Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, released photos of migrants in clear pens akin to cages

Photos of migrants in a crowded border facility in Donna, Texas, were released Monday by the office of Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, as the Biden administration limits media access to the southwestern border. 

The migrants, who are in clear pens akin to cages, are seen sleeping on pads on the floor with aluminum blankets. In some instances, it appears that dozens are sharing individual pens. Most appear to be wearing masks.

Amid a significant surge of migrants to the southern border in President Biden’s first two months, some in the media have complained about a lack of access to facilities like the one in Donna.

“I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations,” award-winning photojournalist John Moore tweeted Friday. “I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now – zero access is granted to media. These long-lens images taken from the Mexican side.”

He added: “There’s no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations.”

The White House has said that it is limiting media access to border facilities in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that the Biden administration is aiming to finalize details on how the media can access border facilities like the one in Donna, Texas. 

Psaki responded to the photos on Monday, as a reporter asked her whether the conditions the migrant children are being kept in represent a crisis. 

“Children presenting at our border who are fleeing violence, who are fleeing prosecution, who are fleeing terrible situations, is not a crisis,” she responded. “We feel that it is our responsibility to humanely approach this circumstance and make sure they are treated and put in conditions that are safe. I will say that these photos show what we’ve long been saying, which is that these border patrol facilities are not places made for children. They are not places that we want children to be staying for an extended period of time. Our alternative is to send children back on this treacherous journey. That is not, in our view, the right choice to make.”

She continued to say that the Biden administration is aiming to ease the pressure on facilities like the one in Donna, Texas.

The photos released Monday also upset some on the right who believed Democrats are being hypocritical in saying there is no crisis currently on the southern border after sounding the alarm over the treatment of migrants under former President Donald Trump. 

“Either Dems and media faked the tears and ‘outrage’ pre-Biden, or they meant it,” Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., tweeted. “If it’s the latter, where are they now? Kids are in cages. And this surge is far worse than any under President Trump.”

By Tyler Olson, Evie Fordham contributed to this report. 

Lawmakers in the House and Senate on Tuesday welcomed the Justice Department’s (DOJ’s) move to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google that claims the tech behemoth used its power to preserve its monopoly via its search engine.

“Today’s lawsuit is the most important antitrust case in a generation,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said in a statement. “Google and its fellow Big Tech monopolists exercise unprecedented power over the lives of ordinary Americans, controlling everything from the news we read to the security of our most personal information. And Google in particular has gathered and maintained that power through illegal means.”

The DOJ suit alleges that Google has used its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and boost profits. The suit could be an opening shot in a battle against a number of Big Tech companies in the coming months.

A Google spokesperson told Fox News: “Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to — not because they’re forced to or because they can’t find alternatives. We will have a fuller statement this morning.”

According to the lawsuit, “For years, Google has entered into exclusionary agreements, including tying arrangements, and engaged in anticompetitive conduct to lock up distribution channels and block rivals.”

“American consumers are forced to accept Google’s policies, privacy practices, and use of personal data; and new companies with innovative business models cannot emerge from Google’s long shadow. For the sake of American consumers, advertisers, and all companies now reliant on the internet economy, the time has come to stop Google’s anticompetitive conduct and restore competition,” it says.

The DOJ claims the action was brought to stop Google from “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices, and to remedy the effects of this conduct.”

“Largely as a result of Google’s exclusionary agreements and anticompetitive conduct, Google in recent years has accounted for nearly 90 percent of all general-search-engine queries in the United States, and almost 95 percent of queries on mobile devices,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit has been in the works for over a year, and Big Tech executives from Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter have been anticipating an announcement — designing their testimonies in Congress to ward off a potential federal suit. 

House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline, D-R.I., described the lawsuit as “long overdue” and brought attention to prior investigations by the committee.

“The Subcommittee’s investigation uncovered extensive evidence showing that Google maintained and extended its monopoly to harm competition,” he said in a statement. “It is critical that the Justice Department’s lawsuit focuses on Google’s monopolization of search and search advertising, while also targeting the anti-competitive business practices Google is using to leverage this monopoly into other areas, such as maps, browsers, video, and voice assistants.”

The lawsuit alleges that Google used billions of dollars from advertisers to pay phone manufacturers to ensure Google is the default search engine on browsers.

“For a general search engine, by far the most effective means of distribution is to be the preset default general search engine for mobile and computer search access points,” the lawsuit says. “Even where users can change the default, they rarely do. This leaves the preset default search engine with de facto exclusivity.”

The Trump administration has long had Google in its sights. A top economic adviser to President Trump said two years ago that the White House was considering whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation. 

Trump and other Republicans have accused Big Tech companies of having an anti-conservative bias — claims they have denied.

In a press conference, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said that the case had nothing to do with online bias, and was only about competitive conditions in the marketplace.

By Gillian Turner, Jake Gibson and Bill Mears, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.Adam Shaw is a reporter covering U.S. and European politics.

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President Trump has promised to announce a pick for the US Supreme Court promptly, specifying this coming Saturday. The seat was vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday at age 87 following cancer complications.

Democrats have been howling that there would be something unjust about Trump nominating Ginsburg’s successor, and for the GOP controlled Senate giving its “advice and consent” regarding the nomination. Of course, that is exactly what the US Constitution requires of each of them.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Lindsey Graham, has announced that there are enough votes in the senate to confirm Trump’s pick.

Trump has indicated that he plans to nominate a woman to the high court. Sources say that the president has already met with 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a very well known conservative judge, recently approved by the Senate to sit on the 7th Circuit bench.

In retaliation for the President and Senate doing their constitutionally mandated jobs, Democrats are threatening (again) to “pack” the Court when they take control of the White House and Senate–hopeful that will be the outcome of the upcoming November election.

Packing the US Supreme Court was threatened by FDR when the Supreme Court ruled many of his big government New Deal power grabs were unconstitutional. Packing the Court means (to liberals) adding liberal justices to the present 9 justices, diluting the conservative votes on the court. For instance, if Trump and the Senate install a conservative justice on the Court, it will give the court 6 conservative voices and 3 liberal. By packing the court with additional justices, say a total of 13, that would leave the Court with 6 conservatives and 7 liberals–ensuring that every case would be ruled on according to liberal activist philosophy.

Okay — Let’s Pack the Court, if it’s such a great idea!

If Democrats are so keen on the idea of packing the Court, perhaps the Republicans, who have actually been voted into control of the White House and the Senate by The People, should do just that.

Perhaps President Trump should nominate 5 judges to be seated on the Supreme Court, raising its members to 13. Indeed, such an act would ensure conservative (historically constitutional) rulings from SCOTUS for the next 30 or 40 years–probably much longer.

The Democrats could not overcome this super-majority by adding a few more judges to the Court when they take control–unless they add enough justices to total 21. Although the Democrats have proved that there is no new low to which they are unwilling to go–no law, tradition or rule they are unwilling to break–I cannot see them convincing The People of the need for 21 Justices on the Court.

If Packing the Court is a great idea–then let’s do it. If it’s a stupid idea, and it is, then it shouldn’t be done by either party. When I say “shouldn’t be done,” I mean that a party that threatens to do it should be permanently retired by The People, and never given The People’s trust again.

By James Thompson | James Thompson is a political consultant and a ghostwriter.

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday at her home in Washington, the court says. She was 87.

Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court says.

Ginsburg has had many health related issues in the past few years, and finally succumbed today.

Ginsburg’s death clears the way for President Donald Trump to nominate a third justice to the Supreme court in his first term. A major fight is anticipated from Capital Hill democrats, who have long feared President Trump receiving this rare opportunity to heavily influence the court.

By James Thompson

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President Trump on Tuesday declared the “dawn of a new Middle East” as he presided over the signing of two historic Middle East diplomatic deals between Israel and two Gulf nations.

“We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history. After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East,” he said at the ceremony in the South Lawn of the White House.

“Thanks to the great courage of the leaders of these three countries, we take a major stride toward a future in which people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity,” he said.

The deals, known as the “Abraham Accords,” involve the exchanging of ambassadors, establishment of embassies and co-operation on a range of fronts, including trade, security and tourism. The deals also allow Muslims to visit Islamic holy sites in Israel. Trump said the deals would form “the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region.”

Earlier in the Oval Office, Trump said “we’re very far down the road with about five additional countries.” He declined to name the countries he is speaking with and later said it could be “five or six” other countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will sign the deals, which mark the normalization of relations, with the foreign ministers of both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The UAE deal was announced last month, with the Bahrain deal announced on Friday. They have been dubbed the “Abraham Accords.”

Netanyahu rejected the idea that Israel was isolated in the region and declared that “we’re breaking out to the entire world.”

While critics have noted that such deals ignore Palestinians and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, it is hoped that the deals would be the start of warmer Arab-Israeli relations.

Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning that other countries “want to come in” and that he believes the Palestinians will eventually come in too.

“You’re going to have peace in the Middle East,” Trump said, adding that countries including Iran were “actually getting to a point where they’re going to want to make a deal. They won’t say that outwardly. They want to make a deal.”

Israel, Bahrain and the UAE are expected to sign a trilateral document, in addition to the bilateral agreements. Trump is expected to sign on as a witness.

Democrats have given some support to the agreements, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying in a statement that it marked “an important day” but said that “questions remain” including about a commitment for the UAE to purchase F-35 jets — which has led to fears it could blunt Israel’s military superiority in the region.

“As we learn more about the full details of both agreements, questions remain – specifically, regarding the commitment that the UAE has received from the Trump Administration to purchase American-made F-35 aircraft. The U.S. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, will be watching and monitoring to ensure that Israel can maintain its qualitative military edge in the region.

“It is also critically important that we fully understand the agreements’ details regarding the announced freeze of efforts by Israel to annex portions of the West Bank,” she said.

By Adam Shaw

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Just weeks after helping to broker peace between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), President Trump has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.

The nomination submitted by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian Parliament, lauded Trump for his efforts toward resolving protracted conflicts worldwide.

“For his merit, I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” Tybring-Gjedde, a four-term member of Parliament who also serves as chairman of the Norwegian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, told Fox News in an exclusive interview.

Tybring-Gjedde, in his nomination letter to the Nobel Committee, said the Trump administration has played a key role in the establishment of relations between Israel and the UAE. “As it is expected other Middle Eastern countries will follow in the footsteps of the UAE, this agreement could be a game changer that will turn the Middle East into a region of cooperation and prosperity,” he wrote.

Also cited in the letter was the president’s “key role in facilitating contact between conflicting parties and … creating new dynamics in other protracted conflicts, such as the Kashmir border dispute between India and Pakistan, and the conflict between North and South Korea, as well as dealing with the nuclear capabilities of North Korea.”

Tybring-Gjedde, further, praised Trump for withdrawing a large number of troops from the Middle East. “Indeed, Trump has broken a 39-year-old streak of American Presidents either starting a war or bringing the United States into an international armed conflict. The last president to avoid doing so was Peace Prize laureate Jimmy Carter,” he wrote.

This is not Trump’s first such nomination, as Tybring-Gjedde submitted one along with another Norwegian official in 2018 following the U.S. president’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong Un. Japan’s prime minister reportedly did the same. Trump did not win.

Tybring-Gjedde, a member of a conservative-leaning populist party in Norway, told Fox News that his latest nomination is not about trying to curry favor with the U.S. president.

“I’m not a big Trump supporter,” he said. “The committee should look at the facts and judge him on the facts – not on the way he behaves sometimes. The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump. For example, Barack Obama did nothing.” Video

The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to then-President Barack Obama for what the Nobel Committee called his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

That decision made just nine months into Obama’s first term was met with criticism in the U.S. – including from Donald Trump, then a private citizen. Lech Walesa, Poland’s former president and a 1983 Nobel laureate, also said at the time it was too early to bestow the award on Obama — just 263 days after taking office: “Too fast. For the time being Obama’s just making proposals. But sometimes the Nobel Committee awards the prize to encourage responsible action.”https://omny.fm/shows/the-fox-news-rundown-1/president-trump-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize/embed?t=0s

Even Obama was taken aback, saying at the time he was “surprised and humbled” by the Nobel Committee’s decision. “To be honest,” he said, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize, men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

Besides Obama, three other U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 for “having negotiated peace in the Russo-Japanese war”; President Woodrow Wilson in 1920 for being the “leading architect of the League of Nations”; and President Jimmy Carter in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts.”

The Nobel Peace Prize recipient is determined by a five-person Nobel Committee, which is appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. The winner of the Peace Prize for 2021 will not be announced until October of next year.

By Jon Decker | Fox News Jon Decker | currently serves as the White House correspondent for FOX News Radio (FNR).

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On July 24, 2020, The Washington Post news organization settled a defamation lawsuit launched by Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann over its false coverage of a viral confrontation with a Native American elder that had falsely portrayed the Kentucky teen as the aggressor. The settlement was for an “undisclosed amount.”

Similarly, earlier in the year on January 7, CNN settled with Sandmann for “an undisclosed amount.” The $250 million defamation suit sought damages for the “emotional distress Nicholas and his family suffered” in the fallout of the network’s reporting.

Sandmann lambasted “cancel culture” in his speech to the Republican National Convention, calling on the country to join President Trump in calling the media out for their constant barrage of misleading and plainly false reporting, in their ongoing efforts to sway American politics, constantly supporting leftists running for office and leftist policies.

Federalist Press has obtained information regarding the settlement amounts between Sandmann and The Washington Post and CNN.

We have learned that The Washington Post settled its lawsuit with Sandmann in the amount of $128.2 million.

We have also learned that CNN settled its lawsuit with Sandmann in the amount of $135 million.

Sandmann’s attorney, Todd McMurtry, declined to comment on the dollar amount or other elements of the settlements with The Washington Post or CNN. However, independent sources have disclosed the amounts to Federalist Press.

McMurtry has filed similar lawsuits against other defendants, and is negotiating offer settlements with each of them.

PUBIUS

‘Almost everything she put her name on for eight years was perjury or fraud.’

Once again, the media has failed to carry out even the most cursory investigation when it comes to allegations against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). But investigative journalist David Steinberg has been piecing together “32 new, verifiable, archived pieces of evidence” that indicate Omar conducted the “most extensive spree of state and federal felonies by an elected congressperson in U.S. history.”

Steinberg joined Glenn Beck on the radio program to detail how the pieces fit together in his latest report available on TheBlaze.com.

“It’s over,” Steinberg told Glenn. “There’s really nothing left. It’s all … the publicly available documentation that anyone would need to be convinced that, for eight years, [Omar] married her brother to commit immigration fraud. And this marriage fraud also was in the service of education fraud/student loan fraud. And along the line, we have evidence, that she filed at least two years of fraudulent tax returns, possibly eight [years]. We have evidence that she perjured herself eight times during her 2017 divorce from this man. And along the way, of course, we know she was living in public housing. We also know she was likely receiving subsidized child care.

“Essentially, almost everything she put her name on for eight years was perjury or fraud. And it all adds up to likely the most extensive spree of state and federal felonies by an elected congressperson in U.S. history. I really have no other way to put it. That’s how big this is.”

Watch the video below to get the details:

by TheBlaze

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Little Sisters of the Poor ‘vindicated’ by Supreme Court

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration acted within its authority when it expanded exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) requirement for employers to provide insurance coverage that includes contraception — in a victory for Little Sisters of the Poor, the Catholic group that has been at the center of the national debate over the mandate.

The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the Trump administration and the Catholic charity that cares for the elderly in two related disputes against Pennsylvania, which sued over the validity of a rule from the Trump administration that allowed religious-affiliated groups and some for-profit companies to opt-out of providing contraception coverage to employees.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled that the Trump administration’s challenged rulemaking was aboveboard, and hailed the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor.

“For over 150 years, the Little Sisters have engaged in faithful service and sacrifice, motivated by a religious calling to surrender all for the sake of their brother,” Thomas wrote. “But for the past seven years, they — like many other religious objectors who have participated in the litigation and rulemakings leading up to today’s decision — have had to fight for the ability to continue in their noble work without violating their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

He added: “We hold today that the Departments had the statutory authority to craft that exemption, as well as the contemporaneously issued moral exemption. We further hold that the rules promulgating these exemptions are free from procedural defects.”

Little Sisters of the Poor Sister Constance Veit told Shannon Bream on “Fox News @ Night” earlier this year that following the ACA mandate was “unthinkable.”

“We dedicate our lives to this because we believe in the dignity of every human life at every stage of life from conception until natural death,” Veit said. “So, we’ve devoted our lives — by religious vows — to caring for the elderly. And, we literally are by their bedside holding their hand as they pass on to eternal life. So, it’s unthinkable for us, on the one way, to be holding the hand of the dying elderly, and on the other hand, to possibly be facilitating the taking of innocent unborn life.”

The Supreme Court also ruled in favor of religious organizations in an employment discrimination case Wednesday. And last week it came down with a ruling that states could not ban religious schools from receiving money from state-funded scholarship programs that are available to non-religious private schools.

Lower court rulings had gone against the administration, with a nationwide injunction putting the exemptions on hold. But the Supreme Court’s ruling Wednesday amounts to a huge win for religious conservatives who have been battling the ACA’s contraceptive mandate for years.

“It is outrageous that the Obama administration forced a group of nuns to violate their religious beliefs in the first place,” Judicial Crisis Network Vice President and Senior Counsel Frank Scaturro tweeted. “The Court’s decision today upholding that exemption is a victory for freedom of religion and conscience—for the Little Sisters and for everyone. Let’s be thankful that the Little Sisters’ ordeal in court has finally ended.”

Thomas was joined in his judgment by all the justices except for Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Wednesday. Ginsburg raised alarms in her dissent that the ruling could put women’s health at risk.

“Today, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree,” she wrote. “Destructive of the Women’s Health Amendment, this Court leaves women workers to fend for themselves, to seek contraceptive coverage from sources other than their employer’s insurer, and, absent another available source of funding, to pay for contraceptive services out of their own pockets.”

There were two concurring opinions, one written by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, and another written by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justice Stephen Breyer.

In her opinion, Kagan said that she believed the Trump administration had the authority to make the religious exemption to the contraceptive mandate, but that she is suspicious about whether the administration fulfilled “administrative law’s demand for reasoned decisionmaking.”

Kagan argues that Pennsylvania could further challenge the religious exemption as “arbitrary and capricious” in lower courts following Wednesday’s ruling — something that the lower courts did not previously rule on because they had decided that the rule was outside of the administration’s authority.

Alito’s concurrence, on the other hand, argues that Thomas’ ruling did not go far enough and that the court should have ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) requires the religious exemption.

“We now send these cases back to the lower courts, where the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the State of New Jersey are all but certain to pursue their argument that the current rule is flawed on yet another ground, namely, that it is arbitrary and capricious and thus violates the APA,” Alito wrote.

He added: “If RFRA requires this exemption, the Departments did not act in an arbitrary and capricious manner in granting it. And in my judgment, RFRA compels an exemption for the Little Sisters and any other employer with a similar objection to what has been called the accommodation to the contraceptive mandate.”

Liberal groups were incensed by the Wednesday decision, which they said was essentially a license to discriminate.

“This is a shameful decision from the Supreme Court,” Bridgitte Amiri, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said. “Religious liberty is a fundamental right, but it does not grant a license to discriminate. Denying employees and students coverage for birth control will limit their ability to decide whether and when to have a family and make other decisions about their futures. And it will exacerbate existing inequalities, falling hardest on people with the fewest resources and people of color.”

Amiri noted that the religious exemption is just that — an exemption. And most employers will still have to provide birth control in their health care plans under the ACA.

But pro-life groups nonetheless carried the day, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, credited President Trump.

“Today is a major victory for President Trump, who has courageously fought to protect the Little Sisters of the Poor from the Obama-Biden HHS abortifacient mandate,” she said. “We commend President Trump for standing strong for the Little Sisters of the Poor – his record stands in stark contrast to that of Joe Biden, who helped launch this assault as Obama’s Vice President nearly a decade ago.”

The justices this fall will hear a broader challenge to Obamacare, and requests by the current administration and some red-leaning states to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act. It is a move opposed by the Democratic-led House and a coalition of other states.

By Tyler Olson, Ronn Blitzer, Shannon Bream. Fox News’ Bill Mears and Julia Musto contributed to this report.

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On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. 

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30. 

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

• Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction” 
• The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
• Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
• Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
• The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
• The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
• Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s 
• Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level
• We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
• Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
• Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
• Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism. 

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies. 

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia. 

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California. In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions 

But until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.” 

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse. 

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.” 

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.” 

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened. 

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence. 

 And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. 

It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.

Some highlights from the book:

• Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress 
• The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land 
• The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium 
• 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50% 
• We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
• Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
• Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
• “Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
• Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
• The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped. 

Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it. 

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop. 

The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power. 

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications. 

Nations are reverting openly to self-interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to. 

The invitations from IPCC and Congress are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment. Another one has been to the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.

“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same.  Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets.  Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism. 

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

By Michael Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. 

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Significant win for the school choice movement 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a ban on taxpayer funding for religious schools, in a narrow but significant win for the school choice movement.

In the 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court essentially backed a Montana tax-credit scholarship program that gave residents up to a $150 credit for donating to private scholarship organizations, helping students pay for their choice of private schools. The state’s revenue department made a rule banning those tax-credit scholarships from going to religious schools before the state’s supreme court later struck down the entire program.

“A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious,” Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.

Under the program, a family receiving a scholarship originally could use it at any “qualified education provider,” which the court’s opinion noted means “any private school that meets certain accreditation, testing, and safety requirements.” The Montana Department of Revenue, citing the state constitution, then changed the definition of “qualified education provider” to exclude those “owned or controlled in whole or in part by any church, religious sect, or denomination.”

That decision, which the state attorney general disagreed with, was based on a “no-aid” clause in the state’s constitution, which bars the state from giving aid to schools “controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.”

Parents of children attending a religious private school sued, and a lower court ruled in their favor, holding that the tax credits did not violate the state constitution because they were not appropriations made to religious institutions. The state supreme court overruled that decision and ordered the entire program to be scrapped.

“I feel that we’re being excluded simply because we are people of religious background, or because our children want to go to a religious school,” Kendra Espinoza, a lead plaintiff in the case, said after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in January. “We’re here to stand up for our rights as people of faith to have the same opportunities that a secular schoolchild would have.”

Roberts noted that the Montana scholarship program in no way violated the U.S. Constitution, noting that the Supreme Court has “repeatedly held that the Establishment Clause is not offended when religious observers and organizations benefit from neutral government programs.” The chief justice pointed out that neither side in the case disputed this.

What was at issue in the case is the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause — which applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment — which forbids laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion. Roberts said that the Montana Supreme Court erred when they failed to recognize that the state constitution’s “no-aid” clause violated the First Amendment.

“When the Court was called upon to apply a state law no-aid provision to exclude religious schools from the program, it was obligated by the Federal Constitution to reject the invitation,” Roberts wrote.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that there was no constitutional violation because the program ended up being shut down entirely, leaving families from all schools in the same position. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued in her own dissent that the Montana state court decision was based on state law having nothing to do with the Free Exercise Clause. Roberts rejected those arguments because “[t]he program was eliminated by a court, and not based on some innocuous principle of state law.”

In a third dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer — joined by Justice Elena Kagan — argued that while Montana’s aid program’s inclusion of religious schools may not have been forbidden by the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, it was not required by the Free Exercise Clause as Roberts’ claimed it was.

Tuesday’s ruling is a victory for school choice proponents and some conservative religious groups who had challenged the provision in court. Montana’s program was similar to many across the U.S., and other states have proposed tax-credit scholarship programs but not passed them due to confusion about their legality.

Roberts once again served as the swing vote in a 5-4 decision. This time, he joined his fellow justices in the conservative wing of the court. On Monday, Republicans railed against him for siding with the liberal contingent in a 5-4 case that struck down a Louisiana law that place restrictions on abortions by requiring that those who perform the procedures have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. He was also the deciding vote in a recent ruling against the Trump administration’s attempt to rescind DACA.

By Ronn Blitzer, Bill Mears, Shannon Bream Tyler Olson contributed to this report. 

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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday for the Trump administration in a key immigration case, determining that a federal law limiting an asylum applicant’s ability to appeal a determination that he lacked a credible fear of persecution from his home country does not violate the Constitution.

The ruling means the administration can deport some people seeking asylum without allowing them to make their case to a federal judge. The 7-2 ruling applies to those who fail their initial asylum screenings, making them eligible for quick deportation.

In a decision in the case of Dept. of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam, the court ruled that the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) – which prevents judicial review of the credible fear determination – does not violate the Constitution’s Suspension Clause, which protects habeas corpus privileges that allow courts to determine if a person should be released due to unlawful detention.

“In this case, however, respondent did not ask to be released. Instead, he sought entirely different relief: vacatur of his ‘removal order’ and ‘an order directing [the Department] to provide him with a new . . . opportunity to apply for asylum and other relief from removal,’” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion, ruling “that relief falls outside the scope of the common-law habeas writ.”

Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a Sri Lankan national, had crossed the southern U.S. border without documentation in January 2017, was apprehended within 25 yards of the border, and detained for expedited removal. According to court documents, he said he was afraid of returning to Sri Lanka because he had once been abducted and beaten by a group of men, but did not know who they were or why they attacked him. At the time, he said that he did not fear persecution due to his political beliefs, race, or any other protected characteristics.

As a result, an asylum officer determined that he did not have the requisite “credible” fear of persecution. A supervisor agreed and signed off on a removal order, which was then affirmed by an immigration judge who had heard additional testimony. This led to Thuraissigiam filing a habeas corpus petition for unlawful detention, which a federal District Court denied. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision, ruling that the law was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court reversed this with Thursday’s ruling.

Alito’s opinion also shot down the argument that the IIRIRA violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, citing an 1892 decision that ruled that for “foreigners who have never been naturalized, nor acquired any domicil or residence within the United States, nor even been admitted into the country pursuant to law,” decisions of administrative or executive officers exercising powers granted by Congress amount to due process.

The Supreme Court ruled that someone in Thuraissigiam’s position – being apprehended within 25 yards of the border – should be treated the same as someone who was taken into custody at the time they attempted to enter the country, and therefore the 1892 decision applies.

The Trump administration is seeking to expand authority so that people detained anywhere in the U.S. and up to two years after they got here could be quickly deported. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court threw out a trial judge’s ruling that had blocked the expanded policy. Other legal issues remain to be resolved in the case.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor — joined by Justice Elena Kagan — argued that the ruling “deprives [asylum seekers] of any means to ensure the integrity of an expedited removal order, an order which, the Court has just held, is not subject to any meaningful judicial oversight as to its substance.”

“Today’s decision handcuffs the Judiciary’s ability to perform its constitutional duty to safeguard individual liberty and dismantles a critical component of the separation of powers,” Sotomayor continued.

Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with the majority’s ruling, but in a concurring opinion authored by Breyer, they made clear they believe the ruling only applies in this particular case.

“I agree that enforcing those limits in this particular case does not violate the Suspension Clause’s constitutional command,” Breyer wrote. “But we need not, and should not, go further.”

Taking a broader approach, Breyer said, “may raise a host of difficult questions in the immigration context,” questioning what could happen in a case habeas corpus is denied where a person is detained after living in the U.S. for years, or if someone claims to be a naturalized citizen.

“I would therefore avoid making statements about the Suspension Clause that sweep beyond the principles needed to decide this case,” Breyer wrote, “let alone come to conclusions about the Due Process Clause, a distinct constitutional provision that is not directly at issue here.”

By Ronn Blitzer | The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Biden says ‘you ain’t black’ if torn between him and Trump, in dustup with Charlamagne tha God

Joe Biden faced a swift backlash on Friday for suggesting during a contentious radio interview with host Charlamagne tha God that those having a hard time “figuring out” whether to support him or President Trump “ain’t black.”

The dustup occurred 17 minutes into the former vice president’s interview on “The Breakfast Club” – a nationally broadcast morning talk show popular with black listeners – when a Biden aide tried to end the interview, prompting the host to charge, “You can’t do that to black media.”

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee stressed that his wife had an upcoming engagement, and suggested he would have to go whether dealing with “white media” or “black media.”

“Uh, oh … I’m in trouble,” he joked as he referred to making his wife late. Biden and his wife Jill Biden share the same studio in the basement of their home in Wilmington, Del.

After Charlamagne tha God, who is black, then asked Biden to come back on the program again and the former vice president agreed, the host added, “It’s a long way to November. We’ve got more questions.”

That’s when Biden dove into a rapid-fire defense of his record with the black community.

“I tell you if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” he said.

It’s unclear whether Biden meant to refer only to the host or to the black community as a whole.

Charlamagne tha God responded that “it has nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact that I want something for my community.”

Biden fired back, “Take a look at my record. I extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. I have a record that is second to none. The NAACP’s endorsed me every time I’ve run. Take a look at the record.”

After the friction, the interview – which was pre-taped on Thursday – ended on a mutually positive note with Biden again agreeing that he “will come back.”

But the “You ain’t black” moment reverberated on social media, with the host retweeting a variety of listeners complaining about it. Biden “should never say to a black man ‘You aint black’ under ANY circumstances,” one wrote.

“The Breakfast Club” put the question to listeners on whether they agree with Biden:

President Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, quickly highlighted the clip, tweeting, “This is disgusting.”

Trump senior adviser Katrina Pierson called the remarks “racist and dehumanizing,” saying Biden believes black voters are “incapable of being independent or free thinking.”

She added: “He truly believes that he, a 77-year-old white man, should dictate how Black people should behave. Biden has a history of racial condescension and today he once again proved what a growing number of Black Americans and I have always known: Joe Biden does not deserve our votes.”

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh spotlighted a quote from Kanye West, a prominent African-American supporter of the president, saying, “I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color.”

But Biden campaign adviser Symone Sanders defended the comments, stressing Biden’s record with the black community and saying: “The comments made at the end of the Breakfast Club interview were in jest, but let’s be clear about what the VP was saying: he was making the distinction that he would put his record with the African American community up against Trump’s any day. Period.”

Pierson, in a Trump campaign conference call with reporters, fired back that Biden’s comment “wasn’t in jest. He was serious.”

And Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina — the only black GOP senator and a supporter of the president — said “I won’t even dignify that with a response” when asked about Sanders’ comment that Biden was joking.

Pierson, when asked by Fox News if Trump had ever been a guest on “The Breakfast Club” or if there were now plans to have the president do an interview on the program, said “the president has not been on The Breakfast Club, I’m not sure that he’s been invited.” She added that “I’m not opposed to it you know, I think it’s a place that we should go.”

Biden has enjoyed widespread support among black voters, not just in general election polls – Fox News polling shows black voters favor Biden over Trump by 76-12 percent – but during the primary battle. His victory in the South Carolina primary, boosted by black voters’ support, helped revive his then-struggling campaign and catapult him toward a dominating performance on Super Tuesday.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time a 2020 contender has questioned the party affiliation of a particular race or religion. Last year, President Trump faced a backlash for saying American Jews who support Democrats show “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

He was pointing to anyone supporting Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both critics of Israel.

Fox News’ Madeleine Rivera and Judson Berger contributed to this report. 

By Brooke Singman. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeSingman.

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Sanders suspends presidential campaign, rendering Biden presumptive Democratic nominee

Bernie Sanders has suspended his Democratic presidential campaign — all but handing the nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden.

The senator from Vermont initially announced the decision during an all-staff conference call Wednesday morning, and followed up with a formal livestreamed address to supporters shortly before noon.

Citing Biden’s lead of over 300 convention delegates, Sanders declared: “The path toward victory is virtually impossible.”

He continued: “I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful. … I do not make this decision lightly.”

In a curious moment, though, Sanders said that Biden “will be the nominee,” yet went on to stress the importance of continuing to win delegates for his own campaign so he’ll be able to exert “influence” on the party platform.

Calling it a “difficult and painful decision,” Sanders stressed that “while this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.”

More than any other Democratic campaign, Sanders’ candidacy indeed represented a movement — a populist, liberal, grassroots army of young people and others drawn to his democratic socialist beliefs, which he brought from the fringes to the mainstream of the party.

Biden, in a statement, said he and his supporters “changed the dialogue.”

He said: “But more than any one issue or set of issues, I want to commend Bernie for being a powerful voice for a fairer and more just America. It’s voices like Bernie’s that refuse to allow us to just accept what is — that refuse to accept we can’t change what’s wrong in our nation — that refuse to accept the health and well-being of our fellow citizens and our planet isn’t our responsibility too. Bernie gets a lot of credit for his passionate advocacy for the issues he cares about. But he doesn’t get enough credit for being a voice that forces us all to take a hard look in the mirror and ask if we’ve done enough.”

On Twitter, Biden praised him for creating a movement.

“I know Bernie well. He’s a good man, a great leader, and one of the most powerful voices for change in our country. And it’s hard to sum up his contributions to our politics in one, single tweet. So I won’t try to,” Biden tweeted.

“To Bernie and Jane, as friends, from Jill and me: You haven’t just run a political campaign; you’ve created a movement. And make no mistake about it, we believe it’s a movement that is as powerful today as it was yesterday. That’s a good thing for our nation and our future.”

For a time, Sanders almost looked poised to clinch the nomination, as he and a handful of others emerged in early 2020 as the last candidates standing from a once-massive field of primary contenders.

Sanders won New Hampshire’s primary and scored a landslide victory in the Nevada caucuses in late in February, as he surged to front-runner status in the nomination race.

The populist lawmaker, however, then suffered a string of major primary defeats in his second straight presidential bid.

Biden steadily amassed a near-insurmountable delegate lead, following decisive victories in South Carolina and then on Super Tuesday as well as subsequent contests — before coronavirus measures forced most primaries on the calendar to be delayed.

But until now, Sanders had refused to back out of the race, instead pressing Biden to embrace progressive policy positions. Sanders’ lingering presence in the race had agitated Biden allies, concerned he would continue to make it difficult for Biden to fully focus on a general election battle against President Trump.

Biden, however, was already moving ahead, planning to consider running mates and even downplaying the possibility of any future debates with Sanders as part of the primary process.

The most recent primary was held Tuesday in Wisconsin, though most others are postponed. Results in that race are not expected for another week, though Biden was thought to have the clear advantage there.

Sanders was considered the longest of long-shots when he launched his first White House bid in the spring of 2015. But after nearly defeating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses and then crushing the former secretary of state in the New Hampshire primary, he battled the eventual nominee throughout the primary calendar.

He made an uneasy peace with Clinton in the summer of 2016, but many of his progressive and younger supporters never embraced the Democratic nominee. The lack of unity was a contributing factor in helping Donald Trump upset Clinton.

There are deep concerns among Democrats of a repeat of the 2016 lack of unity. Biden has praised Sanders in recent weeks and has said he would not pressure the senator to drop out of the race.

Biden has also embraced some progressive proposals, such as bankruptcy reform and free college tuition at public colleges and universities — policies that Sanders had pushed. But he has not embraced “Medicare-for-all,” Sanders’ signature policy that has many supporters among congressional Democrats.

Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire. 

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The New Testament of the Bible contains the story of the life of Jesus Christ. Within its pages is recounted how He was crucified on Friday, and his body was hastily removed from the cross and placed into a tomb hewn into the rock, with very little time to appropriately prepare the body for final burial before the Jewish Sabbath started at sunset.

It was early Sunday morning when Mary Magdalene and other women disciples arrived at the tomb to see the sepulcher and prepare His body. Suddenly there was a great earthquake and an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.

The angel said to the women, “Fear not: for I know that you seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is arisen. Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” He then instructed her to go and tell Jesus’ disciples that He was risen from the dead and that He would go before them to Galilee; and there they would see Him.

The others ran to tell the Apostles what they had seen and heard, but Mary stood at the door of the sepulcher weeping. As she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulcher, and saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain.

They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.”

And when she had spoken she turned back, and saw Jesus standing, but knew not that it was Him. He spoke to her and said, “Woman, why are you crying? Whom do you seek?”

She, supposing him to be the gardener, said, “Sir, if you have borne him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus looked upon her with compassion, and said, “Mary.”

Suddenly recognizing His voice, she turned herself and said to him, “Rabboni,” which is to say, Master.

Mary ran to him and embraced him, but Jesus said to her, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say to them, ‘I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.’”

What is the significance of this story nearly 2,000 years later? Each of us must decide its implications and importance for ourselves, and apply its lessons in our own lives as we interpret the message for ourselves. John, the Apostle who recorded this version of the incident gives us his own explanation of why he recorded it: “But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing, ye might have life through his name.”

Let us remember Him this Easter.

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James Thompson is a Christian author, political commentator and ghostwriter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S3TI4bYerU&feature=youtu.be

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