The Federalist – American Political Report

Corporate Music Is Killing Classic Country and Its American Values

The Federalist — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 14:12:57 +0000

Large corporations have strayed from the American values of classic country music, but some young artists are keeping the tradition alive.

Someone committed murder.

At least, according to George Strait and Alan Jackson when they sang “Murder on Music Row” in 1999.

“The almighty dollar and the lust for worldwide fame/Slowly killed tradition, and for that someone should hang.”

Classic country artists like Strait and Jackson consistently portray deeply American values like faith, family, and freedom overcoming human vices like drinking, gambling, and cheating. But as these artists age out, a cheap replica of “country” is rising in their place. […]

Here’s How To Actually Reverse The Baby Bust

The Federalist — Wed, 04 Dec 2024 10:10:33 +0000

Birth rates are plummeting in the United States and globally, forecasting a political and financial crisis. The most recent estimate predicts the average American woman will have 1.6 children in her lifetime, far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a steady population and even further below the 2.5 rate observed in the United States as recently as 1970.

Many cultural and technological factors have contributed to this dramatic decline, and public policies play a role in shaping people’s decisions about whether to have children and how many. Finding the right policy levers for influencing fertility rates, however, has proven very difficult.

Countries such as Hungary and South Korea, operating on the assumption that fertility is primarily constrained by the costs of raising children, have offered very generous government subsidies for families having children to offset those costs. Unfortunately, their fertility rates haven’t risen, so these large expenditures clearly haven’t helped.

But it’s unlikely they would have anyway, as child-rearing expenses do not appear to be the main obstacle to people choosing to have more children. Remember, fertility rates used to be much higher even when people had significantly less money than they do now.

For example, in 1970, when the U.S. fertility rate was at 2.5, per-person gross domestic product was almost one-third what it is today. Somehow, people with a lot less money managed to have many more kids. […]

FEMA Director Says Criticism of Agency Is Misinformation

The Federalist — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 12:01:35 +0000

FEMA was heavily criticized for its disaster relief efforts being slow and political, while spending money on illegals. Those criticisms turned out to be accurate.

Instead of taking responsibility for the slow and apparently politically motivated response to disaster relief after hurricanes Milton and Helene, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Deanne Criswell criticized what she deems to be the spread of “misinformation” in a House hearing on Tuesday.

Following reports of former FEMA official Marn’i Washington directing her disaster response team to avoid the homes of Trump supporters, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing giving Criswell an opportunity to answer for the political response from her agency.

“This type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA, and we will hold people accountable if they violate our standards of conduct,” Criswell said at the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management hearing, indicating that the political response was isolated to Washington’s Florida team, and not “indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA.”

While Criswell also said that preliminary findings in the investigation launched after the Washington revelations have not found similar issues, Washington herself has been making her way around the media circuit claiming that her actions were being passed down through the chain of command. (Washington’s position, according to Criswell, is the “lowest level of supervision.”) […]

Trump Should Immediately Stop Federal Agencies From Hiding Documents By Needlessly Marking Them Classified

The Federalist — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 15:39:59 +0000

Files should be open to the public unless otherwise specified, not secret by default. We the people have a right to know what our government does in our name, and to know our own history.

Early in his third presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to establish a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to “declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.” The phrase “Truth and Reconciliation” recalls bodies established to investigate abuses by toppled Communist regimes such as East Germany’s, or the former apartheid government of South Africa. The framing suggests that Trump views the entire past decade, from “Russiagate” to the “lawfare” cases entangling himself and his advisers, as the fruits of an illegitimate regime that threw the rule of law out the window.

This interpretation of recent history, surely viewed as partisan by Trump’s opponents, will be tested by the facts, once they become better known and documented. But the president-elect’s suggestion that the workings of the U.S. government must be more transparent is long overdue.

According to Sens. Gary Peters, D-Mich., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, who introduced a bipartisan “Classification Reform for Transparency Act” last July, the U.S. government spends $18 billion every year classifying information. “Over-classification,” they argue, “undermines national security by limiting information sharing between federal agencies,” as in the notorious intelligence failures before 9/11. American taxpayers, we might add, fork over billions every year in order to help their government hide information from them.

Like so many now-encrusted practices in Washington, the classification monster is of dubious constitutional provenance, born of the metastasizing of the U.S. security apparatus during the Cold War. Just as foreign military interventions denied taxpayers a genuine “peace dividend” after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the intelligence agencies created to oppose the Soviet threat, instead of disbanding after its disappearance, spread their tentacles ever wider. […]

Thank You to All the Men Who Voted ‘for My Daughter’

The Federalist — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 02:49:39 +0000

Men did ‘step up’ for their daughters and for women everywhere, but not in the way that these sobbing women on Instagram demanded.

Out of all the post-election reactions shared on social media in the last 72 hours, perhaps the most grating and eye-roll-inducing are the women sobbing about how a majority of America could have possibly voted “against our daughters.”

“How am I going to tell my daughter that America voted for her rights to be taken away?” sobbed one woman on Instagram. Others crooned about voting “for their daughters” on Election Day, presumably meaning they voted for pro-abortion candidates and ballot initiatives.

Before I explain why I’m grateful for this election “for my daughters” specifically, it needs to be said that these types of posts using children to fight in political culture wars need to stop. Whether it’s your own children, or others’, just stop. Kids under 18 need to be protected, not used by their parents or anyone else as a shield to hide behind or a cudgel to push an adult’s policy preference. But since the “for my daughters” crowd is out in full force this week, I would like to thank all the men and women, but specifically the men, who voted for Donald Trump and “for my daughters.”

Courting the Manosphere

There was a lot of pressure on men this election to “show up for women.” From Barack Obama lecturing “the brothers” to Kamala Harris’ step-daughter demanding men “step up and show they actually support us,” Democrats knew how unappealing and unlikeable their candidate was to men, and they hoped men could be guilted or pressured into voting for her anyway. […]

Leftist Groups Turn To Threats To Get Out The Vote

The Federalist — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 20:14:44 +0000

Maryland’s attorney general is warning the Voter Participation Center to stop sending ‘threatening’ mailers to residents.

Growing increasingly desperate in a tight presidential race, leftist groups appear to be turning to the intimidation game just days before the election.

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office is warning the infamous Voter Participation Center to stop sending mailers to residents “threatening to expose” their voting records.

Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, sent the VPC a cease-and-desist letter after Marylanders complained of receiving the group’s so-called “voting report card” attempting to shame people into voting.

“We’re sending this mailing to you and your neighbors to share who does and does not vote in an effort to promote election participation. While we have hidden the name and street number of your neighbors to protect privacy, these are their true voting records,” the mailer warns. “We will be reviewing these records after the election to determine whether or not you joined your neighbors in voting.” […]

Leftist Groups Lay Groundwork to Call a Trump Victory Illegitimate, Smearing His Supporters as ‘Violent’

The Federalist — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 09:44:02 +0000

Powerful leftists dismissed in advance Trump’s potential claims to victory, casting his supporters and election integrity advocates as extremists.

Leaders of leftist influence groups sought to preemptively discredit potential claims of victory by former President Donald Trump and portrayed his supporters as violent in an apparent effort to pave the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to claim victory.

“There is a lot of investment by allies of President Trump to suggest that his victory is inevitable,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, which funneled millions in “Zuckbucks” to election officials in 2020. “If he loses the election, or perceives that he’s losing, you can imagine the shock that is going to be felt by his supporters, and how that’s going to be leveraged by grifters to try to anger them, to try to incite them to violence.”

The webinar, which happened Wednesday, was appropriately called “Red, White, and Coup.” It featured Becker; Nora Benavidez, senior counsel for the Free Press (which supports censorship and was founded by a socialist); Heidi Beirich, cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (which smears conservative groups); and Damon Hewitt, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (which wages lawfare against conservatives).

Panelists cast a potential Trump claim to victory as illegitimate and suggested his supporters and those with election integrity concerns are “extremists” with a potential for violence, in what appeared to be an attempt to predetermine the narrative and set the stage for Harris to claim victory and suppress dissent. […]

I Worked With John Kelly In The White House And Don’t Believe A Word He Says

The Federalist — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 00:36:00 +0000

John Kelly has done a disservice to the nation by being dishonest and insubordinate, quitting on the job, and now smearing Trump to help elect perhaps the worst presidential candidate in history.

As Donald Trump gains momentum to be reelected on Nov. 5, the anti-Trumpers have unleashed their last desperate wave of smears to stop him. Most despicably, but not surprisingly, former Chief of Staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly gave interviews to The New York Times and The Atlantic in which he claimed President Trump fit the definition of a fascist and supposedly made favorable comments about Adolf Hitler.

I worked in the White House with Kelly, and I don’t believe a word he says. He was a terrible chief of staff who dishonestly kept information from President Trump to pursue his own agenda, an unelected former military official substituting his judgment for the judgment of the duly-elected president.

In 2018, after Congress refused to appropriate adequate funding to build the wall along the southern border to secure it against illegal alien crossings, Trump asked Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney to find money in agency accounts to build the wall. Mulvaney asked OMB Deputy Russ Vought and me, as OMB general counsel, to do a deep dive to find the money, and with the help of superb career staff, we found a ton of funding at the Department of Defense we could legally use to build the wall.

But Kelly prevented Mulvaney from presenting this plan to President Trump. Several months later, in a meeting, the president said, “Mick, I asked you to find me money, and you haven’t.” Mulvaney responded, “I found the money, but I have not been able to brief you.” As the chief of staff, Kelly would not set up policy briefing time for Mulvaney to discuss the plan with President Trump. After this exchange, Mulvaney presented the plan, and the president authorized this strategy. […]

Bob Woodward Is the Deep State’s Favorite Conduit for Disinformation

The Federalist — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 23:59:35 +0000

On the campaign trail in early October, a reporter asked Vice Presidential Nominee J.D. Vance about new reporting from Bob Woodward that Donald Trump had private phone calls with Vladimir Putin after leaving office. Vance replied, “I honestly didn’t know that Bob Woodward was still alive until you just asked me that question.”

Vance’s response is indicative of Woodward’s slide into irrelevance in recent years. He’s drifted from the world-famous shoe-leather reporter who famously took down Nixon to someone who seemed all too comfortable in the corridors of power.

This shift is why my new book co-authored with Kent Heckenlively, Twilight of the Shadow Government: How Transparency Will Kill the Deep State, opens with a chapter titled, “The Lies of Bob Woodward.” Let me cut to the chase and tell you what I really believe: Bob Woodward is likely to be the number one disinformation agent of the Deep State. Let’s start with the facts.

We started with Woodward’s own fairy-tale account of his life, enrolling in Yale on an NROTC scholarship and studying history and English literature. Did you know the Ivy Leagues are the prime recruiting grounds for the intelligence agencies, and they love those liberal arts majors?

From Yale, he goes to the Navy for five years, but neglects to inform the public that he was an intelligence briefer for General Alexander Haig, who would go on to become chief of staff in the Nixon White House. In that role, he also briefed Admiral Thomas Moorer, who was the chief of naval operations and later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s only because of a fabulous book by two-time Pulitzer-prize nominated writer, Ray Locker, Haig’s Coup, that we have this information. […]

The Real Reason Men Just Aren’t Into Democrats

The Federalist — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 09:09:46 +0000

The problem of appealing to men has less to do with messaging and more to do with the actual women who constitute the Democrat Party.

If Kamala Harris ends up losing this presidential election, which is looking increasingly likely, it will be because the majority of American men are turned off by her.

And it isn’t for lack of trying. The Harris campaign has desperately courted men in a multitude of ways. They assembled White Dudes for Harris, headed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttitgieg. They released a slick commercial of men bragging about their masculinity and their endorsement of Kamala Harris. Harris selected assistant football coach and former National Guard soldier Gov. Tim Walz to be her running mate, mainly to signal her solidarity with straight white men from the Rust Belt. She owns a Glock, looks tough in her commercials about border security, and is married to a man who embodies a new kind of masculinity.

Harris’ friends in Hollywood have also done their part to bring in some more of their fellows to the Democrat Party. Ben Stiller and Andy Cohen gave testimonies as girl dads about the country’s great need for a Harris presidency, rapper Eminem just spoke at one of her rallies, and pro-wrestler and action star Dave Bautista flexed his muscles and support for Harris by mocking Trump as a sissy.

So what’s the hold up? Is there something wrong with the messaging? […]