CBS Censors Own Documentary After Ukraine Outraged: ‘30% Of US Weapons Gone Missing’
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CBS has censored its own documentary investigative reporting after an avalanche of pushback from supporters of Ukraine and its military. The segment highlighted that tons of weaponry shipped from the United States to the country’s military has gone missing, and sounded the alarm as billions in dollars more have been pledged by the Biden administration.
“CBS partially retracted a documentary in which it said that shipments of weapons to Ukraine from the US had been going missing,” Insider reports Monday. “CBS tweeted on Monday that it had removed a a video promoting the documentary that included a months-old quote saying most aid was not making it to Ukraine’s front lines.” Below is the deleted tweet, with the offending line of “30% of it [US-supplied arms and munitions] reaches its final destination.”
The segment, titled “Arming Ukraine” was published days ago, and follows on the heels of Pentagon and US intelligence officials issuing similar warnings that there are few mechanisms in place to legitimately track the arms flowing into the country. One admin official even described in April that, “we have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
The fresh CBS reporting added to these concerns, quoting the the head of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, Jonas Ohman, who said bluntly:
“All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination.”
Ohman stressed that actually getting the weapons to the designated Ukrainian army units involves having to navigate an array of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players.” This also as there have been persistent reports that some weapons end up on the black market, or might possibly be moved outside Ukraine.
A senior crisis adviser with Amnesty International also told CBS in the documentary, “What is really worrying is that some countries that are sending weapons do not seem to think that it is their responsibility to put in place a very robust oversight mechanism.”
Officials with the Ukrainian government promptly accused the mainstream US network of playing into “Russian propaganda”.
Along with a widespread social media backlash from Kiev’s supporters and pundits, this was apparently enough for CBS to announce it is “updating” the segment, with some of the offending lines now dropped…
The Ukrainian government further put out a dubious claim that“all received equipment is accounted for” – this despite months of Pentagon officials warning that this isn’t the case.
Unsurprisingly, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, has demanded that CBS News conduct an internal investigation to get to the bottom of things.
There’s of late been growing scrutiny placed on the Ukrainian side, after Russia and Putin have long been the main focus of Western mainstream media reporting. It appears that efforts to “police” western MSM reports to deflect any possible criticism of Kiev whatsoever during the war is now ramping up.
Lindsey Graham Nods in Agreement as ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal Mocks Americans For Being Freaked Out Over an Army of 87,000 New IRS Agents (VIDEO)
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The Democrats’ tax-and-spend bill making its way through the senate adds 87,000 new IRS agents to an already politicized agency.
The so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will give $79.6 billion to the IRS over the next 10 years.
The Wall Street Journal said the new army of IRS agents will target the middle and upper-middle class.
Senator Richard ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal (D-CT) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Sunday morning appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” to discuss Biden’s massive spending bill.
Lindsey Graham laughed as Senator Blumenthal mocked Americans rightfully concerned about a new army of 87,000 IRS agents.
“The idea that there’s gonna be this army of IRS agents descending on the average American is just preposterous,” Blumenthal said as Lindsey Graham laughed and nodded in agreement.
WATCH:
According to new analysis, the IRS audits the poor at 5 times the rate of everyone else, CBS News reported.
Tax season is a fraught time for taxpayers, who are understandably eager to get their refunds quickly and who may fret that processing hiccups could delay their checks. But some Americans may have more grounds for concern than others: low-income households with less than $25,000 in annual earnings.
This group is five times as likely to be audited by the IRS as everyone else, according to a new analysis of IRS data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University. About 13 tax returns out of 1,000 filed by those earning less than $25,000 were audited in the fiscal year ended September 30, compared with a rate of 2.6 for every 1,000 returns for people with incomes above $25,000, TRAC found.
The reason is a rise in what are known as “correspondence audits,” a review of a tax return that’s typically handled by the IRS via letters and phone calls, as opposed to the typically more complex face-to-face audits. More than half of the correspondence audits initiated by the IRS last year involved low-income people who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), TRAC found.
The IRS also has a history of targeting conservative groups.
Lois Lerner, the controversial director of the tax-exempt organizations division at the Internal Revenue Service, has a long sordid history of targeting conservatives.
Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. Eventually, she lost her case. At one point Lerner even asked a targeted conservative if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?)
Conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch obtained IRS documents in 2018 revealing backstabber Senator John McCain’s former staff director urged the IRS, including the corrupt Lois Lerner to engage in “financially ruinous” targeting of conservative Tea Party groups.
RNC warning to Trump: If you run for president, we stop paying your legal bills, says official
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Republican leaders who worry that Donald Trump could hurt their midterm chances by announcing a presidential run too soon are hoping he’ll be dissuaded from doing so by the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal payments, according to an RNC official.
Since October 2021, the Republican National Committee has paid nearly $2 million to law firms representing Trump as part of his defense against personal litigation and government investigations.
But an RNC official told ABC News that as soon as Trump would announce he is running for president, the payments would stop because the party has a "neutrality policy" that prohibits it from taking sides in the presidential primary.
In January, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said, "The party has to stay neutral."
"I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024," she added. However she has since reaffirmed that Trump "still leads the party."
RNC officials would not comment on the record for this story. Representatives for Trump also declined to comment.
This isn’t the first time that legal bills have been seen as possible leverage over Trump.
According to the book "Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show," by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Trump told McDaniel he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — only to back down after McDaniel made it clear to Trump that the party would stop paying his legal bills for his post-election challenges and take other steps that would cost him financially.
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a "Save America" rally in support of Arizona GOP candidates on July 22, 2022, in Prescott Valley, Ariz.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
Both Trump and McDaniel have denied the story.
According to the RNC’s most recent financial disclosure to the Federal Elections Commission, from October 2021 through June of this year, the RNC paid at least $1.73 million to three law firms representing Trump, including firms that are defending him in investigations into his personal family business in New York. Last month alone, the RNC paid $50,000 to a law firm representing Trump in June.
The latest tally tops the $1.6 million maximum figure that the Republican Party’s executive committee reportedly voted to cover for Trump’s personal legal bills during an RNC meeting last year, a figure that The Washington Post, which first reported on the agreement in December, wrote could increase further with the party executive committee’s approval.
The RNC reported payments to law firms representing Trump as recently as mid-June, indicating the party leadership’s unfettered support for the former president and heightening critics’ concerns about the party’s neutrality ahead of the 2024 presidential primary season.
"I don’t think there’s been any effort" by the RNC to remain neutral, longtime Republican donor and Canary LLC CEO Dan Eberhart told ABC News. "This is a symbiotic relationship."
"The RNC needs Trump or Trump surrogates or Trump’s likeness to raise money, and Trump wants them to continue paying his bills and be as pro-Trump as possible," Eberhart said. "So neither is in a hurry to cut the umbilical cord."
The RNC has continued to fundraise off of Trump’s name in its emails to supporters, touting a so-called "Trump Life Membership," boosting his social media platform, and, most recently, promoting Trump’s first visit to Washington, D.C., since January of last year. Other potential 2024 presidential candidates and key party figures like former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have not received the same spotlight as Trump, experts say.
Eberhart said the current relationship between Trump and the RNC is putting other potential 2024 presidential candidates at an "absolute disadvantage."
"Other Republican candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president have good reason to worry that the party apparatus is rigged against them in its unwavering support for Trump," echoed Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the progressive government-watchdog group Public Citizen.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel gives remarks to a packed room at the opening of the RNC’s new Hispanic Community Center in Suwanee, Ga., on June 29, 2022.
Ben Gray/AP
"By paying Trump’s extensive legal bills, the RNC is indirectly helping finance the Trump campaign," Holman said. "And given the history of the RNC zealously defending Trump, other Republican candidates should expect that they are not just running against Trump, they are also running against the Republican Party."
Eberhart said "it’s an open secret" within the Republican Party that "nobody wants Trump to announce his candidacy until after the midterms."
"Everyone thinks it’ll scramble the midterms and we could potentially destroy the advantage we have" if Trump would announce too early, Eberhart said. "It makes Trump more relevant and gives the Dems potentially a way to reset the race."
RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn, who declined to comment on the RNC’s recent legal payments to firms representing Trump, had previously told ABC News that "as a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP."
"It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never-ending witch hunt and attacks on him," Vaughn told ABC News in January, in response to questions about the party’s earlier legal payments for Trump.
The Republican Party committee has described the legal payments for Trump as support for the former president against political attacks against him. But at least two of the three firms that have been paid on behalf of Trump are involved in legal work on behalf of the former president regarding investigations against his personal businesses by the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney.
Although both officials are Democrats, they have both said their probes are not politically motivated.
In all, the $1.7 million paid in total to the three firms includes more than $862,000 paid to NechelesLaw LLP, $516,000 paid to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, and $350,000 paid to van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin, the RNC’s disclosure filings show. The most recent payments are $50,440 to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP in mid-June and $186,182 to NechelesLaw LLP in May.
Former President Donald Trump delivers speaks at the America First Agenda Summit hosted by America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., on July 26, 2022.
Kyle Mazza/TheNEWS2 via ZUMA Press Wire
Neither NechelesLaw LLP, Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, or van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
The RNC is reportedly not covering Trump’s legal bills related to the House special committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But as previously reported by ABC News, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, and his presidential committee-turned-PAC Make America Great Again PAC have been footing legal bills for witnesses involved in legal battles related to the events of Jan. 6, which has raised concerns about witness coercion from Jan. 6 committee members and legal experts.
Holman, the watchdog group lobbyist, said regulations that would govern legal expense funds for executive branch officials and candidates have been proposed to the Office of Government Ethics. Among the proposals are regulations that would enforce contribution limits, prohibit certain funding sources, and require the full disclosure of where money comes from and how it is spent.
"Until OGE finalizes these rules, however, Trump and the RNC legally can do almost whatever they want to pay for Trump’s legal woes and largely evade meaningful disclosure of the sources and expenditures of these funds," Holman said.
Trump conduct, conversations part of Justice Dept. investigation
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The Justice Department is investigating President Donald Trump’s actions as part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to four people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors who are questioning witnesses before a grand jury — including two top aides to Vice President Mike Pence — have asked in recent days about conversations with Trump, his lawyers, and others in his inner circle who sought to substitute Trump allies for certified electors from some states Joe Biden won, according to two people familiar with the matter. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The prosecutors have asked hours of detailed questions about meetings Trump led in December 2020 and January 2021; his pressure campaign on Pence to overturn the election; and what instructions Trump gave his lawyers and advisers about fake electors and sending electors back to the states, the people said. Some of the questions focused directly on the extent of Trump’s involvement in the fake-elector effort led by his outside lawyers,including John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani, these people said.
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In addition, Justice Department investigators in April received phone records of key officials and aides in the Trump administration, including his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, according to two people familiar with the matter. That effort isanother indicator of how expansive the Jan. 6 probe had become, well before the high-profile, televised House hearings in June and July on the subject.
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol built their case over a series of eight public hearings. Here’s how they did it. (Video: Blair Guild/The Washington Post)
The Washington Post and other news organizations havepreviously written that the Justice Department is examining the conduct of Eastman, Giuliani and others in Trump’s orbit. But the degree of prosecutors’ interest in Trump’s actions has not been previously reported, nor has the review of senior Trump aides’ phone records.
A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesman and a lawyer for Meadows both declined to comment.
The revelations raise the stakes of an already politically fraught probe involving a former president, still central to his party’s fortunes,who has survived previous investigations and two impeachments. Long before the Jan. 6 investigation, Trump spent years railing against the Justice Department and the FBI; the investigation moving closer to him will probably intensify that antagonism.
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Federal criminal investigations are by design opaque, and probes involving political figures are among the most closely held secrets at the Justice Department. Many end without criminal charges. The lack of observable investigative activity involving Trump and his White House for more than a year after the Jan. 6 attack has fueled criticism, particularly from the left, that the Justice Department is not pursuing the case aggressively enough.
In trying to understand how and why Trump partisans and lawyers sought to change the outcome of the election, one person familiar with the probe said, investigators also want to understand, at a minimum, what Trump told his lawyers and senior officials to do. Any investigation surrounding the effort to undo the results of the election must navigate complex issues of First Amendment-protected political activity and when or whether a person’s speech could become part of an alleged conspiracy in support of a coup.
Many elements of the sprawling Jan. 6 criminal investigation have remained under wraps. But in recent weeks the public pace of the work has increased, with a fresh round of subpoenas, search warrants and interviews. Pence’s former chief of staff, Marc Short, and lawyer, Greg Jacob, appeared before the grand jury in downtown Washington in recent days, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Both men declined to comment.
The Justice Department efforts are separate from the inquiry underway by the House committee, which has sought to portray Trump as responsible for inciting the Capitol riot and for being derelict in his duty for refusing to stop it. Both Short and Jacob have testified before the committee, telling lawmakers that Pence resisted Trump’s attempts to enlist him in the cause.
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Unlike the Justice Department, the House panel does not have the power to launch criminal investigations or charge anyone with wrongdoing.
The Justice Department probe began amid the smoke, blood and chaos at the Capitol and has led to criminal charges against more than 840 individuals, expanding to include an examination of events that occurred elsewhere in the days and weeks before the attack — including at the White House, in state capitols and at a D.C. hotel.
There are two principal tracks of the investigation that could ultimately lead to additional scrutiny of Trump, two people familiar with the situation said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
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The first centers on seditious conspiracy and conspiracy to obstruct a government proceeding, the type of charges already filed against individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and on two leaders of far-right groups, Stewart Rhodes and Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who did not breach the Capitol but were allegedly involved in planning the day’s events.
The second involves potential fraud associated with the false-electors scheme or with pressure Trump and his allies allegedly put on the Justice Department and others to falsely claim that the election was rigged and votes were fraudulently cast.
Recent subpoenas obtained by The Post show that two Arizona state legislators were ordered to turn over communications with “any member, employee, or agent of Donald J. Trump or any organization advocating in favor of the 2020 re-election of Donald J. Trump, including ‘Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.’ ”
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No former president has ever been charged with a crime in the country’s history. In cases when investigators found evidence suggesting a president engaged in criminal conduct, as with Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton, investigators and successive administrations concluded it was better to grant immunity or forgo prosecution. One goal was to avoid appearing to use government power to punish political enemies and assure the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has vowed that the Jan. 6 investigation will follow the facts wherever they lead and saidthat no one is exempt or above scrutiny, while refusing to divulge information outside of court filings.
Garland told NBC News in a Tuesday interview that the department pursues justice “without fear or favor. We intend to hold everyone, anyone, who was criminally responsible for the events surrounding January 6th, for any attempt to interfere with the lawful transfer of power from one administration to another, accountable — that’s what we do. We don’t pay any attention to other issues with respect to that.”
The Jan. 6 investigation is by some measures the largest ever undertaken by the Justice Department. While investigators in nearly every part of the country have been involved, the lion’s share of the work is being done by three offices: the U.S. attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, and the criminal and national security divisions at department headquarters.
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In the probe’s first year, prosecutors focused largely on the people who breached the Capitol, some of them violently, charging hundreds with interfering with or assaulting police or obstructing an official proceeding.
This year, the fake-elector scheme has become a major focus of the Justice Department inquiry. After Trump lost the election, lawyers and others close to him urged GOP officials in key states to submit alternate and illegitimate slates of electors to reject the results of the state vote totals. Those would-be electors were aided in their effort by Trump campaign officials and Giuliani, who said publicly that the rival slates were necessary and appropriate, and has been described as overseeing the strategy.
Last month, federal agents fanned out in multiple states to serve grand jury subpoenas, execute search warrants and interview witnesses — a significant escalation of overt investigative activity. As part of that effort, agents searched Eastman’s electronic devices, and conducted a search at the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who enthusiastically embraced some of Trump’s last-ditch efforts to stop Biden from becoming president. Many of those who received subpoenas were told specifically to turn over their communications with Giuliani.
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The Justice Department inspector general is also an important player in the investigation, as it examines Clark’s role as a department official in allegedly furthering the efforts.
In a call on Dec. 27, 2020, witnesses have said, Trump told acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that he wanted his Justice Department to say there was significant election fraud, and said he was poised to oust Rosen and replace him with Clark, who was willing to make that assertion.
Rosen told Trump that the Justice Department could not “flip a switch and change the election,” according to notes of the conversation cited by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“I don’t expect you to do that,” Trump responded, according to the notes. “Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”
The president urged Rosen to “just have a press conference.” Rosen refused. “We don’t see that,” he told Trump. “We’re not going to have a press conference.”
Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report.
Watch – Activist Confronts “Beto” O’Rourke: ‘You’re Exploiting Dead Children’ for Political Gain!
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Democrat gubernatorial candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke was challenged by an activist Wednesday during a town hall focused on gun control – just one week after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Beto, who embarrassed himself last week when he interrupted a press conference with Gov. Greg Abbott (R), the Uvalde mayor and mourning Uvalde victim family members, was called out by comedian and activist Alex Stein amid the rally in Dallas aimed at demonizing firearms.
“Hey Beto, why do you fantasize about killing children?” Stein told Beto while filming the interaction.
“Beto you’re using this… you’re exploiting these children!” Stein yelled at him, as the audience in attendance grew unruly.
Beto’s henchmen later forcibly removed Stein from the event.
Speaking at the Thurgood Marshall Recreation Center, the former Texas congressman used the Uvalde school shooting as ammo to attack Abbott’s gun policies and the Second Amendment.
“On [Abbott’s] watch, he has chosen to make it – not harder – but easier for people to purchase firearms,” O’Rourke said.
O’Rourke renewed his call to stop selling weapons like AR-15s and AK-47s but stopped short of repeating his pledge in 2019 to pursue a mandatory buyback program that would require gun owners to give up those weapons.
During his rally in Dallas on Wednesday, O’Rourke also called for universal background checks, safe gun storage regulations and red flag laws that would flag people who might be a danger to take their guns away.
Beto was also confronted over the weekend by political commentator Drew Hernandez, who additionally accused him of “exploiting dead kids.”
Alex Stein’s brand of comedic activism has grown highly popular on social media for its effective satirization of liberal insanity.
Stein found his first viral success with a troll of the Dallas City Council, where he sang a freestyle rap facetiously supporting Covid vaccines.
Law enforcement officials have successfully recovered dozens of missing children as part of a joint task force operation in West Texas.
The three-week operation, known as “Operation Lost Souls,” started in late April in the Texas counties of El Paso, Midland, Ector and Tom Green and recovered 70 children ranging in age from 10 to 17 who were victims of sex trafficking, physical and sexual abuse, according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security.
“Operation Lost Souls exemplifies Homeland Security Investigations’ commitment to protecting the public from crimes of victimization. In this case, we are looking out for our children — our community’s most precious resource,” said HSI El Paso Deputy Special Agent in Charge Taekuk Cho.
“HSI is committed to continue working with our law enforcement partners to locate, recover and help missing children heal, while ensuring that perpetrators are held responsible for these heinous crimes and brought to justice.”
The Biden administration is requiring schools to comply with its LGBT policies or lose billions in federal funding for school lunches.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service announced in May it will prevent low-income students from participating in its National School Lunch Program if their public school does not adopt the administration’s interpretation of Title IX, which holds that the federal civil rights law’s provision against discrimination based on sex includes designations of sexual orientation and gender identity. The move was originally reported by The Center Square.
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem (R.) said her state will take legal action.
"Joe Biden has threatened to take away children’s school lunch money to pursue his radical agenda," Noem said. "He’s targeting states like ours that make it clear biological men do NOT belong in girls’ bathrooms and sports. If you act on this, Joe, we’ll see you in court and we will win."
Critics of the administration’s decision said it could unnecessarily harm disadvantaged students. Christian K-12 schools that participate in the NSLP can apply for a religious exemption, but public and nonreligious private schools must follow the new rules or lose their funding.
"All people should be treated with dignity and respect, but it’s wrong for the federal government to take away free meals from economically disadvantaged students if their schools do not embrace radical gender ideology," Greg Baylor, a senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Washington Free Beacon.
The announcement builds on President Joe Biden’s Day One Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, which permits transgender students to use male or female bathrooms and play sports with either sex. Biden’s executive order drew on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which altered the meaning of "sex" in Title VII to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Biden administration will also force schools that receive funds from FNS to investigate accusations of sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. Students at colleges and universities who reject the Biden administration’s definition of sex could also lose their Federal Student Aid.
"Any discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in FNS programs will be handled as sex discrimination," a USDA spokeswoman told the Free Beacon.
Baylor suspects most public schools will comply with the new interpretation as they heavily rely on federal funding. He encouraged parents to submit their concerns to the Department of Education, which is expected to issue new Title IX protections soon that could permit transgender individuals to access sex-segregated spaces.
Jonathan Butcher, a fellow in education at the Heritage Foundation, said the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX would also prohibit schools from informing parents of their child’s decision to assume a different gender.
"It is a parent’s right to know what their children are doing or what sort of health services or even counseling services are being provided to their children in a school setting," Butcher said.
Parents Defending Education director of outreach Erika Sanzi called the Title IX decision "preposterous."
"The notion that schools will not receive funding for student meals if they refuse to let biological males use the girls’ bathroom and compete against girls in athletics is so preposterous, it sounds like parody," Sanzi said.
Update June 2, 2022, at 10:15a.m.: This piece has been updated with a comment from Gov. Kristi Noem (R., S.D.)
Commentary: CNN’s Dana Bash Reminds Viewers What Lefties Really Believe: Better to Kill Children Than Let Them Grow Up Poor
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CNN’s Dana Bash wants you to remember a very important feature of Roe v. Wade: It keeps poor kids from being born.
On Sunday, Bash was interviewing Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson on “State of the Union” about a law he signed in 2019 that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned, including only an exception for the life of the mother.
(As the Supreme Court nears its decision on a case that could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade, The Western Journal will be providing the news and analysis you need to know — all from a Christian, conservative perspective you won’t find in the mainstream media. If you support our coverage, please consider subscribing.)
Arkansas is one of 13 states that have so-called “trigger laws” — legislation that would ban abortion should the decision be returned to the states by the Supreme Court. If the court’s final opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health looks anything like the draft opinion leaked by Politico earlier in the month, that’s set to change — and you can bet the media’s ire will quickly turn from the conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade to the governors of these states.
On Sunday, we got a preview of the kind of treatment they’ll get.
First off, Bash pressed Hutchinson over the lack of exception for rape and incest in Arkansas’ trigger law. Hutchinson said he supported a clause for rape and incest but conceded that it might not get through the legislature. (Of course, abortions due to rape and incest are rare — and it’s unlikely Bash or anyone else who raises this point would support the bill aside from this.)
Next, she said she wanted “to ask broadly about the responsibility of men here” and asked if Hutchinson was “going to change the system in Arkansas to hold men equally responsible for the children they’re bringing into the world” via paternity tests and court proceedings. Hutchinson said they would work to “speed up the system” should it be feasible and would make “sure that there’s the assistance that’s needed.”
So there are those two shopworn arguments, still not that great after all these years. Bash’s third argument: Does Arkansasreally need more poor kids?
“Arkansas already struggles to support vulnerable children. Nearly one in four children in Arkansas lives in poverty. More than 4,600 kids are already in your state’s overloaded foster care system,” Bash said.
“Do you really think that your state is prepared to protect and care for even more children if abortion does become illegal there?”
Hutchinson noted they’d “had historic challenges with poverty in Arkansas.”
“But you’re talking about access to health care. Under my leadership, we continued the Medicaid expansion. So, we have improved health care access in our state. We have increased the support for foster parents and foster children,” he continued.
“It’s been a high priority. And so we’re addressing those needs. Obviously, there’s always opportunity to do more. And we have to address this issue with compassion because of the difficult circumstances and the fact that you’re dealing with the most vulnerable of our population.”
While one understands Hutchinson was there to defend the law, not dismantle the ugliest aspects of the left’s worldview, one can’t help but wish Hutchinson had turned around and asked whether being poor makes an individual any more or less of a human life.
In fact, that could be said of all of Bash’s objections to Arkansas’ trigger law: Every single one is divorced from whether or not the unborn child is human life. That’s the whole raison d’être of the law, and the protection of unborn life isn’t diminished if its the product of rape or incest, if it has a deadbeat father or if it’s (heavens forbid) poor.
My guess is that this wouldn’t fly on CNN, even if Bash had asked it: “Mr. Governor, your state has many poor families whose plight will be worse as their babies become toddlers. Shouldn’t poor parents be allowed to kill their toddlers?”
Should Roe v. Wade be overturned?
Yes: 100% (2 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
Why, then, should this be allowed to stand? Is poor life worth less than middle- or upper-class life? Fathers should self-evidently take responsibility for their children, and if they refuse to, they should face societal repudiation and state intervention for the purposes of supporting the mother — but does that make a child with a delinquent parent any less of a child?
But that’s the problem with the left’s arguments — and why they try their darnedest to avoid the L-word. If they pretend it’s a foregone conclusion that a fertilized, viable embryo isn’t necessarily a human life until it exits the mother’s womb — or at least until some vague point of “viability” in between fertilization and birth, better later than sooner — they don’t have to confront why abortion is a moral injustice, merely why outlawing the termination of the unborn could be inconvenient for women.
In doing so, however, Bash and others have revealed something about the leftist mindset: To them, an unborn child carried by a poor mother is intrinsically worth less than an unborn child carried by a wealthy mother. They can’t say that out loud, mind you, but the subtext is as clear as day.
Guest Jeff Nyquist joins guest host Mike Adams on The Alex Jones Show to break down the reports of leaked audio revealing China’s plans for global war against the United States.
Listen to the translated leaked audio or read the transcript of Chinese Communist Party military leaders discussing impending wartime mobilization and preparedness efforts against the US:
I am not sure how I missed this story, but it happens, I guess.
I am usually pretty good at catching anything that has to do with the Clinton crime family, but since their reach is so widespread, it can happen from time to time.
According to a recent report, the particular crime occurred in 2016, but there was no arrest until 2021.
That does explain why the story would be missed by many of us, but it is important to note that it is rather strange how Hillary and Bill Clinton are close pals and allies with so many pedophiles.
Sadly, here is just another name to add to the ever-growing list of pedos linked to the Clintons.
Steven Pigeon has been a close friend to the Clintons for YEARS and a huge mover and shaker in the Dem party.
He’s close to Obama, Carter, Schumer, and Cuomo. You name it, but the Clintons were his “political home.”
He even worked to get Hillary the Dem nomination in 2015.
Back in 2015, Niagara Falls Reporter reported that Democratic strategist and Clinton associate Steve Pigeon is gearing up to do his part to help Hillary Clinton win the nomination and ultimately the presidency in the 2016 election.
If you haven’t heard, Hillary is running for president. She will be in Iowa today (Tuesday, April 14) to begin a campaign that Pigeon told a WBEN radio audience on Sunday will be focused on wage stagnation and the dying middle class.
“You really need to go door-to-door in Iowa, and that’s what she will be doing,” said Pigeon, who worked for President Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 and 1996 and served as a top aide under Clinton Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
Pigeon said the early focus of Hillary Clinton’s campaign would be on personal politics, meeting people in small groups and not in amphitheaters, and addressing the needs of middle-class families.
As you can see, this guy is thick as thieves with Bill and Hillary.
That’s him on the right below.
Pigeon was arrested for rape of a child under 11-years-old and sexual assault.
Reports indicate this child was a family member of his and is female.
She reportedly told her mom what happened 5 years later, and in 2021, Pigeon was arrested.
Steve Pigeon had been held since last Friday when he was charged under a sealed indictment with raping a child, who claims the incident occurred five years ago when they were under the age of 11.
Pigeon, 61, faces charges including Predatory Sexual Assault Against a Child, conviction upon which could land him in prison for the rest of his life, as well as Rape in the First Degree, Criminal Sexual Act, Sexual Abuse, and Endangering the Welfare of a Child.
State Supreme Court Justice William Boller, after hearing arguments in court Monday morning, set Pigeon’s bail at $250,000 cash, or $500,000 fully secured bond, or $750,000 unsecured bond.
Mr. Pigeon denies any wrongdoing.
Why do the Clintons befriend so many scumbuckets?
via threepercenternation.com https://threepercenternation.com
