Posts Tagged ‘Ken Paxton’

Paxton Sues Biden Admin Over Gender Madness Yet Again

Saturday, September 28th, 2024

If you’ve been reading this blog any length of time, you know that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has been suing the Biden Administration for both dereliction of federal duties and regulatory overreach. The latter has included several lawsuits against the Biden Administration over their attempts to impose a radical transexual agenda via judicial fiat, and on this front Paxton has just filed another one, this time over the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Texas and 16 other states sued the Biden administration, accusing it of attempting to unlawfully rewrite a federal disability law to include “gender dysphoria” in a newly approved rule.

The lawsuit was filed on September 26 against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the charge that its rule “upends decades of established federal disability law” by redefining “gender dysphoria” as a disability under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA were signed into law in 1977. Section 504 states, “No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the United States … shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under … any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency…”

According to the lawsuit, Section 504 “prohibits ‘any program or activity’ that receives federal financial assistance from discriminating against a qualified individual with a disability.”

The ADA defines a disability as “a physical or mental impairment that constitutes or results in a substantial impediment to employment.”

The HHS issued a rule in May titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” which included a change to Section 504 that states gender dysphoria “may be a disability.”

It determined that any “restrictions that prevent, limit, or interfere with otherwise qualified individuals’ access to care due to their gender dysphoria, gender dysphoria diagnosis, or perception of gender dysphoria, may violate section 504.”

However, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit asserts that when Congress enacted Section 504 and the ADA in the 70s, “it established as a matter of law that ‘transvestism, transsexualism . . . [and] gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders,’ are not protected disabilities.”

The lawsuit additionally seeks to have a 2002 amendment to Section 504, “Nondiscrimination Under Federal Grants and Programs,” declared unconstitutional, claiming it “applies with extreme breadth” to any “program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance,” meaning all recipients of Federal funds are subject to compliance to the Rehabilitation Act.

The court documents allege that the HHS rule “exposes” the 17 states and their agencies to “loss of federal funding.”

“The Biden Administration is once again abusing executive action to sidestep federal law and force unscientific, unfounded gender ideology onto the public,” Paxton said in a press release.

Funny how a man pretending to be a woman is simultaneously both a powerful personal statement of individuality that requires large companies to demand people use officially sanctioned pronouns and a mental illness that requires the federal government to invoke the ADA to remove federal funds unless targeted political enemies bow down to radical transsexual social justice. The answer appears to change depending on whichever is most useful for radical leftwing Democrats to force ordinary Americans to bend to their will.

Paxton has won several previous lawsuits on the issue, and I expect him to win this one as well.

LinkSwarm For September 20, 2024

Friday, September 20th, 2024

More Trump assassination details emerge, the Israel-Hezbollah front remains spicy, a huge Russian ammo dump blew up real good, more open borders shenanigans from the Biden-Harris junta, more woke Tolkien garbage, and China tries to pass off the most adorable fake pandas.

It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • “Hawley Releases Damning Report on Security Failures Leading Up to First Attempt on Trump’s Life.”

    Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) released a whistleblower report Monday on the law-enforcement failures leading up to the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump two months ago. The report was released one day after a suspect was apprehended in Florida for trying to kill Trump on his golf course in Florida.

    The Secret Service’s failures to secure Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13 were extensive and constituted one of the most consequential security debacles in U.S. history. Chief among them was law enforcement’s apparent choice to leave the rooftop of the American Glass Research (AGR) building unguarded, allegedly because of heat, before gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed atop the building to carry out the attack, Hawley’s report states.

    The report is based on whistleblower allegations brought to his office in the wake of Crooks’s rampage. Before the report was published, Hawley sent multiple letters to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, questioning him about the most shocking details from the whistleblowers who contacted his office.

    Overseeing the Secret Service’s security operations at the rally was an unnamed lead agent who apparently has a history of incompetence and who directed the placement of certain items around the stage of the Trump rally that impaired visibility. The individual is allegedly known to be a low-quality agent and failed an examination on the way to becoming a Secret Service agent.

    Secret Service intelligence units were not at the Butler rally. If they had been there, they could have prevented or mitigated the communication breakdown between federal and local law enforcement, Hawley’s report says, a major allegation that he has not previously publicized.

    Ahead of the rally, the Secret Service’s counter-surveillance division did not conduct its typical inspection of the site and did not have a presence at the Butler campaign rally. A whistleblower told Hawley’s office that the counter-surveillance division would have arrested Crooks for carrying a rangefinder. The same whistleblower alleges that acting director Ron Rowe personally requested cuts to the counter-surveillance division, a claim Rowe has denied.

    At a congressional hearing in July, Rowe admitted to the Secret Service’s mistakes on the day of the Trump rally, including a decision to reject an offer from local law enforcement for drone support after the Secret Service was unable to fly its own. Hours before the shooting, Crooks flew a drone around the perimeter of the Trump rally for roughly 11 minutes, the FBI has determined.

    According to the report, a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Butler planning process said that the rally was not slated to receive any additional security because Trump is not a sitting president or vice president. These additional resources would have included counter-snipers and counter-surveillance personnel.

    The Trump rally was considered to be a “loose” security environment, meaning that Department of Homeland Security personnel failed to police the area immediately surrounding the stage and were not placed at intervals around the perimeter, Hawley’s report asserts. Extra DHS personnel without the necessary training to work campaigns were pulled away from the department’s investigative team and reassigned to the Trump rally, a whistleblower told Hawley’s office.

    Up to this point, Hawley says, the Secret Service and DHS have not answered questions about the lead agent overseeing the Trump campaign rally, resources allocated to the Trump campaign, and the Secret Service’s lack of counter-sniper coverage on the AGR building.

    I think we need to know the name of this unnamed lead agent, and how many ties he has to the Obama regime…

  • What we know about the latest would-be Trump assassin.

    On Sunday, September 15th, 58-year-old Ryan Routh of Hawaii showed up to Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where former President Donald Trump was golfing.

    Routh reportedly shoved the barrel of a scoped polymer SKS-style rifle through the fence with the intent to fire at President Trump, who was several hundred yards away.

    Nothing says “accuracy” quite like an old Soviet design they dropped for the AK-47.

    Authorities say Routh also had a GoPro camera, as well as two backpacks containing ceramic tile that he had hung on the fence (a type of ballistics armor is made of ceramic tile).

    Secret Service agents saw Routh and fired at him. He escaped in a black Nissan before getting arrested by local police on I-95 thanks to a photograph taken by a bystander.

    USA Today says Routh has a “complex history,” which is code for “the man was foaming at the mouth for leftist causes.”

    A profile for Ryan Routh on X dates to January 2020, where he posted a range of passionate opinions on issues including Black Lives Matter, Taiwanese sovereignty and supporting Ukraine in the war with Russia.

    Obviously he supported Palestinians and hated Israel.

    According to Fox News, Routh spent the majority of his life in North Carolina, where he owned a company called United Roofing.

    You won’t be surprised that Routh was in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) in the 2020 election.

    In 2020, during the presidential primary, the X account said: ‘I was not supporting Bernie, but now I am; as sleepy Joe stands for nothing; no plans, no ideas, just as limp as hillary. Bernie…….give them hell…..fight to the death…’

    Routh reportedly donated to ActBlue, a major Democratic campaign fund, at least 19 times.

  • A lot of reports said would-be Trump assassin Routh fought for Ukraine and against Russia. Ukraine says they rejected him as a “Call of Duty Warrior.”

    Ukrainian military recruiters appear to have spotted almost immediately that Mr Routh, who had a long criminal record, was not promising material.

    According to an interview that he later gave to the Financial Times, he was rejected for service when he first reported to a Legion office on the Polish border at the war’s outset.

    “They said: ‘You’re 56, you’re old and you have no experience’,” he told the paper. “So why don’t you recruit and coordinate?”

    If that is what they told him, they probably intended him doing so having returned himself safely back to the US. Undeterred, however, Mr Routh continued on to Kyiv, where he became a familiar – if less than welcome – face on the Legion’s fringes.

    There were many such cranks in Kyiv at the time, latching on to the war to pose as international men of action and boasting of high-level contacts in the Pentagon or CIA.

    Regular Legionnaires did their best to avoid them, referring to them variously as “Call of Duty Warriors”, “Volun-tourists” and “Screamers” – the latter a reference to their reaction if coming under fire.

    But there was little to stop them promoting themselves on social media, as Mr Routh did prolifically, claiming to be an active recruiter for the Legion ranks.

    “Any gender, any age, any skill level to no skill level,” he claimed to Newsweek in 2022. “Yeah, if you wanna fight, come and see me and I’ll put you in a unit so you can go fight.”

    (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • Kamala Harris: “As of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.” U.S. active duty soldiers in a combat zone: “Say what?
  • CBS polls restaurant patrons in Nevada and finds precisely one Harris supporter. Everyone else was for Trump. Presumably illegal aliens don’t eat out much…
  • “Oregon DMV admits that they’ve registered hundreds of illegal immigrants to vote since 2021.”
  • “PA Supreme Court rules that misdated ballots must not be counted.”

    The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has determined that the two biggest counties in the state do not have to count mail-in ballots that have either the wrong date or no date where indicated on the outer envelope. The ruling was 4 to 3, with those 3 justices writing a dissent in the case.

    The order from the court found that the lower court, which had ruled that those ballots must be counted even with the errors, lacked jurisdiction in the case because only Allegheny and Philadelphia Counties were mentioned in the case and not all of the state’s 67 counties.

    The order reads: “AND NOW, this 13th day of September, 2024, the order of the Commonwealth Court is VACATED. The Commonwealth Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to review the matter given the failure to name the county boards of elections of all 67 counties, and because the joinder of Al Schmidt, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Commonwealth, did not suffice to invoke the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction.”

    In practice, this means that in the coming presidential election, officials will not count any ballots that are either misdated or undated ballots. The jurisdiction issue could be addressed by the plaintiffs in the case before the election. The plaintiffs are listed as Black Political Empowerment Project, Power Interfaith, Make the Road Pennsylvania, OnePA Activists, New PA Project Education Fund, Casa San Jose, Pittsburgh United, League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania and Common Cause Pennsylvania.

    But don’t think for a minute this will keep Pennsylvania Democrats from trying to steal the election just like they did in 2020, as they won’t start “counting” absentee ballots until election day.

  • And speaking of Pennsylvania voting fraud: “Pennsylvania[‘s Luzerne County] bans drop boxes after woman caught with multiple ballots.”
  • “Ex-Border Patrol Chief Says He Was Instructed By Biden-Harris Admin To Hide Terrorist Encounters.”

    In a scathing revelation before Congress, former San Diego Sector Border Patrol Chief Aaron Heitke accused the Biden-Harris administration of covering up a sharp rise in encounters with suspected terrorists at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    During a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing titled “A Country Without Borders: How Biden-Harris’ Open-Borders Policies Have Undermined Our Safety and Security,” Heitke said he was muzzled from releasing critical information on the number of Special Interest Aliens (SIAs) — individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism — apprehended in California.

    “I was told I could not release any information on this increase in SIAs or mention any of the arrests,” Heitke testified. “The administration was trying to convince the public there was no threat at the border.”

    According to Heitke, arrests of individuals with terror ties skyrocketed under President Joe Biden’s watch. The former Border Patrol chief revealed that before 2021, his sector had apprehended between 10 to 15 SIAs annually. By 2022, that number had shot up to over 100, with even more recorded in 2023.

    “Once word was out that the border was far easier to cross, San Diego went to over 100 SIAs in 2022, well over that in 2023, and even more than that registered this year. These are only the ones we caught,”

  • Scott Adams lays down some truth bombs:

    You’ll need to click on that to expand it. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “US Secures Convictions, Guilty Pleas As CCP-Directed Spying Exposed.”

    For years, Beijing has been deepening its hold on America, drawing intelligence from the U.S. government while silencing critics with the help of agents embedded in U.S. society.

    The United States is now hitting back—and seeing results, according to experts.

    In early September, prosecutors arrested Linda Sun, former aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, accusing her of acting on behalf of Beijing in exchange for gifts and payouts valued in millions of dollars to her family.

    There has also been a marked increase in the rate of convictions or pleas in recent months. The Justice Department has brought forth dozens of CCP-directed espionage and foreign agent cases in the past four years, resulting in at least 13 convictions or pleas, with more than half of those taking place this year—including three in the past month. an Epoch Times review of the court records show.

    On Aug. 6, a Chinese American scholar posing as a pro-democracy activist was convicted by a jury for spying on dissidents for the CCP.

    On Aug. 13, a U.S. army intelligence analyst from Texas pleaded guilty to selling military secrets to the CCP.

    On Aug. 23, a software engineer who worked two decades at Verizon pleaded guilty to gathering intelligence on countless dissidents and organizations targeted by the CCP since 2012.

    Case documents reveal a broad range of criminal actions taken by agents, often different from what most may imagine to be spying. Beyond industrial espionage and covert influence campaigns, the regime has directed hacker rings, including a group that was charged and sanctioned this year for waging a 14-year campaign on the United States.

    “I feel that our nation must take every opportunity to stop these threats,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee for the House Armed Services Committee, told The Epoch Times, noting that the U.S. intelligence community has identified Beijing as the number one threat to the United States.

    Bacon has experienced Chinese espionage attempts firsthand. Last year, he was hacked by CCP-linked hackers who also broke into email systems of State and Commerce department officials and dozens of other groups.

    “Can we ever say that whatever actions we are taking are enough? I don’t believe so as the threats are increasing in frequency, sophistication, and national security impact,” Bacon said.

    The CCP has long targeted people of Chinese descent—of whom there are more than 60 million people outside China—as potential assets in its intelligence operations.

    Among those charged by the DOJ in the foreign agent cases are officials of the CCP’s top intelligence gathering agency Ministry of State Security (MSS), Chinese citizens traveling to the United States under false pretenses, hackers residing in Asian countries; as well as asylees, permanent residents, and U.S. citizens of Chinese descent.

    Some reside in the United States while dozens of others charged are known to reside in China, and will now face arrest if they ever set foot on American soil.

    There are also many who are U.S. citizens that aren’t of Chinese descent. They include active military members, former law enforcement, and experts in competitive fields.

  • “Israeli Strike Kills Hezbollah Commander behind 1983 U.S. Embassy Bombing.”

    An Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed senior Hezbollah military official Ibrahim Akil on Friday, Israeli Defense Forces announced. Although Hezbollah has not confirmed the reports, Lebanese officials said earlier in the day that the strike killed at least eight and wounded 59.

    Israeli Defense Forces reportedly targeted two residential buildings in southern Beirut. Akil is the head of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force and Jihad Council, and is sanctioned by the U.S. Department of State for playing a role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, in which a suicide bomber murdered 63 people, including 52 embassy employees. The State Department designated Akil a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2019, and offered a reward of “up to $7 million for information” about the Hezbollah leader.

    Good. Burn in Hell, terrorist scumbag.

  • Despite Israel’s recent successes against Hezbollah’s command and control, Hezbollah was still able to launch multiple missile attacks against northern Israel today. Indeed, the whole theater is quite spicy:

  • A few thoughts on Operation Grim Beeper.
  • “Two chiefs with the New York Fire Department have been arrested on bribery charges.” Those are Brian E. Cordasco, 49, and Anthony M. Saccavino, the same ones the FBI raided.
  • Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary says that New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and California those states are now “uninvestable.” The taxes are too high and “the regulatory environment is punitive.”
  • American Transit Insurance Company [is] insolvent.” They insure hire cars, cabs, Uber, etc. “As in, ‘can’t pay their bills’ insolvent. As in ‘can’t pay claims’ insolvent.”
  • Ukraine just blew up a Russian ammo dump in Toropets so large that the explosion was visible from space. (More.) (And still more.)
  • Remember Thierry Breton, the eurocrat who got in a slapfight with Elon Musk over Twitter refusing the censor people and knuckle-under? He just resigned. “France’s European Union commissioner Thierry Breton abruptly resigned on Monday amid an ongoing dispute with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. He was slated to serve a second term after being re-appointed by French President Emmanuel Macron, The Guardian reports.” Evidently von der Leyen wants the Commission to be “gender balanced.” Social justice will oft social justice mar…
  • “The mayor of Atlantic City, Marty Small Sr., and his wife [La’Quetta Small] (the superintendent of schools) have both been officially indicted.” Despite both being Democrats, they weren’t indicted for fraud, but for brutally beating their own teenage daughter. Bonus: The daughter told principal Constance Days-Chapman of the abuse, and instead of telling the police, she told the abusive parents. She’s being charged, too.
  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Harris County’s revamped version of their unconstitutional socialist guaranteed income program.
  • Has technology killed bands?
  • Both North Carolina and parts of Europe got hit with some near-Biblical floods this week.
  • New Hobbit game obviously more woke bullshitAfter swearing for months they wouldn’t add AI to D&D, Hasbro to add AI to D&D.
  • “23andMe’s board quits en masse: A former tech darling is in turmoil after all seven of its independent board members resigned. 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki is now the sole remaining member following a disagreement over taking the company private.”
  • ESPN’s NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski retires. He was at the top of his profession, and reportedly walked away from a $30 million contract. But given Disney’s ongoing debacles, it’s quite possible they asked him to take a haircut or let him retire in advance of a layoff.
  • Jane says/Can you taste my fist today? Also, the tour’s been cancelled on the basis of chin music. A shame, really, since Jane’s Addition has a fairly unheralded role as the musical bridge between LA’s “hair metal” scene and the harder alt rock edge of acts like Nirvana.
  • “FBI Tries To Distract From Old Trump Assassination Attempt With New Trump Assassination Attempt.”
  • “FBI Says We May Never Know The Motivation Of The Would-Be Trump Assassin Who Was A Biden-Harris Supporter And Donated To Democrats 20 Times.”
  • “Biden Promises Next Trump Assassin Will Be A Woman Of Color.”
  • “DOJ Warns If Trump Is Elected He Will Do To Them All The Stuff They’re Doing To Him.”
  • “Media Assures Americans The Real Threat Is The Side That Keeps Getting Shot At.”
  • “Kamala Safe And In Stable Condition After Attempted Interview.”
  • “Rashida Tlaib Uninjured After Her Pager Mysteriously Explodes.”
  • “BREAKING: Israel Kills Thousands More Terrorists With Exploding ‘200 Free Hours of AOL’ CDs.”
  • It’s a LinkSwarm tradition to end with an amusing dog clip or story. So here are some pretty Chow Chows…painted up to look like Pandas in a Chinese zoo:

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • I’ve now been unemployed for one year, so feel free to hit the tip jar.





    Paxton Sues Travis County Over Partisan Voter Drive

    Sunday, September 8th, 2024

    We’ve had a lot of stories of Harris County Democratic Party corruption, but don’t forget another Democratic establishment in the People’s Republic of Travis County, which Texas Attorney General is suing for funding an illegal partisan voter drive.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued members of the Travis County Commissioners Court as well as the Travis County tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, asking the court to “prevent them from giving a partisan organization thousands of taxpayer dollars to identify the names and addresses of potentially unregistered voters without statutory authority.”

    In the suit, Paxton alleges that Civic Government Solutions (CGS), a voter outreach company, was hired to “conduct services for the County that the County is unauthorized to perform.”

    Paxton’s lawsuit explains that CGS CEO Jeremy Smith has made public comments about “getting people to vote for progressive candidates.” Smith is also listed as CEO of Civitech, a company that Axios described as a “progressive data startup.”

    And what do you know! A search of Open Secrets shows that of 142 political donations, all went to Democrats.

    “Travis County has blatantly violated Texas law by paying partisan actors to conduct unlawful identification efforts to track down people who are not registered to vote,” said Paxton in a press release.

    “Programs like this invite fraud and reduce public trust in our elections. We will stop them and any other county considering such programs.”

    Paxton is arguing that the Travis County officials acted ultra vires — beyond their legal authority, in other words — by contracting with Smith and his company to collect personal information and target unregistered voters.

    He further claims that these officials only have the powers explicitly granted to them by law, and argues that nothing in the Election Code allows them to identify and reach out to potentially unregistered voters, some of whom may not be eligible to vote.

    Paxton argues that this action could harm the integrity of Texas elections by encouraging ineligible people to register to vote. As a result, Paxton is asking the court to issue a temporary and permanent injunction to stop Travis County from moving forward with the contract.

    Pushing to get ineligible people to vote for Democrats seems to be the Democrats’ top goal this year, be it illegal aliens or convicted felons, and they’ve been pursuing it by varied means. Paxton has also fought voter fraud with search warrants in Bexar County and preventing similar “justice” organizations from soliciting voter registration outside DPS offices.

    Paxton seems to determined that the voting fraud that happened in 2020 won’t be happening here in Texas.

    Another Texas Win Against Transsexual Mandates

    Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024

    Texas Attorney General has won yet another victory against the Biden Administration’s social justice regulatory overreach, this one against transsexual health care mandates.

    The State of Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton have been granted a nationwide stay against the Biden administration’s new rule that would defund federally-funded healthcare providers found to be refusing patients “gender transition” procedures.

    The Biden administration announced a rule change last April under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), described as seeking to hold the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) “health programs and activities to the same nondiscrimination standards as recipients of Federal financial assistance.”

    On August 30, U.S. District Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle ruled in favor of Texas and Montana, ordering that the modification of the Affordable Care Act at issue is precluded from implementation across the nation.

    “Here, federal agencies are attempting to impose a sweeping new social policy by manipulating and perverting the statutory text that constrains them,” Kernodle wrote in his opinion.

    “Nothing in these statutes authorizes HHS — or any federal official — to require healthcare providers to perform novel “gender-transition” procedures or force States to subsidize them.Texas and Montana seek a stay or preliminary injunction to prevent the irreparable harm that will undoubtedly follow. The Court grants the States’ request.”

    Snip.

    Texas and Montana sued HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in June for allegedly requiring “healthcare providers and States to perform and pay for so-called ‘gender-transition’ procedures — or else lose federal funding.”

    The filing asserted that the new rule would “defund healthcare providers across the country who refuse to perform or pay for experimental, unproven, and potentially dangerous ‘gender transition’ procedures.”

    Montana and Texas were then both granted a statewide stay the following month, banning the application of the new HHS rule.

    The victorious states then requested a nationwide stay in order to extend the relief granted by the court against the HHS rule across the country.

    Paxton reacted to the stay, saying in a release, “When Biden and Harris sidestep the Constitution to force their unlawful, extremist agenda on the American public, we are fighting back and stopping them.”

    “By blocking this destructive policy, which would have forced taxpayer-funded hospitals to conduct unproven and dangerous ‘gender transition’ procedures, Texas has delivered a major victory for Americans across the country.”

    For anyone that thought the Democratic Party’s creepy love of child transsexism was a passing fade, the Biden Administration’s institutional determination to mandate child mutilation services into law should belay that naive hope. It also indicates that the evil ObamaCare has wrought on America’s health care is far from over. Fortunately, the vast majority of ordinary Americans have not fallen prey to this madness, and Paxton et al. have put a stop to this particular transsexual madness for now.

    Also, any appeal will be heard in the Fifth Circuit Court, which has previously frowned on the Biden Administration’s previous attempts to mandate transsexism by judicial fiat.

    Texas AG Paxton Sues Biden Administration Over Illegal Aliens Yet Again

    Monday, August 26th, 2024

    Another week, another lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against the Biden Administration over breaking immigration law to benefit illegal aliens.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Biden administration over a policy he alleges would allow illegal immigrants to “Parole in Place” (PIP) and receive therwise unpermitted benefits.

    The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration is violating the U.S. Constitution in a new agency rule, established on August 19. That rule establishes a process for “certain noncitizen spouses and noncitizen stepchildren of U.S. citizens” to get around federal prohibitions against certain immigration benefits being obtained until after leaving the country and returning in a legal manner, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) press release.

    “These provisions of law established by Congress serve as powerful disincentives for individuals to cross the border unlawfully. Indeed, were they not present, there would be no practical reason for any alien to abide by the law, wait his or her turn, and only come to the United States when the law provides,” the filing argues.

    “DHS has announced the creation of a program that effectively provides a new pathway to a green card and eventual citizenship.”

    In the lawsuit, Paxton requested the court grant injunctive relief to ban the DHS from implementing the new PIP rule while the policy is on trial.

    “Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the federal government is actively working to turn the United States into a nation without borders and a country without laws. I will not let this happen,” Paxton said in a press release.

    “Biden’s new parole workaround unilaterally grants the opportunity for citizenship to unvetted aliens whose first act on American soil was to break our laws.”

    The lawsuit is a coalition of sixteen states — Texas, Idaho, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming — along with conservative legal organization America First Legal (AFL).

    It was filed against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ur Jaddou, Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Patrick J. Lechleiter, and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young.

    Stephen Miller, president of AFL, said, “Today, we are proud to represent a coalition of 16 states in filing a lawsuit to block an unconstitutional Biden-Harris amnesty program. This executive amnesty gives over one million illegals legal status, work permits, and a path to voting citizenship.”

    “It is brazenly unlawful, a deadly accelerant to the ruinous border invasion, and we will use every lawful tool to stop it.”

    Texas and its co-litigant states have racked up a pretty good record against the Biden Administration as of late, winning cases over border wall construction, the unilateral transexual rewrite of Title IX, and even vaccine mandates for the National Guard. Expect Paxton and his state coalition to win this case, too, but the real remedy for the Biden Administration’s willful defiance of border security laws will have to come from American citizens voting in November.

    Election Fraud Search Warrants Executed

    Thursday, August 22nd, 2024

    Remember how Donald Trump was ahead in several states election night only for tons of Biden ballots to be “found” at 4 AM? I hope all Republican officials in every state are working overtime to prevent similar occurrences this November.

    Texas Attorney Ken Paxton seems to be taking nothing for granted, as the Elections Integrity Unit just executed several warrants.

    Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced that his office had carried out search operations as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged election fraud.

    A statement from Paxton’s office reads, “On August 20, 2024, Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Election Integrity Unit executed multiple search warrants in Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar Counties as part of an ongoing election integrity investigation.”

    Bexar County is the big one here, being home to San Antonio, whereas Atascosa and Frio are directly south and southwest of San Antonio. The geographic clustering suggests the warrants may all be part of the same election fraud case.

    These searches are the result of a 2022 referral by 81st Judicial District Attorney Audrey Louis, who flagged concerns about alleged voter fraud and ballot harvesting in the 2022 elections.

    Remember that Democratic politiqueras illegally harvesting votes has been a concern in previous elections.

    “Secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic,” Paxton said. “We were glad to assist when the District Attorney referred this case to my office for investigation. We are completely committed to protecting the security of the ballot box and the integrity of every legal vote. This means ensuring accountability for anyone committing election crimes.”

    Paxton’s involvement in this case is made possible only through the referral by the local District Attorney. This follows a December 2021 ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeals—Texas’ highest court on criminal matters—that declared a state law granting the attorney general unilateral authority to prosecute election cases unconstitutional. The court argued that the Texas Constitution does not expressly provide the attorney general with such authority.

    Democrats have made no secret of their desire to have as many illegal aliens as possible vote in this election, and Paxton is investigating attempts to register illegal aliens to vote.

    Following reports of organizations potentially working in Texas to register illegal aliens to vote, Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced his office is launching an investigation.

    According to a release from Paxton’s office:

    Investigators from the Texas Attorney General’s Election Integrity Unit recently conducted undercover operations to identify potential voter registration of noncitizens in Texas. The investigation has already confirmed that various nonprofit organizations have been located outside Texas Department of Public Safety Driver License offices, operating booths offering to assist in voter registration for persons doing business at the driver’s license offices. But all citizens have already been presented an opportunity to register to vote as part of the process of renewing or being issued an identification card or driver’s license, so there is no obvious need to assist citizens to register to vote outside DPS offices—calling into question the motives of the nonprofit groups.

    I wonder if these unnamed organizations had “justice” or “tides” in their name.

    Paxton said the possibility of this activity is deeply troubling to Texans.

    “If eligible citizens can legally register to vote when conducting their business at a DPS office, why would they need a second opportunity to register with a booth outside? My office is investigating every credible report we receive regarding potential criminal activity that could compromise the integrity of our elections,” said Paxton.

    “The Biden-Harris Administration has intentionally flooded our country with illegal aliens, and without proper safeguards, foreign nationals can illegally influence elections at the local, state, and national level. It is a crime to vote—or to register to vote—if you are not a United States Citizen. Any wrongdoing will be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” he added.

    Gov. Greg Abbott expressed support for Paxton’s investigation on X.

    Fortunately, Texas has strong Voter ID laws that should prevent illegal aliens from voting in the 2024 election, but Paxton is obviously trying to close off all potential fraud vectors. Despite what your Facebook friends may post, Texas is in no danger of turning blue anytime soon, but voting could easily tip some down-ballot races. Best to nip it in the bud.

    Eternal vigilance is the price of free elections.

    Paxton Sues Biden Administration Over Transexual Madness Yet Again

    Sunday, August 18th, 2024

    Yesterday I covered the Supreme Court blocking the Biden Administrations unilateral rewrite of Title IX by executive fiat to impose transexism on colleges, but that’s not the only place Democrats are trying to impose their twisted gender ideology. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issuing the Biden Administration over their attempt to impose their gender ideology in Title VII.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is once again challenging the Biden administration, filing a lawsuit against the federal government in an effort to block enforcement guidance that the state argues unlawfully compels employers to adopt “transgender” mandates under the threat of discrimination or harassment lawsuits.

    Specifically, the lawsuit points to a change the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) made in April to the “enforcement guidance on harassment in the workplace” that now includes the definition of “gender identity” under the category of “sex.”

    Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created the EEOC to enforce the prohibitions on employment discrimination.

    The EEOC guidelines explain how sex-based harassment includes harassment based on “sexual orientation or gender identity,” including misusing pronouns and “the denial of access to a bathroom… consistent with the individual’s gender identity.”

    Forcing pronouns on people and making the peasants acquiesce to allowing men in women’s restrooms seems like a huge goal for the Democratic Party, one they’re been relentlessly pushing for over the last decade.

    Paxton argues that the EEOC guidance “relies on an intentional misrepresentation of the Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.” He adds that the decision “did not discuss how such employers must accommodate such employees in the workplace.”

    In Bostock v. Clayton County, the court ruled that firing someone for being “gay or transgender” is a form of sex discrimination, but Paxton argues that this does not extend to accommodations such as pronoun use, bathroom access, or dress codes.

    “Thus,” the lawsuit states, “EEOC may not interpret Title VII to require employers to comply with the Pronoun Accommodation, the Bathroom Accommodation, or the Dress Code Accommodation.”

    The lawsuit asks the court to declare the 2024 guidance unlawful, invalidate it, and permanently prevent its enforcement, as well as cover their legal costs and provide any additional relief deemed appropriate by the court.

    Paxton is joined by the conservative Heritage Foundation in this legal challenge.

    “The Biden-Harris Administration is attempting yet again to rewrite federal law through undemocratic and illegal agency action,” Paxton wrote in a statement.

    “This time, they are unlawfully weaponizing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an attempt to force private businesses and States to implement ‘transgender’ mandates — and Texas is suing to stop them.”

    Pronouns and tranny bathrooms are popular with far leftwing activists, but deeply unpopular with ordinary American citizens. No voters outside of San Francisco (and possibly not even there) would vote for these policies, so the Democratic Party’s activist cadres must impose them by stealth via judicial and executive fiat. Just as with the Title IX cases, expect this radical activist regulation to wither under judicial scrutiny.

    LinkSwarm For August 9, 2024

    Friday, August 9th, 2024

    There’s too damn much going on in the world right now! Compiling the LinkSwarm used to be more like hunting and gathering, but the last few weeks have been like drinking from the firehose.

    The real unemployment rate is crushing ordinary Americans, another Trump assassin thwarted, Maricopa cues up illegal alien voter fraud again, Tim Walz’s own National Guard unit accuses him of stolen valor, Ukraine captures a chunk of Russia, Google is declared a monopoly, a global censorship organization immediately folds at the first sign of scrutiny, the leader of Bangladesh flees, and California fines a business for daring to fly Old Glory.

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Stephen Green is shocked at the real unemployment rate.

    There are lies, damned lies, and government statistics — and maybe none is more damnable than the official unemployment rate which is half the actual rate, according to Rasmussen. Worse, the number of Americans who are neither retired nor employed is more than four times higher than July’s official rate of 4.3%.

    I’ve been writing for months now in quick-hit Instapundit items that this country has been in a jobs recession since the COVID lockdowns and, thanks to Bidenomics, never recovered from. Well, the latest Rasmussen unemployment survey has the numbers.

    The report is paywalled, but I pay the subscription fee (and take the tax write-off) so you don’t have to if you ever wondered where some of your VIP membership dollars wind up.

    Rasmussen surveyed nearly 9,000 American adults and found that in July the percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work — this is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should report each month — was 8.4%. The BLS reported a rosy 4.3% unemployment rate last month, up from June’s equally imaginary 4.1%.

    From there, things only get worse. Because under Bidenomics, of course, they do.

    One in four adult Americans is retired, which is nice for them. Fifteen percent say they’re entrepreneurs (that can be anything from driving an Uber to launching a Silicon Valley startup), and just under 30% are employed by a private company.

    Nearly one in 10 work for the government at one level or another. Those workers are supported entirely by tax dollars without producing any material wealth. Every government employee involved in regulation makes it harder for the rest of us to do so.

    If you’ve been keeping track of these numbers in your head, you might notice they don’t add up to anything close to 100%. About three percent of adults surveyed answered “not sure” about their employment situation, the kind of answer that I assume involves smoking weed. The remaining 9.7% said they were unemployed but not looking — i.e., “Not in Workforce.”

    That means the percentage of Americans who could be working and perhaps would really like to be working but either can’t find work or have given up finding work is 18.1%. That’s more than four times the official unemployment rate.

  • Another week, another assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

    An alleged Iranian agent plotted to hire hitmen to assassinate US government officials — including possibly former President Donald Trump, according to sources and a federal criminal complaint.

    Pakistani national Asif Merchant, 46, is accused of planning political assassinations in New York City in August or early September, and paid $5,000 in advances to men he believed to be contract killers, according to US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.

    “The Iranian indicted in Eastern District today is 100% an agent of the Iranian government,” a law enforcement source told The Post.

    The plot was allegedly in retaliation to the 2020 Trump-ordered killing of prominent Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed Tuesday.

    Trump has been a known target of previous Iranian-backed assassination plots, and the feds believe he may have been one of Merchant’s targets, law enforcement sources told The Post. But, the accused terrorist never divulged the name of who he planned to kill during his meetings with undercover agents — instead cryptically saying only that the target would have “a lot of security.”

  • Last week’s plea bargain deal to let 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and accomplices Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi avoid the death penalty broke a little late to include in the last LinkSwarm, but defense secretary Lloyd Austin has nixed the deal.
  • The Harris bubble is all magical thinking.

    Although the last few weeks have had their alarming aspects – chief among which was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on July 13, the odds-on favorite candidate for president – they have also had their amusing moments.

    In the latter category, I place the sudden queen-for-a-day-like coronation of Kamala Harris.

    True, that coronation was in the nature of an anti-democratic semi-soft-coup (or anti-democratic “inversion of a coup”). Biden and his handlers, right up until the morning of July 21, were insisting that he was not dropping out, that he was “in it to win,” etc. But someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse and out he went.

    Here’s the amusing bit. Until the moment Biden was chased out of the race, Kamala Harris functioned primarily as political life insurance. “You might not like me,” Biden communicated, “but if I go, you’re stuck with her.”

    Biden’s polls were in the toilet and, following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump, were circling the drain, poised for oblivion. But Kamala’s polls were even worse. She was cordially disliked by—well, by everyone. Her staff, her colleagues, but above all, by voters. In the 2020 race, she got no delegates: none, zero, zip. She dropped out of the race for president but was then tapped to be VP only because this half Indian, half Jamaican woman was swarthy enough to pass as black and Biden had promised to select a black female as a running mate. Kamala truly is, as Biden himself acknowledged recently, a DEI vice president.

    And sure enough, Kamala was every bit the disaster people predicted she would be. As a matter of clinical interest, she proved that senility is not the only cause of supreme rhetorical incoherence. Some people, and she is one, come by it naturally. Her tenure as vice president is littered with examples, and she provided another doozy just a couple of days ago when she attempted to comment on the prisoner exchange with Russia.

    It’s painful, as are all the many video clips of Harris angrily denouncing people who say “Merry Christmas,” of her presiding as “border czar” over the disaster of our non-existent southern border, of her outlining how she wants to give Medicare, as well as the franchise, to all illegal immigrants, and how she wants to develop a national data base of gun owners so that she can confiscate firearms by force.

    Can such a person win the presidency? No.

    Then, how can we explain the sudden efflorescence of Harrismania? Democrats are wetting themselves with glee over their sudden fundraising windfalls ($200 million in a week, it is said) and sudden surge in the polls. New York magazine just beclowned itself with a cover showing Kamala sitting on top of the world with Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and even Joe Biden dancing and whooping it up below. “Welcome to Kamalot,” we read: “In a matter of days, the Democratic Party discovered its future was actually in the White House all along.”

    Was it? Again, the answer is no. It is a temporary sugar high caused partly by the feeling of liberation following the sudden release from Joe Biden, partly by the slobbering media jumping all over the reinvention of Kamala like dogs vibrating over a bitch in estrus. The feeling of intoxication may linger through the Democratic convention, but there are already signs that it is fading. I think James Piereson is correct. Kamala’s position now is akin to that of Michael Dukakis (remember him?) in 1988.

    Dukakis was way ahead of George Bush in the summer of 1988. Then it all unraveled.

  • The puppeteers have stopped pretending. “Obamaites Take Over Team Kamala.”

    Ho hum, nothing to see here, just another cycle in which Barack Obama runs for president. What is this, five in a row now?

    In this case, though, we may have to give Kamala Harris a pass. It’s not as if she developed a team of campaign experts on her own. Or that they’d stick around for long if she did (via Memeorandum):

    Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris hired a battery of new senior advisers to her campaign this week, moving swiftly to replace lifetime loyalists of President Biden with Democratic campaign veterans, including multiple leaders of Barack Obama’s presidential bids, according to people briefed on the campaign shifts.

    David Plouffe, a top strategist on both of Obama’s presidential campaigns, joins Harris as senior adviser for strategy and the states focused on winning the electoral college. Stephanie Cutter, the deputy campaign manager for Obama’s reelection who has been working in recent months with Harris, is the new senior adviser for strategy messaging. Mitch Stewart, a grass-roots organizing strategist behind both Obama wins, will become the senior adviser for battleground states. David Binder, who led Obama’s public opinion research operation and previously worked for Harris, will expand his role on the Harris campaign to lead the opinion research operation.

    All of the new hires will report to campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, another veteran of Obama’s two campaigns. She managed Biden’s 2020 campaign and built his 2024 operation from the White House before moving to Wilmington, Del., this year. Harris took control of Biden’s campaign as soon as Biden announced he would not seek reelection, an operation consisting of more than 1,300 employees and more than 130 offices. She asked O’Malley Dillon to remain in charge.

    O’Malley Dillon tried gaslighting this right off the bat, although the Washington Post doesn’t put it that way. “This team is a reflection of the vice president,” she declared, but the Post’s reporting makes it abundantly clear that it reflects Obama rather than Harris. Harris’ existing staffers will remain in place, but the reporting strongly suggests that they will be eclipsed by people who [checks notes] know how to get to Iowa in a primary cycle.

    On one hand, this is smart politics, especially given Harris’ record of abysmal performance on the campaign trail. Until now, Harris has only faced one significant competitive election against a Republican, the AG race in California, which she almost lost while other Democrats won statewide races by double digits. Thanks to California’s jungle-primary system, she won her Senate seat against a fellow Democrat in the general election. She then failed to get to a single primary contest in 2020 after entering that primary cycle as one of the favorites, melting down in two debate exchanges with Tulsi Gabbard and utterly failing to inspire Democrat primary voters.

    If anyone needs an Obama rescue, it’s Kamala.

    Still. During most of Biden’s presidency, Obama’s team largely drove policy, especially in foreign affairs, and Biden’s clear cognitive decline made it appear that someone pulled the strings behind the scene — and Obama was the most likely suspect. Then Biden got humiliated in a debate he demanded and suddenly Obama became even more of a public puppeteer in forcing Biden to withdraw. And now practically his entire political team has taken over Team Kamala even more than they had with Team Biden.

    And not to be too conspiratorial about it, but how did we find out about this? In the oh-so-traditional Friday afternoon news dump.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • “Appeals Court Paves the Way for Illegals to Potentially Steal the Election in Arizona.”

    It seems like the Democrats’ rule of thumb is: if you can’t win, cheat.

    On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself and will now allow Arizonans to register to vote in federal races without having to prove citizenship.

    “It’s another dizzying swerve in the legal battle over a 2022 law that aims ultimately to reverse a portion of the National Voter Registration Act and require all Arizona voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote,” reports USA Today. “The order reopens a path for potential voters who just two weeks ago were barred from using the state voter registration form to sign up to vote unless they could produce proof of U.S. citizenship. It comes with two months left before the Oct. 7 registration deadline for the high-stakes presidential election.”

    The order means people can again use the state-issued voter registration form even if they don’t produce proof of citizenship. Instead, they attest under penalty of perjury that they are citizens, and are limited to voting in federal races only.

    In the first 10 days after the July 18 ruling that required the documentary proof, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office said it had rejected 200 voter applications.

    On Thursday, the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office clarified the impact of the ruling.

    “Election officials may not reject voter registration applications submitted without DPOC, regardless of which form is used,” communications director Aaron Thacker said. DPOC is shorthand for documentary proof of citizenship.

    There is only one reason to allow Arizonans the ability to register to vote without proving citizenship: to let illegals vote. That’s why Joe Biden opened up the border, and that’s why the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed itself.

    (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)

  • Result? Lawsuit.

    America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.

    On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.

    On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.

    America First Legal (AFL) has filed a lawsuit against Maricopa County, Arizona recorder Stephen Richer for failing to remove non-citizens from county voter rolls.

    On Monday the legal organization founded by former senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller sued Richer and Maricopa County on behalf of the Strong Communities Foundation of Arizona and a registered voter and naturalized citizen, for allegedly refusing to verify the citizenship of voters registered in the county, Just the News reports.

    On July 16, AFL sent letters to all 15 Arizona counties demanding that election officials follow state and federal law by ensuring that non-citizens were unable to vote, and warned of legal action if they didn’t by the following week.

    Richer replied via his legal counsel, claiming that he’s following the law by verifying the citizenship of voters – however AFL says he’s lying, as voter rolls have had an increase in the number of registered voters without confirmed citizenship under his watch, and that databases have not been accessed which would verify voters’ citizenship.

  • CNN: “Do you think Kamala Harris is black?” Actual black people in a barbershop: “Nope.” CNN: “You black people have no idea what you’re talking about.”
  • Democrats go searching for Republican praise for Harris and end up committing self-parody. It’s like when National Parks created posters based on their worst Yelp reviews.
  • Michael Malice calls Harris “America’s Wine Mom”:

  • “Tim Walz’s first order as Minn governor was to create DEI council, make himself the chair.

    Tim Walz’s first executive order as the Democratic governor of Minnesota governor was establishing a diversity, equity and inclusion council for all of the state government’s actions and designated himself as the chair. On Tuesday, Waltz was selected to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election.

    The Democratic Vice Presidential nominee told The Associated Press in 2019 that the “One Minnesota Council on Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity” would ensure the “lens of equity” for all state government businesses, including “recruiting; retaining and promoting state employees; state government contracting; and civic engagement.”

    “Walz told reporters Wednesday he’ll chair the council,” the AP said at the time, “patterned on a similar council formed by former Gov. Mark Dayton, but expand its scope to include geographic diversity and other considerations.” Walz said that the point of the council, per AP, was to “work to ensure that all Minnesotans have the opportunity to fully participate in the development of state policy. He says it will ensure that the ‘lens of equity’ is focused on everything the state does, whether it’s transportation projects or hiring.”

    He has spoken many times about the “privilege” he’s been given as a “white man.” “I understand the privilege I’ve been given as a white man,” he said during his leadership, saying that he was in office “not just to talk about the problem” of racial disparity “but the solve the problem.”

  • Walz’s Fellow Guardsmen Set the Record Straight on Veep Candidate’s Military Career: ‘He Bailed Out’.

    It was late in the spring of 2005 when Tom Behrends, a farmer in his mid 40s with three kids, got the call from his superiors: The Minnesota National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery was being sent to Iraq. Tim Walz, the unit’s command sergeant major, had just resigned to run for Congress. Behrends was in line to take his place.

    He’d need to talk with his family, Behrends told his bosses. He had a farm to run and his youngest child was still in elementary school. Because he wasn’t in the unit when it was activated, technically Behrends had to volunteer to go.

    But Behrends told National Review it was clear what he needed to do.

    “My first reaction was, I’m not going to let my soldiers down,” he said.

    Behrends ended up spending 17 difficult months in Iraq with the unit. Among the unit’s tasks was maintaining a key supply route, keeping it clear of explosives. Three of his soldiers were killed and dozens more were injured during the tour, he said.

    Although they were both first sergeants in the Minnesota Guard, Behrends said he didn’t really know much about Walz. They were in meetings together. “The only thing I knew about him is he talked too much, and he liked to hear himself talk,” Behrends said.

    When Democrats decide they need a veteran to help disguise their radical nature, they inevitable seem to pick a “blue falcon,” dating back at least as far as tapping John Kerry in 2004.

  • Stolen Valor: Tim Walz launched political career on false claim as combat veteran in the War on Terror.”

    The Tim Walz Stolen Valor story goes back to the very beginning of his political career. From the onset of his foray into national politics, Walz sold himself to the public and the media as a combat veteran of the Global War on Terror, masking the reality that he quit the military to run for office and avoid being deployed to Iraq.

    Thanks to some quality reporting, we know that the Minnesota governor — who yesterday officially joined the Kamala Harris campaign for President as its VP on the ticket — quit the military in 2005, after learning that his battalion was about to be sent to Iraq. Walz spent his entire career in the Army National Guard learning to lead people into battle, with training and his lone six month overseas deployment to Italy provided at U.S. taxpayer expense. He then retired when he learned he was going to be leading people into battle in Iraq, leaving Minnesota’s 125th Field Artillery Regiment high and dry for a career in politics.

    But that’s not what Tim Walz told the public when he decided to run for public office upon abruptly leaving the military.

    Just months after leaving his battalion to go to Iraq without him, he announced a run for Congress, and the dissembling about his service record began immediately.

    Instead of being honest about his early departure from the military, Walz told the media a much more heroic tale, one that was entirely fictitious.

    To this day there are Democrats who believe that Walz served in Iraq, when he never got closer than Italy.

  • More on the subject.
  • Boom:

    (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)

  • “The Minnesota National Guard has disputed Governor Tim Walz’s military biography, saying that his claims of retiring at the rank of command sergeant major is untrue.”

    Minnesota National Guard spox Army Lieutenant Colonel Kristen Augé told Just the News that Walz, Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate, was demoted and did not retire as a command sergeant major as he has claimed for years – including on his official gubernatorial biography – as he failed to complete a 750-hour course in the Army’s Sergeants Major Academy, a mandatory course for E-9s, the Army’s highest enlisted rank.

    While Walz temporarily held the title of command sergeant major he “retired as a master sergeant in 2005 for benefit purposes because he did not complete additional coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy,” Army Lt. Col. Kristen Augé, the Minnesota National Guard’s State Public Affairs Officer, told Just the News.

    The statement reignited a controversy that began during his 2018 election for governor in which National Guardsman claimed on social media and in a paid ad that Walz declined to deploy to Iraq for combat duty in 2005 and forfeited his title of command sergeant major. Walz chose to run for Congress that year. -Just the News

    The governor’s biography, however, says that “Command Sergeant Major Walz” retired from the Minnesota National Guard in 2005. At the time he was serving as one of the highest ranking members of the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion.

    How is it that stolen valor and career embellishment are so endemic among Democratic office holders? Is it status anxiety, or the arrogance of the entitled? “It’s OK to lie about my record, because I deserve this!”

  • Ukraine has launched a substantial invasion of Kursk oblast in Russia. Update.
  • Ukraine successfully attacks oil depot 2,000km inside Russia with a drone.
  • Massive drone strike hits Morozovsk Airbase and and oil depot, and the ammo cookoff was evidently epic.
  • Ukrainian drones also finished off Russia’s Rostov-on-Don submarine.
  • FBI raids NY home of ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.

    Ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s home in upstate New York was raided by the FBI as part of a federal investigation, Wednesday, officials said.

    An FBI spokeswoman confirmed to The Post that agents conducted a raid on the Delmar home as part of a federal investigation. She declined to comment further, citing the ongoing probe.

    Ritter, a convicted sex offender, told reporters outside his Delmar home after the raid that the warrant focused on potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Times Union reported.

    He recently had his passport seized by the US Department of State as he tried to fly to Russia for a conference – a brouhaha he contended in the Russian propaganda site RT was a spiteful move against his pro-Russia stances.

    The raid came a day after Ritter, the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, palled around with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was in an Albany courtroom for a hearing over whether the independent presidential candidate should be on New York’s November ballot, the Times Union reported.

    Ritter is indeed a Russian tool, but the timing from our increasingly politicized FBI does seem a tad suspicious…

  • Israel Attacks Airbase In Central Syria Known To House Russian Troops.” Do you get the feeling that the more Iran tries to goad Israel into a full-scale war, the less likely they are to enjoy the results?
  • Google has been declared a monopoly.

    Google has engaged in illegal activity by using its search-engine dominance to thwart competition, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a landmark decision that could have major implications for the way Americans consume information.

    The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Google this week, after the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general challenged the tech company’s market dominance in 2020. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said in the decision that Google is a “monopolist” that has “acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Google paid $26.3 billion in 2021, for example, to promote its search engine as the default option on smartphones and browsers.

    “The default is extremely valuable real estate,” Mehta wrote. “Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change.”

    “Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues,” he added.

  • Once again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton took a leading role in bringing the lawsuit. “The legal battle began in October 2020 when Paxton announced that Texas had sued Google for utilizing business strategies to squelch competition for search advertising and internet searches.”
  • In very much related news, the U.S. House moved forward in investigating the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).

    We have been discussing media rating systems being used to target advertisers and revenue sources for certain cites and companies. NewsGuard and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) have been criticized as the most sophisticated components of a modern blacklisting system targeting conservative or dissenting voices. I recently had a series of exchanges with NewsGuard after a critical column. Now, the House Judiciary Committee under Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is moving forward in demanding documents and records from leading companies utilizing the GARM system, a company that I have previously criticized. It is a welcomed effort for anyone who is concerned over the use of these blacklisting systems to curtail free speech. However, time is of the essence.

    The demand to preserve evidence went to various companies, including Adidas, American Express, Bayer, BP, Carhartt, Chanel, CVS and General Motors.

    In my new book, I discuss the rating systems as a new and insidious form of blacklisting.

    It is an effort to strangle the financial life out of sites by targeting their donors and advertisers. This is where the left has excelled beyond anything that has come before in speech crackdowns.

    Years ago, I wrote about the Biden administration supporting efforts like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to discourage advertisers from supporting certain sites. All of the 10 riskiest sites targeted by the index were popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. That included Reason.org and a group of libertarian and conservative law professors who simply write about cases and legal controversies. GDI warned advertisers against “financially supporting disinformation online.” At the same time, HuffPost, a far-left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation.

    Once GDI’s work and bias was disclosed, government officials quickly disavowed the funding. It was a familiar pattern. Within a few years, we found that the work had been shifted instead to groups like the GARM, which is the same thing on steroids. It is the creation of a powerful and largely unknown group called the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which has huge sway over the advertising industry and was quickly used by liberal activists to silence opposing views and sites by cutting off their revenue streams.

    Notably, Rob Rakowitz, head of GARM, pushed GDI and embraced its work. In an email to GARM members obtained by the committee last month, Rakowitz wrote that he wanted to “ensure you’re working with an inclusion and exclusion list that is informed by trusted partners such as NewsGuard and GDI — both partners to GARM and many of our members.”

    GARM is being used by WFA to achieve what GDI failed to accomplish. The WFA sites refers to Rakowitz as “a career change agent” who will “remove harmful content from ad-supported digital media.”

    Rakowitz’s views on free speech are chilling and his work shows how these systems can be used to conceal bias in targeting the revenue of sites with opposing views.

    Rakowitz has denounced the “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” and how civil libertarians cite “‘principles for governance’ and applying them as literal law from 230 years ago (made by white men exclusively).”

    He appears to be referring to free speech.

  • Know who else isn’t wild about GARM? Elon Musk, who’s suing them for coordinated boycott of Twitter/X.

    Elon Musk’s X sued a coalition of advertisers leading a boycott against the social platform, accusing the group of conspiring to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue.”

    The suit takes aim at the World Federation of Advertisers and its initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which led a boycott against the platform formerly known as Twitter after it was acquired by Musk in 2022.

    “The boycott and its effects continue to this day, despite X applying brand safety standards comparable to those of its competitors and which meet or exceed those specified by GARM,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in Texas federal court.

    X accused the coalition and several specific advertisers, namely Unilever, Mars and CVS, of violating antitrust law and circumventing the competitive process with their boycott.

    “The brand safety standards set by GARM should succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting collectively to promote their own economic interests through commercial restraints at the expense of social media platforms and their users,” the platform argued.

    Since Musk’s takeover of the platform, X has struggled to retain advertisers, which were wary of the tech billionaire’s early decisions to roll back content moderation policies and reinstate previously banned users, like former President Trump.

  • So what was GARM’s response to the lawsuit and increased scrutiny? It shut down immediately.

    An advertising industry initiative targeted by an Elon Musk lawsuit is “discontinuing” its activities and has deleted the member list from its website.

    On Tuesday, Musk’s X Corp. sued the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) over what X claims is an illegal boycott spearheaded by a WFA initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). The WFA isn’t disbanding but is halting GARM’s activities, and the GARM member page now produces a 404 error. An archived version of the page from yesterday shows the initiative members, including X.

    X’s antitrust lawsuit has drawn skeptical responses from law professors, who say it will be difficult to prove that companies violated antitrust laws by stopping advertisements. But while X may never obtain financial damages from the advertising group or corporations like CVS and Unilever that it also named as defendants, fighting the lawsuit could be costly.

    Business Insider reported on the GARM shutdown today:

    The advertising trade group The World Federation of Advertisers told its members on Thursday that it was “discontinuing” activities for its Global Alliance for Responsible Media initiative following an antitrust lawsuit filed by Elon Musk’s X against the company earlier this week.

    Stephan Loerke, the CEO of the WFA, wrote in an email to members, seen by Business Insider, that the decision was “not made lightly” but that GARM is a not-for-profit organization with limited resources. Loerke said that the WFA and GARM intended to contest the allegations in X’s suit in court and were confident the outcome of the case would “demonstrate our full adherence to competition rules in all our activities.”

    If that’s not an open admission of guilt, it will do until one comes along. In the meantime, expect this censorship hydra to put up again under another same.

  • What has all that investment in “green” energy gotten California? “Since January 2014, residential average rates for the PG&E service area have jumped by 110%, those of SCE have surged by 90%, and SDG&E rates have soared by 82%….A total of 18.4% of the customers of the three investor-owned utilities are in arrears in their energy bills.”
  • “Bangladesh Leader Flees Country In Helicopter As Protesters Storm Parliament.” “Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, resigned and fled the country on Monday, after protesters defied a military curfew and stormed her official residence. Hasina, who had been in power for 15 years, fled the capital Dhaka along with her sister by a helicopter to India, the daily newspaper Prothom Alo reported, after weeks of violent crack downs on protesters left nearly 300 people dead.”
  • “Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s caretaker government on Thursday, hoping to help heal the country that was convulsed by weeks of violence, forcing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and flee to neighbouring India. Known as the ‘banker to the poor’, Yunus is the pioneer of the global microcredit movement. The Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks.” I’d be more enthused about Yunus if their bank hadn’t been a contributor to the Clinton Global Initiative.
  • “The Israeli army killed Abdel-Zarii, the economy minister of Hamas in Gaza.” Good.
  • The U.S. is sending F-22s to the Middle East, just in case Iran gets spicy.
  • Two Chinese Nationals In U.S. Illegally Stopped With $250,000 In Gold Bars On Them In Texas.”

    Just a normal everyday traffic stop: pulling over a couple of Chinese nationals, driving through Texas, with $250,000 worth of gold bars on their person.

    That was the scene last week in Van Zandt County, according to KETK NBC.

    Sgt. Charlie Hughes of the Wills Point Police Department was monitoring traffic on I-20 near the 533-mile marker when he saw a White Chevy Malibu with Michigan plates committing a traffic violation.

    He then stopped the vehicle and identified the driver as 25-year-old Weijian Chen.

    KETK writes that due to a language barrier, Hughes asked Chen to use a translator app in his patrol vehicle to communicate.

    The officer said that during the interview he “observed multiple factors that lead [him] to believe there was criminal activity afoot.”

    The driver said that he was heading to Dallas and had also been in Florida to “play”.

    The vehicle was rented under the name of the passenger, 46-year-old Wenqiang Lin, who consented to a search but appeared uncertain. A K9 unit alerted to the front passenger door.

    Inside, officials found a Spirit Airlines boarding pass indicating that Weijian Chen had flown from Los Angeles to Atlanta on July 30-31 without any bags. The rental agreement showed the car was rented in College Park, Georgia, on July 31 and was due in Los Angeles by August 3, the report continued.

    A bag behind the driver’s seat contained gold bullion bars worth an estimated $200,000 to $250,000, including:

    • Seven 1-ounce 999.9 gold bars
    • Three 5-gram 999.9 gold bars
    • One 1-gram 999.9 gold bar marked with 20 squares
    • Eight 10-ounce 999.9 gold bars

    After arresting Chen and Lin, Sgt. Hughes contacted U.S. Homeland Security, which revealed both men had entered the country illegally. Lin entered on September 15, 2023, and was awaiting immigration processing in Los Angeles. Chen entered on December 17, 2023, and is also pending immigration judicial action.

  • “Austin ISD Chief Financial Officer Arrested on Insurance Fraud Charges. Austin Independent School District (ISD) Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Eduardo Ramos has been placed on paid leave following his arrest on charges of insurance fraud unrelated to district activities.” Maybe. But I’d still say a forensic audit is in order…
  • New York’s Supreme Court says that New York City has to suck it up and take in more illegal aliens.

    The New York State Supreme Court has denied New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s request for a preliminary injunction against busing illegal immigrants from Texas to the city.

    Adams, who faces challenges from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and others in his reelection bid next year, filed a lawsuit against 17 charter bus companies in January.

    His goal was to stop the companies from busing migrants, many of them undocumented, from communities in Texas to New York. The mayor cited Social Services Law 149, which stipulates that any person “who knowingly brings, or causes to be brought, a needy person from out of state into this state for the purpose of making him a public charge” has an obligation “to convey such person out of state or support him at his own expense.”

    But in her nine-page July 29 ruling, Judge Mary V. Rosado found that the lawsuit was “unconstitutional.”

    Maybe if NYC hadn’t gone out of its way to declare itself a “sanctuary city” I might feel a tiny more smidge of sympathy. Who am I kidding, no I wouldn’t. This is all on Adams’ Democratic Party. Choke on it.

  • Ken Paxton says that ActBlue swears they’ll stop breaking the law.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has provided an update to an investigation related to allegations that the Democratic fundraising operation ActBlue is involved in illicit activities.

    “ActBlue has cooperated with our ongoing investigation. They have changed their requirements to now include ‘CVV’ codes for donations on their platform,” Paxton said in the press release.

    “This is a critical change that can help prevent fraudulent donations.”

    Paxton added that “suspicious activity on fundraising platforms must be fully investigated to determine if any laws have been broken.”

    This alleged “suspicious activity” by ActBlue in Texas has been an ongoing point of contention.

    Current Revolt first reported on the investigation into ActBlue and the allegedly illegitimate donations last week.

    Journalist James O’Keefe recently produced a series of videos where he purported to show alleged money laundering by ActBlue in Texas.

    According to O’Keefe, some individuals in Texas are being reported by ActBlue to have made thousands of individual donations, but said individuals deny them when asked if they made those contributions.

    O’Keefe received a statement from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office regarding some of these incidents.

    “It appears that both donors made voluntary contributions through ActBlue. One donor was reimbursed after contesting some of the charges, while the other cannot recall whether all or only some of the donations were authorized,” the sheriff’s office told O’Keefe.

    I suspect ActBlue will drop any reforms just as soon as they need to launder more money.

  • “Federal Court Orders California College To Drop Censorship Policy. A federal judge ordered a California community college on Aug. 2 not to enforce a poster policy that was used against three students whose anti-communist posters were taken down. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston found that the poster policy of Fresno-based Clovis Community College violated the students’ First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights.”
  • Warner Brothers Discovery took $9.1 billion write-down on it’s network TV assets. As many have observed, this means that not only is CNN worthless from the standpoints of truth, philosophy and morals, but that it’s quite literally worthless as an economic asset as well. It may actually be worth less than your grandmother’s closet full of Beanie Babies…
  • Actually, it could be worth considerably less than nothing. “CNN Could Be Forced to Pay Upwards of $1 Billion from Defamation Suit from Tapper Show.”

    The case may not be as well known (yet), but CNN could be facing a defamation liability rivaling or exceeding the $787 million Fox News paid out to Dominion Voting Systems. NewsBusters recently reported on Florida’s First District Court of Appeals affirming that plaintiff Zachary Young could seek punitive damages, in addition to economic and emotional damages, from the Cable News Network in a civil trial after they allegedly defamed him regarding his work in getting people out of Afghanistan. The total could near or exceed $1 billion.

    For that outcome to be remotely in the cards, Young needed to prove malice and according to the ruling, he’s done exactly that. “Young sufficiently proffered evidence of actual malice, express malice, and a level of conduct outrageous enough to open the door for him to seek punitive damages,” Judge L. Clayton Roberts wrote in the court’s ruling.

    The court felt the high bars for actual and expressed malice were met because of internal CNN messages that were extremely vicious toward Young. Correspondent Alex Marquardt, the “primary reporter” expressed in a message to a colleague that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mfucker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” On that declaration of wanting to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!”

    Alongside Marquardt, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan, who’s a member of CNN’s internally lauded “Triad” of editorial, legal, and standards/practices oversight personnel, described Young as “a shit.”

    In an interview with NewsBusters, Vel Freedman, the lawyer representing Young, said that “everyone makes mistakes” but what CNN’s messages showed was a “systemic problem” inside the network. He added that their internal mechanism for accountability had “clearly failed” and opened themselves to “massive, massive liability.”

    Freedman told NewsBusters that his client had lost between $40-60 million in economic opportunity over the course of his now-damaged career as a security contractor since people in the field no longer wanted to work with him. If a jury awarded his client for emotional damages, the upper end could be as high as $600 million. The court recognizing the malice and outrageous conduct by CNN, effectively removed the cap on punitive damages in the State of Florida.

    All of that meant CNN could be facing upwards of $1 billion in total damages.

  • Dell lays off 12,500 employees. The Biden Recession is bad for everyone, but especially tech workers.
  • “65% of Texans support the adoption of legislation that would provide school vouchers to all parents in Texas, with 33% strongly supporting this legislation. 69% of Texans support the adoption of legislation that would create Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs) for all parents in Texas, with 30% strongly supporting this legislation.” (Hat tip: TPPF.)
  • Bisexual woman dates other women and comes to realize what guys already know: Women are jerks.
  • Northern California business fined for flying the American flag.
  • “Six Christians arrested in Paris for driving around in bus marked ‘Stop attacks on Christians.'” Note: Not the Bee.
  • “Drunken Kamala Mistakenly Picks Wrong Shapiro For VP.”
  • “Democrats Worried Choosing Jewish Vice President May Cost Them The All-Important ‘Death To America‘ Vote.”
  • “Josh Shapiro Annoyed He Got This ‘Death To Israel’ Neck Tattoo For Nothing.”
  • “Tim Walz Vows To Make America As Great As Minneapolis.” “As the governor who presided over the looting and burning of Minneapolis during the summer of 2020, I have full confidence that I will be able to apply my experience stirring up race riots on the national scale as well as I have in my home state.”
  • “Woman Who Lost To Male Boxer Says Everything’s Fine, She Just Fell Down Some Stairs.”
  • “Taylor Swift Jet Launches Retaliatory Strike On ISIS Stronghold.”
  • Good dog!
  • Speaking of which:

  • I think these LinkSwarms have gotten too long. Since I’m I’m still between jobs, I have more time to waste on read the Internet. “Oh, there’s a link I should include!” Wash, rinse, repeat. I’m either going to have to start cutting these down in size or start doing multiple LinkSwarms a week.

    Hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    Texas Declares Victory In Border Wall Lawsuit

    Saturday, August 3rd, 2024

    Texas won another victory over the Biden Administration, this time simply because the feds failed to file an appeal.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a court order for President Kamala Harris Joe Biden’s administration to finish the border wall.

    Biden issued an executive order to stop the border wall and told DHS to find a way to redirect the $1.4 billion Congress allotted for the wall.

    Paxton sued the administration “under the Administrative Procedure Act, arguing that Biden violated the Consolidated Appropriations Act.”

    In May, Paxton received a final injunction from Judge Drew Tipton of the United States District Court Southern District of Texas McAllen Division.

    Biden’s administration had 60 days to appeal, which it never did, securing the victory for Texas.

    “For the reasons stated in this Court’s Memorandum Opinion and Order granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Preliminary Injunction in part, (Dkt. No. 128), the Court concludes that Plaintiffs have demonstrated success on the merits of their claims brought under the Administrative Procedure Act for violation of the Consolidated Appropriations Act,” Judge Drew Tipton wrote. “Accordingly, the Court concludes that entry of a permanent injunction is appropriate.”

    The order told the administration it could not implement any plan to divert funds from their original purpose.

    The funds must go to “construction of physical barriers, such as additional walls, fencing, buoys, etc.”

    Paxton said: “This is a final victory against Biden’s attempt to defund the border wall. His Administration illegally sought to prevent the construction of the border wall and illegally attempted to repurpose the money allocated for American safety and sovereignty, working instead to keep the border open. I sued and won to stop their unlawful scheme. Now, the Administration has thrown in the towel by declining to appeal their defeat and will be legally required to build the wall.”

    There’s a saying that half of life is simply showing up, but the Biden Administration couldn’t even do that. Maybe everyone was distracted by the soft coup against the administration’s titular figure head. Or maybe the plain language of the statute made them realize that the case was hopeless.

    This is another in an increasingly long string of victories Paxton has secured over the Biden Administration, which is probably the real reason Dade Phelan’s backers tried to hard to engineer his impeachment.

    At the very least this should mean an end to federal agents actively attempting to dismantle border security barriers erected by the state of Texas.

    Now it remains to be seen if the Biden Administration will actually resume border wall construction, or if they’ll merely try to stall and run out the clock. I suspect the latter, given that open borders have become a central goal for the social justice-infected Democratic Party. The courts have ways to enjoin government action, but it is much harder to compel an Administration to do what it doesn’t want to do, as there are simply too many ways for a bureaucracy to wage passive resistance.

    Border Invasion Validation

    Thursday, August 1st, 2024

    Texas’ theory that the state is undergoing an illegal alien invasion, as per Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the Constitution of the United States of America, due to the Biden Administrations willfully ignoring border control laws, just got some validation from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit permitted the State of Texas’ buoy barrier in the Rio Grande to remain in an en banc ruling Tuesday night, but an ancillary opinion from Judge James Ho endorses one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s main border contentions: that the state is being “invaded” by illegal immigrants.

    Overall, the court’s ruling was more procedural than substantive on the case’s full scope — that the U.S. government’s argument that the 1,000-foot stretch of water constitutes a “navigable water” under federal law is “unlikely to succeed” on its merits.

    But Ho’s part-concurrence, part-dissent opinion takes a different route, fully endorsing the State of Texas’ invocation of the much-debated “invasion clause.”

    Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”

    After shrugging off, then toying with the suggestion that an invasion be declared to expand Texas’ border enforcement capabilities, Abbott gave it his full-throated backing in January.

    “President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense,” he stated.

    Dozens of counties in Texas had already invoked the invasion clause, currently at least 55.

    It then became one of the central contentions in the state’s legal strategy related to border security and illegal immigration.

    The case for such a declaration has been made slowly over the last couple of years, including by such center-right political figures as Ken Cuccinelli, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President Donald Trump, and his new employer the Center for Renewing America.

    Cuccinnelli touted the ruling, saying on social media, “This is a complete victory for the Center for Renewing America’s position that [the invasion clause] of the US Constitution provides states with a complete and unreviewable right to self-defense (called ‘non-justiciability’).”

    In the 2022 gubernatorial race, former state Sen. Don Huffines and former Texas GOP chair Allen West both hit Abbott on the issue, who to that point had not endorsed the idea. Like Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton expressed skepticism of the concept in 2022 before becoming one of its biggest proponents.

    Now, its proponents have written legal backing from the bench — implicit from the majority opinion and explicit from Ho’s.

    “It is of course true that the invocation of Article I, § 10, clause 3 constitutes a non-justiciable political question; the parties agree on that, as does every member of our en banc court,” Judge Andrew Oldham wrote in his concurring opinion.

    Right off the bat, the court is agreeing wholesale that it cannot determine what constitutes an invasion — throwing that jurisprudential ball back into the state’s and federal government’s court.

    Legal barrier presented, meet legal barrier removed.

    Then Ho goes much further, actually opining on the merits of Abbott’s invocation.

    “A sovereign isn’t a sovereign if it can’t defend itself against invasion. … States did not forfeit this sovereign prerogative when they joined the Union,” Ho wrote.

    “Indeed, the Constitution is even more explicit when it comes to the States. Presidents routinely insist that their power to repel invasion is implied by certain clauses. But Article I, section 10 is explicit that States have the right to ‘engage in War’ if ‘actually invaded,’ ‘without the Consent of Congress.’”

    Ho cited multiple historical examples of states engaging in military action to repel foreign actors, including deploying state soldiers to the border in the 19th century to beat back bandits who’d crossed the southern border from Mexico.

    An important distinction made there and applicable to today’s situation is that those bandits were not agents working on behalf of a foreign nation but were foreign individuals, just as illegal border crossers are today.

    In Ho’s assessment, the distinction between a cartel actor and a run-of-the-mill immigrant matters not when evaluating the invasion clause’s application; it still counts as a state protecting itself from a foreign actor.

    He also cited the U.S.’s pursuit of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and airstrikes against Middle Eastern terrorist groups both before and after 9/11.

    Few in 2020 would have thought that Democrats were so determined to open the border to an invasion of illegal aliens that federal courts would be referencing Pancho Villa’s raids in comparison, yet here we are.

    “The use of military force in these contexts continues to be a matter of great controversy,” Ho continued.

    “It was controversial before September 11, and it remains controversial after September 11. But that’s the point. These are political controversies, not judicial ones. Which private acts warrant military action are questions for the political branches, not the courts.”

    Ho then wrote, “Supreme Court precedent and longstanding Executive Branch practice confirm that, when a President decides to use military force, that’s a nonjusticiable political question not susceptible to judicial reversal. I see no principled basis for treating such authority differently when it’s invoked by a Governor rather than by a President.”

    “If anything, a State’s authority to ‘engage in War’ in response to invasion ‘without the Consent of Congress’ is even more textually explicit than the President’s.”

    June border apprehensions by U.S. Border Patrol agents showed a 29 percent dip, but the monthly encounters are still in the six figures and approaching two million total for the Fiscal Year 2024. And that doesn’t include the number of “got-aways” that evaded state and federal police.

    Ho continues, “To begin with, ‘there are no manageable standards to ascertain whether or when an influx of illegal immigrants should be said to constitute an invasion.’”

    “It’s hard to imagine that anyone would conclude that a few border crossings would suffice to justify a military response. On the other hand, numerous officials have concluded that military action was warranted in response to bands of Mexican criminals in the 19th century and terrorist attacks in the 20th and 21st centuries. Determining where the present illegal immigration crisis falls along this spectrum is not a legal question for judges, but a political determination for the other branches of government.”

    The founders crafted the constitution not just to balance the power of the three branches of government, but also to balance the power of the federal government with the states (which they intended to have more power than the federal government), and the power of individuals to oppose the state, and thus by distribution of power to different entities thwart tyranny. But I suspect even at their most cynical, the founders would never imagine that a political party would deliberately engineer the invasion of America by millions of foreigners merely for political gain…