Horowitz: Most important outcome of Dobbs decision? Making state legislatures great again



It’s the body of government closest to the people, yet it’s the most forgotten, overshadowed, and weakened body in recent years. However, with the Dobbs opinion returning the power to regulate abortions to state legislatures, we now have the opportunity to focus our attention on legislative elections, sessions, and policies and settle our acerbic cultural and legal differences in the most prudent and democratic process.

We are an irrevocably divided nation, and it will only get worse over time. We can’t agree on the definition of a marriage, a woman, a citizen, a criminal, a fundamental right, or the purpose of our existence, much less the purpose of our government. We can either continue forging ahead with a winner-take-all approach to politics and have the federal executive bureaucracy – the least accountable and transparent branch of government and most distant from the people – decide every important political question. Or we settle those debates in state legislatures – the branch closest to the people where most members are elected every two years.

Whether you abhor abortion as murder or think it’s the greatest sacrament of virtue, the reality is that red states are going to ban abortions (many already have) and the blue states are going to obsessively expand access to them. Unlike the seven justices who initially banned all regulation of abortion in 1973, all those legislators in each state will be subject to removal every two or four years. For the most part, the legislators will vote in a way that reflects the values of the majority in their areas. This is the self-sorting process we’ve always needed. This dynamic needs to expand to every other important issue of our time. It’s not a perfect process, but it’s much better than where we are today, and it will allow us to live side by side harmoniously in a de facto amicable separation, albeit with shared custody over certain issues that are national in scope.

In the coming months, conservatives will be trained by their favorite Fox News media figures to obsess about the potential of a RINO takeover of Congress and the coming presidential election, even though the latter won’t even be relevant, policy-wise, until 2025. But the reality is that Republicans control trifecta supermajorities in a number of states today and will only expand that dominance next year. Come January, they have the ability to make those states de facto sanctuaries for our rights and values – if only we focus our pressure on elected state Republicans and educate them concerning the enormity of their power. It’s time to use it.

In his national design for governance, Madison explained the state vs. federal arrangement in Federalist #45 as follows: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

Think about issues like COVID fascism and transgenderism. Internal order, liberties, and property, etc. – this can all be rectified at a state level. Anything outside war and foreign commerce is fair game. This is where conservatives failed to act during the lockdowns and COVID fascism. They should have activated the legislatures immediately and forced debate for the states to immediately reject the federal policies. It’s still not too late to change course.

In responding to the Biden administration’s immoral and illegal policies and edicts over the next two and a half years, conservatives should have a one-track mind and be singularly focused on how they can pressure their legislatures to interpose against the federal tyranny. Conservatives have long been distracted away from a state legislative focus, but perhaps the Democrats will teach them how it’s done. Believe me, the blue states will immediately take action and juice up funding for abortion while expanding its legal scope – perhaps even to after the birth of the baby.

Likewise, most GOP legislatures and attorneys general seem to have acted swiftly to immediately ban abortion at the first opportunity. But we now need to see this swiftness on other issues as well. For example, Biden’s Department of Education just promulgated a rule putting any school or university on the hook for sexual harassment if they don’t call men who think they are women by female pronouns. This is the sort of illegal federal regulation that states must immediately stop. Legislatures should instantly convene and block its implementation within their states.

The big problem we have in legislatures, though, is that so many of them are only in session for a few months a year. In states like Texas, they are only in session every other year. This means that, for example with COVID, when you have federal and state executive branches suspending the republic, we often have to wait months or years for legislatures to act. It was OK to have a part-time legislature when we had a part-time executive branch and the legislature was the only organ of government that legislated. However, now that the federal and state departments of health and education legislate 365 days a year without any checks or balances, the concept of a part-time legislature actually harms us.

As such, conservatives must begin pushing reforms to make it easier to call legislatures back into session, and it should not be tied to the whims of the governors. We don’t need state legislatures voting on bills all year, but we must reserve the prerogative to get them back into session at a moment’s notice to interpose against tyranny.

For years, Republicans have accumulated a ton of power in many states, have done nothing with it, and have failed to clean up their own cultural Marxist swamps within state-run agencies. Abortion was the only red line conservative voters established and held their elected representatives to. It succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. Now it’s time we harness that energy for issues like medical freedom, Pfizer liability, transgenderism, illegal immigration, crime, First Amendment protections, and interposition against the tyrannical Biden administration. What the Dobbs victory has clearly shown is that we will only enjoy the rights and policies commensurate with our desire to fight for them.

Horowitz: The need for states to thwart federal persecution of political opponents



If COVID was the pretext to criminalize our bodies, then January 6 was the ploy to criminalize our social and political views. The regime is now arresting people for merely protesting regime policies without committing an actionable crime simply because they are political opponents. Meanwhile, regime supporters can directly call for violence, have their supporters follow up and attempt to assassinate a Supreme Court justice, and the regime will continue to praise the protesters and even insinuate the coming of a “mini-revolution.” The past week’s events have made it clear we need a national divorce and cannot live harmoniously with these people. As such, it’s time for red-state governors to protect the civil rights of political dissidents with as much vigor as the regime has for violating them.

On Thursday, a team of FBI stormtroopers raided the Michigan home of Ryan Kelley, one of the leading GOP candidates for governor. His crime? Being at the protest outside the Capitol. The Feds accused him of “gesturing” to protesters to storm the Capitol and used some comments he made during the heat of the protest to incriminate him; however, the proof being in the pudding, Kelly never entered the Capitol at all. Using this as the threshold for arrest, millions of BLM protesters should be sitting in jail, when in fact even those who burned, beat, looted, and vandalized were never cited, much less punished. Oh, and he was arrested by the same Michigan FBI office that was engaged in entrapment and basically concocted the kidnapping plot against Governor Whitmer. As Julie Kelly reported, “More than a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants were involved in the kidnapping caper; Dan Chappel, the lead informant, was compensated at least $60,000 by the FBI for six months’ work, paid in cash for services rendered, and reimbursement for expenses.”

Obviously, the arrest of Ryan Kelley coincides with the Hollywood documentary-style January 6 committee hearings and is a day after Biden promised Jimmy Kimmel he would send his political opponents to jail for not playing by the rules. In a sadistic twist of irony, in that same interview, he “predicted’ a “mini-revolution” if Roe is overturned, even though the day before, a young man was arrested for an attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh for potentially overturning Roe.

So here are the rules of the game. Democrats can directly call for violence, have their supporters take up the call, and they are not held politically accountable and even double down on their comments. Yet for any individual involved in a protest or – in the case of Peter Navarro and law professor John Eastman – merely giving a legal opinion on something that was associated with violent acts of a selected few individuals (encouraged by FBI agents like Ray Epps) – their legal and political opinions or forms of protest are now deemed criminal acts.

Remember Chuck Schumer’s comments about releasing a “whirlwind” against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh?

\u201c\u201cNow go peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won\u2019t know what hit you.\u201d\n\nGuess which one of these quotes led to a media meltdown, impeachment, and over a year\u2019s worth of congressional inquisitions.\u201d
— Sean Davis (@Sean Davis) 1654719982

"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price," Schumer, who was then minority leader, said at the time. "You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Keep in mind, there are no elections for Supreme Court, so there is no way he could have meant these words figuratively, about an election, in the heat of political debate. There is only one thing he could have meant, and now we have ubiquitous protests outside their homes and one individual as an alleged assassin. I’m not suggesting we head down the slippery slope of criminalizing Schumer’s words, but the government is criminalizing any opinion even if there is no violence inherent in the words.

We constantly hear the left wax poetic about the degree of violence on January 6, the damage, and the threat to slaughter thousands of people, even though, interestingly enough, all of the videos only seem to show violence outside, but those in the Capitol either did nothing or goofed off. Some even exchanged friendly words with officers in the Senate chamber.

\u201cI\u2019m sorry but this is still one of the funniest videos\u201d
— Ashley St. Clair (@Ashley St. Clair) 1654821954

Yet these same people seem to forget that dozens of Secret Service agents were injured in a BLM riot at the White House in May 2020. What about the broader scope of the BLM riots?

According to a report by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA):

  • There were 574 riots in the U.S. and Canada between May 25 and July 31, 2020, stemming from about 8,700 protest events.
  • More than 2,000 officers were injured in those riots.
  • 72% of major city law enforcement agencies had officers harmed during the protests.
  • More than half of major city law enforcement agencies (56%) experienced arson incidents.

In Minneapolis alone, rioters burned down more than 1,500 businesses, as well as police stations and schools, and caused over $500 million in damages. Nationwide, there was between $1 and $2 billion in insurance claims for damages from the riots. Yet not only did no Democrat condemn the violence, as every conservative condemned the violence on January 6, Democrats praised it, encouraged it, joined it, declared it a new civil rights movement, and dedicated memorials and ostensibly a new national holiday to it. Across the nation, even those who committed the worst forms of arson got off with a slap on the wrist, and most of the extremely violent rioters in Portland had their charges dropped. Oh, and unlike January 6, they didn’t need FBI agent provocateurs to get violent, they did it on their own.

According to the Oregonian, out of 974 criminal cases stemming from the Portland riots over the past several months, 666 were dropped by Multnomah District Attorney Mike Schmidt. Moreover, only seven out of the 39 arrests for assaulting police officers resulted in charges being filed. The outlet even found 18 individuals who were arrested three or more times throughout the rioting since May. Nearly all the charges have been dropped.

The Oregonian further found that even some of the cases that were initially listed as having criminal charges lodged against the defendant were later dropped. "But court records show prosecutors have subsequently decided to drop all charges in at least 22 of these cases, some that have included allegations of riot, burglary and unlawful use of a weapon."

This is not a mere double standard; this is a systematic persecution in the most grotesque form of anarcho-tyranny. It’s quite evident that Democrats will work assiduously to protect their political supporters, even those who commit the most heinous acts. Isn’t it time for Republican governors to protect our political supporters, especially those who never committed a violent act or any criminal act?

Many red states are contemplating a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” but there is an even more urgent need to establish a First Amendment sanctuary. All GOP governors, backed by their respective legislatures, should announce in press conferences that state troopers will prohibit the entry of federal agents to arrest any political opponent where there is no evidence the target has committed an act of violence. They should also refuse to work with the FBI on any other issue until this crisis is resolved.

One such bill has been introduced in Oklahoma by state Senator Nathan Dahm. SB 1166, the “Prohibition on Political Prisoners in Oklahoma Act,” would prohibit the federal government from transporting any January 6 prisoner through the state if they are not being charged with a felony.

If Democrat states can become sanctuaries to protect illegal alien sex offenders from ICE, then you better believe red states should become sanctuaries for Americans targeted by the regime simply because of their political opposition.

Horowitz: Idaho conservatives poised to remake legislature like never before



Idaho has long suffered a paradox, in that it is so dominated by Republicans that it is not so Republican at all. Because it is a de facto one-party state, many liberals who are well connected to the woke industries and lobbyists choose to run as Republicans and use their superior campaign cash to campaign as conservatives, the exact opposite of what they plan to do in office. This is why, despite a 58-12 majority in the House and a 28-7 majority in the Senate, conservatives rarely enjoy legislative wins that other red states are able to easily secure. Last night’s elections might have changed that in a big way.

Establishment Republican elites are crowing about their apparent victories in both the Pennsylvania Senate race and the Idaho gubernatorial race on Tuesday. Idaho Gov. Brad Little warded off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. However, when you get past the statewide elections, which require tremendous money and organization to make competitive – money true conservatives don’t have – we find a different story.

A total of 20 incumbent Republicans – 11 running for the Senate and nine running for the House – were defeated or poised to lose as of Tuesday night. A big part of these results is thanks to the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC, which actively recruited candidates against incumbents.

It’s truly hard to overstate the significance of this development. Thirteen of the 28 Republican senators didn’t stand for re-election. Out of the 15 remaining, nine were defeated, and several RINO House members seeking a Senate seat lost to conservatives. There is almost no parallel to that in recent history. While some of the races involved other quirks or were due to redistricting, and a few others were conservatives who were defeated by more ideologically ambiguous candidates, for the most part, conservatives downed many liberal Republicans and made gains in open seats.

Among the highlights were conservative Rep. Codi Galloway beating Sen. Fred Martin, the five-term Senate Health and Welfare Committee chair from Boise. Sen. Jim Patrick, who served five terms in the Senate and three in the House, was defeated by a conservative as well. He was chairman of the Senate Commerce & Human Resources Committee. Also, Rep. Greg Chaney, the outgoing chair of Judiciary, Rules & Administration in the House, lost his bid for a Senate seat, and Sen. Carl Crabtree, vice chair of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, lost his seat.

Additionally, two conservatives who moved from California to seek freedom in the Gem State defeated prominent incumbents. Retired California firefighter Carl Bjerke took out Senate Health and Welfare Committee vice chair Sen. Peter Riggs. Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee co-chair Sen. Jeff Agenbroad was defeated by Brian Lenney, who moved his family from California to Nampa in 2010.

Even in a number of instances where the incumbent survived, the challengers came much closer than we usually see in statewide elections. Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder only won his race by about 640 votes. Now he will face a brand-new caucus that can possibly vote him out of leadership. Conservatives would have enjoyed an even better night if not for the fact that leadership drew several of them into the same district and forced them to compete with each other. This dynamic made the House results more of a wash, but the House was already fairly conservative. So, the fact that the Senate has caught up to it will give the legislature a lot of clout over Gov. Brad Little.

What this success at the legislative level demonstrates is that for lower offices, where the bar to entry is much lower in terms of financial needs, conservatives are on a much more level playing field.

Even in the statewide elections, there are signs that in the future, conservatives can sweep the state. Former Congressman Raul Labrador defeated a 22-year incumbent for attorney general. Conservatives also came within a hair of winning the office of secretary of state and only lost because of vote-splitting. Even for governor, Brad Little only secured 53% of the total vote. Had there been a runoff option, the race might have picked up more momentum and could have become contested. With less vote-splitting and slightly stronger candidates, conservatives can truly take over the state next time.

In other states, mainly in the South, where there are runoffs, conservatives have a stronger chance to compete statewide. Next week, conservatives have an opportunity to draw Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey into a runoff. One recent poll showed Ivey only garnering 40% of the vote, with socially conservative businessman Tim James in second place for a potential runoff. Vote-splitting has plagued conservatives for decades, and the institution of runoffs in more states would allow them to compete against the establishment without fear of dividing the vote of thinking voters.

The Idaho media cheer for liberal Republicans because they don’t really have Democrat horses to ride, but even they recognize the significance of the Idaho Freedom PAC’s work in changing the state’s politics. A bigger focus on state legislatures will pay great dividends in the future, and other states can mimic the work of the Idaho Freedom PAC.

Indeed, the trend of RINO chairmen losing their seats played out in other states on Tuesday night. Three RINO Kentucky House chairs lost their seats in northern Kentucky. Eight-term incumbent Adam Koenig, chairman of the House Licensing and Occupations Committee, was defeated by Steven Doan, a liberty candidate supported by Congressman Thomas Massie and state Rep. Savannah Maddox, a rising conservative star who might run for governor next year. Rep. Ed Massey, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from Hebron, and Rep. Sal Santoro, an eight-term incumbent and chairman of the Transportation Budget Committee, were also defeated.

In Pennsylvania, Rep. Stan Saylor of York County and Sen. Pat Browne of Lehigh County, both the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs respectively, were defeated by conservative challengers. Saylor had been in the House for 30 years. Republicans already have strong majorities in both houses, and if they can pick up the governorship with Doug Mastriano, a more conservative legislature can dramatically alter the political trajectory of the state.

So, what gives when it comes to 63% of the Pennsylvania Republicans voting for Mehmet Oz or Dave McCormick over the conservative favorite, Kathy Barnette? Very simple. They each raised close to $16 million and ran as solid conservatives, so the other challengers, including Kathy Barnette, were outgunned. On the other hand, Doug Mastriano, likely the most conservative in the gubernatorial field, won his primary in a landslide. In that case, there was no unified establishment candidate with endless sums of money to fool the voters.

Overall, conservatives would be wise to focus more on state and local races rather than federal races. Making red states red again and state legislatures great again will go a long way in divorcing ourselves from the morass of Washington. The RINOs can have the irremediably broken federal system, while we focus on rebuilding liberty in some of the states.

Horowitz: Why is Governor Kristi Noem attacking the small group of conservative South Dakota legislators?



Why are red states not nearly as red as California is blue? Why is it so hard to pass bills against chemical castration, COVID fascism, illegal immigration, and medical tyranny in states with few Democrats in the legislatures? Well, unfortunately, in red states it’s not so much the voters who control the arc of legislation, but the special interests. And in smaller red states, the Chamber of Commerce and the medical cartel wield an outsized share of influence, often turning red states into de facto anti-abortion/pro-gun versions of blue states. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Dakota.

On paper, Democrats are an endangered species in the Mount Rushmore State. Not a single labeled Democrat holds a state office. Republicans control the state Senate 32-3 and the state House 62-8. Sounds like a conservative paradise, right? Well, as it relates to abortion and guns, like most other red states, the politics reflects the political orientation of the majority of the people. Other issues? Democrats as may as well hold a super-majority, particularly in the Senate. They just run as Republicans.

In that vein, it was shocking to read how Governor Kristi Noem has declared war, not on the RINOs who legislate like Democrats, but on the few House Republicans who actually want to make the state distinct from a blue state. Last week, the Argus Leader reported that Noem is taking a “hands on” role in training candidates to run for legislature, including those challenging the few conservative incumbents.

Not seen as vulnerable in her primary, Noem says she's still not taking her party's nomination for governor for granted. But she is managing to find time to involve herself in some battleground legislative contests. She's offered candidate school seminars to up-and-coming politicians, making endorsements and even going as far as publicly chastising Republican incumbents she doesn't see eye to eye with politically.

Last month, for instance, Noem joined District 4 House candidate Stephanie Sauder on a radio program where she openly accused Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, of being a poor legislator doing damage to South Dakota's way of life.

According to the Argus Leader, the governor is also working with Sen. Lee Schoenbeck, the president pro tempore, “to unseat far-right members of the party seeking re-election.”

Here is a list of targeted races based on a paper circulated by Schoenbeck referenced in the Argus Leader:

The highlighted members are the establishment picks not deemed “far right.”

But what does “far right” mean? People who oppose men in female sports, chemical castration of minors, corporations violating human rights and mandating dangerous shots, but support reduced taxes? The aforementioned issues have essentially been the dividing lines between the governor and some of the House conservatives over the past two years. These members were pushing for a half-percent reduction in the sales tax, but were stymied by the governor. Then they tried to eliminate the sales tax on food and institute a gas tax holiday, something done even in some blue states. Yet the governor evidently opposes it enough to primary them out of office.

Conservatives in the state and nationwide clashed with Governor Noem last year when she opposed the bill barring men in female sports.

“All of the people on her target list are true Christian conservatives, and those are the people she wants gone,” said Rep. Rhonda Milstead, the lead sponsor of HB 1217, the female sports bill, in an interview with TheBlaze.

Milstead also accuses the GOP establishment of targeting the most conservative members with new districting maps. “Our redistricting was awful because it put the people they want out in districts where they will have a hard time, or they placed solidly conservative people against each other in the same district,” charged the freshman, who represents the greater Sioux Falls area. Milstead claims the map was drawn with the intent of placing several other conservatives into her district.

Fred Deutsch of Watertown was placed into a new district because he was viewed as more repugnant to the GOP establishment than Joe Biden and the Democrats. His crime was the sponsoring of a bill banning chemical castration for minors, a bill that easily passed in numerous other red states. Yet this year, South Dakota failed to pass a single meaningful bill on any important issue, from transgenderism and illegal immigration to medical freedom and COVID fascism.

In an interview on KXLG in Watertown on April 21, Kristi Noem, who hails from that part of the state, lambasted Deutsch and others for being a drag on the state and sloppy legislators who don’t read bills and understand the consequences of good governance. “We need people who are thoughtful,” said Noem in a common refrain we hear from establishment Republicans.

Milstead disagrees. “Fred is an excellent researcher and probably does more research on the issues than the next 10 legislators. He always does his homework, even when I disagree with him, and Gov. Noem knows that.”

There is a common thread undergirding this intra-party battle in South Dakota that reverberates nationally in the Republican Party. It’s not a divide between conservatives and liberals or moderate Republicans and “far right” Republicans. It’s an unbridgeable gap between the priorities and the values of the average red state voter and the special interests that control the powerful entities in the state.

Although red-state Republican governors and legislative leaders will find some minor ways to distinguish themselves from Democrats, as it relates to the issues combatting the spirit of the age, they will always be incorrigibly on the side of the corporatists. Whether it’s transgendersim, mass refugee resettlement, illegal immigration, or COVID fascism, the powerful Republicans in office will always side with big business, which, unlike in past generations, is squarely on the side of cultural Marxism and against individual liberty. Even as it relates to the tax issue, which in the past united Republicans of ever ilk, the corporatist wing wants to focus on targeted tax provisions rather than broad-based cuts for obvious reasons.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the health care cartel. Sanford Health and Avera Health are the top employers in the state. It’s quite obvious why medical freedom will be taboo in the legislature. “The game is very simple,” notes Rep. Milstead. “The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations political action committee contributes to numerous liberal candidates around the state who they feel will walk the line on their issues. Most candidates do not have a lot of money, and so they operate with a sense of fear over what these lobbyists and PACs can do to them.”

Rep. Steve Haugaard is running against Noem in the June 7 primary. On his campaign website, he makes it clear that it is not any one issue that is motivating his run, but the power structure behind the results we see on numerous issues. “The axis of Big Tech, Big Business, Big Education, and Hollywood have changed our culture dramatically just in the past decade,” writes the former House speaker, who now faces a David vs. Goliath contest. “Today, large multinational corporations are dictating how we should live, how our children are raised, and what values our children should be taught.”

The South Dakota Constitution begins with the phrase, “We, the people of South Dakota, grateful to Almighty God for our civil and religious liberties …” Today, we face the challenge of corporations that have essentially become an arm of government or often even stronger than government, with the ability to destroy civil and religious liberty while shielding elected government officials from having to do the dirty work. They often enable elected red-state Republicans to campaign on doing the opposite, knowing full well they will work hand in glove with the lobbyists of those entities to silence the voice of the people.

Thus, anyone who wants to advance the cause of liberty and traditional values beyond the two legacy issues will inevitably have to engage in a full-scale war with the most powerful interests of the state. It is not for the faint of heart.

Horowitz: Reversal of Roe will make state courts great again



Leftists do not like legislative bodies and believe they should wield the least power precisely for the very reason Madison said: “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.” Legislators are elected by the people, constantly stand for re-election (most state legislators are in cycle every two years), all the proceedings are publicized, there are several layers of public votes, and the process in every state (except Nebraska) is bicameral. This is why leftists instead love the courts and bureaucracies, because they can achieve their goals without the disinfecting power of public scrutiny and without the deterrent of public reprisal.

Anyone who supports democratic values should embrace the opportunity to steer contentious issues away from the courts and toward legislative bodies. Obviously, state legislatures are the best suited to deal with contentious issues – not only because they are the closest to the people but also because there are 50 states. We have a divided country and can easily sort out our divisions through a degree of political and even physical self-separating. The reality is that not a single Democrat-controlled state will vote to curtail abortions, because the Supreme Court did nothing but reverse the judicial interference in the issue to ensure that legislatures are free to deal with it.

In light of the fallout from the impending reversal of Roe, there is an uncanny and somewhat perverse political dichotomy unfolding between the two parties. Republicans seem to be defending the “independence” of the court and exalting it to this supreme status above the other branches. Democrats, on the other hand, are trying to delegitimize judicial power because of the perception that they will face a long-term conservative majority on the court. However, if both sides really placed democratic values over politics, they would agree to a grand bargain to devolve power on every contentious issue to the states. This would mean that all cases adjudicating novel rights that only leftists believe in would be dealt with in the respective states. But it would also mean that cases dealing with gun rights would be up to the states.

Don’t get me wrong, I fully believe that there is a difference between bogus rights and foundational rights spelled out in the federal Constitution, such as self-defense, and that should be binding on the states. Ideally, we have the right to petition a federal court for redress if our gun rights are infringed upon. But if that is going to allow courts to perpetuate judicial supremacy and use it as a cudgel over red states, I’m more than glad to devolve all these issues to the states.

Such an arrangement would unfortunately cement the status of blue states as incorrigible Marxist dictatorships, but they are already there anyway. The courts – including the so-called conservative Supreme Court – have barely laid a glove on the COVID fascist regime in blue states. And many courts have prevented red states from blocking these tyrannical laws, such as federal courts requiring red states and counties to have mask mandates.

Conservatives would be naive not to push for a grand bargain ending judicial supremacy. We would benefit so much more than we lose. At present, we rarely benefit from judicial oversight when blue states violate foundational rights, yet we get crushed in red states by the courts vitiating every commonsense policy by creating phantom rights. As of now, we have a “conservative” Supreme Court that has prevented red states from cleaning up homeless encampments, from defining marriage, from keeping the sexes separate in private bathrooms and dressing rooms, from keeping sports sperate, from enforcing immigration law, and from many aspects of fighting crime.

However, let us not forget that for those who still like judicial oversight over broadly political issues, it’s not like the state legislatures won’t have competition. Overshadowed in the politics of the U.S. Supreme Court is the fact that all 50 states have their own constitutions and state judiciaries, including courts of last resort. Let’s not forget, it wasn’t until 1875, in the twilight of the Reconstruction era, that Congress transferred authority over most constitutional questions from state courts to lower federal courts, and it wasn’t until 1914 that Congress granted the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over all cases heard by state supreme courts.

Thus, all these decisions we see from the federal courts creating phantom rights can still be done on the state level with regard to the state constitutions – for better or worse. If Democrats so fervently want to enshrine their morals and political aspirations into constitutions, they can do so in the states they control.

Except there is one difference. State judiciaries, for the most part, are elected either initially or through retention ballot. There are only seven states where the voters never get a crack at judicial selection: Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Most of them are solid blue states, and Rhode Island is the only state that mirrors the federal system, in which the judges are never subject to review by the voters and serve a lifetime tenure. In four of those states, the judges are subject to a specific term and must at least stand for re-nomination before the legislature, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts have an age tenure limit of 70.

Inevitably, given the polarization of our society, we disagree not only on policy but on the Constitution itself. This is why any case implicating a constitutional right will invariably be political. Thus, if we are going to place politics in the courts, it’s better to do it in the bodies that are elected and closer to the people.

Collectively, this will make state judicial elections great again and will make state legislatures more consequential and powerful. If we are going to have the courts decide every political and social issue, let’s at least have this debate at the local level. Yes, there will be times when the labyrinth of state laws and constitutionally protected rights might get confusing and even clash, but I’d rather a patchwork of law than uniformity of tyranny.

This is also a wake-up call to conservatives in red states. Many conservatives focus solely on congressional elections, but they need to pay attention to state judicial races. A lot of red states have non-partisan elections, which allows stealth leftists to glide into office. It might be a good idea to make these elections partisan. Let’s face it: There is nothing in politics that is not partisan, especially as it relates to the most consequential legal questions. Let’s be open about it and sort out our disagreements through the diversity of the 50 states. That is the only way to agree to disagree in an agreeable fashion.

Horowitz: Red states should ban abortions even before official SCOTUS opinion



The weakest position in battle is to come out from behind defensive lines without cover but fail to advance toward the objective. Political combat is no different, and that is why the left leaked the rough draft of the Dobbs opinion reversing Roe. They hoped to pre-emptively expose the assault on Roe and elicit robust attacks before the red states get a chance to actualize its benefits. Red-state legislatures and governors need to do one better and pre-empt any blue state action by banning abortions immediately.

Roughly half the states, including most deep red states, are already out of session until 2023, and most will be done by the end of the month. The worst thing they can do is to allow this issue to fester – as if it’s still in contention – and allow the left and its machine of boycotting, censorship, and astroturfing to work its magic. Republican governors should immediately convene legislative sessions, ban abortions even before 15 weeks, and make the repeal of Roe a reality.

Such a move would have several benefits:

1) In politics, the more you debate an issue, the more it sows doubt, especially when you are trying to implement something new. When you just rip off the scab and implement it quickly, it demoralizes opponents and proves the veracity of the issue in the eyes of the voters by evincing an image of confidence and moral clarity. Just look at how the left successfully implemented COVID restrictions by seizing the moment without any debate. Had they left these issues to a protracted debate, they would never have been implemented in most states.

2) States issuing bans on abortion will make it that much harder for Roberts or external forces to pressure Barrett or Kavanaugh into watering down Alito’s draft majority opinion.

3) It will have the broader effect and ancillary benefit of delegitimizing judicial supremacy. It will show that when we are prepared to do something constitutional, moral, and just, we will do so regardless of the courts. The courts don’t have exclusive and final jurisdiction over constitutional interpretation, and Roe was legal fiction. Really, this should always be the attitude of the states, but now that there is at least an authentic draft of an opinion repudiating Roe, they should set the precedent of delegitimizing judicial supremacism, a principle they will need in the future on other issues. Red states will need to enforce immigration law and directly challenge the court’s ruling in Arizona v. United States (2012).

Senate establishment Republican types like Mitch McConnell who fervently believe in judicial supremacism are feigning outrage over the leak and focusing all their attention on that issue rather than on the banning of abortion itself. That is because they believe that we can only accomplish good policy with the courts and nothing else.

McConnell lambasted the leak as “an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” While the leak was certainly a reprehensible act, I disagree with this bromide of “the independent judiciary.” The judiciary is no more or less independent than the legislature and executive – both in the states and at the federal level. They are all independent of each other, each with their own powers. Every branch must use its powers in concert with the Constitution, not just the courts.

This is the core of what Lincoln did as president to thwart Dred Scott and even issue citizenship and passports to freed black slaves in direct opposition to the 1858 decision. During the sixth debate with Stephen Douglas during the 1858 race for Senate in Illinois, Lincoln asserted: “Judge Douglas understands the Constitution according to the Dred Scott decision, and he is bound to support it as he understands it. I understand it another way, and therefore I am bound to support it in the way in which I understand it.”

Lincoln observed that courts can adjudicate individual cases, but if they seek to use those rulings as a way of setting political policy across the nation, it should never be regarded as a “political rule” to be “binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually concur with the principles of that decision.”

During Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1864, Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of Dred Scott, was forced to administer the oath of office to the man who reminded him of his own impotence to give will or force to his bad opinion. After taking the oath, Lincoln delivered his inauguration address, in which he promised to treat black people as humans, not as property built upon another human being’s “substantive due process rights” to own them. He rejected the notion that “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions.”

What Lincoln meant is that court opinions in a case or controversy – real or politicized – are not self-executing on the other branches of government and automatically universally binding on all the people. So how does the court succeed in making a ruling in a case the de facto “law of the land?” As Eleventh Circuit Judge William Pryor once wrote, it’s all on the power of persuasion:

Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 78 that judges exercise “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment.” Hamilton’s point was that we must depend upon the persuasiveness of our written opinions to command the respect of our fellow citizens.

It flows from here that if a court delivers a horrendous opinion that is clearly divorced from the history and tradition of our laws and Constitution, then the other branches and the states will not be convinced. This is why, unlike McConnell, conservatives should not be quite as concerned with the prospect of Barrett or Kavanaugh being convinced to change their opinions. This is not an official vote like that of a legislature. Courts don’t pass laws like a legislature, nor do they “strike down” or veto laws like a presidential veto. They offer an opinion in a case and, occasionally, can offer an opinion on a constitutional question to resolve that case. Remember, in the early days of the republic, there was an even number of justices on the court, a clear indication that it wasn’t designed to conduct votes on the most fundamental constitutional and political questions and have those outcomes enshrined with finality.

Now that we already know how the majority of the justices feel – that Roe is a legal fiction – there is nothing stopping the states from following the true Constitution and acting upon the Constitution as written the way we understood it before this leaked opinion. Any change in opinion henceforth, to paraphrase Judge Pryor, will indeed not be very persuasive and will not command the respect of our fellow citizens.

Horowitz: TN legislature passes bill to finally lock up violent criminals



In recent years, sentencing for violent criminals has been like common core math. You start out with a sum of 20 years, for example, but somehow even the worst career offenders wind up turning 20 years into 8 years’ time served. Tennessee has become the first state to finally implement truth in sentencing to make sure that a sentence is actually served.

Last week, after a decade of red states promoting the Koch/Soros jailbreak agenda, the Tennessee legislature put victims first and passed true criminal justice reform. HB2656 / SB2248, as amended, requires people convicted of one of nine criminal offense categories to serve 100% of their sentences – no exceptions. This means no good time credits or parole are available for those found guilty of homicide, vehicular homicide, attempted first-degree murder, robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, or carjacking.

Additionally, those found guilty of 20 slightly lower-level but still significant crimes, such as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated robbery, burglary, and arson, would still be eligible for good time credits, but only after serving 85% of the sentence.

This bill has reversed the decade-long tide of weak-on-crime legislation percolating through red-state legislatures. For years, we’ve been told that there is somehow an over-incarceration problem with people serving draconian sentences for nothingburger crimes. The reality is that even the most violent career criminals often serve a few months here and there and constantly get out to reoffend. With the growing crime wave in cities like Nashville and Memphis, the role of the de-incarceration agenda is hard to deny.

To begin with, most of the sentencing these days is very lenient. For example, in 2019, out of 17,355 felony convictions in Minnesota, only 3,612 were fully sentenced in accordance with the sentencing guidelines. Once you add all the parole and good time credit programs to that, even the worst career criminals are only serving a fraction of the sentence. This doesn’t even account for all of the ways they plead down throughout their criminal career, thereby incurring a sentence well below the threat level of their criminal proclivities. At a minimum, this bill ensures that violent and dangerous criminals will at least serve the entire sentence they are given. This bill should serve as a model in every other state, as the crime wave continues to grow.

The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC gathering for alleged conservatives, vigorously opposed this bill because it apparently still believes there are too many, rather than too few, criminals behind bars. However, no sane person can believe we need to let more people out of prison.

Those who think we don't have an under-incarceration problem should consider the following statistics from the FBI in 2019. Just 61.4% of the 14,325 homicides, 32.9% of the 124,817 rapes, 30.5% of the 239,643 armed robberies, and 52.3% of the 726,778 aggravated assaults were "cleared" cases. That means that in 5,529 murder cases, 83,752 rape cases, 166,552 armed robbery cases, and 346,673 aggravated assault cases, there was no arrest. Hence, just in the four violent categories alone, there were over 758,000 violent crime cases that went without a resolution just in one year.

What about duration of incarceration? According to BJS, among the prisoners released from state prison in 2018 – before some of the recent "reform" – they only served, on average, 44% of their sentences. Even for murder, it was only 58% of their sentences. The median length of time served for murder was less than 10 years in 30% of the cases and was more than 20 years in only 42%. The median time served for rape was less than 10 years in 64% of prisoners. In total, 71% of those serving time for a violent crime category served less than five years, and nearly half served less than two years.

In reality, the bromide of “criminal justice reform” for “low-level, nonviolent offenders” was always a ruse. Now groups like the ACU openly admit they oppose even truth in sentencing, much less enhanced sentencing, for the most violent and career criminals.

The truth in sentencing bill passed the Senate 20-6 and the House 86-9 with bipartisan support and now heads to Governor Bill Lee’s desk. The bill was sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who made a rare speech from the well of the House chamber to present his bill. This legislation piggybacks on last year’s truth in sentencing law, which closed the early release loopholes for crimes traditionally committed against women and children, such as rape and child abuse.

Reminiscent of some of the debates over COVID, proponents of weak sentencing are demanding to see “studies” showing more jail time leads to less crime. Speaker Sexton believes no such study is needed when common sense dictates fewer criminals on the street equals less crime. “This solution creates the toughest penalties in America for violent criminals; it also establishes a firm line for criminals not to cross,” said the speaker in a statement to TheBlaze. “If they do, punishment will be swift and severe under our new law. I do not need a fancy study to tell me more bad guys in jail with longer sentences reduces crime.”

It is shocking how red-state governors and legislatures have failed to pursue these ideas until now. Even blue-state governors are now vulnerable to defeat because of the growing crime wave. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of Americans worry a “great deal” about crime and it ranks as the third most important issue on the minds of voters. A Pew Research poll showed that crime is the number-one issue among black voters.

With surging crime in cities like Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee had the sixth highest murder rate in 2020. In both 2020 and 2021, Memphis set new homicide records and now boasts the ninth highest homicide rate in the country and is ranked the most violent metro area in the country. The homicide rate in Tennessee has gone from a low of 5.2 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.6 in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts have spiked from 183 per 100,000 to over 300. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga have become increasingly dangerous.

Kudos to the Tennessee legislature for recognizing that weak-on-crime policies plague red states just as much as blue states and need to be rectified. Along with the passage of robust medical freedom bills and a new ivermectin over-the-counter bill, the Tennessee legislature is on its way to forging an agenda of freedom and public safety that should be emulated in every red state. If every GOP supermajority state would use its power to its fullest, we wouldn’t have to wait for ineffective GOP majorities in the irremediably broken federal system to make a difference.

Horowitz: Who will be the first governor to block the Pfizer injection for babies?



The perception in the body politic is that the Democrats want an off-ramp from COVID and that many people have realized the existing failures were a catastrophic mistake. However, just as we were confronted with some of the worst battles seemingly at the end of WWII – the Bulge and Okinawa, for example – we are now facing the most immoral and unscientific COVID measure of all. Originally, the FDA planned to approve the now expired vaccines for infants, toddlers, and babies yet to be born. They have since delayed the authorization, but that just gives us a few weeks to put the nail in the coffin of this immoral experiment.

Our babies are now lab rats. After Fauci himself has admitted the emergency part of the pandemic is over, they plan to use an emergency authorization to approve the shot for a population for which there never was an emergency. But facts, laws, and morality no longer matter when Pfi$er comes for its fair share. And evidently, $54 billion in revenue is not enough.

Originally, Pfizer planned to submit its EUA application for kids 6 months to 4 years old to the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee on Tuesday. On Friday, the company announced it would wait until the trial on three doses for children is finished, rather than going ahead with the two-dose application, which failed to show any improved immunity. However, the company still plans a three-dose submission for some time in April.

Pfizer’s own trial thus far found no benefit for those children, and even the most conservative estimate of adverse events renders this endeavor all risk and no return. And of course, there is no trial on the current variant. Yet our government was already distributing the vials. We call that a violation of the Nuremberg Code.

What could possibly be the motivation to pursue this authorization so quickly when the emergency has passed and the virus circulating seems to have a greater affinity for vaccine-mediated antibodies? Israel, with the most boosters in the world, is experiencing its worst death curve precisely now, even with the mildest variant. In some U.K. age groups, the triple-vaxxed have over a 2.7-fold greater case rate than the unvaxxed.

Meanwhile, Pfizer is trying to find data showing three doses do “something” for children, when we already know from the past 12 months with adults that even if they offer some antibodies, they wane and run the risk of causing enhancement and negative efficacy. Yet Pfizer will cleverly just show two or so months of the trial before the waning kicks in, just as with the adult trials.

Is there not one righteous man left in Sodom who has any degree of curiosity as to why this is happening? It’s one thing for older people to use this experiment with informed consent during the height of the pandemic. One could conceivably say they will turn a blind eye to all adverse events because of the perceived short-term benefit. But nobody can articulate any benefit for this group of kids at this time for this variant with these shots, and we sure have a lot of known and unknown safety signals about short-term and long-term consequences. This was so rushed that they even merged three phases all into one phase.

There’s only one plausible explanation for this maniacal alacrity to shoot up the babies, and it can’t just be about money alone. They want to destroy the one remaining demographic control group in this country that remains untarnished by this great human experiment. As we begin to witness the reproductive, cardiovascular, neurological, and immune system damage, the media and the medical system will seek to blame the death and destruction on everything but the shots. In order to succeed, they cannot allow a single age group to evade the reach of the great experiment.

Last week, the European Medicines Agency announced it will investigate reports of "heavy menstrual bleeding and absence of menstruation" after mRNA COVID shots. We have known about these safety signals from day one, yet the global health entities chose to ignore them until after all of the young women and even children got the shots. How could someone in good conscience allow this shot to now enter the arms of babies and toddlers before this safety signal is fully investigated?

Now imagine if the federal government began distributing Planned Parenthood abortion centers throughout all the red states. Do you think the governors would sit idly and say, “Well, at least there is no mandate to get an abortion, it’s simply optional”? Hell no! They would ban that distribution throughout the state. Well, this is an even bigger pro-life issue, because it will affect exponentially more children. It’s no longer enough for governors to remain neutral on the shots. They must pledge to ban them in the states, and that begins with babies and toddlers. Pro-life means so much more than just fighting abortion.

Horowitz: Thousands of Afghans coming to a red-state community near you



Our communities are being flooded with the most unvetted “refugees” of all time from the most volatile part of the world. And there is no resistance whatsoever among Republicans in state governments. As thousands of Afghans are moved from military bases to our communities, we are about to pay for the worst form of social transformation without representation.

In October, Zabihullah Mohmand, a new arrival from Afghanistan, was charged with raping a woman in a Missoula, Montana, hotel. The Department of Homeland Security, in response to outcries from the Montana governor, insisted that the 19-year-old Afghan went through a “rigorous and multi-layered” vetting process. The problem is that they are right. Most of these people have gone through a vetting process — a process with no data! We rushed in over 100,000 Afghans within a matter of days. These people came from the darkest corners of the Afghan mountains. What sort of criminal history are you going to find, especially on a 19-year-old?

Moreover, they are making our point. How do you vet people for a violent ideology or anti-women values when those views are shared by the overwhelming majority of the people in Afghanistan? The stone-cold truth is that the views of the average Afghan — at least a large number of them — are indistinguishable from those of the Taliban.

In 2013, Pew Research Center published a poll surveying the sentiments of people in 39 Muslim countries, and the data on Afghanistan is quite disturbing. Here are some of the highlights:

  • 99% support making Sharia the official law of the land, more than in any other country surveyed. 61% say that Sharia should be imposed upon non-Muslim citizens.
  • 79% support the death penalty for those who leave Islam.
  • 82% say religious leaders should have some or a lot of influence over politics, more than in any other Muslim country surveyed.
  • 39% believe suicide bombings can be justified, more than anyone else except for the Palestinians.
  • Only 30% believe women should be allowed to decide whether to wear a veil, less than in all but one country surveyed. 94% believe wives must always obey their husbands, more than anywhere else except Malaysia.
  • 96% believe converting non-Muslims is a religious duty, more than in any other country.

At the time of the alleged rape in Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale pointed out that during the initial court hearing, Mohmand’s attorney claimed that “cultural and language barriers” may have led to the rape. Well, no kidding! A group of Afghan evacuees allegedly assaulted a female service member at Fort Bliss while they were staying on the base. Do we really need to rehash the lessons of Europe and irresponsible refugee policies over the past generation to realize we are following in those self-immolating footsteps?

What is particularly jarring is that the Biden State Department, HHS, and private taxpayer-funded resettlement contractors appear to be targeting red states like Montana, Nebraska, Indiana, and Oklahoma for this social transformation. The Grand Island Independent reports that 469 Afghans have already been resettled in Nebraska and another 635 are on the way. “Because of the rush of evacuations, a lot of the Afghans of working age are coming without the employment documents that most refugees have when they arrive,” reports the central Nebraska media outlet. “So they will need financial help for longer than the usually expected three months until they can start working.”

So, who is paying for this? The feds have set a deadline for Feb. 12, 2022, to get all of the Afghans off the military bases, which means the pace of resettlement in our communities will accelerate in the coming days.

One would think every GOP governor and legislator would immediately raise Cain over this and pledge to block any resettlement within the states. How is this in any way in the interests of their constituents from public safety, financial, and cultural standpoints? Instead, nearly every GOP governor has partnered with Biden to screw their constituents. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb is practically begging the feds to seed as many Afghans as possible in Indiana, while he controls his own people with COVID fascism and refuses to take action against domestic crime. There were thousands of refugees at Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana who are now being released into communities at a rate of hundreds per week. One thing is clear: Biden and Holcomb won’t force injection mandates on their prized Afghans.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who never saw a domestic criminal he didn’t want to release from jail, announced in Sept. he was “excited” that Oklahoma would be getting the third largest number of Afghans of any state.

As a close second to the priority of fighting federal COVID mandates, any Republican running for state office needs to pledge to block federal social transformation of our communities. Republicans just supplied the requisite votes to pass the current budget continuing resolution, which contains an extra $7 billion in taxpayer funding for Afghans. This will induce transformation of our communities at the behest of international officials, unelected State Department and HHS bureaucrats, and parasitic contractors who have everything to gain and nothing to lose by endangering the communities and saddling them with a fiscal burden.

We fought a war over no taxation without representation. Shouldn’t states at least hold their ground on a banner of “no social transformation without representation”?

Horowitz: It’s time for state constitutional amendments against bio-fascist government mandates



"No earthly king or president or public health official or billionaire technocrat gets to dictate what we must put into our bodies.” ~Rev. Ed Meeks, Towson, Maryland

Outside a few states, no Republican-controlled government has even repudiated the current iteration of COVID fascism, much less immunized the population from future usurpations. Over the past 20 months, the governing elites have successfully established a premise that they can shout “public health emergency” and mandate any form of restriction or action against your body, property, or movement without any due process, transparency, evidentiary standards, oversight, or democratic process. The lesson of the past year is that no such morality or science could ever necessitate such an outcome.

Undoubtedly, Republicans can run Mickey Mouse on the ballot in every state and win big in next year’s midterm elections. But on which principles are they running? Absent an effort to direct the national election towards the raging fire consuming liberty and medical freedom, we will elect the same Republicans who not only fail to put out this fire, but actually add their own lighter fluid against liberty, as most of them agree with Anthony Fauci and company and most aspects of public health tyranny. What if we pursued a national strategy of state constitutional amendments placed on the ballot in as many red states as possible prohibiting bio-medical tyranny and immunizing us from any future attempt to resurrect it?

While it’s nearly impossible to add amendments to the national Constitution, many state constitutions can be amended by some quorum of legislators, a ballot initiative, or a mixture of both. If Republicans in deep red states (and even some swing states) were forced to take a stand, it is quite achievable to successfully get an amendment on the ballot in many states affirming the right to bodily integrity, property, and freedom of movement. It’s time for voters to finally have their say on the most consequential question of our time, if not the entire existence of this country.

One great example of such an effort is Pennsylvania HB 2013, authored by Rep. Russ Diamond. The proposed state constitutional amendment, which is sponsored by 20 Republicans and already passed the relevant House committee, creates a right to medical freedom with the following language:

The right of an individual to refuse any medical procedure, treatment, injection, vaccine or prophylactic may not be questioned or interfered with in any manner. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged to any person in this Commonwealth because of the exercise of the right under this section.

This is a simple proposition we should all agree upon as a free country and indeed never had to contemplate until now. But absent an effort to promote this in as many states as possible, we literally are no longer a free people.

To be clear, this is not about creating a right to a treatment or services (such as an abortion), but freedom from government action taken against our bodies. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his famous Obergefell dissent: “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.”

The freedom to breathe and move without government requiring injections or that we cover our breathing holes is the most basic expression of liberty. If Republicans running for office this election cannot rally behind this simple proposition, then all their platitudes about “limited government” are meaningless. Placing such an amendment on the ballot in as many states as possible will make it hard for weaselly Republicans to dodge COVID fascism as a campaign issue and make this issue front and center in every campaign.

In Pennsylvania itself, it is not possible to get the amendment on the ballot for this election because state law requires any amendment proposal pass in two successive legislative sessions. However, Republicans control both houses in 32 states, many of them with supermajorities, that can easily be harnessed to get these amendments on the ballot for the upcoming election. Moreover, a number of states give voters the power to initiate constitutional amendment ballot questions by gathering signatures and completely bypassing the legislature. According to Ballotpedia, the list includes:

  • Arizona
  • Arkansas
  • California
  • Colorado
  • Florida
  • Illinois
  • Massachusetts
  • Michigan
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • Montana
  • Nebraska
  • Nevada
  • North Dakota
  • Ohio
  • Oklahoma
  • Oregon
  • South Dakota

Also, even in the states where there is no viable path to a legislative or initiative-based constitutional amendment to be placed on the ballot, several states do allow a right to initiate a ballot question that is a statutory change. They include Alaska, Idaho, and Maine. It’s still important to codify into statute that no government can take away your life, liberty, and property or freedom of movement for a declared emergency.

The Pennsylvania legislature will convene for three days in December, and it’s important for House majority leader Kerry Benninghoff to schedule a vote on this matter immediately. This is the most effective way to bypass the Democrat governor, take the issue directly to the people, and define the election around the most meaningful messaging and policy.

It is shocking that 20 months into the most deadly and devastating form of fascism ever in American history, numerous Republican states still have not lifted a finger to fight COVID fascism, despite enjoying supermajorities. With 39-11 and 71-29 majorities in the Senate and House respectively, Indiana Republicans couldn’t even end the unlawful emergency declaration from RINO Gov. Eric Holcomb, much less pass any protections against mandates, during last week’s special session.

Sadly, we should not even need constitutional amendments to affirm bare-bones human rights during a time of a declared emergency. As the great Justice Robert Jackson said in the landmark Youngstown case of 1952, “Aside from suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in time of rebellion or invasion, when the public safety may require it, they made no express provision for exercise of extraordinary authority because of a crisis.”

“They knew what emergencies were, knew the pressures they engender for authoritative action, knew, too, how they afford a ready pretext for usurpation,” wrote Jackson. “We may also suspect that they suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.”

Justice Jackson, aside from being the lead dissenter in the Japanese internment case, was the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial. The time has come for a political party and movement to arise that will rekindle the liberty, due process, and anti-fascism that successfully punished the perpetrators of bio-medical experimentation at Nuremberg and harness them once again in our time.