Ukraine said Tuesday that Russia has amassed 100,000 troops in a push to advance through Ukrainian defenses in the Kharkiv region in the country’s northeast.
The post Russia Is Massing 100,000 Troops for Offensive, Ukraine Says appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Sometime between April 21 and May 28, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice removed substantial sections of information regarding child sex trafficking from its website, the New York Post reported.
The website changes sparked concern among survivors and anti-child-trafficking advocates who accused the administration of deprioritizing the heinous crime.
The DOJ’s current webpage about child sex trafficking, compared to an archived version from April, reveals that the agency removed entire sections discussing “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Minors” and “Child Victims of Prostitution.”
The original version of the webpage also included a section labeled “International Sex Trafficking of Minors,” addressing how children are trafficked over the border.
“One form of sex trafficking involves the cross border transportation of children. In these situations, traffickers recruit and transfer children across international borders in order to sexually exploit them in another country,” the website previously stated.
According to a State Department report, approximately 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across the border each year. Approximately 70% of those victims are women and 50% are children.
Victor Marx, the founder and CEO of All Things Possible Ministries, told the Post that the website changes “have raised valid concerns.”
Marx, a survivor of child sexual abuse, stated, “The message we’re sending to our children and the criminals, and the women at large that are concerned is the administration doesn’t care.”
“I think they’re trying to lower their culpability and responsibility,” he continued. “They’re having to lower and lessen their footprint and their position on this because believe me, it’s horrible and stories are going to start to come out.”
Jaco Booyens, the leader of an organization rescuing trafficking victims, told BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales that scrubbing the information from the webpage was “100% a border move.”
“To tell the American people, ‘It’s a lie, it’s conspiracy, nothing to see here, our border is secure; we’re so confident that kids are not being sold for sex across our border that we’re going to lower the prioritization level of this,’” Booyens stated.
The DOJ denied the accusations that the agency is deprioritizing child trafficking.
“In the course of the Department publishing the most recent National Strategy, related content on various Department webpages was updated,” the spokesperson stated. “Just as it has during previous administrations, the Department continues to place a very high priority on and devote substantial resources to fighting child exploitation and child sex trafficking, both domestically and internationally. To suggest otherwise is simply false.”
“The 2023 National Strategy and supporting subject matter expert working group reports, including the Child Sex Trafficking in the United States, Livestreaming and Virtual Child Sex Trafficking, and Extraterritorial Child Sexual Abuse reports reflect the most up to date information about child exploitation including domestic minor sex trafficking, virtual child sex trafficking, and extraterritorial and transnational child sexual exploitation,” the agency spokesperson added.
Silencing the victims: Why is DOJ removing child sex trafficking info? youtu.be
In yet another example of how President Joe Biden’s wide open border policies are endangering every American — especially our children — we are now seeing an uptick in a deadly disease being brought across the border and into nearly every U.S. state by illegal immigrants.
According to a new report, Biden’s regime is releasing thousands of illegals, especially children, into the country despite that they are carrying deadly tuberculosis.
This health crisis is just more proof of how unserious Biden is as our president.
The report finds that around 2,5000 children with latent tuberculosis infections have been released into 44 U.S. states, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.
“About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children,” the Times added, also pointing out that COVID-19 has also been rampant.
Healthline says that Tuberculosis (TB), which was once called consumption, “is a highly infectious disease that primarily affects the lungs.”
“According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1.5 million people died from the disease in 2020,” the site added. “Tuberculosis is also the 13th leading cause of death globally. Currently, it’s the second main infectious cause of death, after COVID-19.”
“TB is most common in developing countries, but according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 7,000 cases were reported in the United States in 2020,” the site reported. It also listed Mexico and other Latin American countries, China and many other Asian countries, and India among others as prime territory for outbreaks of the disease.
The Biden administration excused its releasing of thousands of disease-carrying children into the U.S. by claiming that it cannot deliver medical treatment because they only hold children for a short time before releasing them and treatment for TB takes three to nine months, the Times reported.
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There is also a lack of medical treatment follow-through on behalf of the liberal, non-governmental organizations that handle illegals inside the U.S.
Since these NGOs tend to push children quickly through the system, their medical status remains unacknowledged and untreated.
The paper contacted the Virginia Department of Health, which said in a statement, “We do not know how often the sponsors follow through on treatment. By the time outreach takes place, the child has sometimes moved to another area or state.”
Per current immigration policies, the Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol is required to transfer unaccompanied alien children to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services in only a few weeks’ time. So, the system is not conducive to assessing a child’s physical condition and health history.
Indeed, the HHS also noted it has no way to securely house children with diseases such as HIV, or even to isolate youths with a criminal record, a history of violence, or those who have threatened sexually predatory behavior. And that isn’t even to mention the risk of sexually transmitted diseases that these kids are exposed to, as so many are sexually assaulted and raped on their way here.
Indeed, the Health Dept. doesn’t even have a way to track youths with such problematic histories, and it has no idea where young illegals like those end up going here in the U.S.
TB is particularly dangerous because it takes so long to incubate and can spread quickly before anyone is aware it is even there. Before the modern era, it was once one of the top killers in America. But this all shows how Biden is endangering us all with his insane border policies.
The problem is that Biden has flung the door to the U.S. border so wide open that there isn’t the luxury of time to assess the illegals pouring across the border. And we are now seeing dangerous diseases being brought into the U.S. by these children who end up sitting in our schools right next to all our children.
A serious president would not be releasing disease-wracked, lawbreaking illegals into our midst like Biden is doing.
The post Thousands of Illegal Immigrant Kids with Highly Contagious Disease Released Into Nearly Every State appeared first on The Western Journal.
President Biden hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House on Tuesday.
While Biden relied on the provided note card to navigate the discussions, his Israeli counterpart appeared at ease without such assistance, creating an unflattering visual contrast.
Biden seemed to be constantly looking down into his hands, mumbling incoherently like an unprepared schoolboy forced to give an oral report.
Although Herzog called the meeting “wonderful” when speaking to reporters as he departed the White House, as reported by NBC News, there were times during their discussion that it looked like he was just agreeing with Biden out of courtesy without really understanding what he was saying.
Watch:
Tensions between the U.S. and Israel reached new heights when President Biden openly criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul. Adding to the strain, questions arose as to why Biden had not invited Netanyahu, the prime minister of one of our closest ally nations, to the White House.
In March, when asked whether he would be hosting Netanyahu at the White House, the president said unequivocably, “Not in the near term,” — a statement referred to by one opinion writer at the Jerusalem Post as a “verbal body blow against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
However, President Biden finally extended an invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu during a recent phone call on Monday.
Twitter users were quick to point out Biden’s disinterested, half-hearted, and, frankly, half-asleep appearance at the meeting between the two leaders.
Greg Price wrote, “Imagine watching this video and then thinking to yourself ‘yep. I want four more years of that.’”
Fox News host Harris Faulkner wrote in mock panic, “Someone please check on the President. Seriously.”
Benny Johnson made a not-so-subtle allusion to the latest cocaine scandal at the White House, tweeting, ” When there is no more cocaine in the White House.”
It’s easy to criticize Biden’s advisors for the tragic optics and missed opportunity to present a more polished image of the president during this crucial event.
But you can only work with the materials you’re given, and unfortunately for the White House staff, they have very little left to work with here.
Beyond the humor lies a more serious concern: The health and mental acuity of a nation’s leader are essential considerations, as they directly impact the ability to govern effectively and make vital decisions.
Biden’s inability to stay awake during a conference and off-the-cuff slights to our closest allies make for unnecessary political theater that consistently displays the country in an unflattering light. It also draws critical comparisons between him and other leaders, including his potential rival in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump.
According to NBC News, at the end of the conference, Herzog told reporters that Biden had “reiterated his ironclad commitment and his utter friendship and love of the state of Israel.”
We all sincerely hope that that was what Biden said, but since no one could really tell what he was saying half the time, we may never really know.
The post Biden Goes Viral for Looking Half Asleep While Mumbling in Brutal Oval Office Video appeared first on The Western Journal.
The House Oversight Committee led by Rep. James Comer (R-KY) will hold a hearing with IRS whistleblowers on Wednesday starting at 1:00 PM ET.
The whistleblowers will both appear at the hearing.
Witnesses and testimonies:
Gary Shapley
Supervisory Special Agent
IRSWhistleblower X
Criminal Investigator
IRS
They are expected to testify under oath that the Department of Justice and FBI urged them to end the investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.
The House Oversight released a timeline of the Biden Crime Family’s influence peddling operation over the past decade.
The whistleblowers will indict the corrupt DOJ and FBI along with Joe and Hunter Biden.
The House of Representatives has more than enough evidence at this point to impeach Joe Biden and to indict him criminally.
The hearing will start at 1:00 PM Eastern.
The post IRS Whistleblowers to Testify Wednesday – Will Confirm Reports on Joe and Hunter Biden Investigation – And Will Likely Indict FBI, DOJ, AND Biden Crime Family appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The FBI told a supervisory agent investigating Hunter Biden to duck GOP House Oversight Committee questions about the “ongoing” criminal case involving Hunter, according to a letter obtained by the New York Post.
FBI general counsel Jason Jones sent a letter to a supervisory agent warning him to decline to respond to questions by House Oversight Committee lawmakers just days before the agent was set to testify.
The name of the supervisory agent was redacted.
The New York Post reported:
The FBI warned a supervisory agent who investigated Hunter Biden that he was expected to “decline to respond” to House Oversight Committee questions about the “ongoing” case involving the first son, a bombshell letter obtained by The Post shows.
FBI general counsel Jason Jones sent the letter Sunday afternoon, just hours before the agent was set to testify — even though a source tells The Post that the FBI knew of a scheduled Monday deposition for several days.
“[T]he Department expects that you will decline to respond to questions seeking non-public information likely covered by one or more components of executive privilege or other significant confidentiality interests, in particular information about deliberations or ongoing investigative activity in law enforcement matters,” Jones wrote.
“You should instead refer such questions to the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs,” the FBI lawyer went on.
“Consistent with longstanding practice, this will afford the Department the full opportunity to consider particular questions and possible accommodations that may fulfill the Committee’s legitimate need for information while protecting Executive Branch confidentiality interests.”
“Specifically, the Committee has stated an interest in what the Committee has described to you as certain events that took place in December 2020 as part of this investigation. As the Department recently emphasized when affirming that U.S. Attorney David Weiss will appear before the House Committee on the Judiciary ‘at an appropriate time, consistent with the law and Department policy,’ the Department’s longstanding policy is to seek ‘wherever possible to provide information about closed, rather than open, matters.’”
Jones added: “Department officials, including those who have left the Department, are obligated to protect non-public information they learned in the course of their work. Such information could be subject to various privileges, including law enforcement, deliberative process, attorney work product, and attorney-client privileges, and privacy interests. Current and former Department officials also must protect classified information, sources and methods, and grand jury information protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e).”
Oversight Committee Republicans on Monday said a former FBI Supervisory Agent confirmed key portions of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony.
Federal agents were told not to approach Hunter Biden!
The Biden transition team was TIPPED OFF about the planned Hunter Biden interview.
Hunter Biden was given a sweetheart deal by his father’s corrupt Justice Department after a 5-year mop-up operation disguised as an investigation.
“Today, our committee staff conducted a transcribed interview with a former FBI supervisory special agent assigned to the FBI’s Wilmington office and the Biden criminal investigation.” Oversight Chairman James Comer said.
Below are key takeaways from today’s transcribed interview of a former FBI supervisory special agent.
House Republicans are debating whether to impeach US Attorney General Merrick Garland after Speaker McCarthy floated the idea last month.
The post REVEALED: FBI Told Supervisory Agent Investigating Hunter Biden to Duck House Oversight Committee Questions appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Would you like to eat a slab of “beef” or “chicken” that has been artificially “grown” inside a giant vat filled with disgusting goo? Personally, I will never eat any “beef” or “chicken” that scientists have cooked up in a lab somewhere. In fact, I would rather crawl on my belly for a mile on a gravel road filled with razor-sharp glass shards than eat a single bite of lab-grown “meat”. I am sure that many of you feel the same. But it is coming anyway. In fact, CNN is reporting that Americans will be able to try lab-grown chicken “soon”…
Soon, Americans are going to be able to try chicken that comes directly from chicken cells rather than, well, a chicken.
On Wednesday, the USDA gave Upside Foods and Good Meat the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown, or cultivated, chicken products in the United States.
The USDA really does a bang up job of protecting us, don’t they?
I can only imagine the new dangers that this sort of “meat” will bring to our population.
If you are not familiar with “lab-grown meat”, the following is a pretty good summary…
In a nutshell, lab-grown meat — or cultivated or cell-based meat — is meat that is developed from animal cells and grown, with the help of nutrients like amino acids, in massive bioreactors.
This happens in a production facility that looks a lot like a brewery: When you picture it, don’t think of people in white coats and hairnets peering through microscopes into petri dishes, but instead people in white coats and hairnets wandering between giant vats.
It wasn’t supposed to be available to the public so quickly, but apparently some people have already had an opportunity to sample it at a restaurant in San Francisco…
On Saturday, cultivated chicken tempura will be on Bar Crenn’s menu, served with a burnt chili aioli and garnished with greens and edible flowers. Chef Dominique Crenn took meat off the restaurant’s menu in 2018 “because of the impact of factory farming on animals and the planet,” according the the restaurant’s website, but is comfortable selling cultivated chicken.
Upside Foods held a contest on social media to determine who would be able to try the product at Bar Crenn, and those winners will be able to dig in this weekend. They’ll each pay a symbolic $1 to try the chicken. Contest winners also get to tour Upside Food’s Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center.
Yuck.
Just plain yuck.
We are being told that “lab-grown beef” is coming soon too, and it is being touted as an environmentally-friendly alternative to normal beef.
But according to one recent study, “lab-grown beef” is actually far worse for the environment…
Researchers at UC Davis have made a startling discovery that could change the way we view lab-grown meat.
As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, they found that the meat alternative’s environmental impact appears to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef you can buy at the grocery store — itself already a very environmentally damaging foodstuff — at least based on current production methods.
If confirmed, the research could be damning: lab-grown meat, long seen as a greener alternative to meat products that don’t involve the slaughter of animals, could be more harmful to the environment than the products it’s trying to replace.
How ironic.
But no matter what the science actually shows, global leaders are not going to end their relentless war on normal meat any time soon.
In Germany, the minister of agriculture has come up with a plan to reduce the maximum daily intake of meat for Germans to just 10 grams…
Recently, the German Minister of Agriculture made another shocking statement. He plans to reduce the amount of meat eaten by all residents in Germany, aiming to change the diet structure by changing the habit of eating meat, so as to be environmentally friendly. He advocated “taking nutrition from green plants” and called for a maximum daily intake of 10 grams of meat per capita.
If this plan does get implemented, I think that there will be riots.
Nobody wants our politicians dictating what will and will not be in our diets.
But most of our politicians are control freaks that love to “play god”, and the same thing is true for many of our scientists.
For example, one team of scientists is actually trying to grow artificial human eggs in a laboratory…
Conception is trying to accelerate, and eventually commercialize, a field of biomedical research known as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). “Basically, we’re trying to turn a type of stem cell called an induced pluripotent stem cell into a human egg,” Krisiloff says. “[This] really opens the door, if you can create eggs, to be able to help people have children that otherwise don’t have options right now.”
The experimental technology could help women who have lost their eggs to cancer treatment, women who have never been able to produce healthy eggs and women whose eggs are no longer viable because of their age.
This is so wrong.
If they are actually able to fertilize such a “human egg”, would such a being even be human?
It turns out that the same scientists are also growing “mini-ovaries” that will be used to “nurture” the artificial human eggs that they are developing…
Hurtado quickly returns the cells to the incubator and pulls out a rectangular dish. “These are some of our mini-ovaries,” he says. “These are a few weeks old now.”
Mini-ovaries are combinations of cells that the company has grown to nurture those primordial cells into becoming immature human eggs.
How sick is that?
There are certain things that should never be done.
But our scientists seem to have lost all restraint in this day and age.
As I have repeatedly reminded my readers, scientists are conducting extremely dangerous and extremely bizarre experiments in secret labs all over the planet.
The stuff that actually gets into the news is quite tame compared to what is really going on behind the scenes.
Our world is becoming a little bit more like a bad science fiction movie with each passing day, and in future years we are going to see things that will absolutely horrify all of us.
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have also started a brand new Substack newsletter, and I encourage you to subscribe so that you won’t miss any of my articles. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
The post Lab-Grown Beef And Chicken Will Soon Be In Your Local Grocery Store… appeared first on The Economic Collapse.
-Sam Storms
I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. (Ezekiel 34:15)
Under the divine shepherdry saints are fed to the full. Theirs is not a windy, unsatisfying mess of mere human “thought,” but the Lord feeds them upon the solid, substantial truth of divine revelation. There is real nutriment for the soul in Scripture brought home to the heart by the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself is the true life-sustaining Food of believers. Here our Great Shepherd promises that such sacred nourishment shall be given us by His own self. If, on the Lord’s Day, our earthly shepherd is empty-handed, the Lord is not.
When filled with holy truth the mind rests. Those whom Jehovah feeds are at peace. No dog shall worry them, no wolf shall devour them, no restless propensities shall disturb them. They shall lie down and digest the food which they have enjoyed. The doctrines of grace are not only sustaining but consoling: in them we have the means for building up and lying down. If preachers do not give us rest, let us look to the Lord for it.
This day may the Lord cause us to feed in the pastures of the Word and make us to lie down in them. May no folly and no worry but meditation and peace mark this day.
One of Martin Luther’s many contributions concerns the Latin word incurvitas. This sounds like something a dentist might say to you as he pokes and prods in the molars. But it’s not. It means “turned inward.” It means that we are naturally selfish, self-centered, and self-absorbed. While all of those are damning enough, this condition of incurvitas has an even more telling effect. Because we are turned inward, we think we can achieve righteousness entirely on our own. So we strive, white-knuckling it, to achieve a right standing before God.
How many times have you heard someone say that as long as our good deeds outweigh our bad ones, God will welcome us open arms? How many religious systems are built upon works? How many people feel trapped by their incessant failed attempts to achieve perfection? Those are all cases of incurvitas. It’s an epidemic.
Understanding this concept of incurvitas so well, Luther said, “It’s very hard for a man to believe that God is gracious to him. The human heart can’t grasp this.” If we don’t look to grace, we look to ourselves and to our own efforts.
Therein lie the roots of legalism.
The roots of legalism are in the sinful and fallen human heart itself. The heart manifests its sinful condition in our crippling desire to lean on our own merits and our own abilities in the attempt to somehow climb out of the miry pit of sin and reach all the way to heaven. We find grace to be far too bitter of a pill. It tells us we can never be good enough.
Curiously enough, the opposite of legalism also stumbles over grace. The opposite of legalism is antinomianism. This word includes the Greek prefix anti-, “against, in place of,” and the Greek word nomos, “law.” Theologically speaking, antinomians run away from any obligation to law or to any divine command. Antinomians are like James Bond: they have a license to sin. But that is the sad lie of antinomianism. It’s not liberty—it’s license.
The solution to legalism is not antinomianism. The solution to antinomianism is not legalism. The solution to both is grace, that thing Luther told us was hard to grasp. Exploring the roots of legalism further will serve not only to expose it, but also to display the brilliant and stunning contours of its solution, the grace of God.
The clearest expression of legalism in Scripture comes in the stories of the antagonists in the Gospels, the Pharisees. In fact, thanks to them, we have the term pharisaical, defined as “hypocritical censorious self-righteousness.” Not one of those three things is a good thing. Taken together, we get a really bad thing. Another definition informs us that the term pharisaical means an extreme commitment to religious observance and ritual—apart from belief. Both aspects of the definition are crucial. The first is the striving and white-knuckling it to heaven. The second part takes us back to Luther’s quote and our aversion to grace—it just can’t be as simple as belief.
Christ confronted this tendency to be pharisaical on about every page in the Gospels. One such place is the parable concerning the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18. “I thank you that I am not like other men,” the Pharisee prays. There is the self-righteousness. The Pharisee further protests that he fasts and tithes. There is the external obedience.
In this parable, the Pharisee is contrasted with the tax collector. The tax collector simply prays, “Be merciful to me, a sinner!” There is the cry for grace.
A few verses later, the rich ruler comes to Christ. He too plays the part of a Pharisee. He too protests his self-righteousness. It seems that everywhere Christ goes, He meets Pharisees.
Ironically, the Pharisees, though they thought otherwise, were not truly concerned with the law of God. They actually set up a whole system of regulations to enable them to get around God’s law. They were experts at setting up loopholes. They had a man-made system of law to avoid the divine law. And they led Israel astray. Hence, we see why Jesus so vehemently opposed them and called them the false shepherds of Israel, as in the series of “woes” unleashed in Matthew 23.
Before his conversion, Paul was one such false shepherd. Paul was the consummate legalist. In fact, you would be hardpressed to find another person so zealous for the law. He had firsthand knowledge when he declared, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight” (Rom. 3:20). He had firsthand knowledge when he lamented, “For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Gal. 3:10).
Paul also had firsthand experience with grace. So he joyfully declared, “God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4–5). It is impossible to study Paul without coming into contact with grace. So we read in Romans 5 that all our striving comes to an end in Christ. We can only attain peace with God by faith in Christ—the only one who kept the law perfectly.
As we turn to the pages of church history, we see the church’s focus on grace eclipsed by legalism. This happened on a grand scale after the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius. In the aftermath of that controversy, the seeds were sown that would eventually result in a full-blown system of works as the medieval church’s view of salvation. A key here is the shift from the biblical teaching on repentance to the church’s teaching of penance.
Repentance is illustrated by the tax collector in Christ’s parable. The repentant one simply prays to God, “Have mercy; I’m a sinner.” Penance is the list of things to do that will put you right with God. By Luther’s time, the list had grown rather long. So, Luther vainly tried to reach God by being a good monk. Luther even went into the monastery as a sorely misguided attempt to please God.
Only one thing resulted from Luther’s ardent work: he found himself even further away from God and mired in anxiety. Later in life, he even suffered physically from his earlier attempt to attain righteousness by these efforts. But in His grace, God reached down to Luther. We can’t grasp grace naturally. That’s why grace grasps us.
One branch of the Reformation initially celebrated this glorious truth of grace and then departed from it. In Zurich, there arose the Anabaptists. In addition to their other beliefs, they advocated withdrawing from society and living in segregated communities. They would soon develop a dress code and rules for how they would live and work. They called themselves the Mennonites, as they followed the teachings of Menno Simons (1496–1561). In 1693, Jakob Ammann broke from the Mennonites over the practice of “the ban”—shunning those who transgress rules. His followers would be known as the Amish. They went beyond the gospel to regulations and traditions.
The same dynamic occurred in the twentieth century in various pockets of fundamentalism. I remember walking into a church in the 1970s and being confronted with two large diagrams showing acceptable hair and clothing guidelines for men and for women. Christianity was reduced to lists, mostly of what not to do.
As Christ confronted legalism on nearly every page of the Gospels, you can find legalism throughout the pages of church history. So, too, you can find the opposite. Antinomianism thrived during the Reformation. It also thrived and continues to thrive amid pockets of fundamentalism. Sadly, we can tell the whole story of mankind’s misguided quest for God by tracing these ever-present threads of legalism and antinomianism.
The opposite of legalism is not license. It is liberty. Luther called Galatians his “Katie.” “I am betrothed to it,” he would say. That is a compliment that goes two ways. It reflects how deeply he loved his wife, and it reflects how deeply he loved the message of Galatians. It is the “Epistle of Liberty.”
In our attempt to uncover the roots of legalism, we must look ultimately at our own lives. Incurvitas keeps us from seeing our true need. It tricks us into thinking we are basically good and only need to be better. Legalism is truly damning and rather damaging. Legalism can even catapult us to its opposite, to a life of license and a life, ultimately, of rebellion.
The reality is that we are not good. How ironic that part of the “good news” of the gospel is that we are not good at all. And because we are not good, we could never look to ourselves but must look to the One born of a woman, born under the law. He is the only righteous One. He kept the law and bore its punishment for those who trust in Him. God pours out His grace freely upon us because of what Christ has done for us. Christ has set us free (Gal. 5:1).
Source: The Roots of Legalism
“Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation.”
It seems like a paradox to say that a “lowly brother” should rejoice and take pride “in his exaltation.” We should ask, “What exaltation?” If life is viewed simply from the perspective of time, wealth, and status, then there is no high position for the lowly. But when we view life with godly wisdom, remembering the glorious riches that Jesus provides, we see that the believer who lives precariously on the lowest rung of the socioeconomic ladder in fact has a significant and secure position simply because they are in God’s care.
Two biblical stories illustrate respectively the danger of viewing low circumstances without wisdom and the blessing of wisdom in the midst of poverty.
In 2 Kings 5:15-27, Gehazi, the servant of the prophet Elisha, chased after the prosperous Naaman, seeking riches for himself. But Elisha confronted Gehazi, essentially challenging him not to despise his position as a servant but to believe that God would look after him. Because of his lack of trust in God, Gehazi and his descendants became lepers. His story reminds us of the peril of greed, envy, and ingratitude.
Ruth, meanwhile, was abjectly poor. After migrating to Bethlehem following the death of her husband, she and her mother-in-law, Naomi, had nothing to eat other than the bits and pieces of grain that Ruth could scrape up from already-harvested fields. When she was shown preferential treatment by Boaz, “she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, ‘Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?’” (Ruth 2:10). Because she was clothed with humility before Boaz and—more importantly—before God, she was able to receive Boaz’s kindness as the blessing it was, without any presumption. Instead of being quick to seek more material wealth, she was quick to be grateful for what she had been given.
Ruth’s story teaches us something else. As Boaz was Ruth’s kinsman and redeemer, so Jesus is the Redeemer who shed His blood for men and women like Ruth, who are undervalued and disregarded. Paul reminds us that when we were called, “not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Corinthians 1:26). Jesus has come to those who were on the lowest rung of the spiritual ladder—you and me—and has caused us to ask the same question as Ruth: Why have You shown such interest in me?
James’s message is not that we will become rich by applying wisdom. Rather, he wants us to see that if we think about life from a proper perspective, we will realize that we are already rich beyond imagining. The wisdom of God comes to us in our poverty to show us the vastness of all we have in Christ; and it comes to us in our plenty to remind us that the only wealth that matters is what we have in Christ. When you grasp this, you can look at any less-than-desirable circumstances and continue in the journey of faith, with your eyes fixed on all that awaits you in heaven, where your true treasure lies.
Going Deeper: James 1:9-15
Devotional material is taken from the Truth For Life daily devotionals by Alistair Begg, published by The Good Book Company, thegoodbook.com. Used by Truth For Life with permission. Copyright © 2021, 2022, The Good Book Company.
Source: Already Rich
Source: The Gift Of Security Part 1
Is your heart rejoicing today, or are you broken-hearted?
Is your heart pure, or is it deceitful?
Would people say you have a heart of gold or a heart of stone?
Do you have a soft heart or a hard heart?
Do you have a generous heart or a greedy heart?
During the past several weeks, I have been searching the Bible for verses describing our hearts. The Bible tells us that our attitudes and moods are an overflow of what is in our heart.
Luke 6:45 says, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.”
How do we keep a heart attitude that is pleasing to the Lord? By being filled (controlled and directed) with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5:18 commands,
“Be filled with the Spirit.”
How do we get a clean heart when our heart is dirty? 1 John 1:9 tells us,
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
How can a broken heart be healed? Psalms 34:18 tells us to ask God to heal our broken hearts.
“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
After reading these verses about our heart’s condition, I realize that I can’t change my heart. I have to rely totally on Christ. In John 15:5, Jesus said,
“Apart from me you can do nothing.”
How is your heart today? Can you say with the Psalmist,
“Create in me a new heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me” Psalm 51:10
To learn more about the Spirit filled life visit: http://thoughts-about-god.com/biblestudies_/spiritfilledlife
By Katherine Kehler
Used by Permission
• Hard Hearted by Charles Spurgeon
• Keep a Soft Heart – by Gail Rodgers
• A Bit Like Pharoah by Julie Cosgrove
The post How is Your Heart Today? can be found online at Daily Devotionals by Thoughts about God.
Is the global heatwave God removing the sun from its ‘sheath’ for final judgement?
And the light of the moon shall become like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall become sevenfold, like the light of the seven days, when Hashem binds up His people’s wounds and heals the injuries it has suffered. Isaiah 30:26. Israel, like many other regions of the world, is currently experiencing a heat wave. While global warming is the focus of political debate, Jewish sources relate that a drastic increase in solar heat is expected as the Final Redemption approaches and that it will play multiple roles in the end of days. Israel is currently experiencing an intense and prolonged heat wave. The highest temperatures of 38°-43°C (100°-109°F) were recorded in southern Israel and the Jordan Valley.
Jews and Israelis: Labor Pains on the Way to Redemption
Over the past 20 years, the Religious Zionists made extensive use of the secular nation to fulfill a series of political and mostly religious aims…
James Comer: Bidens Owned over 20 Shell Companies to Hide Payments, Launder Money
After reviewing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) at the Treasury and subpoenaing banks and individuals, Comer posted on Twitter that the Biden family created more than 20 entities to accept, forward, and collect payment from a wide range of business associates. “We found all these shell companies that make absolutely no sense,” Comer told Fox News. “I don’t believe they have paid a penny of revenue, a penny of taxes on most of the millions of dollars they received from our adversaries around the world.”
INSANE: Democrats Want To Ban Words “Husband” And “Wife”
Democrats in the House of Representatives are so bent on transforming reality that they have introduced new legislation, the “Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act,” put forth by California Democrat Julia Brownley, that would remove the terms “husband” and “wife” from federal law, replacing them with gender-neutral alternatives such as “spouse.”
Netanyahu Vows Crackdown on Military No-Shows in Judicial Protest
“The government won’t accept insubordination. The government will act against it and will take all necessary steps to ensure our security and our future,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, without elaborating on possible measures. “We cannot have a group within the military threatening the elected government:…
Hamas is the Palestinian Wagner Group
Consider Hezbollah as Iran’s Wagner Group. Operating under no international constraints, they now control the country in which they are based, Lebanon. They also operate freely in Syria, a country led by a dictator who has mass murdered his own people and is in need of additional muscle. In his case Iran’s Wagner Group – Hezbollah. Which brings us to the Palestinian Arab Wagner Group – Hamas.
Hezbollah gearing up for showdown with Israel
Hezbollah is intensifying preparations for an imminent confrontation with Israel, drawing global attention and raising concerns about regional stability. Under the guise of the battle over an Israeli border barrier, the Lebanese terrorist group aims to preserve its option of invading the Galilee, while also serving Iran’s interests in establishing a foothold in Syria.
New AI Bible app allows users to chat with Biblical characters
A new artificial intelligence app claims to allow the user to chat with Biblical (and not-so-Biblical) characters. A trial run leaves the user hoping that the real Biblical characters are more inspiring than their computer-generated counterparts. Bible Pics Chat claims to allow users “to seek guidance and enter the gateway to biblical wisdom” by chatting with Biblical characters.
PETA produces an AI Vegan Bible
(PETA), an animal rights nonprofit organization, has taken altruism one step further and used artificial intelligence to rewrite Genesis as a vegan manifesto, leading Bible scholars to fume over whether vegetarianism is indeed a Biblical concept. The PETA Bible is barely recognizable, bearing few similarities to the original.
After four months of disconnect, Netanyahu speaks with Biden by phone, finally receives US invite
It’s been seven months since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassumed office and only now has he received the long-awaited invitation from U.S. President Joe Biden to have a meeting “soon.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses FBI of targeting Catholics while ignoring pro-abortion extremists
“They target conservatives. They target Trump supporters. And the proof is there,” Greene said. “The FBI targeted Catholics attending Latin Mass, putting agents inside a Latin Mass but yet not going after Jane’s Revenge, the radical group that was firebombing pregnancy resource centers. This is who the FBI is, and that is why they have to be held accountable.”
Florida Republicans Officially Designate Covid Shots as ‘Bioweapons’ – News Addicts
Republicans in a Florida county have banned Covid shots and officially designated the jabs as “bioweapons.”
Largest Settlement of Illegal Aliens in US Is Quietly Growing Amid Border Crisis
The largest illegal alien “colonia” in the United States is not located in the Rio Grande Valley or outside of El Paso. In fact, it is hundreds of miles from the border, in an area controlled by Republican politicians and funded by a mega donor to Texas Governor Greg Abbott.
Strong M6.6 earthquake hits Neuquen, Argentina at intermediate depth
A strong earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.6 hit Neuquen, Argentina at 03:05 UTC on July 17, 2023. The agency is reporting a depth of 171.4 km (106 miles). EMSC is reporting the same magnitude and depth.
Southwest Heat Dome Expected to Break Dozens of Record Highs
Heat alerts are in effect for millions of people. The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued excessive heat warnings and heat advisories for more than a dozen states in the West and South. That means outdoor activities should be limited in these areas either right now or in the coming days because of the possibility of heat-related illnesses.
Stink or swim! Over HALF of US beaches contain unsafe levels of FECES, ‘troubling’ report finds
More than half of America’s beaches contain potentially dangerous levels of feces, according to a new report described as ‘troubling’ by experts.
Globalists Are Making Big Moves Which Would Fundamentally Change How Our Society Operates
While everybody else is distracted, the globalists are making absolutely enormous moves. Previously, I have written about the UN’s new worldwide system for cracking down on “misinformation” and about their desire to implement a global system of digital identification that is tied to our bank accounts.
Supreme Court Justices Warn New York Not to Use Race Again to Ration Medical Treatment
Two conservative Supreme Court justices warned New York officials that if they try again to ration health care based on the patient’s race—as they did with COVID-19 treatments in 2021—they will vote to take a case challenging the policy on an emergency basis.
OVERWHELMING PROOF that the COVID-19 Plandemic was officially planned and executed by the U.S. Federal Government (and other state actors)
The following exhaustive investigative research report proves — BEYOND ANY DOUBT — that the COVID-19 Plandemic was, in fact, planned out over many decades within the highest echelons of the US government. It also confirms that an extremely powerful shadow government was directing every facet of the vast lobbying efforts and legislative processes necessary to pull off this ongoing crime wave against the American people. Which means that the barbarians have been inside the gate and operating freely at least since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
Psychological tactics used for Covid began years before to foster the FALSE “Climate Change” narrative
The leaks and exposés about how media and communications were used to manipulate and control the public during the covid era are the focus of ongoing controversy, and rightly so. Yet a very similar approach persists, virtually unchallenged, in the sphere of climate communications. Indeed, key features of covid narrative control were pioneered in relation to the environment.
WEF Says CBDCs Must Be ‘Implanted Under Your Skin’ if You Want To Participate in Society
The WEF has declared that all citizens must be implanted with a CBDC microchip in the very near future, in order to be able to fully participate in society and do basic things such as purchase food and water.
Climategate 3.0: Hero speaks and releases a new cache of emails proving Climate Change Fraud
In 2009, emails were leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. This was referred to as Climategate. In 2011, in what was referred to as Climategate 2, nearly two years after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal, a second batch of 5,000 emails were leaked. In 2013, a third batch of emails was released in what was referred to as Climategate 3. With the release of the third batch of emails, the leaker revealed his motives for doing so.
Evacuations near Philly after hazardous material train derailment
Local residents and businesses were forced to evacuate Monday morning after a CSX Norfolk Southern freight train derailed in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. At least one car was transporting hazardous material, officials said.
Heroic Polish Community Takes Matters into Their Own Hands to Protect Children from Foreign Sexual Abusers
Poland takes immediate action to protect children from foreign suspects, contrasting with the reported incidents in Germany where concerns have been raised about migrant-related sexual assaults on women and children in pools over an extended period.
YouTube DELETES Australian Politician’s Speech Blowing Lid Off COVID-19, Calling it ‘Medical Misinformation’
YouTube removed a video of an Australian MP delivering a maiden speech to Parliament criticizing the unscientific and authoritarian COVID measures, claiming it contained “medical misinformation.”
You stayed at Home >> While they emptied the NHS >> So Matt Hancock could turn Care Homes into Midazolam Murder Camps & pretend there were Thousands of COVID-19 Deaths
While you stayed at home to “protect the NHS, and (allegedly) save lives”, Matt Hancock orchestrated the mass murder of the elderly and vulnerable in care homes using a drug known as Midazolam and then told you that they had all died of Covid-19; and we can prove it…
The WHO Is A Real And Present Danger
Our governments intend to transfer decisions over our health, families, and societal freedoms to the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), whenever he or she declares it necessary. The success of this transfer of power depends on public ignorance of its implications, and of the nature of the WHO itself and its recent pandemic policy reversals. When the public understands, then its leaders are more likely to act in their interests rather than against them.
Islamic Attack in Fargo: Muslim Known to Police Targets Officers, Leaving One Dead, Two Injured, Details Concealed
Pervasive questions resonate—Why did this heinous assault occur on that fateful Friday while the release of crucial information regarding Mohamad Barakat and his prior encounters with law enforcement remains distressingly scarce?
Clouds of Mysterious Gnat-Like Insects Swarm New York City
…Confused residents on Wednesday evening noticed dark clouds in the sky that turned out to be thousands of tiny gnat-like insects. Just before dawn, the little bugs filled the skies, small enough to get caught in people’s beards, get into their noses, and more.
MEP Nicolas Bay Slams EU’s Migration Policies: ‘They Are Not Refugees’, but Threats of Poverty, Crime, and Terrorism
“8.4 million migrants have asked for refugee status in the EU since 2014. It’s almost the equivalent of Austria’s population.
CIA’s Secret Mosquito Experiments In India
…a young journalist came by and told my father of a strange experiment with mosquitoes being conducted right near Palam airport, as Delhi airport was then called. The man said it was an experiment on yellow fever. ‘But we don’t have yellow fever in India,’ my father had exclaimed. The journalist said that this was exactly his point. He claimed it was a part of a biological warfare experiment. We all sat in shocked silence.”
Gigantic swarm of grasshoppers flying into Utah is so large it is picked up by weather RADAR
A swarm of grasshoppers invading Tooele, Utah was so large it registered on weather radar systems.
Herzog heads to Washington on high-stakes mission to keep US-Israel fissure in check
Herzog heads to DC, hoping to bridge the Biden-Netanyahu divide
Biden Invites Israel’s Netanyahu to Meet as Tensions Rise
Biden invites Netanyahu to meet in US, stresses need for consensus on judicial reform
Netanyahu rails at anti-overhaul reservists, in first appearance since hospital stay
Lapid: US is pulling away, national tragedy coming; Gantz to PM: It’s not too late
Report: House Republicans Poised to Put Democrats on the Record with Israel Vote
No more ‘monkeys’ and ‘pigs’: Anti-Israeli content removed from textbooks in Saudi Arabia
PM: Remote settlements will become enclaves in sub-sovereign Palestinian entity
Continuing crackdown, PA arrests five members of Islamic Jihad near Jenin
Plan to Build Mega-Mosque on London’s Iconic Piccadilly Square Back Again
Iraqi Christians fear president’s revocation of decree places them in harm’s way
Turkish President Erdogan visits Gulf Arab states, seeking funds for ailing economy
Global hunger enters a grim ‘new normal’
Russia halts grain deal in what UN calls blow to needy people everywhere
Russia Kills Grain Deal, Seriously Constraining Global Supply of Key Commodity
Russia deals blow to food security by halting wartime deal allowing Ukraine to ship grain
White House pressures Russia to resume Black Sea grain deal amid rising global food prices
Wheat prices jump as Russia terminates Black Sea grain deal; two dead in Crimea bridge blast
Did Killer Sea Drones Just Blow Up Putin’s Beloved Bridge?
Kharkiv mayor dismisses Russian claims of ‘terrorism’ over Crimean bridge attack
Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’ll use new committee spot to push against Ukraine aid
Belarus abducts thousands of Ukrainian children
China, Russia to Start Joint Air, Sea Drill in Sea of Japan
Russia Steps Up Economic War With West, Seizing Assets of Big Conglomerates
Welcome to the Dollar War – A global battle over cash will decide who rules the world economy
Trump warns of Chinese global encroachment under Biden administration
Taiwan’s vice president to transit through the US, raising tensions with China
Biden administration warns Beijing against ‘brazen coercion’ in response to Taiwan VP visit
North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong warns US against ‘foolish act’ that risks security
Top House Republican Suggests Biden Official Could Have Committed Treason
James Comer: Bidens Owned over 20 Shell Companies to Hide Payments, Launder Money
James Comer: FBI Tipped off Hunter Biden to Interview, Confirming IRS Whistleblowers
White House touts ‘thorough’ Secret Service cocaine investigation
Rep. Burchett: Secret Service ‘Destroyed’ WH Cocaine Bag, DNA
White House still has ‘confidence’ in Secret Service after cocaine investigation
RFK Jr. shrugs off Biden family corruption allegations: Won’t be a ‘spear tip to my campaign’
George and Alex Soros jump into 2024 election with maxed-out Biden campaign donations
Jack Smith Seeks Protective Order to Avoid Trial Delay in Trump Classified Docs Case
Georgia Supreme Court unanimously rejects Trump motion to halt Fulton County DA’s investigation
Jan. 6 defendant appeals to Supreme Court in case that could upend hundreds of riot charges
The media industry is in turmoil, and that’s not changing anytime soon
Jim Jordan considers holding Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress
Barry Diller: Actor and Writer Strikes Could Lead to Hollywood’s ‘Absolute Collapse’
Facebook, Instagram face Norwegian ban from tracking users for ads
Race towards ‘autonomous’ AI agents grips Silicon Valley
This AI Watches Millions Of Cars Daily And Tells Cops If You’re Driving Like A Criminal
Santa Monica tests AI cameras for parking tickets
Meta’s new AI lets people make chatbots. They’re using it for sex.
Tim Burchett: UFO Hearing to ‘Get the Truth Out There’
5.4 magnitude earthquake hits near Malisbeng, Philippines
5.0 magnitude earthquake hits near Tatsugo, Japan
Ubinas volcano in Peru erupts to 24,000ft
Sabancaya volcano in Peru erupts to 23,000ft
Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts to 22,000ft
Fuego volcano in Guatemala erupts to 15,000ft
Reventador volcano in Ecuador erupts to 15,000ft
Santa Maria volcano in Colombia erupts to 14,000ft
Semeru volcano in Indonesia erupts to 14,000ft
Ebeko volcano in the Kuril Islands erupts to 13,000ft
Typhoon Talim lands in southern China, flights and trains cancelled
Hong Kong schools and stock market are closed as Typhoon Talim sweeps toward China
Tropical storm warning issued for Hawaii Island as Calvin continues track toward state
South Korea flood death toll rises to 40, Yoon blames botched responses
Drone footage shows a huge break in a Mississippi dam as life-threatening flash flood warning issued
Flash flooding leaves at least 6 dead in Pennsylvania, North Carolina
Tokyo Heat Smashes 150-Year Trend as Extreme Weather Bakes Globe
Italy told to brace for “most intense heat wave” ever, as Europe expected to see record temperatures
Severe heat wave in southern U.S. remains entrenched as records mount
Record-breaking southwestern US heat wave to expand eastward this week
Texas power use hits record high as heatwave lingers
Smoke Pollution From Canadian Wildfires Returns to Parts of U.S.
Justin Trudeau’s Canada Wildfire Fiasco Affecting 70 Million Americans This Week
More than 50 pilot whales die after mass stranding on Scottish beach
Evacuations After Train Carrying Hazardous Materials Derails in Pennsylvania
Weather and possible sinkhole caused Norfolk train derailment, CSX says
Scientists: Socialist Oil Spills Leave Venezuela’s Largest Lake Teeming with Toxins
World Economic Forum seeks 75% reduction in car ownership
‘Massive US Oil Caverns’ Are Now Empty, Will Take ‘Decades To Refill’ Thanks To Biden
White House alters Kamala Harris’s transcript speech over ‘reduce population’ comment
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Loudly Booed at North American Indigenous Games
Divorce Parties Are a New Hot Invite. ‘It Sort of Ended Up as a Really Fun Funeral.’
Unlikely hit ‘Sound of Freedom’ opens new front in US culture wars
CA State Legislators Work to Push Through Bill Increasing Penalties for Child Traffickers
‘Pedophobia’: China Shames the Childless as Birth Rates Collapse
Convicted Pedophile, Who Abused Daughter, Released from Jail After He Identifies as Transgender
6 men arrested for alleged gang rape of teen tourist at European vacation hotspot
LGBTQ rights are at the forefront of Spain’s election
Barack Obama Defends Children’s LGBTQ Books as States Prohibit Them from Schools
Malik Obama Tweets Brother Barack Obama is ‘Definitely Gay’ – Then Deletes Tweet
Transgender Swimmer Lia Thomas Wears ‘Antifa Super Soldier’ Shirt in Instagram Post
Trans Athlete Austin Killips Lashes Out at ‘Cabal of Right-Wingers’ After Cycling Bans Trans Women
Sorority members say they were told to change definition of woman to allow transgender to join
Obama-Appointed Judge Reinstates Kentucky Ban on Child Sex Change Procedures
United Church of Christ urges churches to help ‘pregnant people’ get abortions
Iowa judge blocks state’s new abortion law
WH Floats Argument That GOP Abortion Stance Is Harming Military
Kirby: Military Has ‘Foundational Sacred Obligation’ to Provide Troops with Abortion Access
White House defends ‘sacred obligation’ of Pentagon’s abortion policies: ‘We lose talent’
Massachusetts: Vaccine Bills Spark Intense Debate About Medical Exemptions And Student Mandates
Schumer Seeks New Bipartisan Sanctions Against China over Fentanyl
Rand Paul lambasts Fauci for getting ‘treated like a president’ with taxpayer-funded security
Fauci, health officials accused of illegally approving $26 billion in grants using taxpayer dollars
White House rips ‘vile’ RFK Jr comments COVID-19 was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews, Chinese
House Republicans refuse request to pull RFK testimony after antisemitic COVID claim
Robert Kennedy Jr. Turns to Right-wing pro-Israel Allies to Assuage Antisemitism Concerns
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
“Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.” —George Washington (1790)
| Fellow Patriots, on this day in history during World War I, the Allies saw the tide turn in the crucial Second Battle of the Marne when 85,000 American Doughboys joined the action. Today, we are covering the Pentagon’s priority of providing taxpayer-funded abortion over our warfighting capabilities, and other top news. —Mark Alexander |
It won’t happen as soon as we’d like, but it’s coming nonetheless.
Douglas Andrews
“For 37 years in the service of our nation,” he said, “first as a congressman, as a senator, and as vice president, and now as your president, I have put the unity of the people first. I have put it ahead of any divisive partisanship. … Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
That was President Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the date was March 31, 1968. After a lengthy address to the nation about the status of the war in Vietnam, a war that had riven the country, he announced that he’d step down from the presidency at the conclusion of his term and not run for reelection.
It was a shocking moment, given how rare it is for a sitting president to decline a second term in office. The election to a second term, after all, tends to act as a stamp of approval from the American people and thus signifies a successful presidency.
We can’t know for sure, but somewhere, some Democrat speechwriter is contemplating those words from President Johnson and wondering how they might be remade for Joe Biden. Because it’s becoming clearer with each passing day that this president won’t be allowed to run for reelection, and he won’t be the nominee.
The Democrats are, first and foremost, about political power. And they realize that Biden is a political loser. His poll numbers have, ever since his disastrous retreat and surrender in Afghanistan nearly two years ago, been consistently and stubbornly in the basement, lower than any president in history with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter.
He’s been overtaken not only by cognitive and physical decline but by ruinous and unpopular policies. In addition, he’s been overtaken by events. Instead of taking command of the domestic and international affairs of his presidency, he’s being buffeted by them.
So he needs to go. The question is: How?
And the answer is: by threading the needle. His handlers need to orchestrate a “Baby Bear” departure from the Oval Office. He can’t go too soon, and he can’t go too late. The Democrats can’t afford to have Biden resign in disgrace amid an ever-growing scandal of international graft. Nor can they afford to have him impeached and removed from office. Why not? Because, as historian Victor Davis Hanson has observed, both of those outcomes would usher in President Kamala Harris, who’s the only Democrat in America less popular than Joe Biden. And a President Harris would demand that the party apparatus support her candidacy in the 2024 election — a candidacy they know is doomed.
No, the Democrats need Biden to finish out his term, which would necessitate a traditional open-field primary — a primary in which Harris would be forced to run like California Governor Gavin Newsom and every other candidate rather than running unopposed as a sitting president.
The leftist press knows this, too. Notice how a trio of recent stories — a friendly nudge from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, a forceful attack in The Atlantic, and a look at a potential third-party threat — focused exclusively on what they believe is Biden’s wrong-headed decision to run again. Each of the stories ignored the corruption scandal that might cause him to resign or be impeached and removed before the end of his term.
Still another story, this one from CNN, noted that the talk has already begun, albeit quietly. As Karl Salzmann writes in The Washington Free Beacon:
In “whispers” and “furtive phone calls,” top Democratic donors and officials are saying that “President Joe Biden won’t actually be running for reelection,” CNN reported Thursday.
Those Democrats are talking to “possible replacement presidential candidates,” according to the report, and urging them to “get ready.” They say that “time is already running out” for Biden, who has officially announced his candidacy but hasn’t named a campaign finance director, hired any on-the-ground staff in competitive states, or even opened a campaign headquarters.
We can’t know for sure what FJB’s LBJ speech will sound like, but we in our humble shop wonder whether it might chalk up his reason for declining to run again as a desire to, ahem, spend more time with his family, especially his six seven grandchildren.
But, oh, what a mess it’s going to be. Imagine letting Gavin Newsom, Mr. White Patriarchy himself, into the game to replace the woman of color, Kamala Harris. Imagine, too, the challenges from the Left and Center-Left: from Cornel West, who’ll cut into Biden’s black support, and a possible “No Labels” unity ticket of West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin and former Utah Republican Governor Jon Huntsman.
Interestingly, a recent Suffolk University poll offering three choices for president produced the following breakdown: 34% for Joe Biden, 32% for Donald Trump, and 23% for a third-party candidate. A recent CNN/SSRS poll showed similar dissatisfaction with the current choices, with 33% of voters favoring Trump, 32% favoring Biden, and 31% favoring a candidate named Neither. (For comparison, the final version of that same poll showed 5% for Neither in 2020 and 3% for Neither in 2012.) Caveats apply, of course, because Donald Trump is beating Joe Biden head-to-head in most recent polls, and because when push comes to shove on Election Day, most voters have been reluctant to cast a third-party vote. But conventional wisdom is that a third-party run hurts Biden more because he’s the incumbent, and he’s thus the primary source of dissatisfaction and independent energy.
As for that incumbent, though, he’s stumbling and shuffling cluelessly along, laughing off suggestions that he’s a “flaming woke warrior” — which of course he most certainly is.
In any case, Biden’s LBJ moment is coming, slowly by surely, like a freight train. He might not know it, and his fellow Democrats can’t yet say as much, but they’re definitely thinking it.
John Kirby claims it’s a “sacred obligation” to make sure pregnant military moms don’t actually give birth.
Nate Jackson
It has been crassly said that the military’s job is to kill people and break things. Normally, the target is America’s enemies. Joe Biden’s Pentagon aims that destruction at future military recruits.
In fact, we’re now told that the Pentagon has a “sacred obligation” to kill unborn generations of American warriors. How sick are these people?
As our Thomas Gallatin noted last week, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville is single-handedly blocking numerous Department of Defense appointments because Team Biden is hell-bent on using taxpayer dollars to provide abortion to service members and veterans. House Republicans, meanwhile, passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which overturns Biden’s Pentagon abortion policy among other things.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked about that Monday. He pounded the podium in righteous indignation as he explained why it’s critical that the “one in five” service personnel who are women, as well as the spouses of service members, are right to expect abortions will be provided:
When you sign up and make that contract, you have every right to expect that the organization, in this case, the military, is going to take care of you and your family and make sure you can serve with dignity and respect, no matter who you are or who you love or how you worship or don’t. And our policies, whether they are diversity, inclusion, and equity, whether they’re about transgender individuals who qualify, physically and mentally to serve, to be able to do it with dignity, or whether it is about female service members, one in five, or female family members being able to count on the kinds of healthcare, reproductive care specifically, that they need to serve, that is a foundational sacred obligation of military leaders across the river.
Whew, that is an awful lot of social justice jargon. Think for a minute about a couple of Kirby’s illogical assertions. The military “is going to take care of you and your family” by ensuring that one of them is never born. Kirby is denying dignity and respect to that unborn individual. We know leftists treat abortion like a sacrament of their religion, but the word “sacred” should never be associated with the practice, unless in opposition to it.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion never helped a single person aim a rifle more accurately or fly a plane or helicopter more competently. Neither has opening the military to “transgender” service members, who clearly have serious mental issues that bring them to the point of pretending to be the opposite sex even to the extent of lopping off perfectly healthy body parts.
Kirby tried to claim that lack of access to abortion in states like Tuberville’s Alabama is becoming “a retention and a morale issue.” Yeah, it is that, just not in the way he thinks. In fact, DEI and generally woke policies are harming military readiness, undermining morale, and causing a retention and recruitment crisis.
Predictably, Kirby’s allies in the Leftmedia jumped on board the “blame Republicans” train. PBS NewsHour host Geoff Bennett claimed Republicans are using the NDAA “as a cudgel in the culture wars and to really virtue-signal to members of their base.” Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart lamented, “It puts our national security at risk.”
The opposite is true. Conservatives didn’t start the culture wars. “Progressives” did, and they are the ones jeopardizing national security by treating the military as a petri dish for their social experiments.
Another point that may be less popular to make is that this is one of the downsides to females serving in active-duty roles. Especially for those who are unmarried, biology still happens and a pregnancy presents more than one problem unique to a woman. A woman can’t exactly be ready to deploy when she is about to or has just given birth. The “easy” solution is an abortion, but then the woman carries mental and emotional damage that can affect her readiness in the future. (Much the same could be said for the dude who wants to become a lady.)
Social justice warriors like Kirby simply blame everyone else for those problems.
All the while, Patriots who truly love their country are looking at Joe Biden’s military and saying a collective “nope.” That is shameful, and a change of administration is needed to turn it around.
“Sound of Freedom” may reach $100 million, summer’s heat could damage EV batteries, federal court upholds Oregon’s anti-2A law, and more.
Thomas Gallatin & Jordan Candler
For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.
Meet Becky Pringle, the president of the largest teachers union — the National Education Association.
Emmy Griffin
We often talk about American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. But the AFT is only the second-largest teachers union. The National Education Association (NEA) is the largest, and its president’s name is Becky Pringle. Let’s just say she’s not a conservative thinker.
Pringle was elected in 2020 “as COVID-19 ravaged Black, Brown, and indigenous communities nationwide,” as her NEA bio colorfully puts it. This is the tenor of all Pringle’s self-descriptions. She is an unapologetic social justice warrior, tilting at every one of its inequitable windmills.
She was also a huge advocate for keeping schools closed during the pandemic. Pringle, along with the AFT’s Weingarten, were solicited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for their opinion as to school reopening. Both Weingarten and Pringle kept the schools closed. Then, when schools eventually reopened, Pringle issued an edict that all kids had to mask, regardless of vaccination status.
That policy was a teachers-union-centered decision, not a child-centered decision, because as national benchmark test after national benchmark test has shown, our children are falling further behind academically. Schools were nominally shut down for the sake of the 8% of public school teachers who were especially susceptible to COVID-19. Pringle herself made $534,243 over the course of the pandemic while keeping schools closed.
You know what schools didn’t have children falling behind academically? The private Catholic schools that continued to meet in person throughout the pandemic maintained their students’ academic achievements.
Part of the key to these private schools’ success is that they didn’t get sucked into the woke leftist wormhole that Pringle and Weingarten are promoting. The Catholic schools stuck to teaching math and reading. Public schools, through the encouragement of the teachers unions, were teaching all about social justice, racial inequities, and climate justice.
There are many reasons children in the public schools are struggling to shrink their academic gap, but the most glaring of all seems to be centered around the message that people like Pringle and Weingarten are promoting: Their education is not important and is easily sacrificed.
Another major reason has to do with the stifling indoctrination of left-wing ideologies that have tainted all learning. Critical race theory has told children that they are victims who can’t help themselves or oppressors because they have a certain skin color. Queer Marxism has served to introduce a destructive new religion into the supposedly “secular” school space. Then there is the constant fearmongering about the world coming to an end due to climate change. The kids are scared, confused, depressed, and learning very little that is good or useful.
You know what causes Pringle and the NEA are supporting? In April, Pringle was speaking at an event called “Summit for Democracy” and called social justice the third pillar of being a teacher. By this, she meant all the stuff listed in the previous paragraph. This summer, Pringle and Weingarten have taken on the “book ban” banner. Pringle and the NEA have included Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo on the summer reading list for educators. These books, at the very least, should not be in the hands of students. Except that the AFT and Weingarten are going around in a bus called the “Banned Book Mobile.” There plainly visible is Gender Queer. This book is a graphic novel that explores gender, identity, and sex. Sex is depicted between an older man and a younger boy. This is a book they want your kids to read, all for the sake of “learning.”
The NEA and AFT are left-wing-captured unions. They set the tone for teachers and administrators, and they are key disseminators of leftist ideology in public schools. Pringle is less discussed than Weingarten, but as the president of the NEA, she is playing from the same playbook and being richly paid for her efforts.
The Left is working to deny religious freedom if it’s used to criticize the Rainbow Mafia’s agenda.
Michael Swartz
There are many reasons why we as a nation have debated our support for the United Nations, one of which involves the organization’s collective narcissism and self-importance.
The latest strike against the UN comes with a recent report issued by Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a Costa Rican lawyer who’s described as an independent “expert” on sexual orientation and gender identity. The report was received warmly by the members of the UN’s Human Rights Council — not all of whom have spotless records when it comes to the subject, but all of whom seemingly having an agenda and an outlook disdainful of organized religion, including the U.S. representative.
In his summary of the latest UN diatribe, Christian Post writer Ian Giatti noted that Madrigal-Borloz compared “hate speech” directed toward LGBT people with saying that they’re “a threat to the traditional family” and that “religious doctrines exclude and promote violence and discrimination against homosexuality and gender nonconformity.”
Giatti added that Madrigal-Borloz believes religious freedoms aren’t an adequate legal protection for those who use their beliefs for the “denial of the human rights of LGBT persons,” saying that “violent and discriminatory positions of prejudice are beyond the international legal protections of religious or other beliefs.”
Similarly alarmed about the report was Arielle Del Turco, director for the Center of Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council. Calling the report “staggering,” she explained, “So by the U.N. independent expert making this report and supposedly trying to find a way for LGBT rights and religious freedom to coexist, we see even that at the very core of the report is a huge elevation for LGBT rights.”
Madrigal-Borloz is no stranger to this subject. In 2021, for example, he authored a similar report concluding, “The world must choose between a path of ‘exclusionary narratives’ advanced by ‘ultraconservative political leaders and religious groups’ that perpetuate violence and discrimination, or a path of inclusivity guided by ‘gender theory’ and human rights.”
So you see, it’s not the gender cultists who are at fault; it’s those dastardly “ultraconservative political leaders and religious groups.”
Interestingly enough, Madrigal-Borloz has also been in residence at the Harvard Law School for the last four years, so he’s surely aware of the back and forth that dictated the recent Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis as well as other recent battles between religious freedom and the Rainbow Mafia. Madrigal-Borloz also said last year’s Dobbs decision was “a devastating action for the human rights of lesbian and bisexual women, as well as trans men and other gender diverse persons with gestational faculties.”
Madrigal-Borloz added, “I concur that safe and legal abortion access constitutes a critical part of the right to the highest attainable standard of health (which includes reproductive rights) as well as other human rights including the rights to non-discrimination and equality, the right to respect for private life, the right to life, and the right to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.”
Yes, that’s the “independent expert” the UN is leaning on, and the Biden administration “welcomes their current report.” This despite the allegation that “the report complains of ‘state legislatures seeking to enshrine anti-trans exclusion’ in the U.S. as an example of how ‘religion can be invoked for autocratic practices and denial of basic rights.’”
You know what they say: One man’s autocratic practitioner is another man’s religious freedom fighter.
Indeed, religious liberty is the first of the five freedoms defined within the First Amendment. It is not endowed by government but by our Creator. Obviously, that’s not the prevailing opinion around the world anymore, and it’s under dire assault here in the U.S. by the Left.
That’s because in the eyes of the Rainbow Mafia, everything must be subservient to the gender-identity agenda. And that’s why, now more than ever, the rest of us must fight for our religious liberty.
No GOP presidential contender, especially Mike Pence, would ever say they aren’t concerned about our domestic problems.
Gary Bauer
These should be the closing months of the Biden/Harris presidency. But never underestimate the ability of the GOP and some conservatives to form enough circular firing squads that they turn 2024 into a defeat.
An example of this tendency was on display over the weekend involving remarks by former Vice President Mike Pence. Pence attended the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa this weekend. He and other presidential candidates took questions from Tucker Carlson on a variety of issues, including the proxy war in Ukraine.
There is a legitimate disagreement among conservatives regarding our military involvement in Ukraine. I am closer to Tucker’s position on this issue than Pence’s. But the headlines that have come out of that Iowa event are not fair.
Tucker asked how Pence could favor doing more in Ukraine while there are major domestic problems festering here in the United States. Pence’s answer was essentially, “We can do both.” In his answer, however, he used the phrase, “That’s not my concern.”
Pence was immediately attacked on social media by some who suggested he wasn’t concerned about America’s domestic problems. That is a clear distortion of his answer. He clearly stated:
“Anybody who says we can’t be the leader of the free world and solve our problems at home has a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth. We can do both.”
No GOP presidential contender, especially Mike Pence, would ever say they aren’t concerned about our domestic problems. That would be politically insane.
When all of the primaries and caucuses are over, we will have a nominee. The supporters of the 13 losers will have to rally around the victor for us to have any chance of ending the Biden nightmare.
Savage attacks by the candidates on each other or within our movement only bring glee to those on the left who want to delegitimize American conservatism.
Editor’s Note: Each week we receive hundreds of comments and correspondences — and we read every one of them. Click here for a few thought-provoking comments about specific articles. The views expressed therein don’t necessarily reflect those of The Patriot Post.
For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.
Dumb & Dumber
“It’s just the right darn thing to do for people that raise their hand and agree to serve … in the military.” —National Security Council spokesman John Kirby regarding military abortions (“Kirby: Ending the lives of unborn children is ‘the right thing to do’ and key to the military’s objectives. The war on unborn children might be the only war they have a strategy to decisively win.” —Mollie Hemingway)
“[Abortion is] not dangerous. But what’s actually dangerous, what’s really dangerous, is forcing people — especially black women — to give birth.” —Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO)
Braying Jenny
“As somebody who’s been in the streets and participated in a lot of demonstrations, I want you to know that we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state.” —Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who later elucidated: “It is important that I clarify my statement. I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist. I do, however, believe that Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminator and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government.”
Junk Science
“The earth just broke the record for the hottest day in 120,000 years. In fact, we broke in on three separate days. National climate emergency now.” —Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
The BIG Lies
“Everything that you are seeing with our economy being stronger, wages going up, unemployment going down … is because of Bidenomics. … We’ve seen a positive … movement with the economy because of what this president has done, because of Bidenomics. … Bidenomics has been really helpful in getting to make sure that we build an economy that leaves the one behind. … The first two years, the deficit has gone down by more than $1 trillion. And that is … because of Bidenomics and because of the work that he’s been doing.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
“Since I’ve been in office, we’ve created more jobs than any president has created in their first two years.” —Joe Biden (Fact-check: Those were COVID-restored jobs. Two million more jobs were created in the same number of months Donald Trump was in office.)
“Wage growth is moderating and inflation is subsiding, so I think we’re in a good path.” —Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (“REALITY: Prices are up 16.6% and real wages are down 3% since Biden took office.” —RNC)
Village Idiot
“I want y’all to drink this f***ing beer. I got three cases of Bud Light. Hey, and I want to say this — if you’re gay, bless you. If you’re transgender, bless you. And if you have a problem with that, f*** you.” —former NBA star Charles Barkley
Re: Cocainegate
“The Secret Service here looks like they can’t find a dead cow in a closet. … You know what you don’t do before you interview people? Publicly say that there’s no DNA evidence and no fingerprints. Like, why would you let the whole world know that if you’re then going to interview people?” —Andrew Weissmann, who was the top investigator for Special Counsel Robert Mueller
Leftmedia Lobs
“More people actually moved out of Florida than New York or California in 2021” —Business Insider headline (Fact-check: The headline and story were corrected to note more people actually moved into Florida than any other state; more moved out of New York and California than Florida.)
“Maybe [censored social media] opinions are just not something that people want to listen to. And it’s not censorship. It’s just, you know, the way it is.” —NBC’s Ben Collins
Insight
“Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships.” —Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989)
And Last…
“So Bidenomics is where the rate of increase in inflation drops but every product is 15% more expensive than when Joe Biden took office.” —Ben Shapiro
For more of today’s memes, visit the Memesters Union.
For more of today’s cartoons, visit the Cartoons archive.
“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, discusses the House Judiciary Committee looking into Big Pharma’s role in the censorship probe, upcoming testimony from IRS whistleblowers, and his threat to the FBI director and Meta CEO.
Source: ‘WHO ARE YOU GONNA BELIEVE?’ No one has refuted IRS whistleblowers: Rep. Jordan
John Kirby defended abortion as a ‘sacred obligation’ of the military to ‘female service members’ and ‘transgender individuals who qualify.’
If the Democrats are unsuccessful in stopping Donald Trump from becoming president in 2024, it won’t be for lack of effort. In fact, and give the Devil his due, the Democrats have been eating the lunch of the Republican party for a couple of years now. Special Counsel Jack Smith has been unleashed, and the Right has little to no answer for it. As a lifelong Republican, it’s painful to watch the pusillanimous response from the GOP over all these relentless attacks. As a Christian, I know what I’m watching, the fall of America. I say that not as a defense of Trump, but as a statement of fact.
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Proverbs 29:2 (KJB)
This is not Joe Biden’s first term, it’s Barack Obama’s third term, and the civil war that we told you was coming ten years ago has arrived. The mountain of indictments now levelled against Trump will tie him up for quite some time, and this latest one over the bogus January 6th ‘uprising’ only adds to that mountain. In the meantime, Biden and his criminal family continue to flout the law and skate free, with the Republican-controlled Congress unable to do anything. 2024 is going to be a wild, wild ride, and if I were Donald Trump, I’d invest in some bullet-proof clothing.
FROM CNBC: Trump is the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Smith already has criminally charged Trump with about three dozen counts related to retaining classified documents when he left the White House.
Trump also suggested he may soon face indictment for the January 6th probe, which is focused on Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. Trump posted his statement on his Truth Social account.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the probe confirmed to NBC News that Smith sent Trump a target letter in the case. Such letters are sent by the Department of Justice to give people the chance to testify before a grand jury after the DOJ determines there is substantial evidence linking them to a crime.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
Trump wrote that he was given what he called the “horrifying news” on Sunday evening by his lawyers. READ MORE
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