If at First You Secede

by Paul Jacob: The secessionists won.

Last year, I reported on the seemingly quixotic attempt by rural Oregonians to divorce themselves, politically, from the cosmopolitan woke-crazies in Portland, Salem and Eugene by voting via initiative, county by county, to leave to form a “Greater Idaho” with the neighboring state. Well, those secesh ballots were cast on the 18th, and voters in Malheur, Sherman, Grant, Baker, and Lake counties “approved various measures that require county officials to take steps to look into moving the Idaho border west to incorporate the counties.”

The Epoch Times story, from which I learned the news, is oddly titled “Oregon Counties Vote to Secede Into Idaho.”

Well, one doesn’t secede into anything, one secedes from.

The plan is, after secession, to accede into Idaho.

The opposite concept of secession being accession.

Disgruntled rural Oregonians are begging their governments to allow a double maneuver: secede-then-accede.

The secessionists won the vote, but what happens next? The idea that the Democratic-controlled state government in Salem would allow this is a stretch. And though Idaho’s Republican governor hasn’t pooh-poohed the idea, no guarantee there, either. Plus, the deal would take congressional approval.

Still, the secede-accede strategy makes sense — political bodies are less kludgy if made up of somewhat like-minded people, not people who cannot stand each others’ guts. The sad truth of government today is that the malign intent of many is not “Divide and Conquer” but “Lump Us All Together and Glory in Making Our Opponents Pay and Pay and Pay for What They Hate.”

Arguably, this is driving us crazy.

And some to secession . . . and into new states.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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About That Ceasefire, Rising Anti-Semitism, Biden's Race Baiting

by Gary Bauer: About That Ceasefire
Yesterday a ceasefire was announced between the nation of Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. That's good news. So, what about President Biden's role in all of this?

First, he had absolutely nothing to do with the ceasefire, in spite of his efforts to act like he brokered it. He did not.

In fact, a strong case can be made that while the terrorist group Hamas is responsible for the violence, Biden's weakness triggered the conflict. He did so by repeatedly signaling that he wasn't going to stand with Israel as strongly as President Trump did.

• Trump cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority because it was promoting terrorism and anti-Semitism. Biden gave the Palestinian Authority $235 million with no strings attached.
• Trump named his ambassador to Israel a month before he took office. Biden still has not named an ambassador. Israel's enemies see that as a sign that our alliance with Israel isn't that important to Biden.
• Trump brokered peace treaties (the Abraham Accords) between Israel and five Arab nations. The Biden White House mocked those peace treaties, claiming President Trump did nothing in the Middle East.

Every day of the conflict, Iran urged Hamas to kill more Israelis. Incredibly, the Biden Administration remained at the negotiating table trying to cut a deal to give Iran billions of dollars.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed an end to the fighting, but he warned that any future aggression from Hamas would be met with "a new level of force."

Rising Anti-Semitism
Unfortunately, the violence wasn't contained to the Middle East. Throughout the course of this conflict, anti-Semitism has surged in Europe and here in the United States.

• Jewish diners were attacked in Los Angeles.
• An Orthodox Jewish man walking to his synagogue in Los Angeles was chased by two cars with Palestinian flags. The Jewish man was convinced his life was in danger as the people in the cars were chanting, "Allahu akbar!"
• A Jewish man was attacked in broad daylight yesterday in Manhattan by a gang of seven masked pro-Palestinian thugs. High-powered commercial fireworks were thrown at Jews in New York City's Diamond District.
• Meanwhile, CNN, the Washington Post and New York Times have given virtually no coverage to this sudden outburst of vile anti-Semitism.

It's no coincidence that these disgusting attacks have spiked in the past two weeks as so-called "progressive" leaders have engaged in raw lies about Israel.

They have accused Israel of intentionally targeting civilians. That's a lie. It's Hamas that does that.

They accused Israel of starting the conflict. That's a lie. Hamas started the conflict.

They have smeared Israel as an apartheid state. That's a lie. Israel is the most diverse state in the Middle East.

To be clear, when a Jew is attacked in America, that's not an anti-Israel statement. That's an anti-Semitic attack. I happen to agree with Israel's foreign policy. But whether you agree or disagree with Israeli policies, you have no right to physically harm a Jew.

I urge Christian pastors during this critical time to reach out to your local synagogue. Let them know that you are speaking out against anti-Semitism and praying for the peace of Jerusalem.

There is some drift among certain elements of Christianity regarding support for Israel, particularly among those who don't view the Bible as the inspired word of God. Some of these "Christians" insist that Jerusalem must be given "back" to the Palestinians. They're deeply misguided and dangerously wrong.

erusalem was the capital of the Israeli people when Washington, D.C., and London were still swamps. Islam did not exist until 600 years after the death of Jesus. Some Palestinian leaders argue that Jews were never in Jerusalem, that the Western Wall is not part of a synagogue, that Jews have no historical claim to David's City.

Well, if Jews were never in Jerusalem, then the entire Christian Bible is a lie. So for Islamic supremacists, the effort to erase Jewish history from Jerusalem has the added benefit of erasing Christianity from the Holy Land too.

Biden's Race Baiting
Yesterday, Joe Biden signed into law new legislation cracking down on hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Of course, I condemn all crimes, including those motivated by ethnic, racial or religious hate.

Democrats rammed through this legislation claiming that hate crimes against Asian Americans spiked in the past year because Donald Trump referred to the coronavirus as the "China virus." But it is a "Chinese virus."

There is a well-established history of referring to a virus by its place of origin, just like we refer to COVID variants by their places of origin, like the "British variant" and the "Brazilian variant" and the "Indian variant." COVID-19's origin was communist China.

Biden mentioned two heinous attacks at the event yesterday – the deaths of Heather Heyer, who was killed during the 2017 riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Khalid Jabara, a Christian Lebanese immigrant who was killed in 2016.

Neither victim was Asian or a Pacific Islander. So why did he cite these crimes? Well, in both cases the murderer was a white man, charged with a hate crime and labeled a white supremacist.

In other words, Biden was continuing to fuel the left's narrative that all hate in America stems from white men. That narrative is obviously false, and obviously racist.

And kudos to Will Cain for exposing the truth. Cain dug into the research on anti-Asian American hate crimes and he discovered that they predominately occur in three major cities – New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco – not exactly "MAGA country."

Moreover, Cain found that statistics from the NYPD show that "over 90% of the perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes in New York City were black or Latino." If you're a leftist trying to demonize Trump and his supporters, you can't use those stats.

Sadly, there's a history of such attacks that goes back many years. (Here and here.) That's not Donald Trump's fault. Nor is it evidence of America's "systemic racism." It is evidence of sin that has no skin color.

The race baiting by this administration must end. It's time for Republicans to get over their nervousness on racial issues and proudly defend Reverend King's legacy of a truly colorblind society.

Back To The Future
If the 2024 presidential election were held today, Donald Trump would be on his way back to the White House. According to a new poll:

• 73% of Republicans want Donald Trump to run again.
• In a potential GOP primary, Trump leads with 57%, followed by Mike Pence (10%), Ron DeSantis (8%), Nikki Haley (5%) and Liz Cheney (1%).
• In a hypothetical 2024 race against Kamala Harris, Trump leads 49% to 45%.

Good News

• Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed legislation protecting children from so-called "gender-confirming" medical procedures.
• Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed legislation protecting unborn babies from abortion after detection of a heartbeat.
• Republican state attorneys general are demanding that Biden reinstate the Keystone XL Pipeline, and shut down programs that teach biased critical race theory in our schools.
• The Utah legislature passed a resolution condemning the teaching of critical race theory.
• The Supreme Court ruled 9-to-0 against the Biden Administration that police must have a warrant to search a home and seize lawfully-owned firearms. This is a critical victory for the Second and Fourth Amendments.
• Pennsylvania voters rolled back the governor's power to issue emergency declarations after repeated abuses during the pandemic that severely impacted the state's economy and the 2020 elections.
• A federal judge suspended a COVID relief program because the Biden Administration was discriminating on the basis of race and sex, specifically against white applicants.
• House Republicans are demanding that the Space Force reinstate Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, who was fired for exposing Marxist critical race theory in the military.

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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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Why Does the Left Hate Israel?

Victor Davis Hanson

by Victor Davis Hanson: As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war.

It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and the woke institutions such as professional sports, academia, and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel.

They are in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and often has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants.

The Left in general believes we should judge harshly even the distant past without exemptions. Why then, in venomous, knee-jerk fashion, does it fixate on a nation born from the Holocaust, while favoring Israel’s enemies, who were on the side of the Nazis in World War II?

It was not just that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, was a Nazi sympathizer. Egypt, for example, welcomed ex-Nazis for their hatred of Jews and their military expertise—whether the infamous death camp doctor Aribert Ferdinand Heim or Waffen-SS henchman Otto Skorzeny. The Hamas charter still reads like it is cribbed from Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

The Left claims it champions consensual government and believes the United States must use its soft power clout to isolate autocracies. But the Palestinian Authority and Hamas refuse to hold free and regularly scheduled elections. If an Israeli strong man ever suspended free elections and ruled through brutality, U.S. aid would be severed within days.

If history and democratic values cannot explain fully the hatred of Israel on the Left, perhaps human rights violations do. But here too there is another radical asymmetry. Arab Israeli citizens enjoy far greater constitutional protections than do Arabs living under either the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.

Is the Left bothered by the allies of Hamas? After all, most are autocracies such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

We return then to other reasons for the woke furor directed toward Israel.

In part, the Western Left despises the unapologetically successful—as if they are always beneficiaries of unfair privilege. Underdog Israel was not so hated from 1947-1967. Then it was poor, more socialist, and in danger of being extinguished by its many neighboring enemies.

But after the victories in the 1967 and 1973 wars, the Israeli military proved unconquerable, no matter how large the numbers, wealth, and armaments of its many enemies.

For the Left, Israel’s current strength, confidence, and success mean it cannot be seen as a victim, but only as a victimizer. The more its Iron Dome missile defenses knock down the flurry of Hamas rockets, the more its planes take out those who launched them, so all the more the Left bizarrely believes Israel wins too easily and acts “disproportionately.”

In the virtue-signaling world of the contemporary West, Israel has become caricatured as playing the role of the American white police, the Palestinians a foreign version of the oppressed Black Lives Matter movement. The Palestinians then are woke, the Israelis not so much.

The Left also has a strange idea of current “imperialism” and “colonialism.” The general rule is that Westerners cannot settle in numbers in the non-West. But the reversal is certainly not true. Millions of Middle Easterners are welcomed into Belgium, France, Germany, the U.K., and the United States.

Yet, Jews have been in what is modern-day Israel since nearly the dawn of civilization. And their 1947 borders only grew after they were attacked and threatened with extinction.

Again, the Left always claims that its anti-Israelism has had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.

But it is almost impossible now to make that distinction when woke criticism obsesses over democratic Israel and ignores far greater oppressors and oppressed elsewhere.

Why are there no demonstrations in major Western cities damning the Communist Chinese government that has put 1 million Muslim Uighurs in camps? Why are the world’s millions of former refugees—the Volga Germans, the East Prussians, the Cypriot Greeks—long ago forgotten, and yet the Palestinians alone deified as perpetually displaced by the Jews?

Our formal NATO ally, Turkey, received little global pushback for its treatment of the Kurds, or its frequent intolerance of religious minorities. Why then does the Jewish state alone always earn such venom?

Hating democratic Israel while it is under attack is not just a reflection of the new woke and ethically bankrupt Left. It is also a symptom of a deeper pathology in the West, one of moral equivalence, amoral relativism—and self-loathing.

Hating Israel, then, has become the surrogate Western way of hating oneself.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T American Greatness.

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How Will We Know Who Won the War?

by Caroline Glick: Maybe one day, we will discover that the impetus for Hamas’s newest onslaught against Israel wasn’t the pending Supreme Court decision about whether or not to respect the property rights of Jewish landlords in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem. Maybe we’ll discover that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to deflect Palestinian public opinion away from his decision to cancel the elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council and chairmanship had little to do with Hamas’s missile offensive against Israel or the Arab Israeli pogroms against their Jewish neighbors in cities and on roads throughout the country.

It’s possible that in the fullness of time, we will learn that, acting with Iranian guidance and permission, Hamas chose to open its new campaign against Israel now because its leaders and their Iranian bosses were desperate to block MK Mansour Abbas from making good on his offer to provide parliamentary support for the next government of Israel – whatever form it takes.

Mansour Abbas, the leader of the four-man Ra’am Islamist Knesset faction is a riddle. Is he playing Israeli Jews for fools, speaking of Jewish-Muslim cooperation from one side of his mouth while staying true to the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist creed from the other side? Or is he the real deal; the domestic Arab Israeli expression of the Abraham Accords, predicated on a willingness to make lasting peace between Arabs and Jews?

The truth, at this point, is unknowable.

In the face of the violent Arab Israeli onslaught against Jews countrywide, now is no time for Israelis to base a governing coalition on a riddle like Abbas. But while for Israelis he is a source of confusion, for Hamas, Abbas is a nightmare. Whatever Abbas’s actual intentions are, it is self-evident that Hamas and its partners and supporters think he is acting in good faith and consequently, they view him as the gravest threat their longstanding political war against Israel has ever faced.

In a speech in Doha, Qatar on May 15, translated by MEMRI, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh discussed the meaning of Hamas’s new war. Although he didn’t mention Mansour Abbas, the text of his speech demonstrated that Abbas was living rent-free in Haniyeh’s head. Haniyeh declared that obliterating the very notion of true peace between Arabs and Jews in Israel was Hamas’s chief goal in this war.

In his words, “Jerusalem unites us. Today the geographical barriers within historic Palestine have been removed. Today Palestine is waging an Intifada from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat.

“They have thought that 70 years or more could kill the spirit of belonging of our people within the occupied land in 1948 [sovereign Israel, CBG]. They thought our people there would lose their identity and would assimilate in the Zionist entity…

“But today our people within the 1948 borders are the ones defending the Al-Aqsa mosque. They are the ones waging an intifada against the occupier and the settlers. Today brothers and sisters, some theories collapse and some are being rebuilt. The theory of coexistence between two peoples within the 1948 borders, a theory they have been cultivating for 70 years, is being trampled underfoot today by our sons and our people in Lod, Ramle, Baka al-Gharbiyeh, the Galilee, the Negev, Rahat, Beersheba and Safed. Safed is ours!”

The axis that supports Hamas begins in Iran continues through Qatar and Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. It then moves to the west – to the European Union and to progressive activists and lawmakers in the Democrat Party in the US.

Azmi Bishara, a former Knesset member who fled to Qatar just before he was arrested for treason for spying for Hezbollah in the 2006 war in Lebanon, serves today as senior advisor to the Emir of Qatar. In an interview with Al Araby network last week, Bishara discussed the expanding ties between the American left and the Hamas-Iran axis. The interview was translated by MEMRI.

Bishara argued that US President Joe Biden’s ostensible support for Israel is a relic of his 40 years in Congress. Bishara claimed that during Biden’s long tenure on Capitol Hill, Congress was controlled by “the Zionist lobby,” so Biden had no choice but to hold the line.

Bishara mocked what he presented as Biden’s slavish devotion to the “Zionist lobby,” scoffing, “Biden’s the one who said you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist. It was Biden who made this strange statement!”

Today, Bishara maintained, the situation in Washington has changed.

“In the long run,” he maintained, “we should rely on the grassroots of the Democrat Party. There are more Arabs and Muslims among these activists now. There are more African-Americans and leftists there…. These people constitute the pressure group within the Democrat Party and elsewhere. We should put our trust in them for the long run.”

The same Arab, Muslim, Black and leftist activists Bishara was referring to that are now sitting in Congress came through for him and his fellow members of the Hamas-Iran axis this week. Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar were joined by a dozen or so other lawmakers as they collectively came out of the closet as anti-Semites.

The Democrat lawmakers adopted classic anti-Semitic language when they condemned Israel as an “apartheid state,” rejecting its very right to exist. They also mounted a pressure campaign on Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanding that he place a hold on an approved sale of $735 million worth of precision guided missiles to Israel.

It took an even more powerful pressure campaign on Meeks from Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to cancel the effort. And while Hoyer was able to avoid a direct assault on US military sales to Israel, the very fact that the progressive anti-Semites in the Democrat caucus put the issue on the agenda – where it still remains – is a testament to the fact that today, they are dictating the terms of debate on Israel in the Democrat Party, and their terms begin with the assumption that Israel is evil. So great is the Democrats’ fear of their anti-Semitic members that this week every single Democrat voted against supplemental aid to Israel and every single Democrat voted against sanctioning Hamas.

Hamas/Iran felt that Mansour Abbas was a threat worth going to war to destroy because they perceive him as the Israeli expression of the Abraham Accords. And in the minds of the Iranian leadership and those of their Hamas proxies, the Abraham Accords represent the single greatest military and political threat to Iran’s nuclear and hegemonic ambitions. Destroying them is their strategic goal.

The Abraham Accords provide a formal framework for the operational partnership that developed since 2006 between Israel and the Sunni Arab states that, like Israel, are threatened by Iran. In formalizing those ties, the Abraham Accords split the Arab/Islamic world into two camps. The first camp includes Iran and the states and terror groups Iran supports, controls and is allied with. Political forces hostile to Israel in the West support this camp. Members of the Iran camp and its supporters in the West insist the Jewish state is the greatest source of instability and the primary obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

The second camp is comprised of Israel and the Arab states that understand that Iran is the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East. Arab members of this camp include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan and Morocco. These Arab states believe that in alliance with Israel they will be able to contain and eventually defeat the Iranian regime.

Until the Abraham Accords were formalized, only the Iranian camp had an international presence. The anti-Israel, pro-Iran narrative, which claims that Israel is the greatest threat to regional and world peace, had the stage to itself from Tehran to California. Since the Abraham Accords were signed last September, the Iranian camp has been on the defensive.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Jen Psaki indicated that the administration is just as unhappy with the Abraham Accords as the Iranians and Palestinians are. In response to a reporter’s question about the Trump administration’s peace efforts, Psaki pretended that the Abraham Accords don’t exist.

“Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival,” she said derisively, “we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”

This asinine statement put paid the notion that Biden will ever opt for an alliance with the Abraham Accords member nations over the Iran/Hamas axis. Just as the administration refuses to even utter the term “Abraham Accords,” so it insists on ignoring their political significance for the states of the region and their military capacity to contain Iran.

Despite the massive pressure that has been exerted against Abraham Accords member states to disavow their ties with Israel since Hamas opened its offensive last week, so far they have not wavered. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco have put out mild statements on the Hamas war. Morocco sent humanitarian aid to Gaza. There have been no anti-Israel demonstrations in the streets of any of the Abraham Accords member states.

Sudan’s leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan discussed the issue in an interview with France 24 in Arabic earlier this week. The interview was translated by MEMRI.

In his words, “The normalization [of relations between Sudan and Israel] has nothing to do with the Palestinians’ right to establish their own state. The normalization is reconciliation with the international community, and with Israel as part of the international community.”

Making clear that Sudan would not be bullied into ending its relations with Israel, Al-Burhan added that the decision to maintain relations with Israel is a sovereign Sudanese decision. It is “the prerogative of the state institutions,” said.

Since it is clear that Israel made clear from the outset that it had no interest in conquering Gaza, Hamas will declare victory no matter how much damage it sustained from Israeli airstrikes. So too, after the Biden administration placed the threat of condemning Israel at the UN Security Council on the table in the first days of the conflict, it was clear that Israel wouldn’t dare defy Biden for long once he publicly demanded a ceasefire. So Israel stood down without ever stating outright what it would view as a victory in this confrontation.

Despite the deliberate lack of clarity, Israel may well emerge the victor. Two parameters will determine who has won this round of war. First, if the Supreme Court sides with the law and respects the property rights of the Jewish land owners in Sheikh Jarrah, their ruling will deliver a stinging defeat to the Iranian/Hamas axis and their American and European supporters who insist that Jews have no property rights in the neighborhood because they are Jews.

Second, if the Abraham Accords survive the war and ties between Israel and its Arab partners expand and deepen, then Hamas and its partners will be the losing side. As for Mansour Abbas, time will tell if he is a friend or an enemy. But in the meantime, his political survival is a national interest.
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Caroline Glick is the Senior Contributing Editor of Israel Hayom and the Director of the David Horowitz Freedom Center's Israel Security Project. For more information on Ms. Glick's work, visit carolineglick.com.

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Everything You Needed to Know About the Escalation in Israel

A message from the State of Israel.

FrontPage Mag Editors Note: Below, Frontpage is running a message directly from the Israeli Government Press Office -- aimed to counter the sea of leftist propaganda about the conflict we are now witnessing in Israel. The message contains common questions with answers provided, including what role the international community can play in ending the current crisis and preventing future ones:

Q&A - Everything you needed to know about the latest escalation in Israel
Why did all of this start?
The massive rocket attacks from Gaza that began on 10 May came after weeks of Palestinian terrorism, rockets and incendiary balloons launched from the Gaza Strip, massive riots and other attacks on Jewish civilians in Jerusalem.

Although the Palestinians and their supporters have tried to justify these violent acts by linking them to a variety of Israeli actions, in fact they are the result of Palestinian plans, made in accordance to Palestinian interests, often based on internal Palestinian struggles and on Palestinian goals.

The Palestinian Authority is trying to divert attention away from its own decision to postpone elections, thereby deflecting any potential criticism. Hamas is attempting to strengthen its position, both in eyes of the Palestinian population and the Muslim world, by igniting violence and unrest, all the while trying to claim the role of Jerusalem’s defender.

This escalation was directly caused by Palestinian incitement. The Palestinian leadership has been deliberately and publicly inciting to violence over the past several weeks with the Hamas terrorist organization in particular exploiting sensitive national sentiments during the Ramadan period to stoke tensions.

How did all of this start?
This week’s flare-up follows several weeks of escalating Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians. The Hamas terrorist organization fired over forty rockets at Israel in April alone. Incendiary balloon devices launched from Gaza caused dozens of fires, resulting in widespread environmental and economic damage throughout southern Israel. In a shooting attack at the Tapuah Junction in early May, a Palestinian terrorist killed a 19-year-old yeshiva student and injured two others. Border police stopped an attempted stabbing attack in Hebron and prevented a serious mass attack when they diverted a minibus carrying three heavily armed terrorists to the Salem Junction border police base. Combined, these attacks left almost seventy Israeli civilians injured in just the past month – before the current escalation.

Violent rioters led by the Hamas terrorist organization and the Palestinian Authority met in planned clashes, with the goal of igniting violence and unrest in the city of Jerusalem. Deliberately manufactured flashpoints were used to stoke the flames. Every Israeli attempt to deescalate the situation was either ignored or drove the Palestinians to focus on a new issue after the removal of their contrived excuse for unrest.

How did Israel respond to the escalation?
Throughout the past several weeks, Israel has taken every measure possible to deescalate the situation. When Jerusalem was being used as the excuse for unrest, Israel stopped allowing the entrance of Jews to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and changed the route of the Jerusalem Day Flag March – before cancelling it entirely due to rocket fire – while the Supreme Court delayed a court hearing on the issue of Sheikh Jarrah. Each and every one of these steps was taken in order to prevent violence and restore calm.

Hamas responded to these measures with more violence, more incitement, and more rockets.

What’s happening on the ground in Israel?
When Gaza’s terrorist organizations began their campaign of massive rocket fire on 10 May, 1500 rockets were fired in the first 24 hours, including 7 aimed at Jerusalem. Since then, over 4,000 rockets have been fired at Israel (as of 19/05/2021). Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are firing these rockets and deliberately aiming them at key metropolitan areas throughout Israel with the purpose of killing and injuring as many Israeli civilians as possible. So far, this barrage of rocket attacks has killed several Israeli civilians and injured dozens more.

Isn't Jerusalem the center of the current escalation?
No. This is a false claim. As always, Israel is taking every step possible to prevent escalation, unrest and violence, and to ensure freedom of worship in Israel.

Are the holy sites in Jerusalem still open to visitors?
Absolutely. Israel is a pluralistic democracy and guarantees the freedoms of religion and worship for all citizens and visitors. The sole exception is the limitations placed on Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, undertaken to prevent friction.

In fact, since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has safeguarded freedom of worship for all faiths in the city and nurtured rapid economic, demographic, and cultural growth. Israel will continue to uphold freedom of worship for all.

Who is Hamas?
Hamas is an Islamist terrorist organization whose ultimate goal is to annihilate the State of Israel entirely and establish a caliphate. The Hamas Charter – the organization's manifesto – is an antisemitic document that calls for the murder of Jews simply on the basis of their religion. Hamas has been internationally recognized as a terrorist organization since 1993 in the united states, with many countries following suit, including by Canada, and the EU.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in a violent military coup in 2007, which caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians. It had hoped to take control of the West Bank through Palestinian elections this year, which were ultimately postponed by the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas is responsible for the death and injury of tens of thousands of Israeli and Palestinian civilians. It deliberately targets civilian population centers throughout Israel with rockets and other weapons. Hamas uses its own population as human shields, firing rockets from within civilian spaces in Gaza and hiding its leaders, terrorists and military facilities there as well. This is effectively a double war crime: not only do they indiscriminately fire rockets at Israeli civilians, but they do so from areas densely populated with Palestinian civilians.

I've heard that Sheikh Jarrah was the catalyst for the current escalation of violence…
This is a false claim that simply does not stand up to scrutiny. The Sheikh Jarrah issue is essentially a real estate dispute between private parties, to which the State of Israel is not party. This legal matter was deliberated in several different courts, which determined that the current tenants do not have ownership over the property in dispute and violated their duties as tenants for decades. Nonetheless, the issue is now pending before Israel’s Supreme Court, which decided to delay the scheduled Court hearing on the issue specifically in order to prevent violence and calm tensions.

Can reports from Gaza be trusted?
As opposed to Israel, which is a strong democracy that respects freedom of the press, Gaza is ruled by a terrorist organization that limits press coverage. Moreover, Hamas controls the government bodies that supply basic information, such as the Ministry of Health, and does not hesitate to falsify data when it serves its purposes.

Hamas has a long history of misrepresenting and even faking facts. In previous conflicts, it provided civilian casualty figures that were later proven to include large numbers of terrorists and other combatants. It presents civilians who were used as human shields as victims of Israeli aggression. Similarly, the deaths of Palestinians killed by rockets that failed inflight (it is estimated that approximately 20-30%15 of the rockets launched at Israel land in Gaza instead) are blamed on Israel.

What role can the international community play?
The international community can play an important role in both ending the current crisis and in preventing future ones.

The first and primary task is to communicate to Hamas that terrorism will not be tolerated, let alone rewarded. As long as this internationally-recognized terrorist organization believes that it stands to gain from the violence, rockets will continue to reign down on towns and cities, forcing Israel to respond.

Hamas has a long history of creating the same scenario: it designs a situation that leaves Israel with no choice but to react, deliberately places Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure in harm’s way, and then reaps the rewards by claiming victim status. The importance of not falling into Hamas’ trap cannot be overstated.

World leaders who support Israel in its fight against terrorism are not lacking in compassion towards Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Rather, they are acknowledging the reality of the situation: Hamas instigated this conflict with no concern for civilian life on either side of the border and with the expectation that it can exploit Palestinian suffering to delegitimize the State of Israel. Suffering on both sides will most quickly be alleviated by focusing the blame on those responsible for starting and perpetuating the violence while denying Hamas its objectives.

Hamas, like many other terrorist organizations, seeks to undermine the legitimacy of democratic nations acting in self-defense. Its actions cannot be condoned, while attempts to create equivalence between a terrorist organization that provokes conflict and a democratic state that seeks to protect its population is not only morally offensive, it encourages future terrorist attacks.
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FrontpageMag Editors on site in Israel.

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Putin’s Puppet

Biden shuts down the American pipeline XL losing, 1000’s of jobs, then gives Russia a waiver to open theirs.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Biden Advisers Link Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants With ‘Environmental Justice’

President Joe Biden has made it clear that "environmental justice is a top priority,"
Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Brenda Mallory says.

by Fred Lucas: An advisory panel to President Joe Biden is trying to marry the issue of amnesty for illegal immigrants with what it calls “environmental justice,” the federal effort to confront climate change.

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council last week released a report with about 90 pages of recommendations, including adopting the language of the left’s Green New Deal and opposing nuclear energy.

But the panel also made recommendations that seem to have at best a tenuous relationship to the environment, tying policies already supported by the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress to environmental protection.

“Lack of immigration status fundamentally limits the ability of immigrants to enforce their rights and have access to programs and services that would promote their food, housing, economic security, and improved environmental quality,” the White House environmental justice report states, citing the situation as a “challenge.”

The report goes on to make two recommendations to meet this challenge.

The first: “The [Biden] administration should leverage its discretion and resources to ensure that undocumented individuals and families are not left out or ineligible to benefit from EJ40 investments.”

EJ40 is a reference to the Environmental Justice 40 initiative outlined in Biden’s January executive order creating the Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which called for 40% of environmental spending to benefit “disadvantaged communities.”

The second immigration recommendation states:Where limitations in servicing undocumented individuals require statutory changes, the administration, at the highest levels, should work aggressively with Congress to secure a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants, as well as other improvements to prevent the exclusion of the undocumented from [Environmental] Justice 40 investments, given that they are predominantly BIPOC.BIPOC is an acronym for black, Indigenous, and people of color.

Biden already has backed an immigration bill to grant legal status to up to 20 million illegal immigrants.

The recommendations in the report are similar to the Green New Deal proposal in Congress, amounting to a grab bag of left-wing proposals, said Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research.

“These proposals do a disservice to the very communities they claim to help,” Pyle told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “I don’t see how communities in this country are going to benefit from amnesty for illegal immigrants.”

But previously, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairwoman Brenda Mallory issued a public statement on the report. Mallory said:President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris have made it clear from their first day in office that environmental justice is a top priority, and that the voices of historically disadvantaged communities will be heard in the White House and throughout their administration.The Biden administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 includes $1.4 billion for “environmental justice” initiatives.

Mallory also said:I am immensely grateful to the volunteer members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council for their tireless and swift work to provide the recommendations they are submitting today. I look forward to reviewing these recommendations and to working with my colleagues across the federal government and with Congress to follow through on the president’s commitments to address long-standing environmental injustices, ensure no community gets left behind, and build back better.Biden administration officials, among them Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, already have indicated they aren’t likely to consider all of the energy-related suggestions from the report.

The push against nuclear power will be a problem for New Mexico’s economy, said Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, a free market think tank in New Mexico.

“I would point to the title of the panel, ‘Environmental Justice.’ When you convene something with the word ‘justice’ in it, that becomes the ultimate focus,” Gessing told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Justice means different things to different people. But once a panel goes down a ‘justice’ rabbit hole, it can create a lot of policies that have nothing to do with the [modifier], in this case environmental.”

As The Daily Signal previously reported, many of the members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council have radical activist backgrounds and have compared energy development with racism and slavery.

On another front that seemed tenuously related to environmental issues, the council called for expanding Medicaid to more “birthing people” and expanding Medicare for “lifetime access” for “frontline communities.”

“Expand Medicare/Medicaid for lifetime access for individuals from frontline communities directly impacted by environmental racism and injustice (e.g., the Flint Water Crisis),” the report urges.

The other related recommendation says: “Extend Medicaid coverage for a year for ALL mothers and child-birthing people with inclusion of body burden & risk factors associated with climate issues: extreme heat, air pollution, lead-poisoned water, and other environmentally induced health conditions.”

Packaging unrelated matters together is not unusual for Democratic lawmakers, said Pyle, of the Institute for Energy Research.

“It’s not odd if that’s how you govern, through community organizing and trying to enlist groups to direct money to constituencies they think will help them get elected,” Pyle said, adding: “The Green New Deal is just putting a green coat of paint on progressive policies.”
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Fred Lucas is chief national affairs correspondent for The Daily Signal

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Fake Outrage Over Cheney ‘Ouster’; Dems ‘Ousted’ Bernie Twice

by Larry Elder: House Republican leadership removed Rep. Liz Cheney, (R-Wyo.), from her leadership position, a position her indignant liberal defenders likely did not even know existed until days ago. Cheney became Republican roadkill when she not only voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump but also became a vocal critic of his alleged “big lie” about the 2020 election.

Cue the fake outrage by Democrats and the media.

A CNN headline read in part: “Ousted Cheney Warns Direction of the Party is ‘Dangerous.'” MSNBC wrote, “The GOP infighting reached a turning point after Republicans ousted Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership position.”

PBS wrote, “In less than 20 minutes behind closed doors, House Republicans made their allegiance to former President Donald Trump clear by ousting … Cheney.”

The Washington Post said Cheney’s removal from leadership “offered the clearest sign yet of how far Republicans are willing to go to support or tolerate Trump’s lies about the election as well the degree to which many members are trying to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 to erase the former president’s culpability.” Never mind that for four years and counting, Hillary Clinton has referred to the 2016 election as “stolen” and then-President Trump as “illegitimate.” Two-thirds of Democrats believe that in 2016, the Russians changed vote tallies to defeat Clinton, despite the exhaustive Senate report that found zero evidence that the Russians succeeded in changing a single vote tally.

Bear in mind we were talking about Cheney, the daughter and ideological soul mate of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was labeled a “neocon” and loathed by the left. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan praised Liz Cheney for “her stance against her own party,” but added: “But what about the argument that Liz Cheney herself isn’t a stranger to, quote/unquote, big lies? She backed the Iraq war. She denied Bush-era torture.” So, the left’s newfound love for Liz Cheney is, well, complicated. Note also that Cheney’s replacement has a more moderate voting record, a change that, in normal times, would please the average liberal.

This is about Trump. Ratings for cable news, particularly at CNN and MSNBC, declined dramatically after the Trump presidency. To reverse this downward trend, the media seeks whenever possible to keep Trump in the news. Thus, the Cheney “ouster” story checks a lot of boxes. But one of the boxes it checks is hypocrisy.

Where was this outrage over the “ouster” of Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., from the presidential campaigns in 2016 and in 2020?

NBC News, in a 2017 article headlined “Bernie Sanders Camp: The Fix Was in Against Us,” wrote: “The issue of whether the (Democratic) party was playing favorites in 2016 has been thrust to the fore this week after former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile released an excerpt of a forthcoming book that alleges the party, under her predecessor, essentially let itself be taken over by the Clinton campaign ahead of the 2016 presidential primaries.”

As to the 2020 election, Democrats panicked when Sanders won the Nevada caucuses, becoming the clear front-runner. Before the following South Carolina primary, Rep. James Clyburn, R-S.C., endorsed “moderate” Joe Biden. Right after that primary, rivals Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Biden, all because Democrats feared a political bloodbath were Sanders to become their nominee. Politico called the Democrats’ rapid coalescence behind Biden “an epic display of political strength and coordination.”

Sanders, like Cheney, found himself on the wrong side of a party determined to win. This happens. It’s called politics. But this, apparently, is the rule: It’s OK for Democrats to push Bernie Sanders aside — twice — in order to beat Donald Trump. But it’s not OK for Republicans to push Liz Cheney aside in order to beat Joe Biden.

Got it?
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Larry Elder writes for Larry Elder's column.

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Why Biden Wants A War In Israel

Daniel Greenfield

by Daniel Greenfield: Terrorists have only one thing to offer. It’s right there in the name.

The business model of terrorism is killing people and then demanding a payoff. The game always works the same way. The terrorists attack, their targets fight back, and a third party sends in the diplomats to negotiate on behalf of the terrorists before they get hit too hard.

The Islamic terrorist war against Israel has worked exactly this way for generations.

Like a radio pop song that plays every time you go into a supermarket, you know the next verse and can feel the next beat before it even kicks in no matter how much you hate the music.

It’s the same way with the regular mini wars that begin with a manufactured political provocation that can be blamed on Israel, (this time a court ruling evicting illegal Muslim colonists occupying homes that were seized during the ‘48 ethnic cleansing of Jews from Jerusalem), followed by terrorist violence with the usual pattern of attack and escalation.

Hamas and a few of its allies shell Israeli towns and cities using the latest Iranian technology and some of their own cruder models. Israel responds by calculatedly taking out terrorist compounds which Hamas has, with equal calculation, filled with civilian human shields.

Especially children.

Politicians, the media, and social media (three distinctions without a difference) rush to attack Israel, vastly inflating the already inflated casualty figures put out by the terrorists, lying about the nature of the conflict, and doing their best to mainstream antisemitism a little more.

The Biden administration makes a few public statements vaguely supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, an absurd point, and sends in mediators to negotiate the payoff for the terrorists.

Israel had a brief break from America acting as the paymaster and bagman for the terrorists.

It was a refreshing pause especially for all the children who didn’t get bombed, the homes that didn’t have rockets smash through their roofs, and the soldiers who didn’t get shot just so that State Department negotiators could tell Israel the current going rate for ending the attacks.

Islamic terrorists aren’t crazy or irrational. The average suicide bomber might be, but their leadership doesn’t do anything without a profit motive.

The profits for Islamic terrorism against Israel come in two ways.

First, the terrorists are backed by Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and the rest of the Islamist gang to carry out attacks on Israel. Second, the terrorists are rewarded by the United States, Europe, and Israel for ending the attacks.

This never leads to peace because if you keep rewarding terrorists for ending the violence, you’re also telling them that if they do it all over again, they’ll profit from the violence.

Paying the terrorists not to attack you is really the same thing as paying them to attack you.

But the essence of the peace game is obliviousness. That means believing that there are root causes that can resolve the underlying grievances. The root cause is the existence of Israel.

The terrorists want to destroy Israel: Israel doesn’t want to be destroyed.

And the negotiators came up with a compromise which satisfies no one: a two state solution that will only destroy a part of Israel. The solution, which has solved nothing and will solve nothing, incrementally destroys parts of Israel by handing them over to the terrorists.

The amount of Israel being destroyed through this process has kept on increasing ever since the original fake peace deal was celebrated by Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat, and Yitzchak Rabin at the White House. Every exchange of fire leads to a push for a new peace “compromise” that will destroy even more of Israel by handing more territory over to the terrorists.

Since this process provides the terrorists with zero incentive to stop the violence, it failed.

The Trump administration overturned conventional wisdom by recognizing that the terrorists, who had repeatedly rejected and sabotaged peace negotiations for two generations, not the Israelis, who had shown up for every bad faith attempt at negotiations, were the problem.

Instead of taking away territory from Israel and giving it to the terrorists, President Trump began recognizing Israeli claims to parts of Israel, while cutting off money and political support from the terrorists. The terrorists didn’t turn pacifist, but they turned down the violence because they understood that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, unlike Kerry, wouldn’t be bailing them out.

They just waited, while Kerry privately assured the terrorists Trump would soon be gone.

The Biden administration is going back to the same old policies of propping up the terrorists. And the first thing you need to do when propping up the terrorists is giving them some leverage.

The leverage of terrorists is terrorism.

Rebooting the old negotiating process requires a war. And so the Biden administration turned on the money tap to the terrorists and their Iranian sponsors. It made it clear that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the anti-Iran coalition linked to the Abraham Accords were out of style in D.C.

Biden also appointed Hady Amr, a veteran of Qatar’s Brookings operation, a state backer of Hamas, as his “point man” on the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” which had been low on conflict.

At least the conflict had been low until Biden got started.

Amr, a Lebanese anti-Israel activist, had made no secret of his raving hatred for Israel and support for the terrorists.

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr had declared during his time as an anti-Israel activist.

"I have news for every Israeli," Amr ranted in one column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas' Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli air strike.

Arabs "now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents."

These days, Amr is the one doing the avenging for Israel’s attacks on Hamas.

Amr has repeatedly argued for a deal with Hamas. In 2019, he co-wrote an article arguing that Hamas should offer Israel a cease-fire with the PLO acting as a broker for the deal in exchange for Israel “offering a significant move on Israeli-Palestinian peace.” That’s diplo-mafia speak for appeasing the terrorists with more territory that they can use to launch attacks on Israel.

But you can’t have a cease-fire until you first have a war. That’s the war now raging.

It’s the familiar model already embraced by terrorist organizations who pretend that their political and military wings are separate organizations.

The Biden administration policy is for the PLO to play the political wing to Hamas’ military wing. Hamas starts wars, and the PLO collects territory and concessions to stop the fighting, while disclaiming any responsibility for the violence. And the Biden administration oversees this terrorist shakedown by insisting that Israel make more concessions for ‘peace’. Diplomats and experts go around making the same false promises that Israeli appeasement of the PLO will discredit Hamas and make it possible for Israelis and the terrorists killing them to live in peace.

The purpose of this political strategy is to isolate Israel, creating a system that profits from terrorism while maintaining enough plausible deniability to keep a fake peace process going.

Generations of this horror show have not been enough to discredit it. Not to the diplomats who keep pushing this big lie, and not to American Jews who when faced with a choice between blaming Israel and the politicians they support, always choose to blame Israel.

Biden is rebooting the same old scam after stocking his administration with appointees like Amr who have made no secret of their hatred for the Jewish State.

Biden’s Senior Director for Intelligence on the National Security Council, Maher Bitar, was pictured dancing in a keffiyah in front of a banner reading, “Divest from Israel Apartheid”.

Reema Dodin, Biden's Deputy White House Legislative Director, had argued that, “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.”

Sarah Margon, Biden's Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, had advocated for boycotts of Israel and cheered a proposal to destroy the Jewish State.

The Obama administration stocked its foreign policy team with Iran Firsters, while the Biden administration has gone even further with a roster of Hamas Firsters.

The Biden administration seeks to blame Israel for a conflict for which it provided a profit motive.

The fighting in Israel commenced after the Biden administration sent the signal that it was resuming its support for the terrorists. The violence is a prelude to the negotiations. And Biden’s people have already laid out their plans for getting Israel to pay off the terrorists. All the terrorists had to do was attack Israel and wait for Biden’s team to do their dirty work for them.

The Biden administration wanted a war in Israel. It needed to blame Israel for that war. And now it got everything it wanted. The next stage is the pressure campaign against Israel tying together domestic anti-Israel lobbies like J Street, and the radical Left like AOC and Warren, to pressure American Jewish organizations to drop their already weak support for the Jewish State. And then, having isolated Israel, they’ll move in for the kill with their big pitch for a terror state.

All of this is bad for Israel, but it’s also terrible for America.

Everything that the Biden administration’s team of terrorist sympathizers is doing to Israel, they also intend to do to America. If you think gas prices are bad now, wait until Iran really starts throwing its weight around. And while Biden’s people are insisting that the only real terrorist threat is domestic while dismantling our counterterrorism system, the Jihad will come.

Al Qaeda built up its networks into a massive international killing machine on Clinton’s watch, and ISIS grew into a state power while Obama was building up the Arab Spring. We don’t know what terrorist nightmares Biden will breed, but they are likely to be worse than either one.

Israelis are in bomb shelters now, but after a few years of Biden, Americans might be there too.
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Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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How States Led the Way Toward a Health Care Personal Option During the Pandemic

by AFP: West Virginia was quick to the draw during the COVID-19 pandemic when it came to meeting the health care needs of its residents. How States Led the Way Toward a Health Care Personal Option During the Pandemic The state’s rural and mountainous geography makes it difficult for many patients to find and access care. So, West Virginia came up with a solution: Remove, at least temporarily, restrictions on the practice of telehealth, allowing more residents to see their doctors remotely using a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

The plan helped isolated patients and those with limited mobility access care. Then, last month, West Virginia enacted a law to permanently expand telehealth services, an important policy reform pushed for by Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia.

Now, states across the country are taking a similar approach to help their residents better access care.

State lawmakers moved fast to make quality care more accessible
A new article Governing reports that last year, all 50 states suspended their restrictions on telehealth, and several have since expanded telehealth permanently through legislation.

Some went even further. Arkansas, Utah, and Virginia enacted laws reforming their scope-of-practice laws, restrictions which forbid qualified advanced practice registered nurses from delivering care without physician supervision.

These scope-of-practice restrictions didn’t make patients safer. They reduced access to care.

What spurred this flurry of legislation across the country? In large part, the pandemic made health care access a more pressing concern.

Lawmakers learned an important lesson from the pandemic
“The pandemic has demonstrated the wisdom of removing barriers between patients and [health providers] and elevated it to a whole new level,” Dean Clancy, senior health policy fellow with Americans for Prosperity, told Governing. “What it all adds up to is what we hope will be a transformation of American health care that’s permanently freer and better for everyone.”

Restrictions on telehealth and nurse practitioners were severe impediments to health care access before the pandemic, of course. But when hospitals began to reach their breaking points during the height of the health crisis, states were forced to act.

Twenty states suspended their certificate-of-need laws, restrictions that forbade providers from expanding their facilities, purchasing new equipment, and offering new services without government permission.

SevHow States Led the Way Toward a Health Care Personal Option During the Pandemiceral states, including Tennessee and Montana, are now in the process of reforming their CON laws through legislation.

These reforms provided states the flexibility they needed to treat COVID patients. Permanent reforms will help patients long after the health crisis is over.

Lawmakers can do more to expand access
Despite the immense success of state-level efforts to make care more accessible, some lawmakers are still claiming that additional federal involvement in medicine is needed, particularly in the form of a public-option health care program and drug price controls.

These are bad ideas that belie the lesson most states learned over the past year. Removing government roadblocks, not erecting them, helped us navigate this health crisis.

Instead of a public option, lawmakers should give patients a personal option, which would reduce costs, promote price transparency, and give Americans more choice over their own health care.

To that end, Congress could:

• Expand tax-free health savings accounts, allowing more Americans to put money away for care and save on each expense. Lawmakers could offer directly funded HSAs for those who need additional assistance.
• Remove restrictions on health reimbursement arrangements, which would give more Americans access to portable health care.
• Allow more Americans to use short-term renewable insurance plans, which are generally less expensive than traditional plans.

These personal option reforms, along with the those implemented by the states, would help us through the final chapter of the COVID-19 pandemic, allow more patients to access affordable care, and prepare us for the next health crisis.
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Americans for Prosperity is urging lawmakers to give Americans a personal option in their health, but your voice is needed, too.

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AFP: President Biden’s Executive Order on “Climate-Related Financial Risk” Undermines Critical Innovation to Improve Environment

by AFP: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) Policy Fellow Clint Woods issued the following statement regarding President Biden’s sweeping executive order on “Climate-Related Financial Risk” mobilizing federal agencies across the gamut to enforce mandates on businesses, insurers, retirement funds, and suppliers that would ultimately stifle the very innovation critical to improving the environment:

“We all want to be good stewards of our environment, but mobilizing the federal government to force industry from all corners of the economy to adhere to one-size-fits all requirements will only harm our ability to improve the environment, undermine America’s capacity to lead in the global economy, and worsen energy poverty. Business leaders and consumers – not politicians and appointed Washington officials – have always been the driving force to innovate and deliver superior products that solve for the needs of today while also pushing our country toward a better future that benefits all. This sweeping expansion of government overreach involves dramatic mission creep for a suite of agencies from the Retirement Thrift Investment Board to the Department of Labor, and ultimately undermines the leaps in innovation we need to actually achieve our shared goals for the environment.”

Background:
AFP has previously issued a timeline of major Biden administration energy and regulatory milestones under several previous executive orders.

In 2020, AFP commented on a Department of Labor proposal to amend regulations under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to require plan fiduciaries to select investments based on financial considerations.
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Americans for Prosperity (AFP) addresses President Biden's order on 'Climate Change'.

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The Blog that did it : Is it Politics or is it Fear?

by Mario Murillo: Editor’s note: On April 7th, 2014, at 3:17 PM Mario Murillo would see his life change forever. It was a blog that would slam the doors of churches shut to him. It was a blog that accused Christian leaders of refusing to face the destruction of American freedom. Read it again in the light of what is happening right now.'

What would you do if they expelled your young daughter from school for being a Christian? What if it had nothing to do with bad behavior? She was expelled for her beliefs…pure and simple. What would you do? You would storm down to the principal’s office and demand your rights.

You could also understand your neighbor doing the same thing if this happened to one of their children. One thing you would not do is accuse your neighbor of being judgmental, political or “not walking in love.”

Many Christians think that speaking out against Obama, Eric Holder, the IRS, and the NSA is “different” than parents protecting their children against coercive schools. Oh really? How is it different? The only thing I can see that is different is that it hasn’t hit home yet. So far we have seen executives fired for defending traditional marriage; the IRS attacking Billy Graham; healthcare hijacked and all of our phone calls monitored. If they do all of this today what will they do tomorrow?


You say, “If my child is banished for being Christian I would act!” The problem is that by that time it is too late. The local school is usually the final stop for tyranny. Before there can be a blatant attempt to ban Christianity at school a lot of other bad things must first take place, and they are.

The public must be reprogrammed to accept the loss of freedom. Tyranny trickles down through several layers like acid eating its way down to the hull of a ship.

But Romans 13 tells Christians not to speak out against rulers right? Verse 2 says, “Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.”

The ruling authority of the United States is the Constitution, something the White House swore to uphold and protect. Instead, it has been this administration’s unswerving passion to undermine the first 4 amendments to the Constitution; setting aside everything from freedom of speech to the right to privacy.

In my opinion, they are the ones that Romans 13 says is resisting authority. This administration has crossed a dangerous threshold!

There are tens of millions of Americans who would take it one step further and say that they even question the validity of the last election.
This is not the first time that Christian leaders have had to reach a painful point of opposition that was not popular. In the 20th century Christian heroes opposed tyranny:


Pastor Richard Wurmbrand stood alone among more than 1,000 leaders to denounce the control of Romanian communism.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian famous for his stand against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. His beliefs and convictions ultimately cost him his life in a Nazi concentration camp.

Corrie Ten Boom violated German law by hiding Jews in her home.

Watchman Nee was persecuted and imprisoned for his faith by Chairman Mao and spent the last twenty years of his life in prison.


Each one of these heroes had that moment of denial that said, “This can’t be happening!” Each one came to that point of clarity in their conscience. Each one said, “This is the right thing to do.” Each one faced rejection for trying to convince others of impending coming tyranny.

It is ironic that each is honored as a hero but if they were alive today most Christians would reject them for their open opposition to political leadership.

Today there is a greater danger because when Hitler, Mao and Stalin raised their evil empires there was a free America that could intervene. Where will you or anyone else go for freedom if America itself is overtaken by tyranny?



For a growing number of Christian leaders and me it is time to speak out. The silence we see today is not because of politics but because of fear. It is time to quit hiding behind that excuse.

It is not my place to order any leader to speak out. I can only tell you what I believe passionately; I believe that the leadership of the American Church should unite to stop this administration and hold them legally accountable for the damage they have done to our freedoms.

Tomorrow I want to talk to you why my stance is not going to hinder my ability to win youth to Christ and why it is not too late for effective action.
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Mario Murillo is an evangelist Mario Murillo, minister, blogger

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