million viewers a year. This month, amid their out-and-proud relentless promotion of “Pride Month,” viewership has plummeted to an average of 372,000 a week.

Parent company Viacom claims viewers are just moving to the new streaming platform Discovery+ to watch Nickelodeon there. If so, they’re likely doing it so their kids can watch older shows that aren’t full of sexually inappropriate propaganda. How long will that last once they discover that Nickelodeon is retrofitting the older shows to shoehorn in sexual messages, like declaring that a character on a popular show about infants is now a lesbian?

This is one of many reasons why our resident pop culture guru Pat Reeder advises people that if they want to see films and TV shows the way the creators intended, buy them on DVD and Blu-Ray. If you don't actually own them, then someone else controls what you'll see.

Mike Huckabee

I remember when high school proms used to have themes like “We’ve Only Just Begun” or “Kiss Today Goodbye.” But in 2021, the theme for some high school proms seems to be “Hysterical Totalitarian Idiocy” (I hope that looks better in the yearbooks than it sounds.) If you thought the ban on dancing in the movie “Footloose” was silly, wait until you read about the draconian, COVID panic-inspired, CCP-style prom night in Exeter, New Hampshire.

https://www.westernjournal.com/high-school-marks-unvaccinated-students-prom-forces-identify/

What could be worse? How about a high school graduation ceremony where attendees were forced to endure a speech by a local radical school official who used the occasion to denounce America, capitalism, individualism and objectivity and promote racist “anti-racism,” social justice, “equity” and jihad. She also gave a shout-out to the class president, who'd led the Pledge of Allegiance by calling the US “one nation under Allah.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-tells-high-school-grads-theyre-entering-capitalism-white-supremacy-remember-jihad-reject-objectivity

Incidentally, this is the same school board member who was going to receive an award from a local Jewish group, but it was rescinded due to her tweets accusing Israel of being colonizers and an apartheid state, of killing Palestinians and of “desecrating the Holy Land.”:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/jewish-group-rescinds-award-to-politician-who-said-israel-desecrates-the-holy-land

Still wonder why so many Americans now call putting your kids into public school a form of child abuse?

Mike Huckabee

There’s been so much debate about whether facemasks prevent COVID-19, with their proponents claiming that even if they don’t help much, what’s the harm?

But what if they are doing harm? Not just the damage to childhood development, the restricted oxygen, or their symbolism of Americans’ willingness to give up freedom out of panic. I mean, isn’t putting an unsterilized piece of cloth over your mouth and nose and breathing through it for hours unsanitary? Particularly if we force them onto children, who are not famous for following strict hygiene rules.

Some concerned parents in Florida decided to do what the CDC or the media should have done a year ago. They took facemasks their kids had been forced to wear in school for 5 to 8 hours and sent them to a lab to find out what was on them that their kids had been inhaling. Brace yourself:

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/15/a-group-of-parents-sent-their-kids-face-masks-to-a-lab-for-analysis-heres-what-they-found-n2591047

As many as one-third to a half of the masks were contaminated with bacteria related to pneumonia, meningitis, sepsis, tuberculosis, Lyme disease, food poisoning, diphtheria, Legionnaires disease, Staphylococcus infections, encephalitis and more. The lab also identified less dangerous pathogens that could still cause fever, ulcers, acne, yeast infections, strep throat, periodontal disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (pardon my “racism” against Rocky Mountain natives), and more. One-third had antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Unworn masks and a T-shirt worn by a child were tested as controls and none contained these pathogens.

This likely happened because the kids touched the masks with their fingers, set them on surfaces, wore them into the bathrooms, etc. These are germs we all come close to, but up until now, we haven’t scooped them up on a cloth and put it over our faces.

This falls under the category of news that’s “shocking, but not surprising.” A long time ago, I passed along the CDC’s strict guidelines for wearing masks hygienically and said that I couldn’t imagine anyone actually following them to the letter. Certainly not children! But if you don’t, you are creating a bacteria-infected rag and holding it over your mouth and nose.

We need to stop dismissing these concerns with “Better safe than sorry” and start ensuring that our kids actually are safe before we’re all sorry.

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

Mike Huckabee

A federal judge issued an injunction halting another of the Biden Administration’s assaults on the domestic oil industry.

https://redstate.com/vladimir/2021/06/15/breaking-federal-judge-halts-biden-attack-on-american-energy-n397489

Twelve states joined Louisiana in filing the lawsuit to stop Biden and his Interior Department from putting a “pause” on new federal oil lease sales and the issuance of new leases previously won in competitive bidding. It’s yet another unprecedented and illegal usurpation of power via Presidential executive order.

Ironically, while Biden’s people claim this was done to protect the environment, it would have blocked Louisiana from receiving millions of dollars in oil lease profits that are used to protect the coastline. Also, if access to new leases halts, there’s no point in oil exploration, so it kills the entire industry, making the US more dependent on foreign oil while raising gas prices. The price of a gallon of gas is a dollar higher than it was a year ago, so the consumer is already getting hammered under Biden. No wonder some commentators said Biden should be silently thanking God that this judge saved him from the consequences of his own stupid actions.

Now, I assume his next stupid action will be to appeal the ruling to a higher court.

Mike Huckabee

For too long, leftist media outlets and corporations have believed they can make themselves look good by branding other people as racists and destroying their lives and businesses. Well, they’re finally learning that there are consequences to defamation, and victims of cancel culture are learning that they don’t have to roll over and apologize for nonexistent offenses. In fact, that’s the worst thing you can do; it’s like letting sharks smell blood in the water.

To lift your spirits, here are the latest examples of fighting back. First, the New York Times has surrendered to the Babylon Bee. The Times twice tried to slime the Bee by describing it as a rightwing misinformation site hiding behind the label of “satire.” Anyone with a sense of humor (which precludes leftists) can tell at a glance that the Bee is obviously hilarious satire. Maybe leftists -- who live in a weird bubble where the DNC talking points lectures of Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee and John Oliver are considered “comedy” -- are so unused to having their own foibles mocked that they’re not capable of recognizing anything that’s actually funny.

Well, the Bee didn’t find defamation and false accusations to be funny, so they threatened a lawsuit. And the Times has backed down and issued a retraction.

https://redstate.com/tonykatz/2021/06/14/indianapolis-police-officer-sues-nfl-for-defamation-after-they-misrepresent-shooting-n396850

Ironically, the Times story accusing the Bee of being “misinformation” was filled with misinformation. I can’t think of any Bee story that contains more irony than the New York Times accusing any other outlet of trying to hoodwink people into believing fake news. And of course, leave it to the Babylon Bee to come up with the perfect satirical “fact checker” term for stories that liberal media outlets deny and censor until they turn out to be true: “False For Now.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/bob-ehrlich-years-mainstream-media-misreporting-babylon-bee-three-perfect-words-sum/

Second example: The NFL, where the players signal more virtue than plays these days, put out online statements honoring a black suspect who was shot by police and implying it was an example of racist police misconduct. But the shooting has been investigated and no charges were filed because it was found that the officer acted appropriately. The suspect was armed and fired two shots at the cop even after being tased.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/nfl-lawsuit-police-officer-alleged-implication-criminally-killed-campaign-honoree

Now, the officer is suing the NFL for defamation. His attorney says those statements caused reputational harm to a hero who risked his life to arrest a dangerous criminal, and it’s false and unacceptable to accuse him of racism or misconduct. The attorney warned, “Before you accuse a police officer of misconduct, you had better get your facts straight.”

Third example: Popular game designer Scott Cawthorn was the latest victim of a Twitter cancel culture mob that targeted him after learning he had donated to various political figures that leftists hate, including Donald Trump, Kim Klacik and even sane Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/14/pro-trump-game-designer-gives-master-class-on-how-to-respond-to-the-cancel-culture-mob-n1454464

Cawthorn admitted the attacks were disturbing and frightening to his family (his wife is six weeks pregnant and doesn’t need the stress of doxing and death threats.) But Cawthorn refused to fall to his knees and give them the abject apologies that intolerant people with empty lives need to make themselves feel powerful.

He responded instead with a detailed and reasoned explanation for why he backed all those people. He said he knows those who are attacking him don’t want a discussion, they want “endless apologies and submission,” but they will get neither from him. He said, “I’m a Republican. I’m a Christian. I’m pro-life. I believe in God;” he doesn’t create games for money anymore but because he enjoys it; and “if I get canceled, then I get canceled.”

Except he’s not likely to get canceled because after issuing that statement, the hashtag “I stand with Scott” started trending on Twitter and many people who are fed up with cancel culture spoke up in support of him.

This is why I’ve always just laughed off the Twitter trolls. They’re like the little man behind the curtain in “The Wizard of Oz,” using their machinery to trick the gullible into thinking they’re great and powerful. The best way to deal with them is not to be frightened but to pull back the curtain and expose them for the bombastic posers that they are.

Mike Huckabee

While we wait for the forensic analysis phase of the Maricopa County, Arizona, election audit to be completed, there’s plenty of other election news around the country.

First, just for fun, let’s go to Tampa, Florida, where congressional candidate Laura Loomer made quite a statement over –- and I do mean literally OVER –- this year’s annual conference of the Florida Supervisors of Elections, Inc., which featured Dominion Voting Systems and the Florida secretary of state. So, what is this organization? According to NATIONAL FILE, on its website it appears to portray itself as a government entity but is a professional, private group that includes Florida's 67 duly-elected supervisors of elections. And since these people are all elected officials, their meetings should be subjected to Florida’s sunshine laws. This conference, however, is closed to the public.

Loomer, quite understandably, has a problem with this, and she decided to make her opinion known with some pretty cool stunts. For example, just as the representative from Dominion Voting Systems was speaking, she had a plane fly over with a banner that read “BIG TECH STOLE THE ELECTION.” I imagine she didn’t have it read “DOMINION STOLE THE ELECTION” because she knew she might get threatened with a lawsuit. So that’s why she didn’t say...“DOMINION STOLE THE ELECTION.”

She also arranged for a very special truck to be right outside the hotel in which the conference was held. The side of this truck had a digital screen that displayed a variety of excellent recommendations for fixing election problems, such as stopping the use of both mail-in ballots and voting machines. If Dominion had a featured speaker there, I guess the issue of scrapping electronic voting wasn’t on the agenda.

Some will call this just a campaign stunt, but it was great. Loomer said, “Floridians deserve full and open transparency regarding any conference or discussions that are taking place concerning elections and election processes in their state. As a candidate for Congress in Florida’s 21st congressional district, combating voter fraud, Big Tech election interference, and improving election integrity are my top platform issues for 2022.”

The story at NATIONAL FILE has video of the plane pulling the “...STOLE THE ELECTION” banner.

https://nationalfile.com/video-loomer-flies-plane-with-big-tech-stole-the-election-banner-over-event-featuring-dominion-florida-secretary-of-state/

But Loomer wasn’t done. On Monday, she published video of a confrontation she had with Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Wendy Sartory Link regarding her office’s acceptance of $6.8 million from Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. (She calls that cash “Zuckerbucks.”) Recall that Zuckerberg donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which, in turn, doled it out to counties all over the country with conditions on how it would be spent. In the video, she tries to get Link to tell her why she hasn’t responded to a letter sent by Loomer two weeks prior that asks when she’s going to return Zuckerberg’s money. Accepting this kind of outside money is now illegal thanks to legislation recently signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, so any money her department has left will by law have to be given back, not saved to use in 2022.

The story and video of this official getting “Loomered” are at the link.

https://thelibertydaily.com/loomered-laura-loomer-confronts-palm-beach-county-supervisor-of-elections-wendy-sartory-link-over-illegal-acceptance-of-zuckerbucks-video/

According to the story, Loomer is called by many “the most banned woman in the world” because she’s censored by almost all major social media platforms. No kidding! She appears to wear that label as a badge of honor.

Moving to Fulton County, Georgia –- a huge center of attention right now –- EPOCH TV has a well-sourced video about the security breach that took place at the warehouse holding absentee ballots that were to be unsealed and investigated for possible fraud.

We’ve told you the story leading up to this event: On the basis of compelling sworn affidavits from election workers that physical ballots and the markings on them looked fake, a judge decided to have the ballots unsealed and examined, but at the last minute, county officials and attorneys filed motions to dismiss. The judge had to postpone so he could hear their arguments, so the unsealing was delayed a month, till June 21.

But two days later, the “secure” building was found with its doors wide open, security alarm blaring. The guards who were supposed to be watching the door had left 20 minutes earlier. The lead petitioner for the plaintiffs is now asking to see the security video for the building, to ascertain whether or not the ballots were tampered with.

Also, according to court records, four election workers who were at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena tabulating votes after others, including poll watchers, had been told to leave have been served with notices to appear and give depositions. Finally. And two of them in particular, a mother and daughter, have been ordered to turn over their devices and also a variety of communications for a specified period before and after the election.

Here’s the video, along with a variety of helpful links.

For when you have time, Paul Sperry at REAL CLEAR COMMUNICATIONS has a long and detailed article about why a forensic analysis of the ballots is so important to do in Fulton County. He lays out all the potential problems with the ballots themselves and with the counting. Highly recommended.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/06/08/why_a_judge_has_georgia_vote_fraud_on_his_mind_pristine_biden_ballots_that_look_xeroxed_779795.html

Moving on to Pennsylvania, lawmakers there are serious about election reform and have unveiled their House Bill 1300, which calls for ID at every election, but the WASHINGTON EXAMINER says this bill is a “nonstarter for Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf and legislative Democrats. At least the effort is underway; it will take more electoral victories to make this happen. In the meantime, they need all the poll watchers they can get.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/pennsylvania-election-reform-bill-revealed

Finally, moving to (yes) Washington, DC, Attorney General Merrick Garland is apparently looking to crack down on the Maricopa County, Arizona, audit that’s currently underway and any other audits that are undertaken down the road. The Justice Department will apply new “scrutiny” to the states’ constitutional --- repeat, constitutional --- effort to run their own elections in ways that minimize fraud. Garland calls this their “mission to protect the right to vote.” I wish their mission were to protect MY vote from being nullified by a fake one, but I don’t think it is. The WASHINGTON EXAMINER has the story.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/garland-charts-doj-collision-course-with-maricopa-county-election-audit

Mike Huckabee

Saturday, a federal judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit by 117 employees of Houston Methodist Hospital who were defying a requirement that they take the COVID-19 vaccine by June 7th or lose their jobs. About 99% of employees have complied, but the plaintiffs argued that the vaccines are dangerous and experimental.

https://www.westernjournal.com/lawsuit-challenging-hospital-vaccine-rules-dismissed/

The judge disagreed, saying that they had been approved by the FDA for emergency use (that caveat about "emergency" use was one of the plaintiffs’ arguments against it.) He also dismissed their claim that it’s a violation of the Nuremberg Code barring experimentation on people without their consent. The lead plaintiff, nurse Jennifer Bridges, said she’s not an anti-vaxxer, but that it’s “just insane” to force people to put something in their bodies that they’re not comfortable with in order to keep their jobs.

The attorney for the plaintiffs said this is just the first of many such battles in a long fight, and he expects it to end up in the US Supreme Court. I assume that will be long after this pandemic is over, and let’s hope, not in the middle of another pandemic from that place that must not be named.

Mike Huckabee

While studies now show that shutdowns made little or no difference in the spread rate of COVID-19, they did make a huge difference to our economy by destroying 37.5% of small businesses in America. That includes over half of businesses in the leisure and hospitality industries.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/06/13/covid-shut-downs-destroyed-nearly-40-of-american-small-business-for-no-damned-good-reason-n1454271

However, by allowing big box stores and major chains to stay open while forcing small businesses to close, even if they followed the same safety rules, the shutdowns resulted in a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich. You’d think that because of that, so-called “progressives” would agree with me that it’s way past time for all the lockdowns to end. Yet many, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, continue to resist letting people reopen their businesses.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that no matter how much leftists talk about the suffering of the poor and middle class or the unfairness of wealth inequality, all that becomes perfectly acceptable if it means increasing government power.

Mike Huckabee

The Biden Administration just unveiled a national strategy for battling the heightened threat of domestic terrorism. While claiming their crackdown cuts across the political spectrum, they insist that the most persistent and lethal threats come from “white supremacy and militia violent extremists.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-strategy-domestic-terrorism-white-supremacy-militia-extremists-threats

Odd, the black-clad, communist rioters taking over large swaths of cities, burning public buildings and attacking police officers don’t look much like white supremacists to me. Neither do the violent Mexican gangs that are pouring across our borders, bringing drugs, guns and deadly violence into the US, although they are heavily armed enough that I suppose they’d qualify as militias. And the radical Islamic jihadists that are ramping up recruitment now that Trump’s out of the way don’t seem to be KKK members. But this is a Democrat-controlled intelligence agency, so I’m sure they wouldn’t try to mislead us or politicize the justice system.

In other dangerous rightwing threat news, Sen. Ron Johnson released security footage from the January 6th violence at the Capitol. It shows that over 300 of the people who entered – that’s about 38% of the alleged “insurrectionists” who “broke into the Capitol” – simply walked through the upper West Terrace doorway while five Capitol Police officers stood nearby. One of the cops even appeared to wave some of them in.

https://www.westernjournal.com/sen-johnson-jan-6-video-shows-38-protesters-waved-west-terrace-door-cops/

Johnson said that while he doesn’t condone the violent protesters, the idea that everyone there was an armed insurrectionist is a false narrative. Aside from the fact that none of them were armed, there’s their behavior. The video shows that many of them politely stayed within the rope lines in the Rotunda. Johnson said that’s not how armed insurrectionists behave.

It sounds more to me like how tourists behave. But Democrats would have a hard time getting anyone to take their demands for National Guard troops and barbed wire fencing seriously if they claimed the government was facing an existential threat from Republican tourists. I’m having a hard enough time taking them seriously already.

Mike Huckabee

It’s hard to keep up with all the news about the origins of COVID-19 (especially when so many news and social media outlets decided they already knew the objective truth and decided to censor and vilify anyone who questioned the narrative.) So here’s a handy round-up of what’s happened so far that should bring you almost up to date:

https://redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2021/06/14/here-is-how-to-validate-the-lab-leak-theory-for-sure-n395402

And to bring you completely up to date: despite the adamant denials by EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak and the World Health Organization, and claims that it was a “conspiracy theory” to suggest that there were any bats in the Wuhan virology lab, Sky News Australia obtained explosive video that reportedly shows live bats in cages inside that very lab.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/china-accused-of-astounding-coverup-as-footage-emerges-of-bats-caged-in-wuhan-lab/video/194d472757704f2337dd64e0a7f62aaf

Of course, some are still insisting that it’s more likely that the virus somehow leaped from bats to humans and wasn’t altered in the lab. But since an Oxford study just confirmed that there were no bats or pangolins at the Wuhan wet market, I wonder how that happened? Did someone who wanted to make bat soup knock on the lab’s door and ask to borrow a cup of bats?

Mike Huckabee

Multiple Emmy award-winning journalist Christopher Sign, who broke the story about former President Bill Clinton’s secret June 27, 2016, meeting on the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and who later wrote a book called SECRET ON THE TARMAC, was found dead Saturday.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/13/christopher-sign-reporter-clinton-lynch-tarmac-dead/

Police and fire first responders found Sign inside a Hoover, Alabama, residence at 8:17AM after a 911 call was placed. Chris Sign was 45 years old, married to his college sweetheart, and was the father of three sons. A native of Dallas-Fort Worth, he’d been working since 2017 as evening news anchor for ABC 33/40 in Birmingham. According to a police spokesman, his death is being investigated as an apparent suicide.

The general manager at the station, Eric Land, called Sign a “revered colleague whose indelible imprint will serve forever as a hallmark of decency, honesty, and journalistic integrity.”

Sign’s book about the tarmac meeting was released in late 2019. Here’s a story FOX NEWS ran about it in February of 2020.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/loretta-lynch-bill-clinton-tarmac-meeting-new-book

Sign is quoted as saying his book “details everything that they don’t want you to know and everything they think you forgot, but Bill Clinton was on that plane for over 20 minutes and it wasn’t just about golf, grandkids and Brexit. There’s so much that doesn’t add up.”

Here’s more about the book on his publisher’s website.

https://www.crestpublishers.com/product/secret-on-the-tarmac/

Sign said he’d received death threats for telling this story. He was then working in Phoenix, for the ABC affiliate KNXT-TV. “Credit cards hacked,” he said. “You know, my children, we have code words. We have secret code words that they know what to do.” It was in 2017 that he and his family decided to move for their safety from Phoenix to the Birmingham area for him take the job he held until his death. One post about him said, “His family was the single most important thing in his life, which is why he ended up returning to ABC 33/40 four years ago.”

A week before he died, he posted a happy selfie in the park, with the caption, “Enjoying a beautiful morning.”

In his account of the infamous meeting, Sign cited a source who was already there at the airport and said Clinton was “waiting for” Lynch, in his car, with his motorcade. After Lynch’s plane pulled up and came to a stop, her airstairs came down, most of her staff exited the plane, and then he boarded. According to the source, the Secret Service and FBI agents who were there were looking around and trying to figure out what they were supposed to do. Because, of course, it wasn’t on the official itinerary.

Lynch, who supposedly headed the federal investigation into Hillary’s criminal use of unsecured email, testified before the House Oversight Committee in December 2018 that she and Bill talked about how things were going at the Justice Department and also about her job performance –- not “golf and grandkids.” She testified that he “flattered” her and that they also talked about Eric Holder.

Recall that this highly inappropriate meeting took place just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 that it would not be pursuing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a personal email server for official business as secretary of state, nor for obstruction of justice and destroying evidence. “No reasonable prosecutor” would take that case, Comey said, though I think we could’ve come up with a long list of prosecutors who would have jumped at the chance. We later learned that in internal communications, they had changed terminology such as “criminally negligent” to the more benign-sounding “extremely careless.”

Both Lynch and Bill Clinton testified that the email investigation never came up in their conversation. According to the report by Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Bill Clinton was asked by investigators about this meeting, and he said, “...I don’t know whether I’m more offended that they think I’m crooked or that they think I’m stupid.” Personally, I don’t know anyone who thinks Bill Clinton is stupid.

At least one report, that of Britain’s THE SUN, leaves open the possibility that Sign was still clinging to life when the police were contacted or when they first arrived on the scene. Their wording: “Local police chief Keith Czeskleba said the death is being investigation as a suicide after the reporter was found unresponsive in his home.” No details have been given about how Sign allegedly did this, either, or whether a note was found.

It’s interesting that a British publication would offer the most thorough and humanizing coverage of this story. We learn a lot about the life of this journalist --- a real journalist, part of that rare, endangered species --- from reading the posts and pictures they include.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15259488/christopher-sign-television-anchor-suicide-abc/

THE SUN also covers what Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert said about this in a tweet: “Why is it that so many who cross the Clinton Crime Syndicate end up dead?” They mention, without elaborating, that Boebert has “been linked to QAnon conspiracies in the past.” Well, I guess that’s all it takes to dismiss her concerns about foul play! (I know Stephen Colbert has called her a “gun fetishist,” a title that, coming from him, should be worn as a badge of honor.)

THE SUN ran the video clip Boebert had included with her tweet, featuring Sign being interviewed on FOX & FRIENDS and expressing his concerns about “significant death threats,” bad enough to make him leave Phoenix and return to Birmingham, where his friends and colleagues rallied around him and made him feel safer.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/15265235/christopher-sign-lauren-boebert-links-clinton-crime/

It’s not always possible to know when someone is depressed enough to commit suicide. And perhaps he was that desperate. There might have been something very wrong that even his family and close friends didn’t know about. But looking at this man’s accomplishments in life, his obviously bright future, the respect he’d earned as a journalist, and the happy pictures of his beautiful wife and three boys so shortly before his death (with Father’s Day coming up this Sunday), it’s hard to fathom he would do such a thing.

Chris was obviously beloved by his friends and colleagues. The NEW YORK POST ran a story that quoted Jamie Hale, the network’s sports anchor: “I can’t believe we have an article with this title. It doesn’t feel real. Last night, we were in the office together cutting up the way we always do.”

https://nypost.com/2021/06/13/christopher-sign-alabama-news-anchor-who-broke-clinton-tarmac-story-dead-at-45/

In none of the accounts we’ve turned up so far has there been even one word about any problem in this man’s life, other than the threats that had been made on it. I’m not saying it didn’t happen that way. But will this tremendous loss quickly be chalked up to suicide when it deserves a thorough investigation? Ironically, it's Hillary's email case that shows us how easily an investigation can be blown off.

Mike Huckabee

Today is Flag Day, celebrating the adoption of the American flag by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. It was proclaimed a holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, and officially established as National Flag Day by act of Congress in 1949.

Here’s a fascinating history of the American flag, appropriately enough from the Federalist.com:

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/14/read-the-history-of-the-american-flag-then-go-put-one-in-your-yard/

Florida Rep. Brian Mast also has an excellent article at FoxNews.com about the US flag and what it symbolizes, and that it’s not a Republican flag or a Democrat flag, but the flag of all Americans – even those who denigrate it and fail to grasp that it stands for their very right to speak out foolishly against it.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/flag-day-2021-american-sacrifice-flag-rep-brian-mast

As Rep. Mast notes, chief among those people is New York Times editorialist Mara Gay, who recently declared how “disturbing” she found it when she took a weekend jaunt to Long Island and saw American flags in people’s yards and on (horrors!) pickup trucks! I had a message for her in my monologue this weekend on “Huckabee” on TBN. If you missed it, or would like to share it, you’ll find it here:

https://youtu.be/Tvl4FYHcnOs

Incidentally, I’m still waiting to hear back on whether she’ll accept my invitation. I’ll keep you posted.

Mike Huckabee

I usually don’t spend too much time on political developments in other nations because Americans aren’t that interested. But the replacement of Benjamin Netanyahu after 12 years as Prime Minister of Israel is not an Israeli news item, it’s a story that affects the entire world.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/netanyahu-goes-scorched-earth-in-last-speech-swipes-at-biden-administration-over-iran

After a 60-59 vote in the Parliament, Netanyahu was replaced by Naftali Bennett, who is backed by a fractious coalition ranging from Israel hawks to Islamic Arabs. The major concern with a coalition that covers the entire spectrum of left to right is whether there can be consensus without capitulation on critical issues such as sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and building on the Abraham Accords.

Netanyahu has been the focus of Israel haters worldwide because there has never been so tough, eloquent or resolute a defender of Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself from those who aim to eradicate it. The elites who are always pushing Israel to compromise more never explain how you can compromise with people who want to kill every Jew. By letting them kill half the Jews?

In a strong outgoing speech, Netanyahu said that Iran is "celebrating" his loss because "they understand that starting today, there will be a weak and unstable government that will align with the dictates of the international community." He also revealed that he had privately warned President Biden that his attempts to reinstate the Obama Iran nuke deal would pave the way “for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy." He even compared Biden’s blindness to the consequences to FDR’s tragic failure to bomb the train tracks leading to Auschwitz when he had a chance in 1944.

He also predicted that he will soon be back. I hope it’s not under similar circumstances to Winston Churchill’s replacement of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain after a period when he was out of government. He came back because Britain’s leaders tried to appease the Nazis and ended up needing a tough, resolute leader to win World War II.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been a personal friend of mine for many years, and I’m not sure the people of Israel fully appreciate his statecraft that has led to unprecedented peace, prosperity, and security not just for Israel, but for the entire Middle East. It will take years for the new leadership to develop the depth of relationships that Netanyahu had fostered over his 12 consecutive years and 15 total.

Having said that, Israel is where it is because of God, not any one man or political party. I’ve also known Naftali Bennett for over 10 years and have high hopes that he will use his very significant executive skills to keep Israel stable and secure. I hope all my Christian friends will join me as we “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

Mike Huckabee

Inflation is already starting to be felt by Americans. This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index jumped again in May, bringing the inflation rate over the past year up to 5%, the biggest jump since 2008. Economists had been expecting it to reach 4.7%.

https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/money/us-department-of-labor-reports-largest-1-year-consumer-price-index-increase-since-2008-money/77-3d054451-1d89-40cb-a7e0-2c7f2da3a969

Inflation is essentially a tax that hits the poor and middle class the hardest because it makes everything you buy more expensive. People who were already worrying about how to cover the bills will now have to stretch the food budget a little further or try to cut down on driving (you might have especially noticed the leap in gas prices since Joe Biden became President and declared war on the domestic fossil fuel industry.)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Fed assure us that this is just a temporary price spike caused by pent-up demand and reduced supply, due to the pandemic coming to an end. And that might be part of it. But inflation also happens when you flood the economy with dollars by running the printing press 24/7, like trying to stimulate the economy with trillions and trillions of dollars the government doesn’t actually have. The more of anything that exists, the less it's worth, and that’s true of dollars as well.

During the election, Biden infamously declared, “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.” Since becoming President, Biden has doubled down on his defiance of the Nobel Prize-winning free market economics icon, just as he’s defied reality on a number of other fronts, from border security to energy. But as I predicted even before he took office, his biggest opponent would not be the Republicans, it would be reality.

Simply declaring that Friedman’s wisdom about how money works (and has always worked and always will work) no longer applies and that America can now print money out of thin air and hand it out to everyone without creating hyperinflation and crashing the economy, won’t make it so.

I fear that Biden’s arrogant defiance of the unalterable facts of economics that Milton Friedman so brilliantly explained will prove as foolish as defying the old, dead, white guy Sir Isaac Newton and his outmoded ideas about gravity by leaping off a 20-story building. I also fear that the US economy will suffer the same fate.

The economists at Deutsche Bank are also not convinced that Joe Biden has rewritten the laws of economics and can flood the country with paper money without reducing the value of the dollar until we’re using them as toilet paper because it will be cheaper than buying actual toilet paper.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/09/deutsche-bank-issues-a-terrifying-warning-for-america-under-biden-n1453388

Mike Huckabee

In its latest Orwellian move, the Biden Department of “Justice” is trying to prevent three Christian colleges and the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities from intervening to defend themselves in a lawsuit challenging the religious exemption to Title IX protections of LGBTQ students. The DOJ claimed in the filing that it could “vigorously defend” the constitutionality of the exemption. But the next day, they amended the filing to read “adequately defend.” And by “adequately,” they actually mean “inadequately,” like a boxer who throws the fight.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/10/you-didnt-really-expect-the-biden-doj-to-defend-religious-freedom-did-you-n1453484

Biden is already on record as being hostile to religious freedom protections and for kowtowing to the radical LGBTQ lobby. The idea that his DOJ would protect those freedoms on behalf of Christian colleges, and that they shouldn’t even be allowed to have a say in their own defense, sounds like something out of a banana republic where the defense attorney is also the prosecutor.

Related: In a VIP article that’s unfortunately behind a paywall at PJMedia.com, Tyler O’Neil warns Evangelical Christians that Burger King has jumped on the “Pride Month” float. All this month, 40 cents from the sale of every CkKing chicken sandwich will be donated to the LGBTQ activist group, the Human Rights Campaign.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/08/burger-king-to-evangelical-christians-we-dont-want-your-business-n1453007

O’Neil points out that the HRC supports the Democrats’ “Equality Act” that would gut the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and is partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center in its campaign to defame conservative Christian nonprofits like the Alliance Defending Freedom as anti-gay “hate groups.” So every chicken sandwich Christians buy at Burger King this month will fund a group that wants to take away their rights.

Say, you know who has the best chicken sandwich? Popeyes.

Mike Huckabee

Before this week is over, I want to draw your attention to two major stories that, to their shame, the biased media have barely mentioned, if at all. The fact that you’ve heard something like them before, and the media have covered them up before, doesn't make the latest cover-ups any less appalling.

The first is the leak of private taxpayer data from the IRS by the left-leaning group ProPublica.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/larry-kudlow-investigation-irs-leaks-urgent-immediate

As Larry Kudlow points out at the link, it’s very convenient that this was leaked just as a leftwing, “tax the rich” campaign is gearing up. Yes, I get that we’re all curious to find out how much income tax these wealthy people paid (although it’s misleading, since many don’t live off of straight taxable income), and it’s fun to rant and rage if you think they aren’t paying enough.

But that’s not the real outrage here. What you should be furious about is that someone in the IRS, the government agency entrusted with the most personal information that the government forces citizens to share – their income, what they spend it on, medical expenses, etc. – leaked that private information for partisan purposes. Echoing the days when the IRS tampered with the 2012 elections by targeting and denying nonprofit status to Tea Party groups, this is an example of someone in one of the most powerful government agencies, with the power to intrude into every aspect of our lives, weaponizing that power for partisan purposes.

(And while we’re at it, hats off to Bryan Preston at PJ Media for asking: if these IRS records were hacked, then why haven’t social media platforms banned ProPublica? Twitter cut off the New York Post for reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop on grounds that they don’t allow hacked material to be distributed, but that laptop wasn’t even hacked; it was left at a repair shop until it became the owner’s property.)

There should be an immediate Congressional investigation to find out who committed this unconscionable leak so that they can be fired and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, to serve as an example to others. I know it’s easy to say, “Who cares about those rich guys?” Well, the Tea Party organizers weren’t rich. They were just average Americans trying to have a say in their government. If the IRS can abuse its power to harm billionaires and working class conservatives alike, then nobody is safe until they’re brought to heel.

Biased Media Ignores Latest Hunter Biden Laptop Revelations

By Mike Huckabee

The other major story that liberal media outlets covered this week like a blanket covers a stained sheet was the latest toxic leakage from Hunter Biden’s laptop. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and CNN all dutifully ignored revelations by the Daily Mail of Hunter’s emails in which he repeatedly called his white lawyer by the “n-word.”

https://nypost.com/2021/06/10/mainstream-media-ignores-lewd-hunter-biden-n-word-texts-to-his-lawyer/

While that story is the juiciest (or would be, if the media covered racism on their own side), these stories are arguably more important:

The New York Post reported that even though Joe Biden claimed to know nothing about his son’s foreign business deals, the then-Vice President attended a dinner at Café Milano on April 16, 2015, where he met Ukrainian, Russian and Kazakhstani business associates of Hunter’s. The Washington Post tried to debunk that, but the writer of the New York Post piece hit back pretty hard.

https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2021/06/08/washington-post-fact-checker-joe-biden-just-stopped-by-hunter-biden-dinner/

Emails from Hunter Biden's laptop show he was instrumental in setting up a consulting deal between Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that was paying him big bucks, and two Democratic consultants who are currently under investigation for violating foreign lobbying laws.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/hunter-biden-facilitated-deal-for-democratic-consultants-now-under-federal-investigation/

And just prior to the 2016 election, the former Ukrainian prosecutor told the Obama State Department that a lobbying firm linked to Hunter Biden and Burisma had pitched him that they could get him access to high levels of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, when it was assumed she’d be the next US President.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/blue-star-strategies-burisma-hunter-biden-ukraine-prosecutor-access-clinton-campaign-obama-official

You can find more details on all these corruption stories at the links. And here, Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media asks us to imagine the nuclear-level media reaction if any of these stories had involved Donald Trump’s kids.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/06/09/the-morning-briefing-lets-play-a-game-of-if-hunters-last-name-were-trump-n1453024

Mike Huckabee

New York Times editorial board member and MSNBC contributor Mara Gay sparked well-deserved blowback by saying that during a weekend trip to Long Island, she saw “dozens of American flags,” which was “just disturbing.” She apparently assumes those are owned by Trump supporters (admittedly, probably a safe bet), and claims they were sending a message: "This is my country…not your country. I own this." She went on to regurgitate more liberal buzzwords, including, of course, “whiteness.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-analyst-disturbing-dozens-american-flags-flown-pickup-trucks-trump-supporters

Well, I assume those Long Islanders do own their own flags, and the poles, yards and pickup trucks they’re mounted to. But I think the “It’s not your country” message came right out of her own paranoid noggin. She should be counting her lucky stars that when she goes out into the country where she lives, the flags she sees are American flags. They’re flown by the kind of people who join the military and fight to protect all our rights. That includes the First Amendment, which gives the New York Times editorial board the right to badmouth America, insult the flag, and make fools of themselves in print every day.

On that subject, as Townhall.com columnist Mike LaChance reminds us, Ms Gay is the same New York Times writer who once said that the $500 million wasted by Mike Bloomberg on his presidential run could have been divided up to give every American $1 million. It was actually closer to one dollar. But at the rate he's spending money, Joe Biden might hit that mark.

https://www.thewrap.com/brian-williams-mara-gay-get-dragged-for-bad-on-air-math-about-bloomberg-campaign-spending/

Mike Huckabee

“We have to pass the bill, so you can find out...what is in it.”

That was Nancy Pelosi talking to her colleagues about the monstrous “Affordable” Care Act. And, of course, they did pass it, on a slim, completely partisan vote, without even knowing the details of what they were passing. How could they? The bill, like too many “comprehensive” bills, ran thousands of pages.

But today, I’d like to talk about the content of another such comprehensive bill that has just passed the Senate, originally called the Endless Frontier Act. It’s designed to compete technologically with China, which certainly is a laudable goal, and the name “Endless Frontier” sounds great in that context. However, in medical research, there are some frontiers that we should think about long and hard before we cross, if indeed we ever do.

Our curiosity about the development of this bill started building on Thursday, when Tammy Bruce on FOX NEWS PRIMETIME did a segment on its potential to fund research on “chimeras,” organisms that combine the DNA of humans and other animals. What??

Here is the report by Charles Creitz at FOX NEWS, featuring Bruce’s segment, which includes her interview with guest Lara Logan.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/lara-logan-human-chimera-research

The Endless Frontier Act was introduced by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, which alone sends up red flags. But it got bipartisan support, with six Republican and seven Democrat co-sponsors. The final 1,445-page bill passed the Senate Friday, after being “rebranded” by Schumer as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. Who could be against innovation and competition?

But one thing the Chinese apparently are working on is this kind of trans-species research. In fact, as Bruce reported, they’ve actually created human-monkey embryos that lived 20 days in a lab. So are we going to compete with China on THAT kind of innovation? What could possibly go wrong?

In May, numerous amendments were introduced. One of them, brought by GOP Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Steve Daines of Montana and Mike Braun of Indiana, would have outlawed the type of experimentation that hybridizes human and animal DNA through bioengineering, sometimes called “chimera” research.

Some scientists call this area of experimentation “Pandora’s Box,” with good reason. We’ve already seen how research from Chinese labs –- in this case gain-of-function manipulation on coronaviruses –- can inflict disaster on the world. Recall that funding for gain-of-function was banned during the Obama administration, but that it happened anyway when the NIAID (National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease) funded an intermediary group that, in turn, funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

But the amendment to Schumer’s bill outlawing the funding of “chimera” research did not pass. And the Senate went on to pass their “comprehensive” bill without it.

I'm sure there are some excellent provisions in this bill, but how could any pro-life Republican senator have possibly supported it, absent that amendment? Without it, we might very well be funding research using human embryos and other fetal tissue. But the bill passed 68-32; do the math.

Think those experiments aren't going on? Wrong.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/stanford-research-fetal-tissue-mice-funding-disclosure-complaint

Here’s a report by Tyler Olsen at FOX NEWS from May 19, when Republicans were proposing their various amendments to the bill. Any concern about fetal tissue or "chimera" research was not mentioned.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/anti-china-bill-price-tag-senate-republicans-tough

At the time, the bill was to cost $130 billion, and Republicans chafed at that. The Republican Study Committee in the House had dubbed it “the Endless Pork Act,” which I’m sure is accurate. Yet some Republicans thought it didn’t go far enough and needed important amendments. “As it stands,” said Florida Sen. Rick Scott, “much of the Endless Frontier Act will not effectively counter Communist China’s aggression. A slush fund to universities with little security and oversight isn’t the answer.” He had proposed amendments, he said, to “secure American innovation, protect our national security, hold China accountable and put American interests first.”

At that time, Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said, “While I am still reviewing the hundreds of pages that comprise this legislation, it is my belief that this bill will need to be seriously improved through the amendment process to attract broad support. Enhancing U.S. research and development is an important part of countering Communist China, but that alone is not enough for the Senate to say it has checked the box and held the regime accountable.”

The story gives examples of amendments several Republican senators backed. Ted Cruz, for instance, backed amendments banning China from controlling American radio stations (good idea!); adding money for the extraction of rare earth minerals (which we need to end our dependence on China); blocking the sharing of nuclear technology with China (thank you); and addressing the issue of Chinese spies at American universities, including Confucius Institutes, which happen to be in the news today for another reason.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/governor-desantis-signs-legislation-banning-confucius-institutes-on-college-campuses/

Sen. Cruz ended up voting “no” on the final bill.

One House aide, a Republican, told FOX NEWS that China “is really breathing a sigh of relief” because the bill, as much as it costs, won’t do much. He said it should require disclosure for all think tanks that are funded by the Chinese government (of course it should!) and also sanction the CCP’s United Front Work Department. Good idea; here’s what the UFWD does.

https://www.nspirement.com/2020/06/01/overseas-chinese-beware-of-the-ccp-united-front-work-department2.html

A later story from May 27 by Sam Dorman of FOX NEWS gets to the meat of what happened with the “chimera” amendment: “The Senate narrowly rejected an amendment geared towards criminalizing research that created chimeras, or human-animal hybrids, in expectation that the federal government could lift a moratorium on funding for those projects.” This would have been a way to provide a check on the National Institutes of Health possibly lifting its moratorium on “chimera” research.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-human-animal-hybrid-experiments-chimera-ban-rejected

On a party-line vote, 48 Republicans approved the amendment. Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Thom Tillis of North Carolina inexplicably did not vote. WHERE WERE THEY? And the one Democrat who might have defied his party, Sen. Joe Manchin, didn’t vote, either. These three could have made the difference.

Currently, the International Society for Stem Cell Research has guidelines that we should all find reassuring (too bad you can’t hear the sarcasm in my voice right now): “This research must proceed incrementally, stopping at well-defined timepoints to assess the degree and scope of chimerism during development before proceeding to full gestation, if full gestation is one of the well-defined goals of the research. To avoid unpredictable and widespread chimerism, researchers should endeavor to use targeted chimerism strategies to limit chimerism to a particular organ system or region of the gestating chimeric animal.”

Feel better? It occurs to me that the way we put our bills together is, itself, kind of like making a chimera. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, sometimes it dies, or maybe just part of it dies, but let’s see what we come out with in the end. It might be something that should never see the light of day.

Mike Huckabee

Despite a number of state Attorneys General launching legal challenges to President Biden’s pointless killing of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, it now appears that it is really quite sincerely dead. The developer, Canada’s TC Energy Corp, and the provincial government of Alberta say they’re abandoning the project. Alberta invested more than $1 billion in it thanks to the US commitment that Biden undid with a stroke of his executive order pen.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/06/biden-permanently-kills-keystone-xl-pipeline-developer-abandons-project-after-permit-pulled/

This decision will anger Canada, destroy American jobs, and make America less energy independent and fuel more expensive. It won’t even help the environment, since the oil will still have to get to the refineries, only via CO2-spewing trucks instead of a carbon-neutral pipeline. It’s obvious that the Wall Street Journal reporter quoted at the link was struggling to find some coherent justification for Biden’s actions: “It is a victory for environmentalists who have campaigned to block new pipeline construction as a way to limit oil consumption that contributes to global warming.”

News flash: blocking pipeline construction will not limit oil consumption. That’s like thinking that if you blow up the lunch wagon at your workplace, you’ll eat less. No, you’ll just put the driver out of a job, and you’ll still have to eat lunch. But now, you’ll have to obtain it in a more expensive, inconvenient way because, just like the US economy, your body still needs fuel.

While the Keystone XL Pipeline now seems DOA, some wags on the Internet suggested one possible way that it might be revived: Canada could declare itself part of Russia, and then Biden would approve the pipeline.

Mike Huckabee

For those who despair that America is lost and it’s too late to save her, some proof that you can fight back and win…

After Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced that she would not grant interviews to white reporters, the Daily Caller and Judicial Watch sued her for unconstitutional racial discrimination. A federal judge has now ordered Lightfoot to file a sworn declaration clarifying her interview policy. I’d say she’d better make it good, because the policy already seems pretty clear, and pretty clearly racist.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/06/08/judge-orders-chicago-mayor-to-clarify-her-racist-interview-policy-n1452873

Her attorneys argued that the document isn’t necessary because the policy is no longer in effect. Wait, so if you declare you’ve now stopped acting like a racist, everything’s copacetic and we can just move on from there? I don’t think that argument would fly with Mayor Lightfoot’s fellow liberals these days.

Tuesday, a judge ordered the reinstatement of a Leesburg, Virginia, high school PE teacher who was suspended for refusing to use students’ “preferred pronouns.” He told a school board meeting that he is a committed Christian who believes you cannot change the sex you were born into and that transgender treatments for minors are child abuse. He said forcing him to endorse transgenderism not only violates his religious conscience but forces him to lie to his students.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judge-rules-favor-teacher-suspended-refusing-use-transgender-pronouns/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

The judge ruled that his statement was protected free speech and the school couldn’t prove it caused any significant disruption to school operations. The school’s attorney claimed they had to suspend him because they feared backlash from parents. I’m curious to know if they actually polled the parents to find out how many agree with him.

Eight Minneapolis residents are suing the City Council for causing a spike in violent crime by defunding the police and failing to do their duty to provide a minimal level of policing to guarantee public safety. With the city’s leftist alleged leaders refusing to lead, citizens had no choice but to step up and do it themselves.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/minneapolis-residents-sue-city-council-police

On their behalf, community activist Cathy Spann said, “We are here, together in unison, to say enough is enough. I am here today to say it is about all of us coming together to make a difference to stop the gun violence that is in our city -- downtown, south, north. We are stopping it. We are no longer asking for a plan. We are the plan."

Meanwhile, business owners in Baltimore have their own plan for dealing with the destruction wrought by their leftist, anti-police City Council. Since the government refuses to do its job of ensuring public safety, the businesses are refusing to pay their taxes to fund the useless government. It's being described as the "Baltimore Tea Party," only the "T" they're throwing overboard stands for "taxes."

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/06/08/baltimore-tea-party-business-refuse-to-pay-taxes-as-public-safety-crashes-n1453121

The San Antonio city council member who spearheaded the attempt to block Chick-fil-A from the city airport, accusing them of being a “symbol of hate” for donating to Christian charities, lost his seat in Saturday’s run-off. It’s not clear whether the winner will be any better or if that issue played a major role, but either way, he’s off the city council. And thanks to him, Texas now has a new state law barring religious discrimination in government contracts, and the state Supreme Court is reviewing a lawsuit against San Antonio filed under it. So his term on the City Council actually did accomplish something good, even if it was completely inadvertent.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/07/architect-of-chick-fil-a-ban-loses-san-antonio-city-council-seat-n1452570