Pat Cipollone’s chance to serve the country—not Trump—is now, Jan. 6 probe demands in subpoena

Pat Cipollone had what one former member of the Justice Department described last week to the Jan. 6 committee as “an impossible job” serving the 45th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. 

But Cipollone was “consistent” and “did that job well,” Richard Donoghue, once the second-in-command to former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, testified.

Cipollone “always sided with the department” and did so even as Trump pushed to overturn the results of the 2020 election by attempting to install crony Jeffrey Clark into the attorney general role.

This was a necessary step in a greater plan to have Clark send a letter to swing states falsely informing them their election results were fraudulent and directing them to appoint Trump’s fake electors.

Cipollone, however, appeared to know a bad deal when he saw it three days before the insurrection during a meeting at the White House with Rosen, Donoghue, Office of Legal Counsel head Richard Engel, Clark, and Trump. 

Cipollone rejected Clark’s letter and the plan underpinning it as a “murder-suicide pact,” Donoghue told the committee publicly last week. 

When the mob finally ensued on Jan. 6, according to testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time aide to Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, it was Cipollone who pleaded with a despondent Meadows as a gallows was being erected on the Capitol lawn. 

“They are literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling the president’s chief of staff.

Meadows replied, saying of then-Vice President Mike Pence, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

Cipollone, Hutchinson said under oath, was, in this terrifying moment, at a loss. 

“This is f-ing crazy, we need to be doing something more,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone saying. 

Now, the Jan. 6 committee wants Cipollone to do something more, and it has issued a subpoena for his deposition by July 6.

Cipollone Subpoena From Jan 6 Cmte by Daily Kos on Scribd

Cipollone’s testimony would be significant for the investigation into the Capitol attack and Trump’s bid to overturn the election results. It would perhaps be some of the most significant testimony to emerge because it would likely expose the former president’s overt role in the insurrection even more directly. 

He sat previously for the committee in April, but he was not under oath and the meeting was not transcribed. He appeared with Patrick Philbin, another Trump White House attorney who once joined him to defend Trump against impeachment.

The subpoena now forces Cipollone to decide what he will say under oath and what he will leave under possible attorney-client privilege or executive privilege with the former president. 

Cipollone, according to Hutchinson, was one of the few voices of reason surrounding Trump on Jan. 6, even explicitly warning him and others in the president’s orbit that if he went to the Capitol after his speech at the Ellipse, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.” 

He was at meetings where the question of seizing voting machines was raised, and he was there when not just Donoghue, Engel, and Rosen’s resignations were threatened if Trump insisted on installing Clark, but when Bill Barr, Rosen’s predecessor, offered to quit because he would not declare there was election fraud where none existed. 

Cipollone threatened to resign in the runup to Jan. 6 often, according to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser.

Kushner testified before the probe in recorded deposition and told committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney he chalked up Cipollone’s threats to resign as mere “whining.”

Cheney has publicly called on Cipollone to testify before the committee multiple times and has framed the request in a way that would possibly curry public trust around him.

“Our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right,” Cheney remarked during a recent hearing.

But according to the letter notifying him of the subpoena, Cipollone has declined to cooperate since April. And this subpoena is among the last-resort options barring something more extreme down the road, like holding him in contempt.

If he were to sit now, it would be under closely negotiated terms with counsel present. 

In a statement Wednesday, Thompson and Cheney noted, however: ”Any concerns Mr. Cipollone has about the institutional prerogatives of the office he previously held are clearly outweighed by the need for his testimony."  

Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill

By Mark Hemingway and Ben Weingarten  for RealClearInvestigations

The historic surge of illegal immigrants across America’s southern border is fueling a hidden crime spree few in Washington seem willing or able to address: widespread identity theft by migrants who need U.S. credentials to work.

An extensive review of government reports, think-tank research, news accounts, and interviews with policymakers and scholars suggests the problem involves millions of people – though measuring it with precision is difficult because of the lack of data provided by authorities.

A telling indication of the scope of the criminality is provided by a little-known government accounting book, the Social Security Administration’s Earnings Suspense File (ESF). It reflects the earnings of employees whose W-2 wage and tax statements have names and Social Security numbers that do not match official records. The total has increased tenfold from $188.9 billion at the dawn of the millennium to $1.9 trillion in 2021.

Officials have historically ascribed a “high proportion” of the file’s growth to wages reported by illegal immigrants, and it has swelled alongside their population, which stands at a conservatively estimated 11.5 million today, 7 million of whom are employed. Among those doing so on the books, federal authorities have found that well over 1 million are using Social Security numbers belonging to someone else – i.e. stolen or “shared” with a relative or acquaintance – or that are fabricated.

The data held in the ESF would enable authorities to pursue many of the fraudsters, but the IRS and other agencies responsible for enforcing the law have been reluctant to investigate, and regulations have prevented meaningful information-sharing among them. This identity-related crime is providing a windfall for the U.S. government.

A 2017 study from the conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the federal government collects about $22 billion annually in tax receipts from illegal aliens, with the bulk going toward Social Security ($12.6 billion) and Medicare ($5.9 billion) – programs from which noncitizens are ineligible to receive benefits. FAIR estimated that illegal migrants also paid $3.3 billion in federal income tax – a smaller proportion primarily due to illegal aliens’ lower wage levels – and another $1 billion in state income taxes.

RELATED: After Giving Democrats Enough Gun Control Votes, Cornyn Reportedly Says Immigration Is Next

In other words, the fraud has the effect of bolstering financially shaky federal programs. In one of the agency’s rare direct statements on the issue, Social Security Administration Chief Actuary Stephen Goss told CNN in 2014 that without “undocumented immigrants paying into the system, Social Security would have entered persistent shortfall of tax revenue to cover payouts starting in 2009.

” Leading progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal echoed this observation in 2018, arguing that a “complication of [then-president] Trump’s plans to limit immigration is the effect to our Social Security Earnings Suspense File – money that keeps our Social Security system afloat,” including that provided by “undocumented immigrants.”

Given Washington’s bipartisan willingness to tolerate illegal immigration – whether driven by the multicultural left or businesses interests seeking cheap labor – authorities have focused on this apparent windfall to the U.S. Treasury. But they have largely ignored the costs. These include the significant strain illegal immigrant households place on public finances, which FAIR and others estimate vastly outweigh their tax contributions, their impacts on crime and the job market – and on the victims of identity theft.

Reports dating back over a decade show that hundreds of thousands of Americans are unknowingly “sharing” their Social Security numbers with illegal immigrants. Such victims may face tax bills for income they didn’t earn or depleted benefits.

Worse, some may experience the burden of bad credit histories and criminal records inaccurately attributed to themselves after being issued SSNs that illegal aliens had previously invented and used. The overall impact on American citizens is largely unknown because federal, state, and local governments as well as financial institutions have generally failed to notify them even when fraud is suspected.

The relevant agencies were largely non-responsive to RealClearInvestigation’s requests for updated figures on the size, scope, and extent of the fraud. Nor have lawmakers recently given voice to the victims.

Congress seems to have last held a hearing spotlighting the defrauded over a decade ago. Related legislation aimed at reducing Social Security number fraud in employment has typically languished, and many lawmakers RCI contacted indicated only a passing knowledge of the issue.

One thing experts do agree on is that the problem is likely to get worse as more illegal immigrants cross the border and seek work.

Immigration Reform Spurs Fraud

The growth in illegal immigrant identity fraud, reflected in part by the booming Earnings Suspense File, serves as an ironic instance of regulation becoming the mother of criminal innovation.

In 1986, Congress for the first time made it explicitly unlawful for employers to hire illegal immigrants. The Immigration Reform and Control Act required those seeking employment to fill out I-9 forms attesting to citizenship or work-authorized immigrant status, and provide corroborating documentation and a valid Social Security number.

The law, signed by President Reagan amid great fanfare, was supposed to end the problem of illegal immigration, and as part of the grand bargain nearly 3 million undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were granted U.S. citizenship. But the law did not slow the pipeline of immigration as it was intended to do, and it would drive many illegal aliens – not only those crossing the border under cover but also those not allowed to work while awaiting court hearings that can take months or even years to take place – to fraud.

According to the libertarian CATO Institute, the 1986 law spurred the “creation of a large‐​scale black market for legal documents in the United States. The value of document fraud increased after ICRA because false documents became necessary for illegal immigrants to fill out an I-9 form to work.”

RELATED: Texas Launches Operations Center To Oversee 15-Agency Effort To Thwart Illegal Immigration

Aliens can procure SSNs in several ways: Some simply conjure a nine-digit SSN out of thin air. Others use the numbers of their children who were born in the U.S. Still others steal them directly from individuals, purchase them from dealers for $80 to $200 along with a green card as can be done in Los Angeles, or via the dark web for as little as $4.

In a rare instance of enforcement, in June the Department of Justice announced that a joint operation between the IRS Cyber Crimes Unit and the FBI had seized the “SSNDOB marketplace” – a series of lucrative websites touted on the dark web that sold illegally obtained Social Security numbers of more than 20 million Americans. But “synthetic identity fraud” persists – the most common form of ID theft, where fraudsters create an entirely new identity by stealing the Social Security numbers of children or poor adults with little credit history.

While some illegal immigrants work off the books, the Social Security Administration has previously said that 75% are using fake or stolen numbers. By doing so, they gain access to broader employment opportunities. There is another powerful incentive for paying taxes as well.

By dint of their generally low income levels, illegals can receive reimbursements through making use of deductions and exemptions, as well as rebates via refundable credits – leaving many with tax liabilities of zero or even as net recipients of government largesse. Immigration proponents contend that many do so in the hope that paying their taxes through employer withholding will weigh in their favor in a future amnesty, reflecting good behavior.

Their fraud can be detected each year when employers submit W-2s. The Social Security Administration analyzes the W-2s to detect inaccuracies, such as mismatched names to the numbers it has on file.

This is where the Earnings Suspense File comes into play. ESF, established in 1937, was long an accounting for wayward tax and Social Security payments – for instance when a newly married woman changed her name but forgot to notify the SSA. Should a legitimate taxpayer find he didn’t get tax refunds or Social Security benefits because of a mix-up with his Social Security number, ESF records ideally would help him get what he was owed. Unreconciled filings would remain in the ESF.

For decades relatively little money was recorded in the file. According to the Government Accountability Office, in the three decades between 1950 and 1980 just $33 billion in uncredited earnings were recorded.

Contributions to the ESF exploded after passage of the ICRA in 1986, as a Social Security Administration inspector general report providing a chart showing annual contributions to the fund makes clear:

The Earnings Suspense File exploded after passage of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Uncredited earnings rose to $77.3 billion in the 1980s, would double in the 1990s to $188.9 billion, and then grow by a factor of 10 over the next two decades to an accumulated $1.9 trillion today – surging by $409 billion between the years 2012 and 2016 alone, according to documents obtained by the mass migration-skeptical Immigration Reform Law Institute via FOIA request.

2015 audit from SSA’s IG reports that in a given year as many as one in 25 American workers supplied their employers with false information – “each year, SSA posts to the ESF 3 to 4 percent of the total W-2s and 1.4 to 1.8 percent of the total wages received from employers.”

A 2018 Treasury inspector general report documented more than 1.3 million cases of employment-related identity theft from 2011-2016, and 1.2 million cases in which illegal aliens used Social Security numbers that belonged to someone else or were fabricated in 2017 alone. The Social Security Administration projects this number will rise to 2.9 by 2040.

Private estimates of Social Security number theft have ranged substantially higher.

A 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud identified more than 2.9 million Social Security numbers with “risk characteristics associated with SSN misuse.”

“There’s massive amounts of fraud, the SSA knows it’s happening, and they know it’s your Social Security numbers…being used. These IG reports make it explicitly clear,” said Jon Feere, a former Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official now with the “pro-immigrant, low immigration” Center for Immigration Studies. “And they basically say that they believe that one of the main reasons for this fraud is because of the employment of illegal aliens.”

Known Fraud, Little Enforcement

The existence of the ESF means the Social Security Administration and the IRS, with which it coordinates, are sitting on a database containing a substantial population of fraudsters against American citizens. For the better part of two decades, government watchdogs have encouraged these agencies to put the data to use, but they have been reticent.

A 2005 Social Security Administration IG report stated: “Although SSA continues to coordinate with DHS on immigration issues, it does not routinely share information regarding egregious employers who submit inaccurate SSNs. In our opinion, any serious plan to address SSN misuse and growth of the ESF must allow SSA to share such information with DHS,” reads the report.

A 2006 GAO report similarly recommended that the SSA, IRS, and DHS share data to address this problem. However, federal law severely limits the SSA and IRS from sharing information from tax forms, in part on privacy grounds. The ACLU called attempts to coordinate information-sharing between the SSA and immigration enforcement authorities during the Trump administration an “all-out assault on our legal rights and our immigrant communities.”

Since SSA lacks enforcement authority, the George W. Bush-led Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency proposed a rule setting forth potential penalties for employers who did not respond to SSA “no match letters” – notifications sent to employers informing them of employees whose SSNs don’t match government records.

The proposed rule kicked off a firestorm of opposition from immigrant advocates. In 2008, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated 33 employees who had been fired by their employer after receiving a no match letter. The court ruled a no match letter alone wasn’t sufficient to determine whether employees were in violation of the law.

The Obama administration put an end to no match letters altogether. Jason Hopkins, the investigations manager for the IRLI, told RCI that the Obama administration did so in service of its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“Dreamers”) program, which allowed illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children exemption from deportation and eligibility for work permits.

“If they went in [and] applied for a DACA application, and they had to actually admit they put in fake social security numbers, they’d be essentially admitting to perjury,” Hopkins says. “So that would have scared them off, and Obama wanted them to apply for this program.”

In 2019, the Trump administration-led Social Security Administration resumed sending out no match letters, delivering 1.6 million notices across 2019 and 2020. The Biden administration again discontinued the practice.

RELATED: Americans More Concerned As Illegal Immigration Soars To Highest In Two Decades

The SSA did not respond to RCI’s multiple attempts to contact it regarding related policies.

The IRS has enforcement powers the SSA lacks, but has historically disavowed responsibility for dealing with illegal alien ID theft. In 2016 then-IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who faced impeachment hearings for defying congressional subpoenas and the destruction of evidence, told Congress, “We have Social Security and immigration authorities and others who enforce that part of the law, and if we start looking behind the system and doing their job for them, we’re going to discourage a lot of people from paying the taxes they owe.”

Consistent with this view, a 2020 GAO report on employment-related identity fraud found that the IRS was not tracking numerous forms of employment-related identity fraud.

The IRS’ Internal Revenue Manual, which governs employees’ policies and practices, refers to those engaged in ID fraud as “borrowers,” defending this language as neutral, given that some may be “borrowing” an SSN from another family member to work, rather than engaging in “actual identity theft.”

When CNS News asked the IRS in 2018 how many taxpayer accounts it had referred for criminal prosecution, of the 1.3 million Treasury’s inspector general had flagged for identity fraud, the agency said “We do not have this information.” Similarly, the IG report recommended that the IRS notify the 458,658 victims of ID theft identified in 2017 – and the IRS does not appear to have notified anyone.

When RCI asked the IRS about its policies for handling ID theft, the agency did not confirm it had done anything in response to the IG’s findings or identity fraud specifically related to illegal immigration. A spokesman said that “in recent years, we’ve referred people” – that is, from the general U.S. population – “for prosecution all the time, and where appropriate, we work with other law-enforcement agencies.”

The IRS’s guide to employment-related identity theft highlights notices it might send to taxpayers indicating potential fraud, but it is not clear how many such letters it sends out, and the burden overwhelmingly falls on the victims to be vigilant and take steps to clear their names.

Meanwhile, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has curtailed worksite enforcement. Between halting no match letters and DHS’ leniency, Spencer Raley, a researcher with FAIR, told RCI, “From a strictly immigration-enforcement standpoint, nothing is being done to combat the issue of illegal aliens committing document fraud in order to obtain employment.”

RCI asked a series of questions of ICE, which leads criminal investigations into both document fraud and worksite enforcement, on the nature and extent of its targeting of those engaging in ID theft/fraud in employment, and whether and to what end it coordinated with other agencies on identifying such individuals for investigation. As of the time of publication, it had not responded to the questions.

Law enforcement agencies have periodically made illegal alien ID fraud busts in recent years, but not at meaningful levels relative to the previously reported number of fraudsters.

Given that Medicare is a beneficiary of the fraud, RCI posed a series of questions to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pertaining to ESF, and whether it was aware of, or did anything to contact those whose SSNs might have been fraudulently used associated with Medicare contributions. A CMS spokesperson referred RCI to the Social Security Administration.

RCI posed similar questions to tax authorities in both California and Texas – states dominated by opposing political parties but each with substantial illegal alien populations – to ascertain whether they, like the federal government, were tracking taxes paid by those potentially using fraudulent IDs, including illegal aliens, and doing anything to pursue them.

California’s Franchise Tax Board told RCI that it does not have a state Earnings Suspense File, nor does it track how much tax revenue annually is attributable to individuals misrepresenting themselves on filings. It did note, If we suspect identity theft on an individual tax return, we send a notice to the taxpayer to let them know they may be a victim and how to verify the authenticity of the tax return on file.” With respect to enforcement, the board indicated “Fraudulent claims and suspected ID theft cases may be sent to” its Criminal Investigations Bureau, which partners with other state law enforcement authorities. The board emphasized that California further partners with “state, city, federal and industry partners” to “protect the entire tax ecosystem,” with a focus on “widespread fraudulent schemes and threat groups,” rather than those filing and paying taxes.

As of the time of publication, Texas had not responded to RCI’s inquiries.

Banks and credit agencies also have their own extensive “sub-files” for people who share the same Social Security number, but privacy laws make it impossible to get information on someone who has stolen one’s SSN from a third party, even though the behavior of the person stealing one’s number may end up affecting one’s ability to get government benefits or credit.

Credit rating agencies Equifax, Experian, and Transunion did not respond to RCI’s queries around illegal alien identity fraud.

What Victims Face

Marcus Calvillo, a father of six from Grand Prairie, Texas, experienced one of the more harrowing episodes of identity fraud on record, at least in the eyes of the prosecutor who helped bring him justice. Calvillo’s life was upended after an illegal immigrant named Fernando Neave-Ceniceros was first arrested on drug trafficking charges in Kansas in 1993, then a slew of other ones, including a sex crime involving a minor, and his twice failing to register as a sex offender.

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The criminal activity was recorded under Calvillo’s stolen identity – Neave-Ceniceros’ fingerprints were linked to Calvillo’s name in national criminal databases – making it difficult for the innocent Calvillo to pass the cursory background checks required to hold a job and support his family.

At one point, Calvillo was working as a cable installer when he was abruptly fired. When asked why, he told the Associated Press he was only told, “You know what you did.” Calvillo also had disputes with the IRS over taxes on wages that had been paid to Neave-Ceniceros but recorded under his name.

After years of struggling to get help – a struggle similarly encountered by other victims – Calvillo contacted Assistant U.S. Attorney Brent Anderson, who had been pursuing another identity theft case, who helped him get justice. In 2016, Neave-Ceniceros was convicted on a series of charges including aggravated identity theft and misuse of a Social Security number. “I don’t know of a case where the theft of an identity had a more devastating impact than this one,” Anderson told the Associated Press.

Despite wreaking havoc on Calvillo’s life, Neave-Ceniceros was only sentenced to one year and a day in prison for his crimes.

Horror stories such as Calvillo’s still abound. “I’ve been fired from jobs and have been accused of crimes I didn’t commit because my identity was stolen,” identity theft victim Adrian Gonzalez told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last year. “I don’t know what to do anymore, I think I might need to change my name.”

Linda Trevino, a Chicago suburb resident, was another victim, one of the hundreds of thousands NBC News cited in a report from over a decade ago. She had been denied a job at a local Target because someone using her SSN also worked there. Her number, in fact, had been used to obtain employment at 37 other employers, leaving her haunted by the IRS with letters asking her to pay others’ taxes, and facing creditors.

Children are victims of fraud too, and in fact may be prime targets given the clean records their IDs provide for thieves, and that conduct engaged in in their names may go undetected for years. Former California congressman Elton Gallegly wrote in The Hill in 2012 of a number of child victims of illegal immigrant fraud, including among them:

  • A 3-year-old issued an SSN already in use for years by a twice-arrested illegal alien, impacting the child’s credit, medical, and work history.
  • A 9-year-old denied Medicaid due to wages reported on his SSN.
  • A 13-year-old denied as a dependent on her family’s return for supposedly making too much money.

Immigration advocates downplay the criminality involved. “Most workers are buying documents they believe to be false,” a representative of the National Immigration Law Center told the Los Angeles Times. “There isn’t really any intention of stealing someone’s identity.” But even when immigration-related identity theft lacks specific criminal intent, the confusion that ID theft creates when dealing with tax bills, receiving government benefits, facing ruined credit, and other problems can upend a person’s life.

Citizens who discover someone else is using their Social Security number will quickly learn there’s little they can do about it. According to the Social Security Administration, proof that one’s SSN has been stolen and is being used by someone else isn’t sufficient reason to change one’s Social Security number. One must prove significant harm as a result, and the process is onerous – in 2014 the agency only permitted a total of 250 people to change their Social Security number. The Federal Trade Commission details the numerous steps those who believe they might have been defrauded should take to get their lives back.

The problem is so extensive that Mike Chapple, a professor of information technology at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, told Forbes, “It’s totally reasonable to assume that your Social Security number has been compromised at least once, if not many times.”

Little Legislative Relief

One of the seminal victories for proponents of ID integrity in the workplace was the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act in 1996, which launched the E-Verify system.

That its author, Rep. Ken Calvert, another California Republican, was still struggling 15 years later to move legislation making the program mandatory, illustrates the uphill battle the limited number of immigration hawks in Washington face.

The DHS-run program, which compares employment eligibility information from I-9 forms to government records, remains required solely of federal contractors. Only a small minority of states have mandated its use by employers. Republican senators Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton tried to pass a federal law that would simultaneously mandate E-Verify and raise the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour, but with the Senate controlled by Democrats, that legislation died.

On the House side, Georgia Republican Buddy Carter has sought to pass legislation multiple times that would require the IRS to produce a report on whether it could use proprietary information to identify illegal aliens fraudulently working in the U.S., to no avail.

At the state level, even Republican red Texas, mired in problems pertaining to illegal immigration, has had difficulty finding the political will to police the workplace. “At least 30 bills mandating E-Verify have been introduced in Texas in the past decade,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported last year. “Only one has passed, and none addressed undocumented workers, employers or temporary employment agencies using fraudulently obtained identities.”

Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether states even had the authority to prosecute identity theft by illegal immigrants. In March of 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that at least in some circumstances, they do, overturning a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that had voided the convictions of three illegal immigrants under the state’s identity theft law who had used stolen SSNs to obtain jobs.

The rapidly changing political landscape may be the only thing that could impact the broader trajectory of illegal immigration from which the fraud springs. The populist turn of the post-Donald Trump Republican Party is appealing to working class voters with a strong interest curbing illegal immigration to put upward pressure on wages.

Recent elections also show Hispanics voting for Republicans in significantly higher numbers, in part because of the Democrats’ more liberal border policies.

In the meantime, the illegal immigrant population continues to swell. The Biden administration has released over one million illegal immigrants into the U.S., in addition to the more than 700,000 “got-aways” who evaded apprehension, and over 190,000 unaccompanied minors released into the interior – for a total of nearly two million people. “To put it bluntly, the Biden administration, and other Democratic administrations, they just don’t care,” says Jason Hopkins.

Syndicated with permission from Real Clear Wire.

The post Willful Blindness: Feds Ignore Massive Illegal Alien ID Theft Plaguing Americans As U.S. Coffers Fill appeared first on The Political Insider.

Supreme Court Rules To Protect Religious Expression For Praying Football Coach

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Joe Kennedy, the high school football coach who was fired in 2015 for visibly praying on the field after games.

Justice Gorsuch affirmed the coach’s First Amendment rights in the majority opinion of Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District saying that, “[r]espect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic.”

The decision was heralded as a “tremendous victory for Coach Kennedy and religious liberty for all Americans” by Kennedy’s legal team, First Liberty.

Many conservatives are hailing the ruling as a first step towards restoring religious liberty in America, including Ted Cruz who tweeted, “I’m thankful the Supreme Court fully enforced the First Amendment—in a major victory for religious liberty—and upheld our God-given right to practice our faith.”

The President of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, tweeted that, “The Court has taken a significant step in repairing America’s foundation of religious freedom, which has been under relentless assault over the last 60 yrs.”

RELATED: Reports: Clarence Thomas Interested In Revisiting Ruling To Make It Easier To Sue The Media

Kennedy Wrongly Fired

Kennedy served as an assistant coach for the Bremerton School District in Bremerton, Washington. During his tenure as coach he had a post-game tradition of kneeling for prayer at the 50-yard line. Sometimes students and other coaches voluntarily joined him in this tradition. 

Justice Gorsuch explains in the majority opinion, which was signed by Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Barrett, and Chief Justice Roberts, that coach Kennedy was wrongly fired for his visible prayers. The controversy in this case hinged on the fact that Kennedy was serving in an official school capacity when he prayed, and the School District sought to prove that his prayers were coercing students into his religion, which could be a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Justice Gorsuch takes several pages to explain why this specific case does not violate the Establishment Clause and concludes that:

“Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims.”

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

Left Claims “Free Speech is Dead”

Unsurprisingly, the left is outraged by the decision.

In response to the ruling Representative Illhan Omar (D-MN) tweeted that, “The Supreme Court just ruled that public school teachers can pressure students to join in prayer at public school events but can also retaliate against those that don’t join in. Religious freedom is dead in America.”

However, Kennedy’s lawyer, Kelly Shackelford, explained that, far from any coercion, two students who did not join the prayers were even promoted to team captain.

Gorsuch also explained in the opinion that, “The First Amendment’s protections extend to ‘teachers and students,’ neither of whom ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ It is not dispositive that Coach Kennedy served as a role model and remained on duty after games. To hold otherwise is to posit an ‘excessively broad job descriptio[n]’ by treating everything teachers and coaches say in the workplace as government speech subject to government control.”

Slate news, however, went with the provocative and patently false headline, “Supreme Court Lets Public Schools Coerce Students Into Practicing Christianity.

Christianity Singled Out?

Would Slate news write headlines like this if the coach in question were Muslim or Jewish? This is exactly what an Amicus brief filed in the case by the Shaffer-Jaff law firm posited. 

“Such religious expression does not suddenly become government speech just because it occurs at a place of public employment,” the brief stated. “Because of the well-understood personal and individual nature of expressions of faith, it would be wrong as a factual matter to strip such expressions of their individual significance by attributing them to a person’s employer. No one, for example, would ever view an Abercrombie employee’s decision to wear a headscarf at work as Abercrombie’s endorsement of Islam.”

“A Jewish person who teaches public school students while wearing a yarmulke is doing nothing different in kind than a teacher or a coach privately praying in the view of his students or others.”

Justice Sotomayor refutes this idea in her dissent which was signed also by Justices Bryer and Kagan. Sotomayor sides with the school district stating that, “the District has a strong argument that Kennedy’s speech, formally integrated into the center of a District event, was speech in his official capacity as an employee that is not entitled to First Amendment protections at all.”

“His right to pray at any time and in any manner he wishes while exercising his professional duties is not absolute.”

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The Republican Party long ago missed its chance to distance itself from Trump. Now it’s far too late

With her jaw-dropping testimony before the House select committee on Jan. 6, former assistant to the White House chief of staff Cassidy Hutchinson has given Republicans an opportunity: Get out the 17.5-foot poles and push Donald Trump as far away as they can while there is still a chance. Hutchinson’s testimony, showing that the man who is petty, spiteful, mean, and cruel on stage, turns out to be even more petty, spiteful, mean, and cruel in private, is to Republicans what Jan. 6 was to Trump’s seditious conspiracy: a last chance.

On the day after Jan. 6, Republican “leaders” like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell were adamant in renouncing both the assault on the Capitol and the man who drove the mob into the halls of Congress. McCarthy was quoted as saying, “I’ve had it with this guy” after telling a group of Republican representatives that he would push for Trump to resign. McConnell also told fellow Republicans that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 attack and vowed to “drive him from politics.”

But within days, McCarthy hurried down to Mar-a-Lago, begging the forgiveness of Trump and denying he’d ever said anything about trying to remove him from office. A position made only slightly more awkward by recordings of McCarthy doing exactly that. 

Now Republicans have another chance to walk away from Trump. Don’t expect them to take it. Because it’s too late.

Campaign Action

Once upon a time, in the Pre-Trumpian age that now seems so far away, but was really just 2016, Republicans up and down the dial were readily aware that Donald Trump was in no sense qualified for high office, and that even putting him on the ballot as the Republican nominee was absolutely ridiculous.

There was Marco Rubio saying, “We’re about to have someone take over the Republican Party who is a con artist” (and Rubio should know). Rubio also called Trump the most “vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency” and someone “who has fed into language that basically justifies physically assaulting people who disagree with you.” 

Ted Cruz called Trump, “utterly amoral,” “a pathological liar,” and “a narcissist at a level that I don't think this country has ever seen.” Repeating … Ted Cruz said this.

And of course, Lindsey Graham was there to say that Trump was, “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party.” 

"You know how you make America great again?,” asked Graham. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell."

Then every single one of these leaders showed that they had feet, not of clay, because clay has much more consistency than anything demonstrated by these men. Watery mud, at best. 

The Republican Party might have tried to hold itself separate from Trump’s white nationalist kleptocratic authoritarian agenda. It didn’t. It might have broken with Trump when the first impeachment hearings revealed how he attempted to bully Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into generating false evidence against Joe Biden in exchange for the weapons it needed to hold back Russia. It didn’t. It might have broken away from Trump at a hundred different points, before, during, and after Jan. 6. It didn’t. 

Every day Republicans have had an option: Take their lumps for supporting Trump, and try to save what remains of their party. Instead, they’ve picked door number two—the one where they pull out a spade and dig the hole even deeper. Every day they’ve made the bet that wading further into the swamp is the better alternative—even though they’ve watched the waters close over the heads of so many former party stalwarts.

Last night in Illinois, Mary Miller beat out Rodney Davis for the nomination in the 15th congressional district on the sole basis of being the most willing to do anything, anything, anything, that Donald Trump says. It’s a story that has been repeated so many times in the last five years. What’s left of the Republican Party to save at this point? There’s no version of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene that is not just about being proxies for Trump. Ditto Josh Hawley, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, et. al. 

If Republicans stepped away from Trump, who would lead that charge? McCarthy? Graham? Cruz? Any of them might have preserved something of a dry place to stand that they could leverage now. But they didn’t. There’s maybe Mitt Romney and maybe half a dozen members of the House who have made it through the last four years like kids hunched down at the back of the class, hoping that the teacher would never, ever call on them. The only other Republicans who haven’t groveled at a level that embarrasses earthworms have either lost their seats, retired, or are about to.

Republicans should be thanking Cassidy Hutchinson for this fresh opportunity to declare that they didn’t know Trump was that bad. Because, beyond the ketchup on the walls and the grabbing for the wheel, what Hutchinson made dead obvious was that Donald Trump acted to make sure that his supporters at the Capitol were armed and that he intended to lead their assault on Congress personally. He wanted to be on hand to direct the people chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” which was music to his ears.

There are going to be charges of seditious conspiracy. A number of people are going to go to jail. What’s left of the Republican Party can either take this opportunity to bail on Trump or double down on the destruction of democracy.

Expect them to choose door number two. Again.

Morning Digest: Three House incumbents lose renomination during a huge primary night

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Daniel Donner, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

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Leading Off

IL-06, IL-15, MS-04: Tuesday was one of the biggest primary nights of the cycle, and not just because a trio of House incumbents lost renomination. We’ll start with a look at those three contests below as we begin our summary of where things stood as of 8 AM ET in the big contests. You can also find our cheat-sheet here.

 IL-06 (D & R): Two-term Rep. Sean Casten defeated freshman colleague Marie Newman by a wide 68-29 margin in their Democratic primary for a seat in Chicago's inner western suburbs. Newman’s existing 3rd District makes up 41% of this new seat while Casten's current 6th District forms just 23%, but she was hurt by an ethics investigation into charges she sought to keep a potential primary opponent out of the race when she ran in 2020 by offering him a job as a top aide if she won. The race largely paused about two weeks before Election Day after the congressman's teenage daughter died suddenly and Newman announced that she was halting negative ads.

Casten will face Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau, who won the GOP nod by beating Burr Ridge Mayor Gary Grasso 39-27, in a constituency Biden would have carried 55-44.

 IL-15 (R): Freshman Rep. Mary Miller, who had support of Donald Trump and the Club for Growth, beat five-term incumbent Rodney Davis 57-43 in a safely red seat in rural central Illinois. While neither member had much of a geographic advantage in this new seat, the far-right Miller proved to be a better fit for local Republicans than Davis, who had long sought to present himself as a moderate in order to win under the previous map and voted for a Jan. 6 commission.

Davis tacked right during this campaign and pledged to investigate the Jan. 6 committee if he became chair of the House Administration Committee, but it was far from enough. Miller, by contrast, told Trump at a rally on Saturday, “I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.” (Her campaign responded by insisting she’d meant to say “right to life.”)

 MS-04 (R): Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell defeated six-term Rep. Steven Palazzo 54-46 in the Republican runoff for a safely red seat along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The incumbent led Ezell only 31-25 in the first round of voting on June 7, and all five of the defeated candidates quickly endorsed Ezell for the runoff. Mississippi Today says that this is the first time a House incumbent has lost renomination in the Magnolia State since 1962, when Jamie Whitten beat fellow Rep. Frank Smith in their Democratic primary. (Whitten, who was elected in a 1941 special, retired in 1995 as the longest serving House member in American history, though the late Michigan Democrat John Dingell later broke that record.)

Palazzo spent the campaign dogged by an ethics investigation into allegations that he illegally used campaign funds for personal purposes. His many critics also portrayed him as an absentee congressman uninterested in doing his job, and Palazzo gave them more fodder earlier this year when he posted a picture on Facebook of himself and his son at a restaurant in Mississippi hours after he abruptly canceled a campaign forum for what his staff said were “meetings dealing with national security.”

election recaps

 Primary Night: Below is a state-by-state look at where Tuesday’s other major contests stood as of 8 AM ET Wednesday. We’ll start with a surprisingly close special election in Nebraska:

 NE-01 (special): Republican state Sen. Mike Flood only defeated Democratic colleague Patty Pansing Brooks 53-47 to win the contest to succeed Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, who resigned in March after he was convicted of concealing illegal campaign funds he received from a foreign national, in a Lincoln area constituency that Trump would have won 54-43 in 2020 and 56-38 four years before. Bizarrely, the special was held under the new district lines even though the winner will fill out the remainder of Fortenberry's term, which he of course won under the old lines; Trump carried the existing 1st by a stronger 56-41 in 2020.

National Democrats, though, were not prepared for things to be anywhere near as close as they were: Indeed, Pansing Brooks’ media consultant, Ian Russell, says that Flood outspent her $860,000 to $80,000 in a contest that attracted no serious outside spending. The two state senators will face off again in November for a full two-year term.

We’ll move on to Colorado, where Democrats spent serious amounts in what proved to be unsuccessful efforts to get Republicans to nominate Team Blue’s preferred opponents:

 CO-Sen (R): Self-funding businessman Joe O’Dea turned back state Rep. Ron Hanks, a vocal proponent of the Big Lie, 55-45 in the GOP primary to face Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet. A poll from the Democratic firm Global Strategy Group showed both Republicans losing to Bennet by the same 13-point margin, but Team Blue believed that the extremist Hanks would be easier to defeat.

 CO-Gov (R): University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl, who is Colorado’s only remaining statewide Republican, defeated businessman Greg Lopez 54-46 for the right to take on Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. That same GSG poll showed Polis winning by identical 51-32 spreads against both, but Democrats tried to get GOP voters to select the underfunded Lopez.

 CO-03 (R): Another far-right freshman, Rep. Lauren Boebert, beat self-described moderate state Sen. Don Coram 65-35 in a western Colorado seat that Trump would have taken 53-45.

 CO-05 (R): Rep. Doug Lamborn turned back state Rep. Dave Williams 48-33 in a Colorado Springs-based seat Trump also would have carried 53-43. Lamborn, who has struggled to win renomination in the past, is the subject of an ongoing ethics investigation into allegations that he misused official resources by having congressional staff perform personal and campaign-related tasks for him and his wife.

 CO-07 (R): Former oil and gas executive Erik Aadland defeated businessman Tim Reichert 48-36 in the GOP primary to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter. Aadland will be the underdog against state Sen. Brittany Pettersen, who had no Democratic primary opposition, in a seat in the western Denver suburbs that Biden would have carried 56-42. 

 CO-08 (R): State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer beat Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann 40-23 in the GOP primary for this newly created seat in Denver's northern suburbs. Democrats had aired ads trying to block Kirkmeyer and convince Republicans to instead nominate far-right Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, but Saine ended up taking only third with 20%. Kirkmeyer will go up against state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, who had no opposition in the Democratic primary, in a constituency Biden would have won 51-46.

 CO-SoS (R): Former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson defeated economic development specialist Mike O'Donnell 43-29; the balance went to Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was indicted in March for allegedly breaching the county's election systems during her attempt to demonstrate fraud in 2020. Anderson, who was the one Republican candidate who acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 election, will go up against Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold.

Next is Illinois, which was home to the bulk of Tuesday’s biggest contests:

 IL-Gov (R): Both Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Donald Trump got what they wanted from the Republican primary as far-right state Sen. Darren Bailey beat venture capitalist Jesse Sullivan in a 57-16 blowout; Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who looked like the frontrunner until early June, took third with just 15% despite the $50 million in donations he’d received from billionaire Ken Griffin.

Pritzker and his allies at the DGA very badly wanted to face Bailey instead of Irvin, and they spent massive amounts to make that happen. NBC reports that the incumbent dropped $32 million on TV ads during the GOP primary, most of which went towards hitting the mayor, while the DGA deployed another $18 million on commercials either touting Bailey as a conservative or attacking Irvin. Another conservative megadonor, Richard Uihlein, spent $17 million to promote Bailey as well and go after Irvin’s record as mayor and past moderate stances.

 IL-01 (D): Businessman Jonathan Jackson, who is the son of two-time presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and benefited from $1 million in support from crypto-aligned PACs, won the nomination to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush in this safely blue seat by defeating Chicago Alderman Pat Dowell 28-19. Rush, who is the only person to ever defeat Barack Obama, supported former Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership CEO Karin Norington-Reaves, who finished third with 14%.

 IL-03 (D): State Rep. Delia Ramirez, who had several progressive groups on her side, beat Chicago Alderman Gilbert Villegas 66-24 in a safely blue seat centered around heavily Latino areas in southwestern Chicago and the city's western suburbs.

 IL-07 (D): Longtime Rep. Danny Davis turned back anti-gun violence activist Kina Collins 52-45 in what was easily his closest renomination fight ever in this heavily Democratic seat in downtown Chicago. Davis beat Collins 60-14 in a 2020 contest that attracted little attention, but this time, there was notable outside spending on both sides. President Joe Biden also endorsed the 13-term incumbent two days before the primary.

 IL-08 (D): Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi defeated businessman Junaid Ahmed 70-30 in a seat based in Chicago's outer western suburbs. Biden would have prevailed 57-41 here.

 IL-13 (R & D): The AP has not yet called this GOP primary, but with 95% of the projected vote in, activist Regan Deering leads former federal prosecutor Jesse Reising 35-33. The Democrats are fielding former Biden administration official Nikki Budzinski, who won her own primary 76-24, in a seat that now snakes from East St. Louis northeast through Springfield to the college towns of Champaign and Urbana. Democratic mapmakers transformed what was a 51-47 Trump constituency into one Biden would have carried 54-43, which is why GOP Rep. Rodney Davis decided to take his chances in the 15th instead of run here.

 IL-14 (R): The AP also has not yet made a call in the GOP primary, but conservative radio host Mike Koolidge leads perennial candidate James Marter 31-24. The winner will face Democratic Rep. Lauren Underwood in a constituency in Chicago's western exurbs where Democratic legislators augmented Biden's margin of victory from 50-48 to 55-43.

 IL-17 (D): Former TV meteorologist Eric Sorensen, who would be the first gay person to represent Illinois in Congress, won the Democratic nod to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos by beating former state Rep. Litesa Wallace 38-23. Republicans are once again fielding 2020 nominee Esther Joy King, who lost to Bustos 52-48 as Trump was taking the old version of this northwestern Illinois seat 50-48; Biden would have carried the new version of the 17th 53-45.

Mississippi also had another big runoff Tuesday:

 MS-03 (R): Rep. Michael Guest avenged his June 7 embarrassment by beating Navy veteran Michael Cassidy 67-33 in the runoff for this safely red seat in the central part of the state. Cassidy led Guest, who voted for a Jan. 6 commission, 47.5-46.9 in the first round in a campaign that almost everyone expected the incumbent to win with ease. The congressman, who himself acknowledged he'd run a complacent campaign, used the next three weeks to air ads attacking Cassidy for the first time, while his allies at the Congressional Leadership Fund spent serious amounts on anti-Cassidy messaging.

New York held primaries for statewide races and the state Assembly, but because the courts redrew the maps for the U.S. House and state Senate, those nomination contests won't take place until Aug. 23.

 NY-Gov & NY-LG (D): Gov. Kathy Hochul won her primary for a full term by beating New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams 68-19, while Rep. Tom Suozzi took 13%. Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, a former congressman who served as Hochul’s informal running mate, won his separate primary by beating activist Ana Maria Archila, who was aligned with Williams, 61-25. Hochul and Delgado will campaign together as a ticket in November.

 NY-Gov (R): Rep. Lee Zeldin defeated former Trump White House staffer Andrew Giuliani, the son of Donald Trump's most embarrassing attorney, 44-23. Zeldin and running mate Alison Esposito, who had no intra-party opposition in the primary for lieutenant governor, will try to unseat Hochul and Delgado in a state where Republicans haven’t won a single statewide race since 2002.

Oklahoma also went to the polls: A runoff will take place Aug. 23 in any contests where no one earned a majority of the vote.

 OK-Sen-B (R): Rep. Markwayne Mullin and former state House Speaker T.W. Shannon will compete in the runoff to succeed longtime Sen. Jim Inhofe, a fellow Republican who announced in late February that he would resign, effective ​​when the current Congress ends.

Mullin took a firm first place with 44% while Shannon, who lost to now-Sen. James Lankford in the 2014 primary for Oklahoma’s other Senate seat, outpaced state Sen. Nathan Dahm 19-12. Another 11% went to Luke Holland, Inhofe’s former chief of staff and preferred successor, while former Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt barely registered with just 5%.

 OK-Gov (R): Gov. Kevin Stitt decisively beat state Department of Veterans Affairs head Joel Kintsel 69-14 even after dark money groups spent millions against him. Stitt will be favored in the fall against Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister, who left the GOP last year.

 OK-02 (R): State Rep. Avery Frix will compete in the runoff to succeed Mullin in this dark red eastern Oklahoma seat, but the AP has not yet called the second runoff spot. With 99% of the expected vote in for this enormous 14-person field, Frix leads with 15% while former state Sen. Josh Brecheen holds a 14-13 edge over Muskogee Chief of Police Johnny Teehee.

 OK-05 (R): Despite her vote for a Jan. 6 commission, freshman Rep. Stephanie Bice defeated her underfunded foe, conservative YouTube show host Subrina Banks, 68-32 in a newly gerrymandered seat in the Oklahoma City area.

The big night concluded with Utah.

 UT-Sen (R): Far-right Sen. Mike Lee turned back former state Rep. Becky Edwards, who centered her challenge around Lee's unbending fealty to Donald Trump, 62-30. The incumbent will go up against conservative independent Evan McMullin, whom Democrats decided to support rather than field their own candidate.

 UT-01 (R): Freshman Rep. Blake Moore, who also voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attacks, beat retired intelligence officer Andrew Badger 59-27 in this safely red northern Utah seat.

 UT-03 (R): Finally, Rep. John Curtis, who also voted for a Jan. 6 commission, defeated former state Rep. Chris Herrod 71-29 in what was their third GOP primary contest. This seat in the Provo area and southeastern Utah is also dark red turf.

  Redistricting

LA Redistricting: In an unsurprising move, the Supreme Court's far-right supermajority voted without explanation to block a lower court decision that struck down Louisiana's congressional map for violating the Voting Rights Act over the objections of the three liberal justices. The court said it would hear a full appeal next term. As a result, Louisiana will use a map this year that features just a single Black congressional district out of six, despite the fact that the trial court determined that African Americans, who make up a third of the state's population, are entitled to a second district in which they can elect their preferred candidates under the VRA.

Senate

AK-Sen: Sen. Lisa Murkowski's allies at Alaskans For Lisa are using their first negative TV ad to attack former state cabinet official Kelly Tshibaka as "​​so extreme she wants to outlaw receiving contraceptives by mail," which is almost never the type of messaging we hear in a contest between two Republicans. However, the state's new top-four electoral system gives Murkowski's side an incentive to appeal to Alaska's entire electorate, not just the social conservatives who usually dominate GOP primaries

And there's good reason to think that this sort of ad could resonate even in a red state like this one. Civiqs finds that registered voters agree that abortion should be legal in most or all cases by a 50-45 margin, while other surveys have also shown that a majority of Alaskans support abortion rights.

AZ-Sen: Former Thiel Capital chief operating officer Blake Masters' newest commercial for the August primary features him standing next to Donald Trump as the GOP's actual master delivers a rare direct-to-camera appeal for one of his candidates. (Trump previously made a personal pitch for David Perdue in the primary for governor of Georgia which … did not end well for either man.)

After praising Masters as "strong on election fraud," Trump also uses this occasion to argue that two of his intra-party foes, Attorney General Mark Brnovich and wealthy businessman Jim Lamon, "will only let you down," though he uncharacteristically refrains from dissing them further. Masters himself only chimes in at the end to approve the commercial and shake Trump's hand, a practice Trump once dismissed as "barbaric."

MO-Sen: John Wood, a former Republican who served as a senior advisor to the Jan. 6 committee until last week, announced Wednesday morning that he’d run for this open seat as an independent. Wood previously served as U.S. Attorney for the Kansas City area under George W. Bush.

Wood launched his campaign shortly after former Republican Sen. John Danforth starred in a commercial that was part of what AdImpact reported is a $1.4 million buy from a PAC called Missouri Stands Unite. Danforth, who left office in 1995, didn’t mention Wood or anyone else by name but instead spent the 90 second commercial expressing his disillusionment with the state of American unity and argues that a victory for a nonaligned candidate would send a "message to politicians throughout America." Danforth, though, called for Wood to run before the independent launched his campaign.

NV-Sen, WI-Sen: Two new ads from two pro-choice groups in top-tier Senate races both focus on abortion in the wake of the Dobbs decision, but they use strikingly different language.

In Nevada, Women Vote, which is the super PAC arm of EMILY's List, says it's spending $2.1 million to castigate Republican Adam Laxalt for calling the Supreme Court's ruling an "historic victory." The narrator elaborates: "Unapologetically pro-life, Laxalt has made a career pushing to limit abortion rights, committed to taking control of every woman's personal decision and giving it to politicians."

Planned Parenthood, meanwhile, says it's putting $1.5 million behind an ad warning that the Supreme Court's decision will "trigger[] a ban on nearly all abortions in Wisconsin" because of an 1849 law outlawing abortion that's still on the books. She explains that Sen. Ron Johnson "sided with them on overturning Roe v. Wade—punishing doctors and hurting people. Putting our health and reproductive rights in danger." The voice-over concludes, "Johnson even said, if you don't like it, you can move." (Yep, he sure did.)

What's surprising is hearing an organization like EMILY's List use the term "pro-life"—a dastardly bit of Orwellian rhetoric deployed by the right for decades that has worked wonders to soften the image of a cruel movement designed to render women second-class citizens. Planned Parenthood wisely avoids the problem by eschewing labels altogether and simply describing the implications of Johnson's vision.

WA-Sen: Tiffany Smiley, who is the only serious Republican challenging Democratic incumbent Patty Murray, has released an internal from The Tarrance Group showing her trailing the senator only 48-43. An early June survey for the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling for the Northwest Progressive Institute gave Murray a larger 51-40 edge, but the Democrat has been taking this contest seriously. Politico reports that Murray has spent over $1 million on her opening ad campaign, including a recent spot where an OB-GYN warned, "You think women's reproductive health care is safe here in Washington? Not with Mitch McConnell's handpicked candidate in the U.S. Senate, Tiffany Smiley."

Governors

AZ-Gov: Former Rep. Matt Salmon announced Tuesday that he was dropping out of the August Republican primary, saying, “Unfortunately, numbers are numbers, and it has become clear to me that the path to a first-place victory is no longer a realistic possibility.” While Salmon only narrowly lost the 2002 general election for this post to Democrat Janet Napolitano, he lagged in polls and fundraising in his second campaign 20 years later.

The former congressman’s departure five weeks ahead of the primary leaves former TV news anchor Kari Lake, who has Trump’s endorsement, and Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson as the only two major GOP contenders. Self-funding businesswoman Paola Tulliani Zen is also in, but while she recently aired an ad declaring, “I’m going to cut the fat off our government like I cut the fat off my prosciutto,” she’s otherwise attracted very little attention.

MD-Gov: Goucher College, polling on behalf of the Baltimore Banner and WYPR, finds close contests in both party's July 19 primaries.

On the Democratic side, the school gives state Comptroller Peter Franchot the edge with 16% as former nonprofit head Wes Moore and former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez are just behind with 14% each; former Attorney General Doug Gansler is a distant fourth with just 5%, while a 35% plurality of respondents are undecided. The only other independent poll we've seen here was an early June OpinionWorks poll that also put Franchot on top with 20% as Moore and Perez took 15% and 12%, respectively.

In the Republican primary, Goucher has Del. Dan Cox outpacing former state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz 25-22, with 44% undecided and no other candidates breaking 3%. OpinionWorks earlier this month gave Schulz, who has termed-out Gov. Larry Hogan's endorsement, a 27-21 advantage over the Trump-backed Cox.

House

AZ-01: Self-funder Elijah Norton's newest GOP primary commercial against incumbent David Schweikert features the congressman's former campaign treasurer, Karen Garrett, expressing some choice words about her old boss and the scandal that dogged him last cycle. Garrett tells the audience that Schweikert "reported a fraudulent $100,000 loan, $279,000 in illegal contributions, and more than $500,000 missing." She concludes, "Then he blamed his staff. He lied to us. Discovering the kind of person David has become has been one of the heartbreaks of my life."

FL-02: The local firm Sachs Media gives Republican Rep. Neal Dunn a small 43-40 edge over his Democratic colleague, Al Lawson, in the first poll we've seen of this incumbent vs. incumbent matchup. There's reason to think the undecided voters lean Republican, though: The sample also favors Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis 53-41 in a general election against Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist (Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who is also seeking the Democratic nod for governor, was not tested), which closely matches Trump's 55-44 performance here in 2020.

FL-04: Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry on Tuesday became the latest prominent Republican to endorse state Sen. Aaron Bean in the August primary for this open seat.

FL-23: Broward County Commissioner Jared Moskowitz has earned an endorsement from Hillary Clinton ahead of the Democratic primary.

FL-27: State Sen. Annette Taddeo has released an internal from SEA Polling and Strategic Design that shows her outpacing Miami Commissioner Ken Russell 51-15 in the Democratic primary to take on freshman Republican Rep. María Elvira Salazar.

OH-09: Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur is using her first TV ad against her opponent, QAnon-aligned activist J.R. Majewski, to highlight the Republican's involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. The narrator recounts, "He broke past the police barricades at the Jan. 6 Capitol riot" as the audience sees photos of Majewski in the crowd, continuing, "140 police officers were injured, one died." The speaker, who is now identified as a local voter, goes on to praise Kaptur's record supporting the police and funding a new jail before adding, "Look, reckless guys waving assault weapons don't make our families safer, more police in our neighborhoods do."

Ballot Measures

AK Ballot: Alaskans will vote this November on whether to hold a state constitutional convention, and the Alaska Beacon's Lisa Phu writes that this once-in-a-decade referendum has become an abortion rights battleground now that the U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. The Alaska Supreme Court in 1997 recognized that the state's governing document protects the right to an abortion, and pro-choice groups are urging voters to keep the status quo in place by voting "no."

Anti-choice forces, likewise, understand that a victory for the "yes" side would give them a chance to outlaw abortion in a state where it's otherwise difficult to amend the state constitution. It takes two-thirds of both the state House and Senate to put a constitutional amendment proposal on the ballot, and while two state Senate committees last year advanced a proposal reading, "To protect human life, nothing in this constitution may be construed to secure or protect a right to an abortion or require the State to fund an abortion," it failed to receive a floor vote in either chamber. Senate Republicans and their one Democratic ally currently hold a 14-6 supermajority, but the House is run by a coalition of Democrats, independents, and a few Republicans.  

If a majority voted "no" this fall, then this referendum would next take place in 2032. (Alaska is one of 14 states where constitutional convention questions automatically appear on the ballot after a set number of years; in 2012, "no" won 67-33.) If "yes" came out on top, however, the lieutenant governor's office says, "The process could take as long as four-plus years or, depending on the legislature, it could be as short as, say, two years." Phu explains that after the convention finished its work, voters would need to approve any amendments or other revisions to the constitution. The Last Frontier held its last constitutional convention in 1955 and 1956, which was a few years before Alaska became a state.

CA Ballot, VT Ballot: On Tuesday night, both chambers of California's Democratic-led legislature mustered up the two-thirds majorities needed to place a constitutional amendment on November's ballot that would affirm that "the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual's reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives."

Politico explains that, while "[p]rivacy rights already embedded in the state Constitution have been widely interpreted as protecting the right to abortion," Democratic leaders want to do everything they can to avoid any legal ambiguity especially now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. Back in February, Vermont's Democratic-controlled legislature voted to place a similar constitutional amendment on its general election ballot that would safeguard "reproductive autonomy." Civiqs finds that at least 70% of registered voters in both states believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Grab Bag

Where Are They Now?: On the very day of the special election to fill the vacancy caused by his resignation, former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry learned that he would receive zero time in jail after he was convicted in March of lying to federal investigators in an effort to conceal illegal campaign funds he received from a foreign national.

Remarkably, U.S. District Court Judge Stanley Blumenfeld handed down the light sentence—two years of probation, community service, and a fine—because he concluded that "by all accounts the man is of exceptional character," adding, "The court is convinced that this wrongful, dishonest choice was out of character by Mr. Fortenberry." Making the sentence all the more inexplicable, Fortenberry still denies wrongdoing and once again said he would appeal—the very opposite of the sort of showing of contrition that might motivate a judge toward leniency.

Ad Roundup

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Journalists On Left-Wing Networks Say ‘Fairness Is Overrated’

Most Americans who were alive remember where they were when President John F. Kennedy was shot. Even if you were very young, you remember watching a visibly shaken and emotional Walter Cronkite struggle to hold back tears as he remained the professional that he was, and delivered the devastating news of Kennedy’s death.

Have we ever wondered aloud, how the events of that tragic day would play out in today’s media landscape with today’s “journalists?” It’s a pretty sure bet the coverage would be wildly different.

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

No More Hiding

In Walter Cronkite’s day, you practiced the “5 W’s of journalism.” A reporter’s job was to report the who, what, where, when, why, and perhaps a how of the story. They did not offer up and unwanted opinion for viewers, and more importantly, you didn’t know Walter Cronkite was a liberal until long after he retired, happily ensconced on his boat.

Those days are definitely over. It is not clear what exactly the impetus was, the election of Donald Trump, the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, or something else entirely, but those who call themselves journalists on networks like CNN, MSNBC, and NBC have decided all bets are off, and have declared that well, Republicans and conservatives just don’t merit equal and fair coverage with their Democrat counterparts.

As Fox details, MSNBC Host Joy Reid discussed the coverage of Republicans with her guest, fellow lefty traveller Matthew Dowd. The two came to the conclusion that their job was warn that Republicans are a “threat to freedom.” (Since when do leftists care about freedom, anyway?)

But CNN’s Don Lemon beat Joy to the punch. The week before, he promptly dismissed the idea of objectivity, ironically arguing that the media no longer operate in a “Walter Cronkite society.” 

In March, NBC’s Lester Holt said this about “truth”:

Geez Lester, wouldn’t be easier to just volunteer to organize the next book burning?

RELATED: Bitter Hillary Clinton Blasts Justice Clarence Thomas As ‘Angry’ Person ‘Of Grievance’ 

Justifiable Homicide Of Journalism

In August of 2016, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg gave his fellow journalists license to break any journalistic rule they pleased. Perhaps Rutenberg was prophetic, and saw what could happen in just three short months, even when no one else did?

Did he see that it just might be possible for Donald Trump to be elected president over their precious Hillary, and therefore, the rules had to change? In his column, he implored his fellow writers to “to throw out the textbook of American journalism,” for a more “oppositional” approach when covering then-candidate Trump.

So Republicans and conservatives, we were duly warned what was coming our way. Oh sure, it didn’t just start with Jim Rutenberg and the rest of his friends at the New York Times. We have seen this coming down the pike. Donald Trump just gave them license to do it.

And rest assured, it will not get any better. The midterm election and 2024 are not looking good for them. But keep it up. Keep calling them on it. They are scared. 

Imagine, being scared of a different point of view. 

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Bitter Hillary Clinton Blasts Justice Clarence Thomas As ‘Angry’ Person ‘Of Grievance’

Hillary Clinton launched a personal attack against Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black man sitting on the Supreme Court, saying she has always known him to be an “angry” man and a “person of grievance.”

Clinton’s comments came about during an interview Tuesday on “CBS Mornings.”

“He’s been a person of grievance for as long as I’ve known him,” she said, telling host Gayle King that she went to law school with Thomas.

“Resentment, grievance, anger. And he has signaled in the past to lower courts, to state legislatures, find cases, pass laws, get them up,” continued Clinton. “I may not win the first, the second, or the third time, but we’re going to keep at it.”

Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion regarding the case that overturned Roe v. Wade last week that other cases using similar legal bases, such as the decision affirming the right to same-sex marriage, should come under review.

RELATED: Justice Alito’s Opinion Doesn’t Just Overturn Roe v. Wade, It Shreds It to Pieces

Hillary Clinton Hits Clarence Thomas With Racist Tropes

Hillary Clinton’s comments about Clarence Thomas being angry and aggrieved show she clearly lacks self-awareness. Has there been anybody in politics more bitter and petty than she has been since her embarrassing loss in 2016?

This is a woman who spent years angrily blaming everybody under the sun for her election loss in 2016 – Comey, Putin, Obama, the media, deplorables … you name it.

And honestly, who looks more like a ‘person of grievance’ – Thomas, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice, or his former law school colleague who is best known for having lost an election she had a 90+% chance of winning?

Hillary Clinton’s comments about Clarence Thomas would never be an acceptable form of criticism afforded Republicans of a black jurist or lawmaker.

CNN, when Barack Obama was President, published a column explaining that the ‘angry black man’ is a racist stereotype.

Certainly, they’ll point out that Clinton’s comments are exactly the same thing, right?

But then, what did you expect from the mouth of a Clinton?

This is, after all, a woman who once called black youth “superpredators” that we “must bring … to heel.”

A woman who said “they all look alike” when confusing Eric Holder and Cory Booker.

Clinton once told an African-American radio host that she always carries “hot sauce” in her bag.

Then there were a number of comments from both Bill and Hillary Clinton that the nation’s first black President was not qualified for the job.

“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” husband Bill Clinton famously told the late Senator Ted Kennedy in trying to prop up Hillary.

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

Claims Women Are Going to Die

Aside from her outrageous comments about Clarence Thomas, Hillary Clinton responded to the overturning of Roe v. Wade with an analysis that is nearly indistinguishable from that of the Kardashian of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“There are so many things about it that are deeply distressing, but women are going to die, Gayle,” she told the CBS host. “Women are going to die.”

In fact, those are AOC’s very sentiments when she opined on the Supreme Court’s decision.

“This decision and this policy will kill people no matter what their spin and what their talking points are,” Representative Ocasio-Cortez said.

Contrary to Hillary’s belief that Thomas is an angry man full of grievance all his life, the conservative Supreme Court justice consistently flashes a rapier wit and sense of humor when speaking.

He recently quipped that he’d be willing to leave his seat on the court when his job performance was as bad as the media’s.

Now, I don’t care who you are. That’s funny right there.

In 2018, he mocked Senator Cory Booker for his infamous staged ‘Spartacus’ moment.

“Honorable – if we could use that word about more people who are in public life, people who actually ask the questions at confirmation hearings, instead of ‘Spartacus,'” Thomas chided.

A YouGov poll in 2021 shows Americans have the most favorable opinion of Thomas amongst all Supreme Court justices, with 37% approving of his performance, 33% not sure, and 30% disapproving.

Several left-wing pundits have speculated that the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling could catapult Clinton into the 2024 presidential race.

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Any Institution The Left Doesn’t Control They Seek To Destroy

By Jarrett Stepman for The Daily Signal

From overturning Roe v. Wade to supporting the Second Amendment and maintaining religious liberty, the Supreme Court’s recent decisions have put the left in a sour mood.

The left certainly hasn’t taken the news well.

Despite the left’s obsession with the notion that the right is all about “undermining democracy,” the left has shown little trepidation in demanding we lay waste to republican institutions that stand in opposition to its agenda.

Pleas for “court packing” from Democrats have been building for a while. Undoubtedly, those calls will become louder now, despite caution from the Biden administration. The latter hasn’t stopped plenty of prominent Democrats from acceding to the calls of activists to “burn it down”—figuratively and perhaps even literally. 

They’ve both demanded court-packing with liberal justices and called into question the Supreme Court’s legitimacy.

RELATED: Justice Alito’s Opinion Doesn’t Just Overturn Roe v. Wade, It Shreds It to Pieces

It’s become a full-blown tantrum from people used to getting their way.

“This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on ABC’s “This Week.”

“They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” Warren said. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court, and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court.”

Following the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., marched with protesters in front of the Supreme Court and joined in chants of “illegitimate.”

She later said that “impeachment” was on the table for Supreme Court justices, who she insinuated had lied under oath at their Senate confirmation hearings. As Tim Carney wrote in the Washington Examiner, the idea that Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch promised to uphold Roe v. Wade is completely false.

Not to be outdone, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., went off the deep end in front of the Supreme Court. “Women are going to control their bodies, no matter how they try and stop us,” Waters said. “The hell with the Supreme Court. We will defy them.”

It appears that, for the left, liberalism is the standard by which something has “legitimacy.” Any institution they don’t immediately control they seek to destroy.

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

Part of this might be fueled by their typically overwhelming institutional control, which until very recently included the Supreme Court. For half a century, the court had delivered wins for the left on numerous policy and cultural issues, even when those issues weren’t popular—or in the case of Roe v. Wade and other decisions, weren’t based on particularly sound legal reasoning.

The court could be relied upon to be the left’s sort of deus ex machina, as liberal Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith admitted.

Now, there’s certainly a case to be made that the American political system has become too reliant on courts, rather than on the democratic process, to resolve divisive legal and moral issues. That was one of the problems with Roe v. Wade. By effectively declaring that having an abortion is a “right,” the issue was taken off the table for Americans.

That issue is now going back to the American people and their local elected officials. And that’s really where it should be decided. 

Again, it’s really something to hear the left rage against unelected judges “imposing” their ideas on the country. That’s effectively what Roe v. Wade did, except without supportive language in the Constitution, like the clear text of the Second Amendment, which the justices relied on in their ruling against a New York gun law the day before they overturned Roe. 

When conservatives faced significant legal setbacks in past decades, they didn’t attempt to blow up the court or pack it with additional justices to get their way. Instead, the right worked hard to build a serious institutional and legal infrastructure in opposition, with the Federalist Society being perhaps the most noteworthy example.

With the election of President Donald Trump—who appointed three Supreme Court justices—that generational work came to fruition.

The right worked within the system to create serious and lasting change. Liberals of this generation, it seems, failed the marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification.

RELATED: Progressives Want ‘Term Limits’ For Supreme Court Justices

The left certainly didn’t learn anything from then-Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. The then-Senate majority leader used the “nuclear option” to end the Republicans’ Senate filibuster of judicial nominations in 2013, which cleared the way for Trump and Senate Republicans later getting three justices on the Supreme Court.

Oops.

It’s perhaps a lesson for conservatives today.

 If we really want to overcome the great “awokening,” we need to consider long-term plans to recapture institutions or build new ones in opposition. It’s not enough to just attack them. Short-term victory without a longer-term strategy can easily backfire.

Syndicated with permission from The Daily Signal.

The post Any Institution The Left Doesn’t Control They Seek To Destroy appeared first on The Political Insider.

Clarence Thomas, Consistent Target Of The Left, Explains ‘Right Is Still Right Even If You Stand By Yourself’

Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice and just the second black justice to serve on the Supreme Court, is a consistent target of criticism from the left.

A recently surfaced video of Thomas’ remarks to the Heritage Foundation’s 2007 President’s Club Meeting provides insight into how he weathers the constant attacks and stands on his own morals and principles.

The conservative Justice credits “an abiding faith” and a “litany of humility” as a means to remain steady in public life.

He then provides the following incredible clip about standing for what you believe in regardless of what others may be saying or doing.

RELATED: AOC Wants ‘Consequences’ For Supreme Court Justices, Impeachment For Clarence Thomas

‘Right is Still Right’

Clarence Thomas’s speeches are always a source of inspiration as he is a gifted orator. But his words ring especially true as the Supreme Court receives consistent threats from the political left in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.

A majority of Americans disapprove of the decision. That doesn’t mean the Court should cower in fear and make decisions based on public opinion rather than the rule of law.

“Whether people are mad at you has nothing to do with whether you’re right,” said Thomas during the 2007 speech.

“You know, you can be in the middle of a hurricane, or you can be on a calm day. North is still north,” he continued. “You could be in a thunderstorm. North is still north. People can yell at you. North is still north.”

“It doesn’t change fundamental things. And in this business, right is still right, even if you stand by yourself.”

It is a remarkable clip about having courage in your convictions. Perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts, who frequently sides with liberals on the court for the sole purpose of maintaining integrity with the public, should take some notes.

The entire speech can be seen below.

‘F*** Clarence Thomas’

The excerpt from Clarence Thomas’s speech is especially poignant in light of recent vile attacks against him and his character.

Far-left Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has repeatedly called to impeach him.

She believes his wife’s actions, emailing White House aides about election fraud concerns during the Capitol riot, are grounds for his impeachment.

Actor Samuel L. Jackson used a racist trope in his criticism of the Roe v. Wade ruling, calling Thomas ‘Uncle Clarence’ and wondering about his thoughts on the Loving v. Virginia civil rights case on interracial marriage.

Thomas’s wife is white.

Then there is Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, who launched a profane attack on Clarence Thomas last week during a Pride event in the city.

“F*** Clarence Thomas,” she yelled.

Lightfoot wouldn’t be put anywhere near a mayor’s office in any sane city in America, but thrives in a liberal cesspool like Chicago.

Prior to that, she issued a “call to arms,” claiming that the Court will be “coming for us next,” even as violent threats and assassination concerns were prevalent.

Thomas recently received an assist from Justice Sonia Sotomayor – who is the exact opposite of him politically – when she offered praise for her colleague, stating he is a very personable individual who “cares deeply” about the integrity of the court.

Sotomayor said despite their differences of opinion on how to help people, she and Clarence Thomas maintain a friendship because she knows he is a “man who cares deeply about the court as an institution … about the people who work here.”

Perhaps even more important than caring, Thomas understands that “north is north” and “right is still right” no matter who stands against you.

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