On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in this term’s marquee case, United States v. Skrmetti.

The case, out of Tennessee, nominally involves a state law banning minors’ use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for purposes of so-called gender-affirming care – which, stripped of all euphemism, means genital mutilation and chemical castration. And the justices will indeed have to resolve the narrow legal question before them in this case: namely, whether or not Tennessee’s common-sense protection of vulnerable youth from the predations of the billion-dollar transgender industry offends the 14th Amendment’s injunction that no state “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The straightforward legal answer is that it plainly does not. Fatuous arguments this week from the U.S. solicitor general and American Civil Liberties Union advocate aside, one simply cannot divorce the issue of medical treatment from the issue of medical purpose. Consider the case of fentanyl. There are legitimate purposes for small amounts of fentanyl, which can be used as a painkiller in a contained hospital setting. There are also myriad illegitimate purposes for fentanyl, as anyone remotely familiar with America’s depressing drug-overdose crisis can sadly attest. So too can a reasonable person distinguish between testosterone therapy for an adolescent boy with delayed puberty, on the one hand, and testosterone therapy for an adolescent girl with gender dysphoria, on the other hand.

Tennessee’s law does treat every “person within its jurisdiction” equally. It simply requires that the remedy for gender dysphoria for all children and adolescents “within its jurisdiction,” regardless of biological sex, is psychological treatment – not irreversible physical damage to the human body. As recent as a decade ago, this would have been considered so obvious as to not even require legislation. Because we live in morally confused and ideologically fervent times, sadly, such laws are now necessary.

But the Skrmetti case also entails a considerably more important, and more sweeping, dispute than the technical constitutional issue that is now pending before the justices. More fundamentally, what was presented to the Supreme Court on Wednesday were two diametrically opposed conceptions of anthropology and the human person – of man’s very being and his relation with his fellow man, the state and God Himself.

The transgender lobby and the Biden-Harris administration argue that the human person is, in essence, a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Under this dispensation, it is not sufficient that free will exists when it comes to making the decisions and choosing the courses of action that define our lives. Rather, “free will” also extends, in a bastardized sense, to the biologically irreducible question of who we quite literally are as Homo sapiens, members of the human race. The result of this pseudo-intellectual sophistry is the bizarre spectacle of Ketanji Brown Jackson, then an intellectually challenged judge and now an intellectually challenged justice, refusing to answer the question of what a “woman” is when pressed during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Gender activists hectored us for years that sexual orientation is established at birth, but apparently one now gets to choose whether he is man or woman.

On the other side of the civilizational clash, there are those of us who still “get bitter” and “cling,” to use our 44th president’s infamous words, to the norm established by God Himself in the book of Genesis: “And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Even holding the Good Book aside, it doesn’t require a Ph.D. in biology or embryology to grasp that human beings (and any number of species of animals) have precisely two possible chromosomal structures: XX for “female,” and XY for “male.” We know from the birds and the bees that human beings are specifically designed with sexual complementarity so that they can, upon the marital union, become one flesh and, to again cite Genesis, “be fruitful and multiply.”

These two visions of the human person are in irreconcilable tension with one another. There is no middle ground here. Only one vision can survive.

The imperative of the statesman, be he political or judicial in nature, is to choose. It is not statesmanlike – indeed, it is cowardly – for constitutional officers of all stripes, judges included, to simply toss their hands in the air and proclaim their contentedness with letting the chips fall where they may. America’s great antebellum dispute, that over chattel slavery, similarly concerned the nature of the human person. That dispute ended in tragedy, destruction and mass bloodshed.

In order to forestall a similar fate, we need more Lincoln-esque figures in our time: those who, like the Great Emancipator, have the courage to advance forthright moral arguments. Perhaps the Supreme Court can begin by using Skrmetti to declare transgenderism the lie against the human person that it is.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson compared child sex-change bans to interracial marriage prohibitions on Wednesday.

Jackson made the remarks during a hearing for United States v. Skrmetti, a case considering whether Tennessee’s law banning medical procedures intended to enable “minor[s] to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. She likened the current issue to the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case that reversed Virginia’s rule barring interracial marriage.

LISTEN:

“What was most interesting about the potential comparison to Loving is that in that case everyone seemed to concede up front that a racial classification was being drawn by the statute. That was sort of like the starting point,” Jackson said. “The question was whether it was discriminatory because it applied to both races and it wasn’t necessarily invidious or whatever. But you know, as I read … the case here, you know, the court starts off by saying that Virginia is now one of sixteen states which prohibited and punishes marriages on the basis of racial classifications.”

“And when you look at the structure of that law, it looks in terms of … you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics, it’s sort of the same thing,” she continued. “So it’s interesting to me that we now have this different argument. And I wonder whether Virginia could have gotten away with what they did here by just making a classification argument, the way that Tennessee is in this case.”

The Virginia law referenced by Jackson solely banned interracial marriages that involved white individuals, former Chief Justice Earl Warren noted in the court’s decision to strike down the prohibition.

“There can be no question but that Virginia’s miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions drawn according to race,” he wrote, later adding, “The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy.”

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Tennessee ban in September 2023, asserting that transgender individuals are not a “politically powerless” or “immutable” group.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared reluctant to order the destruction of a Tennessee state law that protects children from being subjected to the chemicals – and even physical body mutilations – that are involved in the transgender industry.

At issue is a state law that bars minors from undergoing transgender procedures – an industry that has exploded with the constant promotions by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over the past few years.

The Washington Examiner explained the members of the high court “appeared skeptical” over demands that they strike down the law in a case brought by leftists who promote the ideology.

The state of Tennessee has explained that it has the authority to regulate medical treatment and procedures, and that’s exactly what it is doing.

The challengers in the case claim that such limits discriminate on the basis of sex.

“The majority of justices appeared to be sympathetic to Tennessee’s arguments,” the report said.

The leftist oriented America Civil Liberties Union initially challenged the law, and claimed it was working on behalf of “families with transgender adolescents.”

Of course, following the science makes clear that changing from male to female or vice versa isn’t possible, as being male or female is embedded in the body down to the DNA level. Further, studies have confirmed that the vast majority of children with gender dysphoria issues resolve themselves to an identity of their birth sex if left alone.

Biden’s Department of Justice eventually joined the case on behalf of the pro-transgender agenda he and Kamala Harris adopted.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, led by Chief Judge Jeffery Sutton, had affirmed the law.

A ruling in the case, which isn’t expected for some months, is expected to have an impact on multiple state laws that address the same issue – the politicized agenda that involves giving children chemicals and body mutilations to appease a transgender ideology.

Tennessee Solicitor General James Rice explained “there is no sex-based line” in his state’s law that would violate the 14th Amendment.

When Biden’s legal representative in the case claimed it is sex discrimination, with, “This statute on its face says you can’t have medication inconsistent with sex, and no matter what you think about transgender discrimination generally, that’s a sex-based line,” Justice Samuel Alito noted, “I’m not sure that’s anything more than a play on words.”

Alito suggested that transgender identity may not be an unchanging characteristic.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested the case would be the trigger for “identifying a new suspect class, which we haven’t done for a long time.”

Chief Justice John Roberts raised the issue of the side effects of the chemicals that promoters want to give children.

“Here it seems to me that the medical issues are much more heavily involved than many of the cases that you look to,” said Roberts. He said the Supreme Court is “not the best situated to address issues like that.”

Alito also pointed out other Western nations in recent days have “significantly curtailed” their use of drugs and chemicals.

A lawyer for Biden’s administration did concede that cross-sex hormones have permanent effects on a developing child’s body.

And she admitted there are detransitioners who have regret over their transgender beliefs.

A statement from the office of the Tennessee attorney general, in defense of its protection for children, said, “We are here defending Tennessee’s law protecting children from irreversible and unproven gender transition procedures.”

AG Jonathan Skrmetti added, “Tennessee’s general assembly reviewed the medical evidence, as well as the evidence-based decisions of European countries that restricted these procedures, and ultimately passed this bipartisan law prohibiting irreversible medical interventions. The plaintiffs in this case are asking the court to take the power to regulate the practice of medicine away from the people’s elected representatives and vest it in unaccountable judges.”

“Our arguments were ultimately about constitutional clarity and common sense,” Skrmetti added, “Our Founders guaranteed states the right and responsibility to protect children, regulate the medical profession, and independently evaluate the evidence of the risks and benefits of practices to be regulated. We cannot allow ideology to override medical evidence at the expense of our right to self-government and our duty to protect our children.”

There is outrage in New Jersey after a resident was booted from his local council meeting for holding up an American flag and Constitution, something local officials have banned as “props” from their gatherings.

Police escorted out Joel Bassoff, a lawyer from the Township of Edison, after he displayed Old Glory as well as the nation’s founding document, warning of potential legal action for the government’s restriction of residents’ free speech.

“I’m holding up an American flag to represent the constitutional values,” Bassoff said.

“It’s my constitutional right to do this,” Bassoff said. “If you get sued, you will lose. My suggestion to you is that you get a second opinion from competent counsel because you are wrong.”

“You are interfering with the decorum of this meeting by interfering with the right to speech of a member of the public. And it should stop now,” he added, as fellow residents could be heard applauding.

The same man was kicked out for holding an American flag at the meeting pic.twitter.com/YmFDHJoeEl

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 3, 2024

Council President Nishith Patel warned Basoff about his “props” before saying: “His time is forfeited.”

“Your time should be forfeited, your positions should be forfeited,” Bassoff replied. “By your actions you forfeit every right to preside over this meeting.”

“He is in violation, he can be removed,” Patel instructed officers.

“Shame on you!” Basoff shouted at the council.

Another resident could be heard saying: “Shame on the police for breaking their oath to the Constitution.”

“To consider the American flag and the Constitution a prop when someone raises it is an insult to what the flag is, what the flag stands for and what this country is,” resident Maryann Hennessey told council members.

“For you to consider the use of the American flag a prop is disgusting.”

Is the news we hear every day actually broadcasting messages from God? The answer is an absolute yes! Find out how!

She said local officials are “hellbent” on controlling the public which is “ludicrous, rude and juvenile.”

“Residents won’t forget how they were made to feel and how things were handled,” she said. “Flags, really a prop, you going to throw me out?”

“It’s juvenile to fight this war, you’re losing. It’s just making people more agitated, more determined to do something to provoke getting thrown out,” she said.

“Let it go. It’s a waste of taxpayer time.”

Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeKovacsNews

Two Democrat-appointed judges have decided to “unretire” following President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victories, in both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote.

And their actions have prompted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican whose party soon will be the Senate majority, to warn about the active politicization of the judiciary.

He called the announcements by the two judges, one appointed by Bill Clinton and the other by Barack Obama, an indication of “a political finger on the scale.” He said the incoming Trump administration, backed by GOP majorities in the Senate and House should “explore all available recusal options with these judges.”

Under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris regime over the last four years, the administrative state in Washington has been weaponized in multiple ways against Trump, Republicans and conservatives. One report showed 70% of education enforcement actions against colleges targeted the 10% of institutions that are Christian. Further, the FBI and DOJ openly assembled wild claims against Trump, such as that he improperly had government documents after his first presidency. In contrast, Biden was given a pass for having literally boxes of such documents in his garage after his vice presidency.

The judges who abruptly changed their retirement plans following Trump’s victory, which would mean a Republican president would nominate their replacements, were Judge Algenon Marbley of Ohio and Judge Max Cogburn of North Carolins.

Marbley was appointed by Clinton and Cogburn by Obama.

They both has announced plans to take senior status before the election, then flip-flopped when Trump won.

A report from Fox News explained McConnell, R-Ky., called the pair “partisan Democrat district judges.”

In fact, he said, American voters “voted to fire Democrats last month.”

“Looking to history, only two judges have ever unretired after a presidential election. One Democrat in 2004 and one Republican in 2009. But now, in just a matter of weeks, Democrats have already met that all-time record. It’s hard to conclude that this is anything other than open partisanship,” McConnell said.

McConnell said the judges are putting “a political finger on the scale.”

He also, according to the report, “warned two sitting circuit court judges, who have announced retirements and have vacancies currently pending before the senate, against making similar decisions to ‘unretire.'”

“Never before has a circuit judge unretired after a presidential election. It’s literally unprecedented. And to create such a precedent would fly in the face of a rare bipartisan compromise on the disposition of these vacancies,” McConnell said.

His reference was to a deal worked out in the Senate to allow a certain number of Biden nominees to be given Senate votes before the end of Biden’s term, while other vacancies would remain unaddressed until after Trump starts making nominations.

.

President-elect Donald Trump recently joked with House Republicans and said: “I suspect I won’t be running again, unless you do something. Unless you say, ‘He’s so good, we have to just figure it out.'”

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who served as lead counsel for one of Trump’s impeachments, fretted: “It’s the same thing now (about a third term). This is how Donald Trump operates. He floats it, he normalizes it, and then it just becomes part of the common parlance.”

Memo to Goldman: Even if Trump were serious, there is a bit of a speed bump. It’s called the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. It says, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” So, if you’re keeping score, Trump has maxed out. And given that Trump insists he actually won in 2020, he’s really maxed out.

Of course, the Constitution can be amended, something that occurs on average every 10 years. Congress could start the process. But an amendment requires a two-thirds vote in the House, where Republicans have a majority by just a few seats, and in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 lead. Then three-fourths of the states would have to approve. The second way to amend the Constitution requires two-thirds of state legislatures to call for a convention to propose amendments. This has never happened. But, hey, fascists find a way.

To completely, totally and forever shut down a Trump third term, Goldman proposed a resolution stipulating the 22nd Amendment “applies to two terms in the aggregate as President of the United States” and it “applies to President-elect Trump.” It’s hard to get clearer than the clear language of the 22nd Amendment. But fascists find a way.

Trump’s joke scared the pants off Vanity Fair. In a piece headlined “There’s Nothing Funny About Trump’s Third-Term ‘Joke,'” it wrote, “So when he muses about staying in office beyond the second term he won last week, there is no reason to take it as anything but an admission of his actual aspirations.”

As for “actual aspirations,” in December 2000, The Guardian wrote a piece called “(Bill) Clinton Wants Third Term in Office: Constitution ban is outdated, president says in nostalgic interview.” It wrote, “The U.S. Constitution should be changed to allow a president to serve more than two terms, Bill Clinton has told Rolling Stone magazine.”

In November 2020, former President Barack Obama told late-night comic Stephen Colbert: “People would ask me, ‘Knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term?’ And I used to say, ‘You know what? If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in, a front man or front woman … I’d be fine with that.'”

Former President Richard Nixon, after his 1972 landslide reelection and before the Watergate scandal, talked about repealing the 22nd Amendment. The New York Times, in a Nov. 29, 1987, article headlined “Reagan Wants End of Two-Term Limit,” wrote: “President Reagan says that after leaving office he ‘would like to start a movement’ to repeal the constitutional amendment that limits Presidents to two terms.”

Two-term presidents tend to fantasize about a third term. Ex-presidents are living longer and longer. Former President Jimmy Carter is 100. He left office in 1981, like Trump in 2021, as a one-termer. Carter, like Trump, could have tried again and, if he won, he could’ve squeezed in a few more terms given his longevity. No wonder Trump’s riff about a third term sent Democrats hiding under the bed.

But Democrats should not be so shortsighted. If Trump pulls this off, then Obama, who is 15 years younger than Trump, could run again. Bill Clinton, two months younger than Trump, could, too. Clinton’s probably itching to get the band back together and hit the campaign trail one more time. Besides, what’s the Democratic alternative? Kamala Harris?

Goldman, on the other hand, certainly raises a legitimate fear. Given Trump’s stamina, drive and energy, he could keep getting elected and stack up enough terms to run with Barron, becoming the first father-son ticket.

You know, like LeBron and Bronny.

A school district in Wisconsin wants its students and employees to say what it wants – and only what it wants.

And it’s apparently going to try to force that by imposing a “hate” speech code that is in violation of the First Amendment, according to a report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

The organization reports that it is the Baraboo School District that has a draft policy stating, “Hate speech is not protected speech” and outlines plans for the district to “not tolerate any form of hate speech.”

Those statements and opinions, the school insists, will be banished “both on and off school grounds,” FIRE reported.

“But here’s the problem: ‘Hate speech’ has no legal meaning in the United States, and the term is often used to describe speech that is constitutionally protected,” FIRE reported. “The policy does provide its own definition of ‘hate speech,’ namely ‘any form of communication that attacks, threatens, degrades, or insults a person or group based on their race, color, national origin, ancestry, creed, age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender variance, or any other group.'”

But FIRE, in a letter to the district, explains that “vague and subjective definition violates the First Amendment.”

Actually, many analysts have said the First Amendment was created in order to protect offensive speech, because inoffensive comments – those that everyone would support – would need no special protection.

FIRE explains, “The First Amendment makes no general exception for offensive, repugnant, or hateful expression.”

And it cited the U.S. Supreme Court, which “recently reaffirmed that ‘America’s public schools are the nurseries of democracy.’ That means they have an interest in protecting students’ freedom to express themselves, and that ‘protection must include the protection of unpopular ideas, for popular ideas have less need for protection.'”

Students’ speech rights inside school walls actually are abridged somewhat, in order to “maintain order and discipline.”

“But school officials don’t have carte blanche to ban whatever speech they personally think is offensive or inappropriate. Rather, they can restrict student speech only in limited circumstances, such as when it would substantially disrupt the learning environment. … Schools cannot suppress speech out of ‘mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.'”

For example, FIRE challenges, “Is it ‘hate speech’ for a student to argue that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old to be president because it ‘attacks’ or ‘degrades’ a person based on their age?”

“Absent evidence of substantial disruption, the First Amendment protects students’ expression of controversial opinions…”

Further, the organization notes, when “students leave school grounds, they’re under the authority of their parents, not government employees.”

“All the right people are angry.”

This is what MAGA will tell you when you point out that President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is an unhinged authoritarian crank.

If you point out that Kennedy is a chemtrail truther who believes the water supply is turning children gay, MAGA will ask you if he’s any worse than “Rachel Levine” or Anthony Fauci.

Probably not, no.

And when you mention that Kennedy has neither the credentials nor expertise to offer anyone advice on their health, much less make national policy, people like Elon Musk will point out that Democrats believe men could be pregnant.

That’s also true.

But none of those contentions are arguments for Kennedy. A man who celebrates the notion of climate lockdowns doesn’t become a stronger candidate because Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra is also an extremist.

Even if we found out Fauci was the devil himself, it wouldn’t erase Kennedy’s lifetime of crackpottery. It’s not merely that Kennedy possesses no experience for the job. It’s that most of the things he believes are dangerously untethered from reality.

Anyway, you may disagree. And Trump has the right to pick anyone he likes. But the Senate has the duty to vote down any irresponsible and ridiculous nominees. It’s why advice and consent exists.

In a normal year, Kennedy would have to answer a slew of awkward questions in a Senate confirmation hearing. Which is probably why Trump has reportedly cooked up a scheme to bypass the Senate and recess-appoint his Cabinet.

Recess appointments, which, the late Justice Antonin Scalia noted, are an “anachronism,” were intended to let the executive branch make appointments when Congress was out of session. In the 18th century, elected officials were compelled to travel hundreds of miles by carriage to go home or escape Washington, D.C., during smallpox outbreaks – which, to be fair, may well make a comeback under Kennedy.

This isn’t some esoteric debate over the spirit of the law. Trump wants to force fake recess with the help of Speaker Mike Johnson in the House, so his nominees can circumvent senatorial scrutiny. It is an open attack on the separation of powers. It is the kind of executive abuse Republicans would rightly be howling in indignation over if the other party was doing it. Recess appointments still exist. No president has ever tried to abuse them in this way.

Whenever MAGA is itching to blow up some norm, it will argue that Democrats would surely do the same if they had the chance. Why should the GOP unilaterally disarm, they ask? Even if this were true, the GOP claims it is a defender of the constitutional order. But maybe ask yourself if it’s worth destroying 250 years of tradition for the likes of Kennedy.

Because “making all the right people angry” isn’t any great accomplishment. Virtually everything makes leftists angry. What would really bring a reckoning to corrupt government are ruthlessly competent administrators who will dismantle the stultified culture in these agencies and reinvent them. There are plenty of people available who can do it and get through a confirmation hearing.

Too bad, MAGA tells me, Trump has a “mandate” from the people. But, of course, mandates aren’t a real thing, either. Every incoming administration imagines it’s been given a magical ability to implement an agenda unilaterally. We don’t have oligarchs with time limits, even if they have captured overwhelming wins, which Trump has not. We have three branches of government. And one of them is empowered to reject the president’s Cabinet picks no matter how people voted for the president.

Sen. John Thune, the incoming majority leader, has already extended deference by promising Trump his nominees will get timely votes. That’s a completely normal thing to do.

And that’s all he needs to do.

A federal program in which Drug Enforcement Administration agents unconstitutionally demanded to search travelers’ luggage, without any probable cause a crime had been committed, has been suspended after the scheme was caught on video.

It is the Institute for Justice, which is fighting on behalf of victims of the program, that confirmed the government’s abrupt flip-flop.

The institute confirmed, “Today, the Department of Justice suspended the Drug Enforcement Administration’s controversial practice of having agents intercept travelers, interrogate them, and insist on searching their bags in what the agency calls ‘consensual encounters.'”

The encounters actually are anything but consensual, as the video reveals one agent insisting that he is “the government” and can confiscate a traveler’s backpack and take it away – to some unknown location – for a search.

The victim in this case explained on video that he was very concerned that the agent would, in fact, take the backpack, and then plant evidence in it.

The institute said the suspension “comes on the heels of an Office of the Inspector General report, also issued today, that criticizes the practice and refers to shocking footage of one traveler’s experience, which the Institute for Justice (IJ) released on YouTube in July.”

“Today’s OIG report confirms what we’ve been saying for years about predatory DEA practices at airports, and the allegations in our nationwide class-action lawsuit against DEA over these abuses,” said IJ lawyer Dan Alban.

“We welcome DOJ’s suspension of this program as a first step, but policy directives can be changed at any time, under this or future administrations. We call on Congress to pass the FAIR Act to permanently reform federal civil forfeiture laws to end the profit incentive, close the equitable sharing loophole, and to guarantee every property owner receives their day in court by ending so-called administrative forfeitures.”

The institute said it currently is suing the DEA and the Transportation Security Administration over the airport seizure and confiscation programs they operate.

The case is on behalf of several travelers and a class of people who have had their property seized, and it currently is in the discovery phase gathering evidence.

The IG report cited the evidence that the DEA was refusing to comply with even its own policies on consensual encounters at airports.

That failure, the IG confirmed, was creating “potentially significant operational and legal risks.”

Among the failings was that the DEA operatives were refusing to complete required documentation about their actions, and had failed to obtain the proper training.

The OG continued with criticism of DEA’s “absence of critical controls, such as adequate policies, guidance, training, and data collection,” because that creates “substantial risks” that officers “will conduct these activities improperly, impose unwarranted burdens on, and violate the legal rights of innocent travelers.”

The IG noted that when the report was given to a deputy attorney general, a directive was issued to the DEA to halt its practices.

Further, the IG noted that concerns about complaints about such activities date back decades.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court held Monday that incorrectly dated mail ballots cannot be counted.

The court held the ballots “shall not be counted for purposes of the election held” on Nov. 5. The Republican National Committee sued Thursday after several counties decided to count ballots with incorrect dates.

“Following our latest RNC lawsuit, today the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled yet again that undated ballots CANNOT BE COUNTED,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley wrote in a statement on X. “No more excuses. Election officials in Bucks, Montgomery, Philadelphia, and other counties have absolutely no choice but to reject illegal ballots. We will hold them to it.”

NEW: @chairmanwhatley tells @dailycaller that the RNC is exploring whether Dem Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia could be held criminally liable for openly admitting to illegally counting ballots in the race between Casey and McCormick.

“We will pursue this to the fullest… https://t.co/KUiqULM0Kk

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) November 18, 2024

Bucks County commissioners voted Thursday to allow misdated ballots to be counted as the race between Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and Senator-elect Dave McCormick headed towards a recount.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously affirmed Nov. 1 that requiring mail ballots to have handwritten dates is constitutional.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Justine Bateman, 58, filmmaker, author, actress and recent graduate from UCLA in computer science and digital media management, feels like a “suffocating cloud” has been lifted since Election Day.

Lots of pundits and pontificators are still trying to figure out how Donald Trump trampled Kamala Harris at the ballot box in a landslide victory to become our next president. (More than 90% of America’s counties shifted in favor of Trump.)

Unlike many of her Hollywood peers, Justine agrees with those who are saying that among many reasons Trump won and Harris lost is that Americans are exhausted in particular over political correctness, public shaming, cyberbullying and cancel-culture mobs attacking people just for stating their differing opinions.

“Trying to shut down everybody, even wanting to discuss things that are going on in our society, has had a bad result,” Justine says. “And we saw in the election results that more people than not are done with it. That’s why I say it’s over.”

A few days after the election, Justine wrote on X, “Decompressing from walking on eggshells for the past four years.”

The New York Post reported, “Bateman’s point is that, during the Biden administration and even before, America has been living under a ‘cloud that has been pressing down on society.’ She’s referring to, as she tweeted, the concept of mob rule on social media and how ‘any questioning, any opinions, any likes or dislikes’ – be it about hot-button topics from Gaza to trans athletes in women’s sports or any form of social justice – were held up to a very limited list of ‘permitted positions’ in order to assess acceptability.”

You know what she means and feels by a “very limited list of ‘permitted positions'” if you’ve ever been hindered, harassed or afraid to state your honest opinions about any of a host of “controversial” issues, like wearing masks, vaccinations views, gender orientation, reproductive rights, religious convictions, border problems, global wars, or even mentioning who you voted for.

Proof of social retribution came again immediately after Justine posted her thoughts above online.

She shared with the Post over the weekend some of the responses to her X posts, even from Hollywood friends, like: “Oh Justine, I didn’t know you were a Nazi.”

Bateman added, “I did have friends say, ‘I love you, call me anytime, but I have to unfollow you’ or ‘I have to distance myself from you online, publicly.'”

“‘Man, we just went “1984” on ourselves,’ she told The Post with an exasperated sigh.

“‘Reporting the surveillance, surveilling each other. Come on. Why? Don’t you want to relax? Do you always want to feel like you are testifying? Do you always want to feel like somebody is recording evidence that’s going to be brought into a court of law? Why do you want to live like that?’

The Post quoted Bateman as saying, “There’s room for everyone to feel exactly how they want to feel. But you don’t get to come at me and start accusing me of certain things. … Go live your life and feel your feelings, but get out of my face.”

She’s particularly concerned and “really feels” for younger people (as my wife, Gena, and I do) who have never known a time where they were able to express their own opinions, especially if they differ from others.

Noted Bateman, “Their parents need to tell them, ‘Freely live your life the way you want to, but never infringe on somebody else’s ability to also live their life as freely as they want to.'”

Justine is of course not alone in “Hollywood” (though it might seem like that) as dozens and dozens of other celebrities across the country join her in saying the era of “emotional terrorism” by mob mentalities has ended.

I’m not sure it’s completely ended, but I do agree that it has been dealt a devastating blow, simply because a majority of Americans voted (sided, if you will) against the polarizing woke, DEI and other secular progressive views.

However, it’s still going to take hundreds of millions of brave souls just like Justine (and those reading this column) to finalize the free speech victory by voicing theirs without fear, just like she does.

The Gateway Pundit just reported another great fearless stand for free speech, as UFC champion Jon Jones did the “Trump Dance” after winning the main event at Madison Square Garden, with Donald Trump in the front row. He then led the crowd in chants of “USA! USA!” before publicly saying before a global audience, “I’m proud to be a great American champion. I’m proud to be a CHRISTIAN American champion.” A must-watch here.

If what Justine (or anyone else) says irritates you, I encourage you to watch her inspiring and liberating film “Violet” and read her equally insightful and powerful books “Fame: the Hijacking of Reality” and “Face: One Square Foot of Skin.”

In her own words on X, “‘Violet‘ is a map to get from a fear-filled life to an instinct-filled life. ‘Fame‘ is about the life-cycle of Fame and how we put it on a pedestal and democratized the seeking of it. ‘Face‘ is about women’s faces getting older and why that makes people angry.”

It’s greatly alarmed me for years that Americans’ constitutional right to freedom of speech is being choked out of our culture, but, as Justine said, it might just have been resuscitated.

It truly sickens me in particular that young people – and I’m talking millennials to Gen Z, on down – are in so much fear of stating their opinion, especially when it differs from others. And those who aren’t in fear often do so with vitriol and vengeance. Both extremes are un-American.

One of the geniuses of America’s Founding Fathers was to provide and secure the religious and free-speech liberties of every American as stated in the firm foundation of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These liberties were what made America different from England where a king ruled.

Are we now trying to turn back the clock and abolish those liberties?

Indeed, modern progressives have tried to restrict them by social pressure (via accusations of “intolerance” and “hate speech”) and proposing legislation under the guise of “hate crimes and laws” – one more facet of lawfare.

But the American Library Association explained, “Under current First Amendment jurisprudence,hate speech can only be criminalized when it directly incites imminent criminal activity or consists of specific threats of violence targeted against a person or group.”

Yet, even that definition can and has fallen down some deep cracks and crevasses in legal interpretation and application.

While hate crime legislation purport to target crimes of brutality, not speech, they could very easily end up (even inadvertently) restricting First Amendment rights to speak freely against any practices or beliefs with which we don’t agree. As with other laws of this type, once enacted, local justices could easily expand its interpretive enforcement to encompass a wider meaning than originally conceived.

If our policymakers understood and followed the constitutional government our founders laid down for us, they never would advocate any so-called hate-crime speech bill.

That is why the great libertarian congressman Ron Paul once explained years ago:

Hate crime laws not only violate the First Amendment, they also violate the 10th Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, there are only three federal crimes: piracy, treason and counterfeiting. All other criminal matters are left to the individual states. Any federal legislation dealing with criminal matters not related to these three issues usurps state authority over criminal law and takes a step toward turning the states into mere administrative units of the federal government.

To clarify, contrary to many misconceptions today (especially among younger generations), the United States does not have hate speech laws, because the Supreme Court has ruled that laws criminalizing hate speech violate the First Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantee.

The First Amendment protects hate speech because the government should not shield people from ideas they find offensive, and because it’s important to allow for debate on public issues.

But agreeing to disagree agreeably is not exactly how the First Amendment has played out in modern America, has it? One glance at social media posts will prove that.

There is no doubt a double standard has proliferated in our land when it comes to free speech: Shall certain belief and opinion camps be expected not to offend while others are free to do so?

What’s so “free” about speech that is limited or burdened by societal pressure?

If the First Amendment is not also there to protect anyone’s “offensive speech,” no matter how much it is disliked, then what type of speech is it protecting?

And if it protects even “hate speech” as well, yet our culture remains intolerant of contrary opinions, then have we not abandoned the First Amendment?

I commend and thank Justine Bateman (and all those like her) for a host of things: for standing by her convictions and basic American right of free speech, for not bending to the politically correct, for not fearing public scrutiny, for not yielding her principles and especially her First Amendment rights.

It’s simply un-American and unconstitutional to impede, harass or persecute (online or in person) anyone who is guilty of nothing more than sharing their opinion or even exercising their right to vote.

This is America – not Iran!

Our founders cry out from their graves and heaven for us to remember what they established – a nation free from tyranny and oppression, where one can express his or her opinions without fear of repercussions.

Thomas Jefferson was particularly passionate and eloquent at this point with these words that are now indelibly inscribed on the memorial in Washington named after him. Whether to the dominance of religious sectarianism or the prohibition of free speech, his words apply: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility toward any tyranny over the mind of men.”

So have I. Have you?

America, when free speech is restricted or punished, we can be certain that we’ve drifted from our roots.

Isn’t it time we all returned home to the entirety of all our rights in the U.S. Constitution?

Remember what my hero John Wayne once said, “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway!”

(Please watch Elizabeth Farah and Jeffrey Tucker’s recent outstanding broadcast on “The Death of Free Speech,” in which they expose the ongoing threat to free expression. Again, I encourage you also watch Justine Bateman’s film “Violet” and read her books “Fame: the Hijacking of Reality” and “Face: One Square Foot of Skin.” Last, to encourage your kids and grandkids this Christmas, I encourage you check out and buy from “Brave Books,” which reflect more American traditional values – contrary to those restrictive progressive books often found now in the children’s sections of major book stores and public school libraries.)

Far-left Democrats in control in the state of Colorado have adopted a new law that would give all the state’s Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote in a presidential election.

Little did they know that their scheme would call for the state’s ballots be given to President Donald Trump.

Actually, their planning had no impact on the election, not even in the state, because the plan has had too little nationwide interest yet.

But in its outline, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which the state joined with more than a dozen other jurisdictions, the state’s power always would have to go to the winner of that national popular vote.

In recent years, that’s over and over been a Democrat.

But not this year, when Trump won some 72 million votes to Kamala Harris’ 67 million.

The overall idea is to concentrate president-electing power in the hands of the few most populous states. The compact concept would eliminate the need for voting in Wyoming, Hawaii, Alaska and dozens more states, leaving the president picking power in the hands of the most populated handful of states.

Every election.

A report from Colorado Peak Politics notes that readers will recall Colorado’s decision, by Democrats, to join the operation.

“The compact’s goal is to eliminate the Electoral College that Democrats fear favors Republicans, and instead elect presidents based on the popular vote, which they thought favored Democrats,” the report said.

To actually get rid of the Electoral College would take a constitutional amendment, since it’s specified there. To get around that the states simply would “agree” on how to cast their ballots, an idea that has yet to be tested in court.

“That’s how Democrats do democracy — by changing the rules in their favor,” the report said.

But this year Trump won the Electoral College numbers, with about 300, and also the popular vote.

“Had this Popular Vote fad caught on as Colorado Dems and Polis had intended, they would all be forking over their votes this morning to Donald Trump,” the report said.

The report noted, “Some 1.4 million voters are feeling mighty smug about their victory over Donald Trump in Colorado where he lost with only 43% of the vote. And yet Democrats passed a law in 2019 signed by Gov. Polis that pledges every vote cast in the state to Trump, because he won the national popular vote.”

Incidentally, that compact would require votes from other participants to go also to Trump, as the winner of the popular vote, meaning, depending on membership, Trump this year could have ended up with 350, or even 400 Electoral College votes.

The compact is set up so that it does not go into effect until enough states are participating to control every election.

History will have a hard time explaining this… pic.twitter.com/8t26E4bjz7

— EducatëdHillbilly (@RobProvince) November 6, 2024

A now-viral video reveals Vice President Kamala Harris has confirmed she would be willing to breach the U.S. Constitution to confiscate the guns of Americans if she wins the election.

Posted on to X by the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk, Harris tells reporters if Congress fails to do something about gun control within the first 100 days of her administration, then she will take action.

“I think it’s a great idea, but I mean listen, I don’t think we lack for great ideas, as I’ve said many times, we’ve been having great ideas for decades, the problem is Congress has not had the courage to act. That is why from the beginning I have said, my agenda includes attempting to get Congress to act, but if they don’t in the first 100 days of my administration, I’m gonna take executive action. What we need is action,”
” Harris said.

She wants to break the Constitution https://t.co/tb8UtNqlwL

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2024

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The U.S. Supreme Court has stepped into a fight in Virginia, stopping a lower court’s order that the state add some 1,600 noncitizens back onto the voter rolls.

Fox News reports the decision by the high court was to take up a challenge from Virginia on an emergency basis.

The lower courts had demanded that the state reinstate hundreds of noncitizens to the state’s voter rolls.

Fox described the development as a victory for Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“We are pleased by the Supreme Court’s order today,” the governor explained in a statement distributed on the situation.

️BREAKING: The Supreme Court rules 6-3 to allow Virginia to remove illegal noncitizens from its voting rolls, lifting the order by a Virginia federal judge to reinstate noncitizens to the voter rolls. pic.twitter.com/uaEvRZU5lb

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) October 30, 2024

The fight is over whether a process in the state, to remove people identified as noncitizens, often by their own identification, from voter rolls.

Meanwhile, the National Voter Registration Act bans “systemic” removals during a 90-day period before an election.

The Joe Biden Department of Justice had sued the state, among multiple attacks on election integrity laws it has launched in recent days, declining to recognize the state’s process is “individualized” and meets the requirements of state and federal law.

The state had identified those on the voter rolls without citizenship and told them to prove their citizenship or be removed.

Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares told the Supreme Court the NVRA does not extend to protections for ‘self-identified noncitizens.”

And he said the state’s process is “individualized.”

Meanwhile, attorneys general from all 26 Republican-led states joined Virginia in its fight in filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, backing its assertion that the removal program was conducted on an “individualized” basis, and further, that the Justice Department’s reading of the protections granted under NVRA are overly broad and do not apply to noncitizens.

It was a Biden-appointed judge, District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles, who claimed that Virginia’s state program to work on keeping its voter rolls clean was “systemic,” not “individual.”

Her claim is that because of her determination, the rolls were cleaned within 90 days of an election, and that’s in violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

It was the Biden administration, which has run a program of open borders for the nation for nearly four years now, removing obstacles that would prevent illegal aliens from simply walking onto U.S. land and taking advantage of the multitude of social and financial benefits programs, that sued the state for trying to remove those who are not eligible to vote.

Youngkin’s order requiring the updates of voter lists was based on a 2006 state law signed by Tim Kaine, a Democrat who then was the state’s governor.

Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho have filed an amended lawsuit in federal court, claiming their “sovereign” interest in “protecting… citizens” was violated by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to expand access to the abortion pill to mail-order dispensing.

The lawsuit, State of Missouri; State of Kansas; State of Idaho v. FDA, filed on October 14, 2024, in Amarillo, Texas, is “asking US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to rollback efforts the Food and Drug Administration has taken over the past eight years to ease access to the drug, such as allowing it to be dispensed through the mail,” CNN reported.

The Plaintiff States allege that “Women face severe, even life-threatening, harm because the federal government has disregarded their health and safety. These dangerous drugs are now flooding states like Missouri and Idaho and sending women in these States to the emergency room.”

As such, the lawsuit also alleged that “Defendant U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has the statutory responsibility to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all Americans by putting commonsense safeguards on high-risk drugs[;] the FDA has failed in this responsibility by removing many of the safety standards it once provided to women using abortion drugs.”

The State of Idaho, along with Missouri AG Andrew Bailey and Kansas AG Kris W. Kobach, brought the lawsuit to “vindicate [their] sovereign, quasi-sovereign, and proprietary interests, including its interests in protecting its citizens,” the court document read.

States request preliminary injunction to reinstate prior safety regulations

In their lawsuit, the Plaintiff States request a “preliminary injunction” from the Court against the FDA, or “a stay of the effective dates” that “reinstates the REMS that were in place before 2016 insofar as they restore the Day 3 and Day 14 follow-up visits, restore the gestational age to 7 weeks from 10 weeks, restore the requirement that prescribers be physicians, and restore the requirement that prescribers must report all serious non-fatal adverse events to the agency; rescinds the 2019 generic approval; and restores the in-person dispensing requirement.”

The three states are asking the court to “issues[] a permanent injunction ordering Defendants to withdraw Defendants’ actions to deregulate these abortion drugs.”

The abortion pill Mifeprex (mifepristone) was approved by the FDA in September 2000 “for medical termination of pregnancy,” the FDA website states. “FDA approved a generic version of Mifeprex, Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, in April 2019.”

In 2016, the Obama administration FDA weakened the safety requirements (REMS) for the drug by removing requirements that women take the first drug in front of a clinician in person, at the location of a certified prescriber. It also expanded use of the drug to abort preborn children up to 10 weeks (70 days) of pregnancy from the previous seven weeks, and removed the requirement for the manufacturer (Danco, and now GenBioPro) report the drug’s non-fatal adverse events (complications). Only deaths would be required for reporting.

By December of 2021, the Biden-Harris FDA had further weakened the REMS by eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement and enabling the abortion pill to be permanently shipped by mail. Then in January 2023, the Biden-Harris FDA further gutted the REMS by announcing it would allow retail pharmacies to dispense the drug.

The Plaintiff States claim that the “FDA made [these changes] without any studies that evaluated the impact of removing all of these interrelated safeguards at once.” The suit adds that the undoing of the requirement to report “non-fatal complications” was “unreasonable” because it was “based on past data collected under the originally approved safety standards, not the new deregulated regime.”

The Plaintiffs also noted:

Women face severe bleeding, ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and life threatening infections because the FDA recklessly removed in-person safety standards that it once provided. Women should have the in-person care of a doctor when taking high-risk drugs.

The States of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho thus challenge the FDA’s actions to remove commonsense safety measures for abortion drugs and ask that the Court hold these actions unlawful, stay their effective date, set them aside, and vacate them.

In rolling back safeguard after safeguard, the FDA has turned a blind eye to the known harms of abortion drugs to the detriment of women and girls.

States seek enforcement of Comstock Law, which prohibits mailing abortion drugs

In their complaint, the Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho are seeking to enforce a law (18 U.S.C. § 1461), known as the Federal Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of “any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing [that] may, or can, be used or applied for producing abortion[.]”

They claim that “[t]he FDA’s 2021/2023 Removal of the In-Person Dispensing Protection violates the federal laws that expressly prohibit the mailing or delivery by any letter carrier, express company, or other common carrier, or by interactive computer service, of any substance or drug intended for producing abortion” by “impermissibly remov[ing] the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion drugs and, accordingly, authorized the downstream distribution of abortion drugs by mail, express company, other common carriers, and interactive computer service.”

“Because a federal agency cannot permit what federal law expressly prohibits, the FDA lacked legal authority when issuing the 2021/2023 Removal of the In-Person Dispensing Protection,” the lawsuit claimed. That decision “failed to account for or address the federal laws that prohibit the distribution of abortion drugs by postal mail, express company, or common carrier and by interactive computer service,” the lawsuit notes. “FDA permitted and sometimes even encouraged these illegal activities. But a federal agency cannot authorize unlawful actions.”

States argue their standing to bring the lawsuit

Kansas, Missouri, and Idaho are clear that the “FDA’s actions interfere with Plaintiff States’ “sovereign interest in ‘the power to create and enforce a legal code.”

State of Missouri; State of Kansas; State of Idaho v. FDA follows a June 2024 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in a separate case, FDA vs. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). The latter challenged as unsafe the FDA’s expansions of abortion pills in 2016 and 2021 — from in-person visits with a lower gestational limit and more safeguards, to mail-order (and now pharmacy) dispensing. The doctors testified to having treated women with severe complications — “many who presented to the emergency room.”

While Plaintiff doctors in AHM also requested that the Supreme Court reinstate the FDA’s pre-2016 REMS safety requirements for mifepristone, calling the recent expansions of the drug “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise unlawful,” the Court’s decision in AHM merely ruled that the plaintiff doctors in the AHM lawsuit did not have standing to sue.

Referring to the new lawsuit, CNN wrote that “the states claim they have standing to sue because the FDA’s actions facilitate violations of state abortion laws ‘by enabling an out-of-state abortion drug distribution network.’ The states also claimed the FDA’s moves displaced state laws controlling abortions for girls in foster care.”

The three states alleged in their lawsuit that they have standing to sue “based on (1) federal assertions of authority to regulate matters they believe they control, (2) federal preemption of state law, and (3) federal interference with the enforcement of state law, at least where ‘the state statute at issue regulates behavior or provides for the administration of a state program’ and does not ‘simply purport to immunize state citizens from federal law.’ They also claim to have “suffered injury to their sovereign interests in enacting and enforcing their laws.”

They say the FDA “intentionally facilitated widespread violations by third parties of state abortion laws..[,] unlawfully removed the backstop of federal law and federal law enforcement..[,] purport to preempt state abortion laws, and (4) seek to displace and nullify the States’ state-law parental rights of notice and consent for abortions for teen girls in foster care.”

States argue “abortion drugs are dangerous”

Before Roe v. Wade, so-called self-administered abortions were portrayed by abortion advocates as dangerous. But once Big Abortion began toying with the idea of “no-test” abortion pill protocols and mail-order telabortion schemes (including an over-the-counter abortion pill push), suddenly, self-managed abortion became “safe.”

Or so Big Abortion claims.

The three Plaintiff states disagree, writing in their complaint, “Abortion drugs are dangerous—the FDA’s own label says that an estimated roughly one in 25 women who take abortion drugs will visit the emergency room.”

According to the lawsuit, “[] the FDA has enabled online abortion providers to mail FDA approved abortion drugs to women in states that regulate abortion—dispensing abortion drugs with no doctor care, no exam, and no in-person follow-up care. These dangerous drugs are now flooding states like Missouri and Idaho and sending women in these States to the emergency room.”

Emergency visits as a result of the abortion pill

Live Action News has previously documented that mifepristone’s 2023 label still contains a black box warning for sepsis, bleeding, and other life-threatening risks.

In addition, published percentages for emergency room (ER) visits on the drug’s insert indicate that 2.9 to 4.6 percent of women who take abortion drugs end up in the emergency room, indicating that abortion pill ER visits could be in the tens of thousands every year. In addition, the FDA’s medication guide acknowledges that as many as seven percent (7%) of women will need surgery after taking mifepristone “to stop bleeding” or to complete the abortion.

The data also is similar to findings from a previously-documented Gynuity Health Projects (GHP) telabortion study, which found that six percent (6%) of participants (70 out of 1,157) faced complications from the abortion pill, resulting in ER or urgent care visits. Gynuity is a pro-abortion group, conducting clinical trials on the abortion pill, and funded by organizations with deep historic ties to the American eugenics movement.

Abortion pill complications have been offloaded to emergency rooms instead of prescribers

Live Action News has previously documented that the risks of the abortion pill triggered the FDA to place it under a safety system called REMS, where it has remained — even under multiple pro-abortion administrations.

Under the REMS, prescribers of the drug are supposed to have provisions to handle abortion pill failures or complications. Instead of abiding by the regulations, which are policed by those who profit from the drug (Danco and GenBioPro), abortion providers instead simply instruct women to present to the ER.

In other words, they are offloading their abortion pill clients onto already potentially overcrowded emergency rooms.

Live Action News previously documented in detail how Danco and the FDA always understood that emergency rooms would be necessary to treat abortion pill clients, even as the FDA allowed for the expansion of “self-managed” and “mail-order” abortion — something the Plaintiffs alluded to when they wrote: “The FDA has consistently identified emergency medical care—including State emergency medical care—as the backstop for abortion drug complications. Its current label directs women to emergency rooms if one of many adverse complications arise.”

“The FDA has acted unlawfully,” the three states allege. “Now, the State Plaintiffs ask the Court to protect women by holding unlawful, staying the effective date of, setting aside, and vacating the FDA’s actions to eviscerate crucial safeguards for those who undergo this dangerous drug regimen.”

A “no-test protocol” can lead to increased rates of incomplete abortion

“The complications of abortion drugs increase as the baby’s gestational age increases. One study found that, after nine weeks’ gestation, almost four times as many women and girls experience an incomplete abortion, nearly twice as many suffer an infection, and over six times as many women and girls require surgical abortion after consuming the abortion drugs than at before nine weeks gestation,” reads the states’ complaint (emphasis added).

Live Action News has previously documented how the abortion industry used the COVID-19 pandemic to lift the in-person safety regulations on mifepristone, expanding access to it. In fact, well before the pandemic, the abortion industry expanded its abortion pill clinical trials and then rolled out a “no test” abortion pill protocol — eliminating important testing, bloodwork, and ultrasounds, which some medical professionals assert endangers women.

“The risks of harm to women are also exacerbated without follow-up visits, during which a doctor can assess whether a mother is suffering complications from the older gestational age of her baby,” the lawsuit added.

Danco Laboratories, the drug’s manufacturer, claims online that “Mifeprex*(mifepristone) is 93-98% effective for safely ending pregnancy (2-7% of women will need a surgical procedure to end the pregnancy or stop heavy bleeding).”

In addition, Planned Parenthood’s national website is clear that “At 10-11 weeks pregnant” the abortion pill regimen only “works about 87% of the time.”

Despite this fact, Big Abortion now prescribes the abortion pill past the FDA approved 10-week limit.

In addition, one Planned Parenthood facility admitted online that “After 11 weeks, there’s a bigger chance that the abortion pills won’t work and an increased chance of stronger bleeding or cramps.” Planned Parenthood’s website says little about the effectiveness of the abortion pill at 12 weeks.

A “no-test” protocol also increases risks for Rh-negative women

“Abortion drugs present heightened risks for women with an Rh-negative blood type. If these women are not administered Rhogam at the time of their chemical abortion, they may experience isoimmunization, which threatens their ability to have future successful pregnancies,” the lawsuit claims.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) changed its recommendations to coincide exactly with the abortion industry’s attempts to expand access to the abortion pill. Then, just weeks ago, ACOG once again co-signed with Big Abortion against the health of women, regarding when to administer RhoGAM.

OBGYN Dr. Ingrid Skop warned this move is dangerous, explaining to Live Action News (emphasis added), “Evaluation of Rh status and provision of Rhogam, if indicated, has long been the standard of care for early pregnancy loss, including elective induced abortion. This action will prevent a mother from mounting an immune response to her future unborn children. If Rhogam is not given and isoimmunization occurs, 14% of untreated infants will be stillborn and half will suffer neonatal death or brain injury.”

The abortion industry is failing to care for women

The abortion industry has shifted responsibility for abortion pill clients from abortion providers to overcrowded emergency rooms. In addition, bad actors inside the abortion industry continue to flout the FDA’s REMS by ignoring the approved gestational limits or approved protocols for prescribing the abortion pill; leaving women to deal with ectopic pregnancies by not ruling them out prior to prescribing the drug; promoting an unapproved one-drug regimen of misoprostol only; dispensing abortion drugs to women who are not yet pregnant; and encouraging women to present to the emergency room and claim a natural miscarriage when experiencing abortion pill related complications.

This flouting of the FDA REMS safety requirements may have prompted well-known late term abortionist Warren Hern to recently question the care women receive when they are sold abortion pills by asking the obvious: Who is doing “follow-up exam[s]” and “tak[ing] care of… a complication?”

Due to a lack of care and the so-called ‘no-test‘ abortion pill protocol which often fails to utilize ultrasounds, run labs, or rule out potentially dangerous ectopic pregnancies, medical doctors are now alerting ER professionals that they may see undiagnosed ectopic pregnancies after abortion pill use. This is due to a reckless lack of concern abortion providers have in relying on the woman, showing they remain pregnant after taking the deadly drug regimen rather than ruling ectopics out first.

Today, Google Reviews from clients purchasing abortion pills at various facilities suggest that some prescribers of the drug are failing to properly treat women, resulting in them seeking emergency medical assistance ERs.

“The FDA’s actions force States to divert resources to investigate and address the harms that this lawbreaking will inflict on women, children, and the public interest…The FDA’s actions thus ‘intrude on state governmental functions[,]’…and hobble States’ efforts to protect health and safety,” wrote Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

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A lawsuit has been filed that accuses Norfolk, Virginia, officials of using a network of 170 cameras to impose a warrantless surveillance scheme on residents, and visitors.

The Institute for Justice case charges that the actions violate the Fourth Amendment rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The system allows police “to monitor the comings and goings of all drivers in the city,” the legal team said.

Lee Schmidt, a plaintiff, said, “I don’t like the government following my every movement and treating me like a criminal suspect, when they have no reason to believe I’ve done anything wrong.”

And another, Crystal Arrington, charged, “My work requires me to drive around Norfolk very often, and it’s incredibly disturbing to know the city can track my every move during that time.”

The institute explained that in 2023, Norfolk police partnered with a company called Flock Safety, Inc. to install 172 automatic license plate reading cameras across town.

The locations were chosen to provide a “curtain of technology” which would allow police to watch anyone “drive anywhere” without being observed.

“Unlike traditional traffic cameras—which capture an image only when they sense speeding or someone running a red light—Flock’s cameras capture images of every car driving by, which it retains for at least 30 days. Artificial intelligence then uses those images to create a ‘Vehicle Fingerprint’ that enables any Flock subscriber to both track where that vehicle has gone and identify what other vehicles it has been seen nearby,” the institute noted.

“Norfolk has created a dragnet that allows the government to monitor everyone’s day-to-day movements without a warrant or probable cause. This type of mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said IJ lawyer Michael Soyfer.

Making the violation worse, the institute noted, is that since Flock “pools its data in a centralized database, police across the entire country can access over 1 billion monthly datapoints. That means not just tracking drivers within a particular jurisdiction, but potentially across the entire nation.”

“Following someone’s every move can tell you some incredibly intimate details about them, such as where they work, who they associate with, whether or not they’re religious, what hobbies they have, and any medical conditions they may have,” said IJ lawyer Robert Frommer. “This type of intrusive, ongoing monitoring of someone’s life is not just creepy, it’s unconstitutional.”

The scheme gives police the ability to spy on people without any judicial oversight, either.

And abuse already has been documented, the IJ said.

‘In Kansas, officials were caught using Flock to stalk their exes, including one police chief who used Flock 228 times over four months to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles. In California, several police departments violated California law by sharing data from their license plate reader database with other departments across the country. And as is the case with other databases, these can be susceptible to hacking, which can reveal private data,” the institute said.

Similar agendas already have been condemned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read Hanne’s The Herland Report.

Fearless speech when facing abuse of power has long been a Western ideal. One may argue that it began with Jesus Christ’s harsh words of free speech to the hypocritical religious leaders of his time. He totally roasted them for their evil actions, publicly.

When reading the New Testament books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, Jesus’ words come across as penetratingly honest. His humility is defined by his willingness to fight injustice, regardless of personal cost. He does not hide the truth, neither in private nor in public, always helping the destitute and the unwanted. It is sobering to read how fearlessly he confronts “the high and mighty,” those who were abusing their authority, stating that doom awaits them as God is the protector of the widow and the fatherless.

The example Jesus set has exerted an extraordinary influence on the Western world down to its very core. Christianity “is the profoundest global revolution in history and the seedbed of everything that makes the West what it is,” says world-renowned author Tom Holland, in a lecture at the Edictum Conference in Romania. He is one of the many hardcore atheists who in recent years have turned to Christianity with a much more positive view of our religious heritage than before. Read my other articles linked at WND on the topic of famous atheists who have changed their mind and now speak of the need for a stronger respect for traditional Christianity.

It is simply impossible to exaggerate the importance of Christianity’s liberating power on the world. Our defining values stem from the Christian root and are deeply culturally contingent. One of the pillars of classical Western civilization was the idea that God loves everyone – it became the basis for the ideal of equality regardless of race, creed, status, gender. This is the birthplace of human rights, the sanctified human race. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has famously stated that we would never have human rights without the Christian idea that mankind is a blessed creation formed in the likeness of God. Man contains the very breath of metaphysical eternity.

Holland points out that it was Christianity that demonstrated the revolutionary concept of equality, repudiating the ancient Roman attitude of contempt for the weak. This new view of humanity was based on an unprecedented principle of equality that recognized the value of women, children and slaves in a way that contrasted sharply with the Greek-Roman definition of a citizen. As many do not know today, it was Christians that cared for the sick in the first hospitals, brought about the end of slavery, formed modern human rights, initiated the first women’s rights movements and founded the welfare state.

Christianity became the ultimate cradle of the modern Western free-speech movement, in which citizens are allowed to criticize corrupt leaders and express opinions without government restraints. It was, of course, also influenced by the Old Testament, in which God sent individuals who practiced harsh free speech to motivate political leaders to do what was right. The ancient Greek debate culture is also important.

Yet, when the concept was introduced in the U.K. House of Commons in the 1600s, it was to ensure that speakers were not interrupted in the middle of a political argument. It did not imply that “free speech” was the right to say whatever you wish, disentangled from good manners, politeness and civility. The current Marxist version of “free speech,” without the traditional, Christian moral constraints – as the right to be rude to others, lie about them as a political tactic and slander to subdue – was never a classical Western value. This is mob-driven, totalitarian bullying.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) clearly defined socialism and communism as ideologies that precisely aim at destroying the very structures of traditional civil society and its critical thinking. Marx hated Christianity. The founders of socialism prescribed intolerance against conservatives, dishonesty, the use of fear to subdue, clamping-down on free intellectuals and manipulating people to become the needed “useful idiots,” to achieve the goal of shutting down the light of Christianity in the West.

When the Christian moral codex is no longer treasured, society disintegrates into anarchy. Holland fears for a society in which the light of Christianity is extinguished. “You only start to value something when you start to lose it. As Christianity diminishes in the West, many do have a feeling that something is lost, that values we assumed were just hardwired into our brains, actually were culturally contingent and dependent on Christianity,” Holland says at the Edictum Conference in Romania. The lecture is well worth watching.

The American Center for Law and Justice is urging the Supreme Court to take up a specific case, and rule that Jewish professors in New York do not have to accept the anti-Semitic representation of a union as their “exclusive agent.”

The ACLJ has confirmed it has filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the Supreme Court, “urging the court to protect the First Amendment rights of Jewish professors who refuse to be represented by anti-Semitic unions.”

The case is called Goldstein v. Professional Staff Congress/CUNY (PSC) and, the legal team explained, “presents a critical opportunity to defend academic freedom and protect the fundamental right to free speech on our college campuses. It is about resisting a culture of intimidation and coercion that seeks to silence dissenting voices and restrict religious and ideological diversity within higher education.”

It developed because of number of Jewish professors City University New York expressed concerns over the surging political bias within the Professional Staff Congress union.

That group is supposed to represent faculty and staff members but “began acting contrary to their interests in a variety of ways, taking an increasingly partisan stance on social and political matters,” the ACLJ reported.

“The union’s leadership, which claims to advocate for all its members, instead created an environment that punishes those who do not align with its ideological agenda. Most strikingly, the union adopted a resolution supporting the anti-Semitic BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement. As a result of PSC’s resolution and subsequent conduct, Jewish professors have been ostracized on campus based on their identities, religious beliefs, and support for Israel,” the report explains.

The problem is that they are not allowed the boycott, because state law bans them from leaving the political organization.

“They are compelled to continue to accept PSC as their exclusive agent and spokesman, regardless of how strongly they disagree with their union’s conduct or how counter to their fundamental identity the speech of the union may be,” the ACLJ said.

State courts there so far have taken the union’s side, but the fight now is being moved up to the Supreme Court.

The ACLJ said its contribution to the legal discussion is that at stake are government employees’ rights that are protected by the First Amendment.

“The threats of compelled speech are always serious, but they are particularly dangerous and egregious when union members are compelled to have a representative who speaks counter to those members’ consciences,” the ACLJ said.

“Unions function as political activity groups and de facto auxiliaries of a political party and should be treated as such. No one should be forced to participate in such public advocacy against their will, the group informed the court.

And, it pointed out, “The implications of Goldstein v. PSC extend far beyond one professor’s individual rights. Unions like the PSC often claim to defend the interests of their members, yet their actions sometimes reveal a disturbing willingness to stifle internal dissent and push a singular agenda. This is not just a betrayal of their members – it’s an assault on the fundamental principles of free speech and association that form the bedrock of our democracy.”