Old Guard Audio ‪❗‬ John Hames

Heritage Foundation Sues Biden Administration to Stop Vaccine Mandate Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / November 29, 2021
 



The Heritage Foundation will "fight tooth-and-nail and send the message that our freedoms are not up for debate," Heritage President Kay C. James says. Pictured: President Joe Biden speaks Nov. 3 at the White House about authorization of a COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden administration to stop its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers, calling the requirement a “gross abuse of power.”
“The mandate clearly encroaches on the police power of states expressly reserved by the 10th Amendment [to the Constitution],” argues the complaint filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The lawsuit adds: “It also exceeds the federal government’s authority under the Commerce Clause.”
Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James and the think tank’s incoming president, Kevin Roberts, who takes office Wednesday, both issued statements on the lawsuit.
“Dr. Roberts and I, along with the Board of Trustees, unanimously agreed The Heritage Foundation has a vital role to play in the courts to protect and secure the freedom of all Americans to make medical decisions for themselves,” James said, adding: 
 
To all of our members, to the conservative movement, and to Americans concerned by this unacceptable overreach by President [Joe] Biden and his administration, I say this—Heritage’s leadership is united behind this lawsuit, and we are going to fight tooth-and-nail and send the message that our freedoms are not up for debate.
 
Heritage’s court action became one of the latest challenges to the vaccine mandate, which imposes a Jan. 4. deadline for businesses and other organizations that employ 100 or more to require their employees either to be fully vaccinated or produce the results of weekly tests for the coronavirus. Heritage has about 270 employees. 
The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Heritage, which is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.
“The Heritage Foundation has not historically filed lawsuits,” Roberts said in his own written statement. “That we are doing so now should make clear to any observer that we view this mandate as a deadly serious threat to our individual liberty and the values that make America great. Under my predecessors, The Heritage Foundation has stood rock-solid in defense of liberty, freedom, and opportunity for all, and it will continue to do so under my leadership.”
Roberts continued: 
I wish this lawsuit were unnecessary. I wish we had an administration in the White House that respected the Constitution and the rule of law. 
From the unprecedented border crisis, to the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, to now this unlawful COVID vaccine mandate, it is irrevocably clear that this administration will stop at nothing—even harming Americans and our national interests—in pursuit of the most radical policy agenda in American history. Rest assured, we at Heritage are only just beginning to fight back. …
I am so thrilled to be leading this incredible organization at this pivotal time in our nation’s history, and to be engaged in the trenches on the most important fights we’ve seen in a generation.
 
On Sept.9, Biden authorized the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to require employers with 100 or more workers to make sure those workers either are fully vaccinated or provide weekly test results showing that they don’t have COVID-19. 
“We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers,” Biden said in announcing the mandate.
The Biden administration contends that the mandate is necessary because too many Americans refuse to get vaccinated and that OSHA has the statutory authority to impose th

Horrific Waukesha Deaths Preventable Result of Ill-Considered Bail Policies Amy Swearer / @AmySwearer / Zack Smith / @tzsmith / Cully Stimson / @cullystimson / November 23, 2021
 
 
 
 



John Chisholm, pictured, the rogue Soros-backed prosecutor in Milwaukee County, released Darrell Brooks from custody when he should have sought no bail. On Nov. 21, Brooks drove his car through a Christmas parade, killing five adults and injuring more than 40 people, including children. (Photo: county/Milwaukee.gov)

Commentary By Amy Swearer @AmySwearer
Amy Swearer is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Zack Smith @tzsmith
Zack Smith is a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Cully Stimson @cullystimson
Charles “Cully” Stimson is a leading expert in national security, homeland security, crime control, immigration, and drug policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research.


After a summer of wildly destructive civil unrest followed by the looming shadow of the high-profile trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, residents of Wisconsin suffered another blow in the form of unspeakable tragedy.
Five people were killed and more than 40 injured when a driver plowed through participants of an annual holiday parade, appearing to intentionally speed up and swerve into lines of marchers, before speeding off.
Hours later, police arrested 39-year-old Darrell Brooks as the suspected driver of the vehicle. He is charged with five counts of homicide.
Investigators are still looking into possible motives, including, according to some reports, the possibility that Brooks did not necessarily target the parade but was instead attempting to flee from a knife fight.
 
Whether the act was intentional or merely reckless and without regard to others, one thing is already clear—what happened in Waukesha was entirely preventable.
Darrell Brooks should have been in jail several times over. The devastation he wrought happened only because grossly reckless bail policies touted by local officials enabled the release of an unrepentantly violent man whose actions routinely placed members of the community in serious danger.
Brooks is a career criminal with a long rap sheet. His history of violence—including violence toward women—is well documented, and wide-ranging.  
In 1999, Brooks pled guilty to felony battery with intent to cause bodily harm, and was sentenced to six months in jail and three years’ probation. Over the next seven years, Brooks had a series of short stints in jail for various drug and obstruction charges.
In 2006, he was convicted of felony statutory sexual seduction for impregnating a 15-year-old girl. Brooks was 24 years old at the time. He was sentenced to probation and required to register as a sex offender.
In 2010, Brooks pled no contest to felony strangulation and suffocation charges, as well as to violating the terms of his probation. He was sentenced to 11 months in jail and three more years of probation.
Brooks spent much of 2011 and 2012 in jail, serving two separate 180-day sentences for charges of drug possession and bail jumping, and a 37-day sentence for misdemeanor resisting arrest.
In 2016, Brooks was arrested and charged with failing to obey Nevada’s sex offender registration laws. He posted bail, then fled the state and never returned to court. He still has an active warrant out for his arrest in Nevada.
In July 2020, Brooks was again arrested after allegedly getting into a fist fight with his nephew over a cellphone and then firing a gun at the nephew’s car as the nephew drove away. Arresting officers found Brooks still in possession of the firearm as well as a small amount of meth. He was charged with a slew of serious felonies, including possession a firearm as firearm and two counts of second-degree rec

Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in 2 Texas Heartbeat Act Cases. Here Are the Top Takeaways. Thomas Jipping / @TomJipping / Sarah Parshall Perry / @SarahPPerry / November 01, 2021



Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Nov. 1. (Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY Thomas Jipping@TomJipping
Thomas Jipping is deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Sarah Parshall Perry@SarahPPerry
Sarah Parshall Perry is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.


We are only a month into the Supreme Court’s 2021-22 term and abortion already appears to be this season’s defining topic.
The court heard arguments in two cases on Monday related to the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans most abortions after the fetal heartbeat is detected (which is usually about six weeks after conception). And in just one month, the court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which challenges the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.
While Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization focuses on the constitutional merits of the Mississippi ban, the Texas cases focus on how the legislature sought to shield the Texas abortion ban from legal challenge in its Heartbeat Act.
Ordinarily, parties that opposed the law would file a lawsuit before it was scheduled to go into effect, asking for an injunction to stop any enforcement while its constitutionality is litigated. That’s what happened in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Texas law, however, says that it can be enforced only by “private civil actions” and removes public officials (those normally tasked with the enforcement of state and federal law) from the enforcement process on the Texas Heartbeat Act altogether. As a result, the law went into effect as scheduled on Sept. 1.
 
In Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, abortion providers sued to prevent state courts from handling any private civil actions to enforce the Texas abortion ban. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit put the Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson case on hold, and on emergency appeal, the Supreme Court left the hold in place, but said that the case raised “serious questions” about the law’s constitutionality.
Even though the 5th Circuit scheduled arguments on the issue of whether federal courts could enjoin state courts from handling these lawsuits for early December, the plaintiffs appealed again to the Supreme Court by way of a rarely used procedural move known as “certiorari before judgment.”
In United States v. Texas, the federal government sued Texas, also asking that the abortion ban be put on hold while its constitutionality is litigated. Like the abortion providers did in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the Biden administration did not wait for the 5th Circuit to rule, but appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
So, on Nov. 1, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases—one brought by abortion providers and one by the federal government—involving procedural issues that must be cleared up before the constitutional merits of the Texas abortion ban can even be addressed.
In Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the question is whether Texas can insulate its state law from federal court review by delegating enforcement to the public instead of state officials.
In United States v. Texas, the question is whether the federal government has an interest in the case sufficient enough to sue state courts and officials to prevent them from enforcing the law.
Texas argues that its new law does not prevent the courts from deciding this underlying constitutional issue. The enforcement mechanism simply prevents blocking the law before it is enforced. But abortion pro

Transgender Bathroom Policies Open Doors for Sexual Predators Nicole Russell / @russell_nm / October 14, 2021
 


A male student sexually assaulted a female student in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia in May. The girl’s father was arrested on June 22 at a Loudoun County School Board meeting for protesting a proposal that would expand protections for transgender students. Pictured: The Loudoun County School Board discusses transgender issues at a meeting on Aug. 10. (Photo: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY Nicole Russell@russell_nm
Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine.


An explosive piece published this week by The Daily Wire shows what happens when crime, liberal school policies, and leftist law enforcement induce a parent’s worst nightmare.
In “Loudoun County Schools Tried To Conceal Sexual Assault Against Daughter In Bathroom, Father Says,” investigative reporter Luke Rosiak reveals a story about a young man who sexually assaulted a female student in the women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School.
This incident is a harbinger of what will happen as school systems, law enforcement, and other powerful groups embrace politically correct social justice agendas over the safety and security of all.
While official juvenile records are sealed, attorneys reveal that a young man wearing a skirt was “charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio,” after he assaulted a young woman in the school restroom.
 
On June 22, weeks after the incident, the young woman’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested at a Loudoun County, Virginia school board meeting for protesting a proposal that would expand protections for transgender students.
He was dragged out, arrested, and later charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He was merely upset about his daughter’s sexual assault and the connection to changing school policy so that biological boys can use the women’s bathroom if they identify as transgender. The school banned Smith from its property.
Smith’s arrest has sparked media attention, further humiliating him.
The only person who has been convicted of a crime is the heartbroken, angry father, not the young man who assaulted not one, but two women—the story later reveals—in the women’s restrooms.
“My wife and I are gay- and lesbian-friendly,” Smith told The Daily Wire. “We’re not into this children transgender stuff. The person that attacked our daughter is apparently bisexual and occasionally wears dresses because he likes them. So this kid is technically not what the school board was fighting about. The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.”
Many angles of this story are disturbing. Elected Democrats in Loudoun County are implementing liberal policies in school districts despite the obvious ramifications as described.  The school brushed off the sexual assault of a young woman in order to continue pressing for broad bathroom policies that are inclusive to the small transgender population in high school. The school administrators also treated a concerned father disrespectfully.
The story also reveals an obvious truth about criminal behavior: Predatory people will take advantage of any policy that favors them.
Even though a small percentage of society’s citizens are sexual predators, it only takes a few to upend the lives of victims and clog the criminal court divisions. Similarly, it’s also true that among the transgender population, which is already quite small, very few—if any—are sexual predators.
However, that does not mean sexual predators would not readily take advantage of loosened or broad bathroom polic

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Attorney General Garland Abuses Power He Doesn’t Have to Threaten Parents GianCarlo Canaparo / @GCanaparo / Mike Howell / @mhowelltweets / October 05, 2021
 



Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo on Monday that essentially directs the Department of Justice and the FBI to intimidate parents who oppose the teaching of critical race theory in schools. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY GianCarlo Canaparo@GCanaparo
GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Mike Howell@mhowelltweets
Mike Howell is senior adviser for executive branch relations at The Heritage Foundation. A lawyer, he previously worked in the general counsel's office at the Department of Homeland Security and, before that, for the chief oversight committees of the House and Senate.


Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo on Monday directing the Department of Justice and the FBI to “launch a series of additional efforts in the coming days designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.” 
The Garland memo looks like an effort to use the FBI to threaten and silence parents who are outspoken opponents of critical race theory in schools. That alone would be a stunning partisan abuse of power.  What Garland has done, however, is even more disgraceful.
Maybe Garland doesn’t actually intend to use the FBI to go after parents—maybe he knows that he doesn’t have that power. In that case, he’s trying to trick parents into thinking that he does. This tactic, he hopes, will suppress parents’ free speech, and throw a bone to a powerful ally of his political party.
Even a few FBI agents questioning parents may be enough to convince others that standing up for their values is not worth the risk.
 
To understand what Garland is doing with this memo, you’ll need a short primer on the background facts and government legalese.
Starting with the facts: What is this “rise in criminal conduct” against school officials?  You won’t find any evidence cited in Garland’s memo. You won’t find any evidence in the FBI’s crime data either.
This claim is parroted from a letter sent to President Joe Biden by the National School Boards Association—a powerful leftist group representing many of the school boards around the country pushing critical race theory curricula. That letter made vague claims about “threats and acts of violence” against school board members from parents who oppose critical race theory.
The letter complained about “disruptions” by angry parents but managed to find only one example of violence against a school official (likely a security guard), which was handled by local law enforcement.
Most of the letter is the National School Boards Association clutching its pearls, aghast that justifiably angry parents are zealously advocating for their children’s interest. The tactics thus far employed certainly are nothing compared to the riots of the summer of 2020 that destroyed over a billion dollars in property and resulted in multiple deaths.
Those tactics were not decried by the National School Boards Association and its liberal friends. In fact, the current vice president organized financial support to the criminals engaged.
The National School Boards Association is not really concerned about an isolated instance of violence adequately handled by local law enforcement. It is much more upset that it is powerless to stop parents from exercising their First Amendment rights to push back against critical race theory in the classroom.
And so, in a move that is nearly a reflex among many leftist organizations, it asked the government to lend it some of its law enforcement power to shut up its meddling critics. Garland was only too happy to oblige. In doing so, he has made a hypocrite out of himself and Biden.
When Biden announced Gar