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Lee Smith: Is the Left preparing for war if Trump wins?

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Lee Smith: Is the Left preparing for war if Trump wins?

By LEE SMITH

The propaganda campaign labeling Donald Trump as an aspiring dictator determined to use the military and national security apparatus against his political opponents is designed not to affect the upcoming election but rather to shape the post-election environment. It is the central piece of a narrative that, by characterizing Trump as a tyrant (indeed likening him to Hitler), establishes the conditions for violence — not just another attempt on Trump’s life, but political violence on a massive scale intended to destabilize the country. 

As I write in my forthcoming book Disappearing the President, Democratic Party research and media reports show that many senior party officials and operatives are preparing for the possibility of a Trump victory. Accordingly, planning is focused on undermining the incoming president with enough violence to rock his administration. Prominent post-election scenarios forecast such widespread rioting that the newly elected president would be compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act. With some senior military officials refusing to follow Trump’s orders, according to the scenarios, the U.S. Armed Forces would split, leaving America on the edge of the abyss. 

By vilifying Trump as a despotic madman who must be stopped before he can commence his reign of terror, the regime’s propaganda apparatus not only slanders Trump but also pre-emptively threatens the reputation, as well as the livelihood and perhaps the liberty, of current military personnel. The point is to push the military against Trump: When the time comes to act, will you stand for democracy or side with a tyrant who sees the military only as an instrument to advance his personal interests? 

For instance, last week the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, quoted former Trump administration officials claiming that the Republican candidate is contemptuous of America’s armed forces and, according to Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, wishes he could command the same respect that Hitler commanded from his general officers. 

This is not the first time that Trump has been compared to Hitler or that Kelly, a retired Marine general, turned on his former commander-in-chief. Kelly was the key source for a story published before the 2020 election, also in the Atlantic and also by Jeffrey Goldberg, that alleged Trump had called American WWII soldiers buried in French cemeteries “suckers and losers.” 

The veracity of Kelly’s latest revelation that Trump admires Hitler must of course be judged against the fact that he waited five years to disclose it, even if it is unlikely to have much effect on the current election cycle. The military, and veterans of the Global War on Terror in particular, overwhelmingly support the candidate opposed to waging endless and strategically pointless foreign wars. Moreover, Trump has weathered far more damaging fabrications — like the false allegations that he had been compromised by Russian intelligence — that only galvanized support for him.

The purpose of the Hitler narrative is not to alter the electoral preferences of left-wing media audiences already solidly in the anti-Trump column, but rather to justify taking extreme measures against the Republican candidate and the America First movement and ensure that the bulk of the military sides with the anti-Trump plot. Thus, it is best understood in the context of recent accounts promising, or urging, violence after the November vote. 

For example, last week the New York Times published a long interview with a scholar of fascism who declared that Trump is a fascist. The paper of record followed up with another long article by two Harvard professors calling for mass mobilization in the event of a Trump victory. The proposal suggests that private industry join civil society organizations to ostracize Trump and his supporters and engage in large public protests to provoke a crisis. Kamala Harris herself, commenting on Kelly’s allegations in the Atlantic story, claimed that her opponent “is a fascist” during a CNN town hall.

These stories are only the latest in an ongoing series of media reports warning of a Trump dictatorship. Beltway insider Robert Kagan was out of the gate early, writing even before Trump wrapped up the nomination that, without mounting resistance against the Republican candidate, America is “a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.” A January story from NBC claimed that Trump was exploring ways to use the military to assassinate political rivals. 

The propaganda meant to establish a predicate to employ violence to stop Trump has been reinforced at the highest levels of the Democratic Party.   

When Joe Biden was asked by a reporter if he was confident that there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the 2024 election, he answered, “If Trump wins, no I’m not confident at all.” Then, seemingly correcting himself, the president said, “I mean if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all. He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all the stuff about, ‘If we lose there will be a bloodbath.’”

Biden was referring to a comment Trump made in March about Chinese efforts to build auto manufacturing plants in Mexico. The export of those cars to America, Trump said, would result in a “bloodbath” for the U.S. auto industry. Naturally, the Biden campaign used the figure of speech to accuse Trump of inciting “political violence.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) advertised a more specific scenario leading to violence when he promised that Congress will remove Trump by invoking Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits anyone “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding federal office. “It’s going to be up to us on January 6, 2025, to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified,” Raskin has said. “And then we need bodyguards for everybody in civil war conditions.”

But the most significant post-election scenarios were drafted by Rosa Brooks, a former Obama Pentagon official whose 2020 wargaming with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) has been credited by the left-wing press for its “accuracy.” 

Ahead of the last election, Brooks and TIP, according to the Guardian, “imagined the then far-fetched idea that Trump might refuse to concede defeat, and, by claiming widespread fraud in mail-in ballots, unleash dark forces culminating in violence. Every implausible detail of the simulations came to pass in the lead-up to the U.S. Capitol attack on 6 January 2021.” 

That’s a fanciful way of obscuring the truth. TIP anticipated that Trump would contest the results because party operatives knew beforehand that election irregularities resulting from new voting procedures, like mass mail-in voting, designed to facilitate fraud would be glaringly obvious. Thus, because of Brooks’s past performance and her central role in a network comprising the media and current and former defense officials, her work is widely acknowledged as the Left’s roadmap for post-election contingency planning. 

For the 2024 election, Brooks teamed up with journalist Barton Gellman to run a series of wargames in May and June under the auspices of the Democracy Futures Project (DFP), part of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. 

As with the 2020 wargames, the two opposing teams were staffed by former government officials from the Republican as well as the Democrat establishment. The results were announced with a mid-summer media rollout to ready other officials and operatives for likely post-election operations. Four articles were published the same day, July 30 — in the New Republic; the Guardian; the Washington Post, which ran a piece by Gellman; and Brooks herself writing for the Bulwark — showing that Brooks and Gellman’s scenarios, at least those disclosed, assume a Trump victory. The play then is to block.

Disruption, destabilization, and violence are legitimized by a narrative driven by self-congratulatory mirror-imaging and projection in which the so-called defenders of democracy face down an authoritarian Trump. 

Brooks and her cohort ignore the evidence of Biden and Harris’s abuse of power and assert that it is Trump who will who use the federal government against his opponents. It is Trump’s CIA and DOJ, according to the wargamers, that will cashier national security officials for “raising concerns about the politicization of intelligence and the pressure to launch ideologically motivated investigations.” It is Trump who will use the IRS to go after nonprofits. It is at Trump’s behest that journalists will be targeted and Democrat-aligned media outlets investigated as the FCC revokes broadcast licenses. And, writes Brooks, the Trump administration will force out top military officials on account of their “objecting to Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia.” 

The forecasts read like paranoid fantasy, but they’re carefully scripted inversions of reality meant to to rewrite history and obscure the crimes of the Left that have shaken the pillars of the republic. 

The most alarming scenario involves political and military officials “resisting efforts to federalize their national guard units and send them to quell anti-Trump protests in major U.S. cities.” That is, the post-election playbook calls for (or takes for granted) widespread violence so intense that the president invokes the Insurrection Act. The forecast posits a split in the senior ranks of the U.S. military after Trump replaces the chiefs of staff with officers who comply with his order and deploy forces to put down the riots. 

This is where the political violence cultivated by the destructive Left is leading: blood-soaked streets and a divided military. The purpose of the Hitler narrative is to force members of the military to turn against Trump. After all, loyalty to the constitution means fighting Hitler, not obeying his orders. 

With the two recent attempts on Trump’s life, we’ve seen how the regime’s narratives simultaneously create the conditions for violence and explain it away. When Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, PA, Democratic Party officials and the media not only denied any connection between the shooting and their inflammatory rhetoric but even blamed Trump himself. After all, he and his aspiring assassin were cut from the same cloth: “The gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy,” wrote David Frum in, of all places, the Atlantic. 

On this view, Trump has polarized the country so profoundly that he is ultimately responsible for the attempt on his own life. But that is another inversion of reality, tailored to suit the bloodlust of a dark regime. It is the logic of terror: It is only the violence of our victims that drove us to slaughter them. 

This self-serving logic not only gets the Left off the hook for past depredations; it serves as the pretext for future violence against Trump, his aides, and his supporters. After November 5, this weaponized narrative could be expanded to justify violence on a mass scale designed to break the republic.

Lee Smith is a bestselling author whose new book, “Disappearing the President: Trump, Truth Social, and the Fight for the Republic,” was published October 22. This article was first published at TomKlingenstein.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearWire and made available via RealClearWire.

Theresa Obermeyer: Don’t retain judges

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Theresa Obermeyer: Don’t retain judges

By THERESA NANGLE OBERMEYER


Please read the Missouri Court Plan in the Missouri Constitution, Article V 25(c)(1), which states” “… Each judge appointed … shall hold office for a term ending December 31 following the next general election after the expiration of 12 months in office …”

Alaska Supreme Court justices’ retention elections are held at the first general election, more than three years after appointment/

Alaska Court of Appeals judges’ retention elections are held at the first general election, more than three years after appointment.

Alaska Superior Court judges’ retention elections are held at the first general election, more than three years after appointment.

Alaska District Court judges’ retention elections are held at the first general election, more than two years after appointment.

Because Alaska justices/ judges are not retained based on Missouri Court Plan, please vote “no” on all 19 justices/judges on the ballot Nov. 5.

Theresa Nangle Obermeyer is a resident of Anchorage.

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Kristen Walker: We need policy pragmatism rather than climate obsession

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Kristen Walker: We need policy pragmatism rather than climate obsession

By KRISTEN WALKER

We are continually being told that climate change is getting worse and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and intense. Neither is true.

Tropical hurricanes have battered the southeast for centuries, spanning the spectrum of severity. Category 4 and 5 storms, considered the worst of the worst, are nothing new; plenty occurred prior to the world’s so-called addiction to fossil fuels. The Labor Day Storm, considered one of Florida’s most powerful and destructive hurricanes, hit their shores in 1935. Governor DeSantis recently said, “This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history. It’s something it will continue to deal with.”

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s records don’t indicate a strong correlation between hurricane intensity and carbon dioxide levels. Quite a few of those tropical storms struck various parts of the U.S. well before global warming became a concern.

Nor does NOAA show that tornadoes have become more powerful. The 1925 Tri-State Tornado, with a 219-mile path across three states in just 3.5 hours, is considered among the most intense.

When last year’s Maui wildfire raged, and many were quick to point fingers at climate change, countless climatologists cautioned not to link the two. Experts had warned for years that the over-grown brush and ignoring recommended mitigation measures would likely lead to deadly infernos.

Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not detect a strong relationship between climate change and extreme weather events.

Yet the panic-stricken rhetoric is driving energy policy with the belief that enacting legislation and overhauling how we develop and use energy will somehow alter global temperatures. Such drastic measures are affecting consumer welfare through energy shortfalls and price hikes, leaving increasing numbers of households energy poor. It has driven inflation and increased federal deficits. Adding insult to injury, these actions are having very little (if any) impact on climate.

Some researchers even assert that a few degrees of warming will benefit plant life and agriculture, and growing seasons will be longer. Renowned Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg often shares the fact that rising temperatures save lives because cold weather is more deadly.

Regardless, the U.S. has made tremendous progress in reducing its carbon footprint and curbing greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions and other pollutants over the last several decades. Much of the headway is due to operational improvements and innovation within the industry.

Despite record production levels, oil and natural gas companies continue to reduce ghg emissions through upgraded and modernized infrastructure. The increased use of natural gas, which has replaced a significant amount of coal, is responsible for nearly half the electric power sector’s emissions reductions since 2005; increasing its use has actually done more to cut emissions in the U.S. than solar and wind combined.

The Environmental Protection Agency notes that between 1970 and 2023, GDP increased 321%, vehicle miles traveled increased 194%, energy consumption increased 42%, and America’s population grew by 63%. During the same time frame, total emissions of the six principal air pollutants dropped by 78%.

Energy is produced responsibly in America. Curtailing production here only spurs production in other nations like China and India, which do not maintain the same strict environmental standards as the Western World. Both developing countries are seeing record levels of coal production and are the greatest contributors to global emissions. It makes little sense to restrict oil, gas, and coal generation on our soil only to have it shift to a substantially bigger polluter. Such maneuvers do not change global energy demand; they merely relocate where the resource originates.

Letting the market work and allowing individuals to innovate have facilitated abundant and sensible energy production. The U.S. has already established rigorous environmental requirements, and the industry has shown it can succeed within reasonable confines.

Alarmists would do well to cease the catastrophizing and end-of-world fearmongering. Energy is the lifeblood of our economy. Pragmatism and common sense, rather than climate hysteria, should be driving energy policy.

Energy demand is on the rise; practical solutions are vital to meeting those needs. Rather than a one-size-fits-all mentality, we must implement energy sources that best serve circumstances and do not restrict access to reliable and affordable energy. Consumers need energy that works, is plentiful and cheap, and allows them to carry out day-to-day functions. Anything less is unacceptable. Their well-being as well as the health of the economy should not be sacrificed at the altar of climate agendas.

Kristen Walker is a policy analyst for the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.theamericanconsumer.org or follow us on Twitter @ConsumerPal.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Steve Goreham: If green energy is the future, bring a fire extinguisher

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Steve Goreham: If green energy is the future, bring a fire extinguisher

By STEVE GOREHAM

Alternative energy is exploding─literally. Lithium battery fires are breaking out on highways and in factories, home garages, and storage rooms. The rise in battery fires is amplified by government efforts to force adoption of electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries for electric power.

Lithium batteries have high energy density, making them valuable for phones and portable appliances. But when they catch fire, these batteries burn with high heat and can even explode. That’s why airlines prohibit lithium batteries in checked baggage.

On June 24, a battery factory in South Korea caught fire, triggering explosions and killing 22 workers. The fire broke out in Hwaseong at the Aricell plant, a maker of small lithium batteries for sensors and communications devices. Experts estimate that most workers were killed by toxic gases emitted by the burning batteries.

Scotland has suffered two major fires in battery recycling centers this year. On April 8, a large fire broke out at Fenix Battery Recycling in Kilwinning, North Ayrshire. More than 40 firefighters and personnel from six different agencies responded to the blaze, which burned for several days. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service urged nearby residents to remain indoors with windows closed as long as two days after the fire started.

On June 23, a large fire broke out at the battery recycling treatment facility of WEEE Solutions in Glasgow. Eyewitnesses reported explosions, noises like gunshots, “steel flying everywhere,” and a huge plume of black smoke. Ten fire trucks were needed, and the blaze lasted four days.

E-bike battery fires are now the leading cause of fires in New York City, with 216 fires last year. E-bike fires have become a serious problem in Australia, Canada, and other nations as well. Low-quality bike batteries self-ignite in first-floor storerooms, destroying the buildings above. Even high-quality batteries are prone to self-ignition after damage or when connected to a faulty charging system.

Lithium batteries have been used for the last 30 years in phones and small appliances. But the introduction of electric cars (EVs) after the year 2000 provided a massive increase in battery size. Lithium batteries for cars and trucks are 10,000 times as large as phone batteries. 

On August 19, a Tesla semi-truck crashed into trees along Interstate-80 in California. The crash ignited the truck’s large lithium battery. Firefighters tried to extinguish the fire with thousands of gallons of water but were forced to let the fire burn itself out. The interstate was shut down for 15 hours. The California Advanced Clean Fleets Regulation passed last year requires all new heavy trucks to be zero emissions vehicles, which practically means electric trucks with batteries prone to fire.

Automakers have been wrestling with lithium battery fires for more than a decade. Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Porche, Tesla, and other manufacturers have recalled millions of EVs because of battery fire problems. Batteries can self-ignite while the vehicle is in motion, when connected to a charger, or even when sitting idly in a parking lot. EVs prone to self-ignition have been prohibited from parking at West Coast parking lots.

In August, a Mercedes-Benz EQE that had been manufactured in China burst into flames in a parking garage in Inchon, Korea. The EV had been parked in the garage for several days and was not charging at the time. The resulting inferno destroyed or damaged 140 vehicles.

On August 24, a fire broke out in the outside parking lot of electric truck manufacturer Rivian in Normal, Illinois. More than 50 trucks were destroyed. The same plant also reportedly suffered three other battery fires in the last year and three more fires in 2021-2022.

How are governments responding to the rash of lithium battery fires? They are doubling down, promoting the use of even larger, grid-scale lithium batteries as part of efforts to transition from coal, oil, and natural gas to wind and solar energy.

Grid-scale batteries are viewed as the solution to wind and solar intermittency, meant to store excess electricity when wind and solar output is high, and then release electricity when wind and solar output is low. But the number of grid battery fires is growing, and grid batteries are hundreds of times larger than EV batteries.

On July 26, a grid battery carried on a truck ignited after a crash on Interstate 15 near Baker, California. The battery was 20 feet long and weighed 75,000 pounds. I-15 was shut down for 44 hours as firefighters worked to put out the blaze. Hundreds of motorists were stranded in the desert in 100-degree heat. Ambulances, medical teams, and fuel and water were dispatched to the site to help stranded motorists.

On May 15, the Gateway Energy Storage facility using lithium-ion batteries caught fire near San Diego, California. Firefighters managed to get the blaze under control in 24 hours, but it then re-ignited twice more and burned for a total of 11 days. Evacuation orders to residents were issued and cancelled periodically, depending on the fire status. The Gateway facility was the largest of its kind when constructed in 2020.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced $1 billion in grants for electric school buses. If a diesel bus engine catches fire, the driver can usually put it out with a fire extinguisher. But this is not possible with electric buses, which explode when they catch fire. Let’s hope we’re not headed for fire explosions in electric buses full of children.

The world faces an epidemic of lithium battery fires. If government leaders continue to push lithium batteries and the green energy transition, battery fires will soon be coming to a location near you.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and author of the bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. A version of this article was recently published in The Wall Street Journal.

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Medicare premiums and prescription drug costs surge under Inflation Reduction Act

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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Medicare premiums and prescription drug costs surge under Inflation Reduction Act

By SHIRLEEN GUERRA | THE CENTER SQUARE

Medicare premiums and senior citizens’ prescription drug costs have surged since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to data compiled by an advocate for seniors on the federal health care program.

Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, which promised financial relief for millions of people with Medicare by expanding benefits, lowering drug costs, and strengthening Medicare for future seniors, prescription drug costs instead have risen nationally by 31%, leaving seniors with new expenses and fewer options. Those costs will rise again under the new Plan B premiums.

With less than a week until the 2024 presidential election, these higher Medicare monthly drug premiums will be seen in 45 of 50 states, including those considered battleground states.

More than 67 million Americans rely on Medicare for their health care.

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As previously reported by The Center Square, the new average plan bid for a standard Part D coverage will increase by 179% for 2025, partly due to an underestimation of federal attributions to the Part D changes. 

The Biden administration’s Medicare prescription drug premiums could cost taxpayers more than $21 billion over three years.

The national monthly average cost rose from $47.69 in 2022 to $62.34 in 2025, a 31% increase that will cost seniors an additional $176 annually per individual, according to Mark Merritt, the founder of Medicare Is for Seniors’ “Misery Index.”

Merritt told The Center Square that seniors end up paying the tab with higher monthly Medicare premiums. He said that the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden after Vice President Kamala Harris cast the decisive vote in the Senate, makes Medicare Drug Plans offer costly new benefits and siphons funds from Medicare into the federal treasury to fund the IRA, most notably its electric car and green energy subsidies.

These increases come despite claims from the Biden-Harris Administration that the IRA would lower costs.

In an op-ed for the Atlanta Journal Consitution, Merritt wrote that “rates for Medicare Prescription Drug Plans have risen four times more than the national rate of inflation since the IRA was enacted. In some battlegrounds, it’s risen eight or nine times higher.”

Georgia seniors will see a monthly premium increase of 59% in 2025, totaling $73.42 compared to $46.05 in 2022. North Carolina seniors will see a 39% increase in monthly premiums, rising from $46.67 in 2022 to $65.00 in 2025, while Pennsylvania seniors will see a 35% monthly increase to $71.53 a month in 2025 from $52.86 in 2022, according to the index.

Merritt reiterated that Medicare and prescription drug savings are used to finance other parts of the IRA that have nothing to do with Medicare.

The Inflation Reduction Act added red tape and government mandates to Medicare Part D, which increased seniors’ drug costs, he said.

“Before the IRA overhauled Part D, costs for Medicare drug benefits had stayed flat for the previous 18 years,” Merritt said.

“So there’s an IRA double whammy; it’s that the law’s spending contributed to higher general inflation of 7% since 2022,” said Merritt, but caused “Medicare Inflation” to spike 31% during those same two years.

According to KFF, an independent source for health policy research, polling, and news, insurers are increasing premiums for their stand-alone drug plan offerings, but not “across the board.” They also are reducing standalone prescription drug plan offerings, from 709 plans in 2024 to 524 plans nationwide in 2025.

Wisconsin is one of the few states that will see a decline in monthly premium costs, according to the misery index, when rates decrease 5%, $50.10 in 2022 to $47.83 in 2025.

New York seniors will see the highest increase in Medicare PDP plans since the IRA was passed, with a rate of $52.46 in 2022, increasing to $97.13 in 2025.

California will see an increase of 69%, with the coverage increasing from $55.82 monthly in 2022 to $94.31 in 2025, making it the second largest increase on Merrit’s Misery Index.

Nevada seniors will see the third-highest increase in prescription drug costs,  when premiums increase from $44.24 in 2022 to $72.52 in 2025.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services state on their website that the IRA offers provisions of financial relief for those with Medicare by lowering some drug costs, keeping prescription drug premiums stable, and improving the strength of the Medicare program.

The benefits include a cap of $35 for a month supply of insulin, access to recommended adult vaccines without cost-sharing, a yearly cap of $2,000 in 2025 on out-of-pocket prescription drug costs, and the expansion of the low-income subsidy program.

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Pat Martin: Eastman Derangement Syndrome and Alaska Family Council

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR
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Pat Martin: Eastman Derangement Syndrome and Alaska Family Council

By PAT MARTIN

An unattributed quote on the Alaska Family Council website extols the critical service they provide in keeping “us informed and engaged in the political process.”

Jim Minnery’s slanderous attack on David Eastman, Alaska Right to Life, and me may bring the relevance of that quote – and several others – into question.

Jim Minnery: Time for David Eastman to retire and for Jubilee Underwood to represent District 27

Jim accused me of maligning every conservative in the Alaska Legislature, but before a line of politicians expecting reparations forms, I think it’s fair to ask what all those conservatives are conserving, because so far, I haven’t seen much effort to protect babies, children, families, or family values. 

Take abortion and abortion funding for example.  Minnery’s Values Voter’s Guide cites this as an important criteria for endorsement and David Eastman offered a budget amendment that would have reduced abortion spending to $0.00, prohibiting the State from paying a single Planned Parenthood’s invoice.  

Eight Republicans in the House voted with the abortion lobby to kill Amendment 131 to CSHB 268 and pay Planned Parenthood for more than 500 babies to be killed in 2024/2025.

Three more Republicans joined pro-life champion turned abortion advocate Cathy Giessel, in killing a similar amendment in the Senate, bringing us to 12 Republicans that voted to pay for babies to be killed.

Minnery’s Voter’s Guide also highlights protecting children from gender transition ideologies, cross-sex hormone poisoning, and irreversibly damaging surgeries.  Eastman offered several bills that align with Minnery’s endorsement criteria in addition to Amendment 80 to this year’s budget (CSHB 268) that would have prohibited the State from spending a penny to poison children with cross-sex hormones or permanently disfigure them with transgender surgeries. Nineteen Republicans joined Planned Parenthood endorsed Democrat CJ McCormick in killing that amendment.  McCormick is also a member of the House Majority Coalition.

Everybody knows that contraceptives are Planned Parenthood’s lucrative abortion gateway drug.  Eastman opposed HB 17 along with a majority of Republicans, and in line with several of Minnery’s voter guide values, while 9 Republicans voted with Planned Parenthood (they wrote the bill) to send HB 17 to the Governor’s desk.

In just three issues, 19 Republicans ran afoul of Family Council’s agenda and endorsement criteria, but it’s Eastman that Jim tars and feathers in Planned Parenthood pink while Jim endorses the 13 of those Republicans running for reelection.  

This isn’t just inconsistent; Jim is deliberately misleading his followers.

It’s telling that Minnery’s attack follows a familiar pattern: isolate a target, personalize the criticism, and attempt to separate David from his supporters by suggesting they’re in a ‘cult.’

These are textbook political pressure tactics – the very kind that Minnery privately accuses others of using.

And it’s not the first time Jim has used these tactics.  If you remember Family Council’s 2020 attack on David, Jim tried to falsely link Eastman to the 2020 Portland BLM riots.  At the same time, he was using Alaska Right to Life ministry and activism images in his fundraising presentations – taking credit for our work while trying to discredit us.  It’s not just misleading – it’s a calculated strategy to manipulate supporters and donors.

A question Minnery’s followers should ask isn’t whether Eastman and Alaska Right to Life are effective advocates, but rather why their leader needs to falsely link an Alaska legislator with Portland riots while using a competing organization’s work to raise money.

If Jim weren’t suffering from EDS – Eastman Derangement Syndrome, he’d have a real problem.  On one hand, Eastman is the only legislator whose voting record is in line with Jim’s published agenda, while 13 of the 14 incumbent legislators he’s endorsed for reelection vote against Family Council time and again.

On the other hand, now we know why Jim left Cathy Giessel’s quote unattributed on his website.  When a discredited pro-life champion turned abortion advocate is your standard for ‘keeping us informed and engaged politically,’ then attacking the one consistently pro-life legislator while endorsing those who repeatedly fund abortions starts to make perfect sense. 

Pat Martin is president of Alaska Right to Life.

By the numbers: Early and absentee voters continue to bank their ballots

Suzanne Downing
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By the numbers: Early and absentee voters continue to bank their ballots

Early and absentee voting is still strong in Alaska, as it is around the country. Over 62,000 Alaskans have voted, a 12.6% turnout, with seven days to go until the Nov. 5 election deadline.

By tomorrow, the early and absentee in person votes will exceed the early vote total for 2022.

Early vote ballots cast through Friday: 35,117

Absentee by mail ballots retuned: 27,328

Combined: 62,545

Total absentee ballot requests (deadline was Saturday): 71,897

This is the second-highest absentee by mail ballot request year ever, the top year being 2020, the year Covid scared people away from in-person voting.

In 2016, a more normal year for comparison, 31,499 Alaskans applied for an absentee ballot.

Alaska’s early voting numbers continue to surge, and several locations offer voting on Sunday
By the numbers: Conservatives come out to vote in Alaska in record-setting early voting

Bob Bird: It’s the Alaska Family Council that needs to be retired, not David Eastman

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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Bob Bird: It’s the Alaska Family Council that needs to be retired, not David Eastman

By BOB BIRD

Jim Minnery has just penned an essay saying that it is time for Rep. David Eastman to be retired … because he is too much of a constitutionalist. He claims that Eastman’s votes are counter-productive. Why? Because (and Minnery agrees with him!) there is absolutely no need for a constitutional amendment because there is NOTHING in the state constitution wherein the right to abortion can be found, unless people rely on the “tea-leaves” and palm readings of the Supreme Court.

Jim Minnery: Time for David Eastman to retire and for Jubilee Underwood to represent District 27

Actually, it is Jim Minnery and the Alaska Family Council that needs to be retired, or at least re-tooled. When I ran against Ted Stevens in 2008, I also failed to get the AFC endorsement, even though, unlike Minnery, I have been arrested five times for organizing or participating in the blockade of abortion clinics.

He was so terribly concerned about keeping Ted Stevens’ supposedly more moderate vote in the US Senate, he would not allow me to explain to the AFC the constitutional reasoning as to why neither a federal nor state amendment is necessary to protect the unborn. He admitted to me, months later, that he intentionally refused to return my calls. This is the man that so many Christians put their trust and judgment in.

Minnery falls into the trap that liberals love: the belief that once the supreme court makes a decision, it must be followed. As long as he uses that logic, the liberals will continue to use him, and not David Eastman, to keep the status quo.

Now hear this, fellow prolife Christians. We do not have “three co-equal branches of government”. The legislature is supreme, and the constitutional tools are already in place to thwart the judiciary. Are you ready?

  1. The governor need not enforce the decisions of the court. In Article 3, Sec. 16 we read: He may, by appropriate court action or proceeding brought in the name of the State, enforce compliance with any constitutional or legislative mandate, or restrain violation of any constitutional or legislative power, duty, or right by any officer, department, or agency of the State or any of its political subdivisions. This authority shall not be construed to authorize any action or proceeding against the legislature. Notice it does not give an exception for the judiciary, only the legislative, demonstrating that the three branches are not equal. And it also assumes that the courts might very well be the ones who “violate a constitutional power”.
  2. The legislature has the power, in Article 4, Sec. 1, to keep the courts out of “judicial review”. It says, “The jurisdiction of the courts shall be prescribed by law.” All they need to do, when passing a prolife law, is to add, “This statute shall not be reviewable by the judiciary.” And even if a court ruling is exercised, is merely an opinion, not a law. The governor is the final filter with his enforcement powers. In a properly functioning system, he would most likely follow the court’s advice in most matters, for he is not a judge. But his oath does not call him to defend the court rulings, but to defend the constitution. It’s a big difference. 
  3. Lastly, there is impeachment. Let me count the ways that the Supreme Court has overthrown the state constitution. Dunleavy is too sluggish to figure this out, and Minnery himself does not understand constitutions properly. In 1997’s Valley Hospital case, the courts overthrew the people’s and the legislature’s power to amend the constitution; in the Sen-Tan case in the late 90s, it seized the power of the right to privacy being defined by the legislature. Then in a follow up, seized the power of the purse by ordering state funding of abortion. Then, more recently, it overthrew the governor’s line-item veto power, when he docked the court’s administrative budget the exact amount that the state had been paying for abortion. And they don’t stop at abortion, either: they just seized the control of Grand Juries from the people.

Imagine if Minnery had used his influence to explain all this to his Christian supporters! By this time, we might have had enough sincere prolifers and conservatives come over to Eastman’s side and begin educating the public. What you think the constitution says, and what it actually says, are two different things. Maybe this election cycle will drive home the point.

Instead, he has found nit-picky ways to always put down his rival in prolife fund-raising, Alaska Right to Life, and now doesn’t like Eastman — even though he agrees that Eastman’s line of thinking is correct!

If you want to know why the status quo on abortion and all other freedom issues continues the way it does, look no further to the constitutional ignorance of the Alaska Family Council. If they are not “controlled opposition”, they sure are filling the bill.

Bob Bird is former chair of the Alaskan Independence Party and the host of a talk show on KSRM radio, Kenai.

Bob Bird: Reshuffling the American and Alaskan deck

Jim Minnery: Time for David Eastman to retire and for Jubilee Underwood to represent District 27

SENIOR CONTRIBUTOR
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Jim Minnery: Time for David Eastman to retire and for Jubilee Underwood to represent District 27

By JIM MINNERY

It’s time for Wasilla Rep. David Eastman to find a new job.

His commitment to conservative values is admirable but his actions have done very little to advance those values in Juneau. In fact, I would argue that Eastman has done more to damage the pro family, pro life cause politically then anything else.

Let’s start with the most important issue – protecting unborn Alaskans.

He believes, as do I, that our State Constitution does not even remotely contain a “right to abortion” within the privacy or equal protection clauses as liberal politicians and the Alaska Supreme Court fraudulently assert. But his strategy to push back on that false assertion is deeply flawed and counterproductive.

Four states ( Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee & West Virginia ) have amended their State Constitutions to explicitly state that their founding document does not contain or provide a right to abortion or the right of public funding for abortion. In doing so, those four states have literally saved unborn lives. With those Amendments in place, the Justices have no wiggle room to manufacture meaning out of thin air as they do here.

Eastman, as you can see above in his answer to our Values Voter Guide survey, would vote AGAINST such an effort joining forces with Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and every other leftist, pro-abortion group.

His reasoning ? Because the right to abortion doesn’t exist in our State Constitution, we shouldn’t have to amend it to clarify the matter. Here’s the problem with that line of thinking – the Alaska Supreme Court rules in a manner believing it does exist and David Eastman hasn’t been able to do anything about it. Period.

The high Court used that judicial philosophy to strike down a statewide initiative that was passed by the people of Alaska requiring parental notification before a minor can get an abortion and they used it to overturn a law passed by the legislature stating that Alaskans shouldn’t have to pay for elective abortions through Medicaid.

If language were in place in our State Constitution as it is in those other four states, the Justices would have been stopped in their tracks and unborn babies in Alaska would have been saved. Full stop.

Eastman and many of his faithful followers believe that holding fast to theory is righteous but we live in reality. His refusal to amend our Constitution to protect the least of these among us has consequences.

In addition to his refusal to protect the unborn through necessary and proven Constitutional amendments, Eastman has been unable to move beyond window dressing in terms of advocating any effective legislation. Through four terms in the State House, he introduced more than 140 measures. Not a single one has advanced to the floor for a vote.

Eastman has also consistently demonstrated that he is unable to work with his own party. His greatest fan, Pat Martin with Alaska Right to Life, someone I vehemently have disagreed with over the years, has made it his mission in life to malign every conservative in the Alaska Legislature. You don’t hear much from Pat about the progressives. He’s too busy trying to throw conservatives under the bus.

In 2020, the minority caucus suspended Eastman from committees after conflicts with fellow Republicans. In 2022, he was removed from the Republican House minority caucus for “disruptive” behavior, stripping him of some of his committee assignments. More recently, in the last legislative session, he was not offered a place in the Republican-dominated House majority, but was given a single committee seat.

Rep Eastman also voted against HB 2, a bill that would have prohibited Alaska public agencies from contracting with any group that boycotts or discriminates against Israel on the basis of nationality, national origin, or religion. The sponsor of the pro-Israel legislation, Representative Sarah Vance out of Homer, a solid Christ-follower and consistent conservative, was appalled when Eastman once again sided with the Democrats in a 20-20 vote to kill her bill.

Eastman’s followers, and there are many, are fond of saying he is the “only true conservative” in the Legislature. But, having a leader that preaches an explicit belief system or ideology and who is followed by unquestioning believers is the defining characteristic of a cult. That may sound intense but for those of you who are ardent supporters of him, ask yourself if you’ve ever opposed him on anything. If not…remember that we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. 

Believe it or not, I like David Eastman. He is a smart, interesting man with convictions but he is in the wrong profession. His presence is doing nothing to advance an agenda other than platitudes and disruption. He has a place in the battle for ideas. It’s just not the legislature.

Alaska Family Action strongly endorses his opponent, Jubilee Underwood, who actually has a track record of working with others within and outside of her political persuasions and of getting real policies across the finish line. 

It’s time for change in District 27.

Jim Minnery is president of Alaska Family Council.

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