Month: July 2024

Authored by Carson Holloway via AmericanMind.org,

The stunning events of the last several weeks have highlighted the great weaknesses in the corporate media, an essential part of modern America’s political system. They have, as they constantly remind us, a vital role to play. But they betrayed that role by their open partisanship.

For one brief shining moment, it seemed as if the media would live up to the promise of Adolph Ochs, the founder of the modern New York Times: “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.” In the month after President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the media raised and vigorously pressed the questions about his fitness for office that had to be addressed for the good of the country.

Yet this spasm of critical curiosity about the fitness of our Democratic president turned out to be just an interlude. Everybody can remember that right before the debate the media (including the New York Times, which later called for Biden to leave the race) were saying that Biden was fine and questions about his decline were based on out-of-context video clips, labeled “cheap fakes” by the White House press office. But now that Biden has left the race, the media have reverted to their usual lack of interest in anything that sheds negative light on the national Democratic Party.

There is certainly no lack of material. In the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from campaigning, it would be no exaggeration to call this an administration mired in scandal. Besides the voter dissatisfaction over the failures of the last three and a half years, three new developments loom like shadows over the Biden-Harris White House.

Consider the mysterious way in which Biden was forced out of the race. Up to the day he dropped out he and his top aides were insisting that he was all in. Then he suddenly stepped aside without offering any reason, seemingly pushed aside, perhaps by powerful and shadowy figures with no public accountability.

There is also the scandal of the officials close to Biden—including the Democrats’ new presumptive nominee, Vice President Harris—evidently knowing about his decline and covering it up, or even directly misleading the public about it. Related to this is the Democrats’ rationally indefensible combination of choices: to drop Biden from the ticket amid widespread reports of his failing memory and flagging concentration, but to leave him in the office of the presidency for the next six months despite these signs of mental infirmity.

Finally, there is the scandalous failure of the Secret Service to provide adequate protection to a former president and the leading presidential candidate in the present election. Had it been successful, the assassination of Donald Trump would have been one of the worst attacks on American democracy in decades. It would have effectively disenfranchised the tens of millions of Americans who hope to vote for Trump. And the government’s as yet unexplained security lapses almost permitted this to happen.

Each of these scandals reflects very badly on the nation’s present governing party. Each is also a once in a century story. Yet the media seem very uninterested in getting to the bottom of any of them. They would rather fawn over Kamala Harris.

Taken together, the events of the last several weeks suggest that Biden’s rough coverage in July was not even really an interlude for the media. It was instead more of their standard operating procedure. Their scrutiny of Biden was not a return to professional standards of reporting. It was rather another case of the media making themselves part of a political operation to protect the Democratic Party—in this case by helping to push aside a president that they had concluded was an electoral liability.

No serious person who has lived through these events can credibly deny the partisanship of the corporate media. This partisanship undermines our democracy. Democracy means self-government. It means that the people get to choose the direction of the country by electing their leaders. The media could play a vital role in this wonderful process (denied to most people throughout history) through impartial and thorough reporting on public issues.

Thus they would provide the voters with the information they need to choose freely and intelligently. Instead, the media do all they can to prop up the political party with which they sympathize—all the while professing an objectivity that they manifestly do not possess. To this extent their work is an ongoing fraud on the American public.

This partisanship also hurts the country itself in other ways.

By shielding the Democrats from criticism, the media permits them to govern incompetently and recklessly with near impunity. The result: foolish policies (inflationary spending, unregulated immigration, and unnecessary foreign wars) that hurt America and Americans.

Donald Trump, with his characteristic simplicity and harshness, once said that “the fake news is the enemy of the people.”

No doubt the media resent this judgment, but they are doing everything they can to demonstrate its accuracy.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, shows the top 10 fastest-growing housing markets in the U.S., based on the growth of their housing stock between 2013 and 2022.

Housing stock refers to the total number of homes (houses and apartments) within an area.

All figures were sourced from a StorageCafe analysis of U.S. Census data.

Data and Highlights

The following table lists the data featured in this graphic.

 

Vineyard, Utah takes the top spot with remarkable 7,000% growth in both housing stock and population. A big driver of this growth is the city’s close proximity to Utah’s “Silicon Slopes” region, a growing hub for tech businesses.

Prominent companies in the region include Adobe, which opened a futuristic 280,000 square feet campus in 2013. Microsoft, Oracle, Google, and Facebook (Meta) also have offices in Utah.

Meanwhile, Horizon West, Florida has the largest population among this ranking. The area is considered a “master-planned community”, which is a large-scale neighborhood that was planned from the outset to include homes, recreational facilities, schools, and more. The goal is to create a self-sustaining community where residents do not need to leave the area frequently.

Given Horizon West’s 2022 population of 58,595 people, we can determine that its population 10 years ago was 15,219 (+285% growth).

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to check out this animated map graphic showing global urbanization from 1950 to 2020.

Authored by Mark Tapscott via The Epoch Times,

At least 5,800 IRS employees and contractors owe almost $50 million in overdue taxes and more than half of them haven’t been required to agree to a payment plan, according to the Department of the Treasury’s Inspector-General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

In a report made available to The Epoch Times, TIGTA  said auditors found 3,414, or 4 percent, of the 85,359 employees at the IRS have unpaid taxes. Of those with payment plans, $9 million remains unpaid, while $12 million is owed by employees without a payment plan.

Among IRS contractors, which include many former tax agency employees, 2,573 of 25,732 (10 percent) contractors have unpaid taxes. Of those without a payment plan, $17 million is owed and those with a payment plan have $8 million outstanding.

The TIGTA also reported that 512 former IRS employees were rehired, either as employees or contractors, despite having “tax compliance issues or conduct and performance problems, including criminal misconduct, sexual misconduct, inability to perform duties, fighting and assault, and unauthorized access to tax return information, have been rehired by the agency and its contractors,” according to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who requested the watchdog’s report.

Law Requires Tax Cheats Be Fired

Federal law requires that federal workers found to have unpaid taxes must be removed unless the IRS Commissioner specifically allows them to remain on the government payroll. The present IRS chief, Danny Werfel, has exercised that discretion to retain more than 1,000 such workers since 2021.

“Between October 1, 2021, and April 1, 2023, the IRS closed 1,175 cases with disciplinary actions, for 1,068 current employees, with confirmed tax noncompliance issues. During that same time period, 70 employees were identified with substantiated willful … violations and 20 were removed as a result,” the TIGTA report explained.

“Although the law requires an employee who has either willfully not filed or willfully understated their taxes due to be removed, subject only to the IRS Commissioner’s mitigation, this disciplinary action is not always enforced.”

Ms. Ernst also pointed out in a July 29 letter to Mr. Werfel that a 2023 TIGTA report “found 149,000 federal employees owe an astounding $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes. Tens of thousands are repeat tax cheats, failing to file tax returns year after year, and the number is steadily increasing.”

The number of federal workers across the government with unpaid taxes rose 32 percent between 2015 and 2021 to 149,000. Congress approved and President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993 the Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative (FERDI) in response to persistent tax delinquencies among government workers.

The Treasury watchdog also expressed concern in the 2024 report that having thousands of IRS employees and contractors with unpaid taxes represents a privacy security threat to all taxpayers.

“Given the ever-increasing threat of identity theft and the substantial amount of sensitive information that the IRS holds, hiring employees of high integrity is essential to safeguarding taxpayer information,” the report said.

“We believe that IRS and contractor employees who are not tax compliant could negatively affect public trust in tax administration and the perception that the IRS is being honest in its dealings with all taxpayers,” the report continued.

The TIGTA report comes as the federal tax agency is doubling its workforce thanks to an appropriation of more $80 billion. President Joe Biden, who sought the IRS workforce increase, said the additional workers will boost tax compliance, especially by taxpayers earning more than $400,000 annually.

But Ms Ernst said the new hires are instead targeting middle-income taxpayers, while the tax agency is doing too little to hold its own employees with unpaid taxes accountable.

“That is why I’m giving my July 2024 Squeal Award to the IRS for auditing honest hardworking Americans while ignoring the overdue and unpaid tax bills of its own tax collectors,” Ernst said in a July 29 statement.

The Iowa Republican’s Squeal Awards spotlight waste and fraud in the federal bureaucracy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday issued another fresh warning in the wake of the United States weeks ago announcing it intends to deploy long-range missiles in Germany in violation of prior Cold War era missile treaties.

He has vowed that Russia’s military will in turn place long-range missiles within striking distance of the West. “The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” Putin warned, announcing his intent to ‘mirror’ any such US actions.

“We will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world,” he said, as translated in Reuters.

Putin also of late frequently warned that a Cold War 2.0 showdown is emerging due to the threatening behavior of the West related to the Ukraine conflict: “This situation is reminiscent of the events of the Cold War related to the deployment of American medium–range Pershing missiles in Europe,” he said.

These comments come at the same time that Russian warships have increased their port visits to Cuba, which has involved groups of Russian military vessels not far off of America’s east coast. 

Just like in the original Cold War, Cuba could become a base of Russian missiles in the potential highly dangerous return of a Cuban missile crisis scenario. 

In early July, the Pentagon had unveiled near and long-term plans to station additional missiles in Europe, to include SM-6, Tomahawk cruise missiles and developmental hypersonic weapons placed in Germany starting in 2026.

As for Germany, which finds itself in the middle of these tit-for-tat threats and warnings, its foreign ministry has said it will not be intimidated by Moscow.

“This type of missile… had already been developed and deployed long ago” by Russia, foreign ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a press conference. “What we are now planning is a response to deter these weapons from being used against Germany or other targets,” he emphasized.

The end of Cold War era treaty was negotiated precisely to avoid and reduce weapons build-up in Europe…

In mid-July, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov stated on Telegram that the US moving missiles to Germany “increases the risks of a missile arms race,” given that it could unleash “uncontrolled escalation amid dangerously soaring Russia-NATO tensions.”

Antonov further warned that this brings European states like Germany in the crosshairs and that Moscow’s patience is limited. The ambassador posed: “Doesn’t Germany understand that the emergence of American missile assets on German soil will lead to these facilities ending up in Russian crosshairs? This is not saber-rattling, it is the simple logic of a normal person.”

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that a law combining abortion restrictions with limits to gender-altering procedures for minors does not violate the state’s constitution, which requires bills to be confined to a single subject.

The state’s high court acknowledged in a split decision on July 26 that abortion and gender-altering care are “distinct types of medical care” but that the law, LB574, does not violate Nebraska’s single-subject rule because both abortion and transgender procedures fall under the subject of medical care.

The law, which imposes a ban on abortion beyond 12 weeks’ gestation and includes regulation of puberty blockers for minors and a ban on gender-altering surgeries for minors, was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) representing Planned Parenthood in Nebraska.

A district judge dismissed the lawsuit last August, and Planned Parenthood appealed, with the key premise being a violation of Article III Section 14 of the Nebraska Constitution, which requires single-subject bills.

Lawmakers in the Nebraska Legislature had originally proposed separate bills, one banning abortion at about six weeks of pregnancy and another restricting transgender procedures for minors. However, the GOP-dominated Legislature added the abortion ban bill to the existing gender-altering care bill when the abortion ban failed to defeat a filibuster.

In arguments before the Nebraska Supreme Court in March, an attorney for the state argued that both abortion and gender-altering measures fall under the subject of health care and so the law does not violate the constitutional single-subject restriction.

By contrast, an attorney for Planned Parenthood argued that the bills deal with distinct subjects in violation of the constitution and that even the Legislature recognized this by introducing the abortion and transgender bills separately.

The majority on the Nebraska Supreme Court disagreed with the arguments put forward by Planned Parenthood, finding that while abortion and gender-altering care are distinct types of medical care, they “certainly are encompassed within the regulation of permissible medical care.”

“After our review of the facts of this case and our historical legal precedent wherein we have rarely found violations of Neb. Const. art. III, § 14, we find no merit to Planned Parenthood’s argument that L.B. 574 contains more than one subject in violation” of the state constitution, the high court’s majority opinion states.

“Unlike our dissenting colleague, and particularly in the absence of a suggestion that the title given by the Legislature was misleading, we decline to reject the elected representatives’ articulation of a subject in the guise of a search for the perfect title.

“We find Planned Parenthood’s assignments of error to be without merit. We affirm the decision of the district court.”

Several justices dissented, with one arguing that the Legislature had the duty under the constitutional amendment to “compose legislation, including titling, which stated ‘one subject’; failure to so compose renders the bill unconstitutional. It is not the role of this court to rescue legislative bills.”

The amended title of the combined LB574 was the Adopt the Let Them Grow Act and the Preborn Child Protection Act, and it provides for discipline under the Uniform Credentialing Act, with part of the dissenting judge’s objection focusing on the complexity of the title.

Another line of dissent was that the bill contained “unrelated acts, i.e., abortion and gender-affirming care,” and that it included sections that don’t relate to the regulation of medical professionals, in violation of the single-subject constitutional constraint.

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen issued a statement praising the ruling, saying he’s “grateful for the court’s thorough and well-reasoned opinion upholding these important protections for life and children in Nebraska.”

“There was a dark moment last year when many feared that a victory for unborn babies was impossible and that the pro-life coalition might break apart,” he said. “I was honored to partner with faithful allies and leaders across the state to combine the abortion ban with protections for kids against irreversible sex change surgeries.”

ACLU of Nebraska issued a statement calling the state Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the lower court ruling “devastating” and vowing to continue fighting for its position on the matter.

“This is devastating news for impacted Nebraskans, but it won’t be the final word on abortion access or the rights of trans youth and their families in Nebraska. We’ll continue doing all we can to ensure that these decisions rest with Nebraskans, not the government,” it said.

At least 25 states have adopted laws restricting or banning gender-altering procedures for transgender minors, with most of them facing lawsuits.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and handed the matter of regulating abortion access over to the states to determine, most Republican-controlled states have advanced legislation that restricts abortion or started enforcing existing laws that had been blocked.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says that Kamala Harris ‘will work with Congress’ to provide a ‘pathway to citizenship’ for tens of millions of illegal migrants.

“I believe we need to create a pathway to citizenship,” Warren told CNN‘s Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday. “All of that is part of what we need to do for comprehensive immigration reform. Kamala Harris will work with Congress and get that done.”

Elizabeth Warren:

“I believe we need to create a pathway to citizenship [for the 10 million+ illegal aliens let in by the Biden-Harris administration]. Kamala Harris will work with Congress and get that done.” pic.twitter.com/wfO9qzgO7w

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) July 29, 2024

When Tapper pressed her to defend the disastrous Biden-Harris administration border policies, Warren blamed Congress!

“I don’t need to tell you voters overwhelmingly disapprove of how the Biden-Harris administration has handled the border,” said Tapper. “By giving the nomination to one of the leaders of the border effort, aren’t Democrats doubling down on one of your party’s biggest vulnerabilities?”

To which Warren replied: “Border crossings now are lower than they were in the last year of the Trump administration. But recognize – and I know that Kamala Harris knows – this is a problem that ultimately has to be solved by Congress.“

“We need the tools in order to have more resources at the border, to have more resources in the states and cities that are supporting migrants,” she continued.

During a Saturday campaign rally in Minnesota, Trump running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-PA), Harris is trying to artificially swell Democrat voter rolls.

“She wants to hand over control of our country to people who shouldn’t be here in the first place. And we cannot let her. And I have a message, a very simple message to the millions of illegal aliens who are in this country and shouldn’t be. If you are here, start packing your bags right now because Donald J. Trump is coming back into office,” he said.

As I was saying, they’re importing voters https://t.co/zokSXYn78x

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2024

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump will sit for a voluntary interview with the FBI regarding the probe into the assassination attempt against him at a campaign rally earlier this month, according to a special agent on July 29.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said in a call with reporters on Monday.

While the agency said it has not yet determined the motive of the would-be Trump assassin, his actions showed extensive planning ahead of the July 13 rally, Mr. Rojek told reporters.

Mr. Rojek said interviews with victims are common practice during investigations.

Several new details were revealed during the call, including that the 20-year-old suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks had made “significant efforts” to conceal his actions, according to CNN.

Mr. Robek said that Mr. Crooks had conducted extensive online research, which showed that he had an interest in mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices, and the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s prime minister earlier this year.

The suspect was a reclusive individual primarily connected to his family, Mr. Rojek said. His parents have cooperated fully with the investigation, maintaining they were unaware of his plans.

Mr. Rojek revealed in the call that Mr. Crooks used aliases and foreign-based encrypted email accounts to evade detection during the purchase of firearms and chemical precursors for explosive devices, according to CNN.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Short seller Andrew Left surrendered in Los Angeles this afternoon, CNBC reported. 

James Spertus, the lawyer representing Left who was previously a prosecutor in the L.A. U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Monday prosecutors had ordered Left to turn himself in that day. Initially, the U.S. Attorney’s Office planned to request a $10 million cash deposit for his bail.

“Then they wanted several million dollars,” Spertus said. “It doesn’t make any sense. This should be Mr. Left released on his own recognizance. There’s no reason for any bond in this case.”

Spertus argued Left isn’t a flight risk, or a danger to the community – and that there are no victims in the case. “There can’t be” a plea deal, he said, since it would require Left to tell a judge that what he did was unlawful, which he says it wasn’t. 

“This case is going to fail for six independent reasons,” Spertus said. “You have no duty to the market to disclose your private trading intentions.”

He said he thinks the DOJ “is trying to deter the activist short sellers, and they want to stop it.”

Spertus told CNBC that, irrespective of Left’s conviction or acquittal, the case will deter short sellers from publicly sharing their research on companies they believe to be overvalued or whose stock prices are based on false information.

“People will stop sharing their research with the market,” Spertus said. “It’s really bad for the financial markets to have a prosecution like this when the government agrees that the public statements were truthful.”

As we wrote days ago, Federal prosecutors charged short seller Andrew Left with fraud last Friday, accusing him of making misleading statements about stocks to profit from price moves triggered by his reports, according to an exclusive by the Wall Street Journal. 

Known for his firm Citron Research, which targets market “lemons,” Left gained fame for betting against Valeant Pharmaceuticals and for betting against GameStop during the meme stock craze, but he has seen less success in recent years.

The DOJ wrote in a press release out Friday morning:

According to the indictment, Andrew Left, 54, formerly of Beverly Hills, California, and now a resident of Boca Raton, Florida, was a securities analyst, trader, and frequent guest commentator on cable news channels such as CNBC, Fox Business, and Bloomberg Television. Left conducted business under the name “Citron Research” (Citron), an online moniker he created as a vehicle for publishing investment recommendations. Citron’s online presence included a website and a social media account on X, formerly known as Twitter.

His media presence amplified his impact, leading followers to mimic his trades, prosecutors said:

As alleged in the indictment, Left commented on publicly traded companies, asserting that the market incorrectly valued a company’s stock and advocating that the current price was too high or too low. Left’s recommendations often included an explicit or implicit representation about Citron’s trading position—which created the false pretense that Left’s economic incentives aligned with his public recommendation—and a “target price,” which Left represented as his valuation of the company’s stock. Sometimes, the commentary represented Left’s own work. Other times, Left disseminated the commentary of third parties as his own. The commentary routinely included sensationalized headlines and exaggerated language to maximize the reaction it would get from the stock market. As alleged, Left knowingly exploited his ability to move stock prices by targeting stocks popular with retail investors and posting recommendations on social media to manipulate the market and make fast, easy money.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Left faces charges of securities fraud and lying to federal investigators, with accusations of manipulating at least 15 stocks to earn $16 million over five years. Prosecutors claim he exaggerated potential stock price declines, sometimes closing positions after minimal price drops.

The press release continued: 

As further alleged in the indictment, in the leadup to publication of Citron’s commentary, Left established long or short positions in the public company on which he was commenting in his trading accounts and prepared to quickly close those positions post-publication and take profits on the short-term price movement caused by his commentary. Left allegedly used his advance knowledge and control over the timing of a market-moving event to build his positions using inexpensive, short-dated options contracts that expired from the same day that he published his commentary to within five days. Left also allegedly submitted limit orders, often prior to publication of his commentary, to close his positions as soon as the company’s shares reached a certain price and at prices vastly different from the target prices that Left recommended to the public. While Left made false representations to the public to bolster his credibility, behind the scenes, Left allegedly took contrary trading positions to reap quick profits off the stocks he either promoted or pilloried through Citron.

Left’s indictment concludes a three-year investigation into short sellers’ tactics. Prosecutors also allege Left concealed ties to hedge funds that traded on his early research, sharing profits with him. He denied these allegations to investigators in January 2021.

Authored by Matthew Vadum via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A Roman Catholic diocese is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court a New York appeals court ruling that requires religious charities to provide abortion coverage in their employee health insurance packages.

Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, confirmed during an online news conference on July 25 that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, New York, is preparing a petition for certiorari, or review, to be filed in coming weeks with the nation’s highest court. The Becket organization is part of the diocese’s legal team.

The case is Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Harris. Adrienne A. Harris is Superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, the agency that issued the health care insurance regulation that’s in dispute.

The deadline for filing the petition for certiorari, or review, was originally Aug. 19, but on July 26, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor extended the deadline to Sept. 18.

The case has been working its way through the judicial system for years.

In 2017, the New York Department of Financial Services issued a regulation requiring that employers fund abortions through their employee health insurance plans. The regulation exempted religious entities whose “purpose” is to inculcate religious values and who “employ” and “serve” primarily coreligionists. At the same time, the regulation forced religious organizations to cover abortions if they have a broader religious mission, such as serving the poor, or if they hire or serve people regardless of their faith.

Various Roman Catholic dioceses, along with Anglican nuns and Lutheran and Baptist churches, sued.

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York ruled in favor of the state in July 2020.

But in November 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court summarily vacated that decision.

The nation’s highest court sent the case back to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York for further consideration in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2021 ruling in Fulton v. Philadelphia.

In the Fulton ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a Roman Catholic charity in Pennsylvania may refuse on First Amendment religious freedom grounds to place children with same-sex couples.

Writing for the court in that case, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Philadelphia had violated the other side’s First Amendment rights.

The religious views of the diocese-affiliated Catholic Social Services “inform its work in this system,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. The charity believes that “marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman.”

“Because the agency understands the certification of prospective foster families to be an endorsement of their relationships, it will not certify unmarried couples—regardless of their sexual orientation—or same-sex married couples.”

However, when the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York reconsidered the case in June 2022, it ruled in favor of the state, finding that the Fulton ruling didn’t apply to the case and that the abortion insurance mandate did not violate the First Amendment.

On May 21 of this year, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling of the Appellate Division.

“Under Fulton, both the regulation itself and the criteria delineating a ‘religious employer’ for the purposes of the exemption are generally applicable and do not violate the Free Exercise Clause,” the court held.

Ms. Windham said in recent years the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of employers “every single time” in three cases when they have objected to having to provide coverage for contraception or abortion medication for their employees.

Despite that, New York decided to impose an abortion coverage mandate and “go all the way in the face of these three Supreme Court decisions.” First, the state enacted the insurance regulation and then the New York State Legislature decided to codify the regulation in state law, she said.

The exemption from the mandate is narrow, Ms. Windham said.

“If you primarily serve people of your own faith, then you can have an exception, but if you open your doors to all … [to] care for anyone regardless of your faith, if you’re out there offering a cup of soup to anyone who’s hungry, regardless of what their faith background is, then you lose your religious freedom protections, you lose your exemption under the statute, and you must also pay for abortions.”

This means that a “religious test” is being imposed on religious groups that provide social services, she said.

“All of these different groups are stuck with this abortion mandate, and all of them because of the work they do, and because of the good that they try to do within their communities, are being hit by this,” Ms. Windham said.

The New York Department of Financial Services didn’t respond by publication time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Authored by Adam Schwarze via American Greatness,

Last Sunday, President Joe Biden made the appropriate decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race amid pressure and a soft coup attempt from Democrats. While dropping out, Biden, our sitting commander-in-chief, hid in Delaware for almost a week without being seen by the American people, prompting “proof of life” demands. Unfortunately, this past week is not the first time this has happened before – Joe Biden has been missing in action for the last four years as our country has been falling apart around him.

As a retired Navy SEAL and former Marine, I’ve had the honor and duty of serving this country in some of the most challenging and dangerous situations imaginable. Our missions demanded precision, adaptability, and unwavering leadership. Any failure, any gap in our planning or execution, could cost lives. That’s why it is deeply troubling to see the current state of leadership under President Biden, who has become a “single point of failure” as our commander-in-chief. His weakness continues to put America in grave danger as our enemies seek to capitalize from America’s missing leader.

It’s no secret that the Biden administration has admitted that the president can only take meetings and function in a presidential capacity from 8 AM to 4 PM. This startling admission should be a wake-up call for all Americans. The presidency is not a 9-to-5 job; it demands constant vigilance and the ability to respond to crises at any hour. The world doesn’t stop turning when the president clocks out, nor do the threats to our national security. It begs the question many have been asking: if Biden can’t serve another four years in office, why should he be allowed to serve another three and a half months in office?

In the military, redundancy is a core principle, particularly in the SEALs. Every mission, every piece of gear, and every communication line has a backup. This ensures that no single failure can jeopardize the entire operation. If one plan falters, another is ready to be executed immediately. This redundancy is crucial for maintaining the integrity and success of our missions.

Unfortunately, this principle is missing from the current administration. The fact that President Biden is limited to such a narrow window of availability and missing from the public eye for nearly a week straight after announcing on “X” that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race raises serious questions about the continuity of government operations. What happens during the hours he is unavailable? Who has been in charge for the last week? Who makes critical decisions in times of crisis? In a time of crisis, the inability to contact top officials can have catastrophic consequences.

Only the president can fulfill numerous critical roles. He alone has the authority to make final decisions on national security matters, launch nuclear missiles, sign executive orders, and serve as the armed forces commander-in-chief. The president is also the primary representative of the United States on the global stage, engaging with foreign leaders and making decisions that affect international relations. These responsibilities demand a leader who is always fully engaged and capable.

Our success as SEALs relies on our trust in our leadership and the systems that support us. Knowing that the president is limited in his capacity to lead effectively erodes that trust. It’s akin to entering a mission without knowing if our commander is fully prepared or even present. The American people deserve a leader who is always ready to act in their best interests, not one who is only partially available.

The absence of a clear plan or redundancy for such scenarios is troubling. In times of emergency, there must be a seamless transition of authority and decision-making capabilities. The current state of affairs suggests that there is no adequate backup and contingency plan. This lack of foresight and preparation is not just a managerial oversight but a national security risk.as a nation, we cannot afford to have our highest office and critical government positions operating under such constraints. The world is watching, and our adversaries are keenly aware of any weaknesses. We need an administration that understands the importance of redundancy and has plans to ensure the continuity of leadership and operations.

Right now, America’s leaders are asleep at the wheel. We have no idea who is truly running our country as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have actively tried to bring down the greatest country in history. In the military, we operate under the principle that failure is not an option. It’s time for our leaders to adopt the same mindset. The security and future of our nation depends on it.