'America can never again allow the weaponization of the federal government'

'The individual ignored the officer's commands'

'I don’t know what I was thinking'

'Wrexham Lager has a 140-year-old recipe and a storied history'

Persistent Issues With Polling Methodology Could Spell Disaster For Democrats In November

'Finally embracing the opportunity to vote early'

The artist's lawyer has denied all allegations filed against him

Adding protections to anti-discrimination laws

Abortion is on the ballot in the 2024 election. It’s literally on the ballot in 10 states, with voters deciding whether to amend their constitutions to guarantee abortion access through most or all of pregnancy. But it’s also on the ballot in the presidential election because the two candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, have different positions on whether, and how forcefully, the federal government should call the shots. Trump says that states should be able decide whether, and to what extent, to restrict abortion. Harris, as well as some Senate candidates, claim in their ads that electing Trump would lead to a “national abortion ban.” That’s unlikely, since Trump says he would veto such a ban if Congress ever passed one. “Veto,” Merriam-Webster tells us, is the opposite of “approve.” Ya don’t say. Harris, in contrast, says that states should have no say at all and that Congress must prevent them from limiting abortion in any way. As a senator, she cosponsored the Women’s Health Protection Act, federal legislation that would prohibit state or local governments from doing anything that could, even potentially or indirectly, limit abortion. This would include measures that large majorities of Americans, in pro-life states or even nationally, support, such as bans on elective abortions after a certain point in a pregnancy. But it gets worse. Not only would the Women’s Health Protection Act prevent any pro-life laws or policies going forward, it would require state and local governments to repeal any already on the books. In other words, no state anywhere in America could, no matter how its citizens felt about it, ever have any laws, rules, regulations, practices, or anything else that could conceivably (yes, that pun was intended) limit abortion in any way. Today, 41 states prohibit abortion during different stages of pregnancy. Fourteen of them ban abortion from conception, four after six weeks, two after 12 weeks, two after 15 or 18 weeks, and 19 after 20 weeks. Lest you think that these abortion “bans” actually prevent many abortions, nearly 94% of abortions nationally occur before 12 weeks. The Women’s Health Protection Act would require every one of these 41 states to repeal its abortion ban. Mississippi’s 15-week ban, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2022, covers only 4% of abortions, but it still has to go. Utah’s 18-week ban only prohibits about 2% of abortions, but it’s still too strong. Eleven states ban abortion after “viability,” or when an unborn child might live outside the womb. That’s generally considered to be at about 24 weeks, but that law is also out the door. Harris’ claim that the Women’s Health Protection Act simply “codifies” Roe v. Wade is not only false, but it’s especially deceptive coming from a lawyer who should know better. Even the Supreme Court in Roe said that states may ban abortion after viability and used words such as “mother” and “unborn children” more than 100 times. Except for the “W” in its title, the Women’s Health Protection Act doesn’t even use the word “woman.” Roe v. Wade did not require taxpayers to pay for elective abortions, but this act would. Roe v. Wade also allowed states to require at least some level of parental involvement, such as notification or consent, when a young girl gets an abortion. This act would not. In other words, the Women’s Health Protection Act would prefer coercion of a girl to have an abortion over any chance that her family or friends might help her decide otherwise. Abortion is on the Nov. 5 ballot, and the choice is pretty stark. Abortion advocates like Harris call themselves “pro-choice” but, it turns out, want to deny any choice to anyone about whether to protect human beings in the womb. Thomas Jipping serves as senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees. The post Harris Wants to Repeal All State Abortion Limits appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Ben Shapiro, co-founder of The Daily Wire, explained what he sees as The New York Times‘ strategy to silence conservatives and interfere in the election by pressuring YouTube to take adverse action against conservatives who allegedly spread “election misinformation.” New York Times reporter Nico Grant reached out to numerous conservative figures, including Shapiro, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, entrepreneur Elon Musk, and Andrew Klavan, the host of a Daily Wire show. Grant asked them to respond to criticism that they spread “election misinformation,” citing the left-wing outlet Media Matters, and asking whether YouTube had warned them about this “misinformation.” “Their goal is to shut the spigot off so you can’t get any information on places like YouTube,” Shapiro told The Daily Signal in written comments Wednesday. He noted that many Americans hear about the new on YouTube. A Pew Research Center survey from September found that 32% of Americans regularly get news on YouTube, an increase from 23% in 2020. “Shutting off the spigot on news information one week in advance of an election. That is The New York Times’ trick,” he added. In a post on X, Shapiro suggested the Times’ article represented the legacy media’s “October surprise,” a last-minute effort to sway the presidential election. 2/ What, precisely, is NYT doing? It's perfectly obvious: using research from Media Matters, a radical Left-wing organization whose sole purpose is destroying conservative media (see below), in order to pressure YouTube to demonetize and penalize any and all conservatives ONE… pic.twitter.com/GzgXdVSwhF— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) October 29, 2024 “Even the threat of being demonetized from YouTube is threatening us directly; it’s saying, ‘Watch your step, or you may get thrown off YouTube,’ which, of course, would be difficult for us and make it hard for us to get the word out,” Klavan, host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on The Daily Wire and author of the mystery novel “A Woman Underground,” told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “It’s both intimidating us and trying to force YouTube’s hand, which YouTube may be in league with them, for all I know,” he added. (Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding this claim.) Desperate to silence dissent, the @nytimes – a former newspaper – pretends they can’t tell the difference between “misinformation” and a joke. Let me help, NYT. Your content is misinformation. You’re the joke. pic.twitter.com/5RfU25njxI— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) October 29, 2024 When the Times reporter reached out to Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host and founder of the Tucker Carlson Network, Carlson responded by asking, “So the New York Times is working with a left-wing hate group to silence critics of the Democratic Party? Please ask yourself why you’re participating in it.” What Did The New York Times Ask? Carlson and Shapiro shared messages from Times’ Grant, a San Francisco-based reporter who focuses on Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which owns YouTube. “I wanted to give you an opportunity to comment for an upcoming article that takes a look at how political commentators have discussed the upcoming election on YouTube,” Grant wrote. “We rely on analysis conducted by researchers at Media Matters for America.” pic.twitter.com/NbjA2iMe1N— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2024 “Media Matters identified 286 YouTube videos between May and August that contained election misinformation, including narratives that have been debunked or are not supported with credible evidence,” he added. “Researchers identified videos posted by you in those four months that contain election misinformation.” To Carlson, Grant cited a video in which Carlson referred to the 2020 presidential election as “clearly stolen.” To Shapiro, he cited a video in which Shapiro tells a Democrat, “Your party rigged many of the voting rules in advance to ensure an extraordinary number of mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting.” The New York Times reporter than asked three questions: Are you a member of the YouTube Partner Program? If so, how frequently does YouTube demonetize your videos? Has YouTube sent you messages, emails or notices in the last year that your content contains misinformation? Media Matters The media bias monitor AllSides gives Media Matters a “Left” bias, and a visit to the site’s home page immediately reveals why. The top article on Tuesday was “Donald Trump’s authoritarian playbook to crush the free press in a second term.” Media Matters focuses on conservatives and Republicans, painting them in a very negative light. “Media Matters became incredibly famous by essentially launching secondary boycotts on people like Rush Limbaugh,” Shapiro told The Daily Signal. “They’ve tried it with us as well. They’ve tried it with our hosts. This is what they do. The New York Times is overtly, clearly admitting to using Media Matters research in order to pressure YouTube to demonetize people on the Right—to destroy them.” “That is what this is about. That’s what the text is about. That’s the entire game,” he added. “You run an article on the front page in The New York Times saying YouTube is subsidizing election misinformation. And that pressures YouTube, which, by the way, is Google, which is the number one donor to the Democratic Party.” While Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is not among the top donors to Democrats in the 2024 presidential election cycle, employees at Alphabet, Google’s parent company, have contributed the most to the Harris campaign, compared to any other company, according to Open Secrets data as recent as July. ‘Not About Misinformation’ “It’s not about election misinformation and it’s not about shutting down ‘bad information,'” Shapiro argued. “How do I know that? Because they reached out to me about election misinformation to me, of all people.” The Daily Wire co-founder noted that, unlike some conservatives, he has consistently accepted the results of the 2020 presidential election. “I’ve been perfectly consistent since November of 2020 that I believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 election,” he said. “I thought that Donald Trump had every right to legally challenge that election, but I did not see the actual evidence that the allegations he was making about the election itself and fraud in the election was sufficient to overcome the state certification of the ballots.” “You have The New York Times, which is supposed to be the tip of the spear in terms of freedom of the press and free speech, which is overtly, clearly attempting to pressure the biggest video platform on planet Earth to shut off other press outlets,” Shapiro added. “That’s crazy.” “They say it’s a challenge to the press if Donald Trump calls them fake news. Imagine if we here at The Daily Wire called for The New York Times to be completely demonetized and shut down on social media because of misinformation,” he concluded. Klavan’s Response “In one sense, it’s funny because I don’t think anybody is going to intimidate me or Ben Shapiro or Elon Musk or Tucker Carlson, all of whom also got these messages, but on the other hand, there’s also a way in which it’s not funny at all because The New York Times is still a major news outlet, and for a major news outlet to try and intimidate people who disagree with them is really quite despicable and against everything the Times is supposed to believe in,” Klavan said of The New York Times’ upcoming story. “In the letter, they actually quoted something they said was misinformation from me, which was not only a parody but they mentioned that it was a parody,” he noted. Klavan claimed that the Left demonizes parody because “all their ideas have failed,” and “instead of admitting that… they want to just shut us down.” He suggested that The New York Times decided to cite Media Matters in order to elicit a response from conservatives. “This is what made me think that the target was not just YouTube but actually the speakers themselves,” Klavan said. He said The New York Times knows what makes conservatives angry and sought to exploit that. “We have gotten constantly attacked by Media Matters. We constantly laugh at Media Matters and make fun of them. We have never been intimidated by them, we just completely laugh them off, and they must have cited that to make us upset,” he argued. Klavan traced the Left’s demonization of dissent to the 1960s, after the President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs failed to solve the problem of poverty in the U.S. “As the Great Society welfare programs failed and actually slowed, for instance, black progress up out of the middle class, it became more and more racist for us to criticize those policies,” he said. Klavan claimed the Great Society programs enriched Democratic politicians while not helping the poor. No Comment Exposés like the Twitter Files have revealed that the Biden-Harris administration pressured social media platforms to censor conservatives in the name of combatting misinformation on topics such as COVID-19, the 2020 presidential election, and more. It seems rather plausible that YouTube might cave to pressure from the Times. Neither The New York Times, nor Alphabet, nor Media Matters responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment for this story. The post ‘SHUT THE SPIGOT OFF’: Ben Shapiro Reveals The New York Times’ Strategy to Silence the Right Ahead of Election Day appeared first on The Daily Signal.