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    Texas GOP Governor Declares Border Invasion, Again – What Next?

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    ANALYSIS – The Biden border crisis just gets worse every day, with no help at all from the White House. 

    And now that a federal court has invalidated Trump’s Title 42 C*VID regulation forcing would-be asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, expect a massive new illegal migrant surge.

    Much of that surge and chaos is seen along the border with Texas which takes the brunt of the migrant onslaught.

    In response, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he is invoking the U.S. Constitution’s invasion clause and taking “unprecedented measures” to repel a “border invasion.”

    https://twitter.com/josephanunn/status/1592639277590249474

    Abbott also sent out a press release and a letter to county officials along the border.

    Abbott’s declaration comes one week after he won a third four-year term as governor. Former Trump administration officials had been urging the governors of Arizona and Texas to declare an “invasion” to justify more aggressive measures to stem the illegal migrant tide.

    Infuriating his partisan critics and open border advocates, the Governor can expect severe legal pushback.

    The question is – can he win?

    As the American Bar Association Journal notes:

    The invasion clause is in Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution.

    It provides: “No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”

    Abbott said he will deploy the National Guard to “repel and turn back” immigrants trying to enter the country illegally. He will also deploy the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest and return to the border immigrants who came into the country illegally.

    Abbott also plans to build a border wall in multiple counties, deploy gun boats, enter into a compact with other states to secure the border, and “enter into agreements with foreign powers to enhance border security.”

    Abbott first authorized the National Guard and Texas police to act in July, directing them to return immigrants to ports of entry. He also referenced the invasion clause at the time.

    However, Abbott has yet to issue a formal invasion declaration or official order. 

    His office has not published such a declaration through an official news release or on the governor’s website, which means he has not yet gone much beyond his actions and declarations in July. 

    National security expert and Navy JAG Jonathan Hullihan told The Center Square that if Abbott had invoked his constitutional authority on Tuesday, “he would have done so in an official document, not from a personal Twitter account.” 

    Hence “No document, no order.” 

    And critics question its legality. The ABA notes:

    Nunn said Abbott’s actions were actually “a thinly veiled effort to take the reins on U.S. immigration policy.” But that would also be unconstitutional under U.S. Supreme Court precedent holding that immigration policy is “unquestionably” and “exclusively” a federal power, Nunn said.

    “For all these reasons, the Biden administration would likely succeed in court if it sued to stop Abbott from carrying out his plans,” Nunn concluded.

    But others see this as a well-played political move putting Team Biden in a position it can’t win.

    “We’re literally talking about state officials doing the same exact thing that federal officials do with Title 42,” said Ken Cuccinelli, a senior fellow at the conservative nonprofit organization Center for Renewing America.

    And as the Washington Examiner reports:

    “He’s [Abbott] run Operation Lone Star and kept your National Guard up and running for a show. He knows it doesn’t do anything,” said Cuccinelli, adding that the state could win a battle in federal court. 

    “If you’re the federal government and you sue Texas over it … they have to prove there is not an invasion, and they have the burden of proof because they’re the plaintiff in the case. Good luck proving that today with the state of the border. I don’t think it could be done.”

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Should Trump Bring Back His Winning ’16 Campaign Chief?

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    ANALYSIS – Will Kellyanne Conway return to Team Trump? As Kamala Harris, who recently stole the campaign from her boss, Joe Biden, basks in her current sugar high glory, some in the Trump campaign are wondering if his team needs a reboot. 

    Or maybe an injection of a 2016 winner.

    And who better to revitalize Trump’s campaign, than his winning campaign manager from 2016, Kellyanne Conway.

    At least Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, reportedly thinks so.

    And a recent post on X showing pics of Conway and Trump together in New Jersey has fueled the speculation that a return to the campaign is in the works.

    In 2016 the brash flaxen haired pollster-turned campaign chief swooped in after the campaign’s failing start with its B Team and is rightly credited as helping to get Trump across the finish line to victory against Hillary Clinton.

    According to the Daily Beast:

    Donald Trump is looking to bring in Kellyanne Conway to shake up his faltering campaign, according to a new report.

    The outspoken adviser is seen as a trusted confidante by both the former president and, importantly, by Melania Trump who is “pushing” for Conway to return because she sees her as “a familiar face amid a sea of relative newcomers,” says Tara Palmeri in the online magazine, Puck.

    Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee and wife of Trump’s son, Eric, is also said to be pushing for Conway to be brought on board to reignite campaign stalwarts taken by surprise by Kamala Harris’ fast start after Joe Biden’s sudden departure.

    One adviser told Puck that Trump listens to powerful women, more than men. “He listens to Hope Hicks. He listens to Brooke Rollins,” they tell Puck. “Ironically, he likes powerful women. If you’re a sharp woman, he will listen to you. Hope and these people could tell him the hardest shit. He may not have done anything, but at least he listens.”

    While she was a key player in Trump’s 2016 win, eight years ago, she could still be the spark that relights the fire of a campaign still unsteady after Harris’ surprising Democrat Party coup and subsequent rise.

    Puck notes:

    …it may also be fair to question whether his brain trust is living in the past. Chris LaCivita, who famously ran the Swift Boat Veterans campaign against John Kerry, has spearheaded an attack on Walz’s military record, but it’s yet to have the same impact as it did in 2004, when the U.S. had recently invaded Iraq. Other Trump allies are wondering if pollster Tony Fabrizio is likewise frozen in carbonite, as he considers a race-baiting strategy against Harris akin to the Willie Horton ads against Dukakis back in 1988. 

    Team Harris has raised $310 million in July, and another $36 million in the 24 hours after announcing her stolen Valor radical VP choice, Tim Walz.

    So far Team Trump hasn’t been able to land any significant blows on his younger female political opponent.

    According to Puck, Trump’s campaign team is split in half over whether she should return in a similar role to the one she had in 2016.

    Meanwhile, Conway is smoothing over any ruffled feather with JD Vance after openly suggesting Marco Rubio as Trump’s VP.

    As part of her mending relations effort, Conway recently tweeted “Brilliant” to Vance’s stunt when he landed at the same airport as Harris and Walz and challenged her to debate.

    One big potential drawback to Team Trump is the fact that Conway recently registered as a $50,000- a month foreign agent for a Ukrainian oligarch.

    This is already provoking accusations among her critics that it would be a conflict of interest. However, a campaign manager or advisor is not the same as a member of the administration. So, that issue may not matter much in these final three months of the campaign.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

    Supreme Court Discrimination Ruling Undermines Corporate Wokeness

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    ANALYSIS – BOOM! – The landmark Supreme Court decision against racial and sex discrimination by schools and universities (under the guise of ‘affirmative action’) will also impact corporate ‘diversity’ programs based on the same flawed, discriminatory ideas. 

    In what has become a major legal development in a growing wave of anti-wokeness, corporations will soon have to reconsider all their – likely illegal – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. 

    While pushed by the increasingly leftist establishment, most of these woke programs have been illegal under U.S. state and federal laws, which explicitly prohibit discrimination by race and gender. But until now the courts let them get away with it.

    Now the Supreme Court has made it official. Affirmative action (aka – discriminatory ‘diversity’ efforts) are out.

    The court held by that Harvard and University of North Carolina’s (UNC’s) admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

    Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, sued Harvard and UNC over their ‘race-conscious’ admissions programs, arguing they intentionally discriminated against Asian American applicants.

    In the decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

    He added:  “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”

    Previously, the Supreme Court in the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger, ruled that “the use of an applicant’s race as one factor in an admissions policy of a public educational institution does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if the policy is narrowly tailored to the compelling interest of promoting a diverse student body.”

    This was intended to be a very narrow exception, but soon became far more. And this helped woke corporate America justify its own discriminatory DEI programs.

    A 2022 Harvard Business Review 2022 survey, reported by The Epoch Times, showed that more than 60 percent of U.S. companies had a DEI program, which separates employees according to race and gender. 

    After the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots, major corporations announced explicit race-based hiring and promotion policies.

    But now that the 2003 decision has been superseded, they will all need to revisit the legality of their DEI programs. As Kevin Stocklin explains in The Epoch Times: 

    In an amicus brief regarding the Harvard and UNC case, the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and attorney Ilya Shapiro argued that “what this Court authorized in Grutter as a temporary, grudging exception to America’s ideals and generally applicable law of Equal Protection … has metastasized into a threat blooming across the legal landscape, the economy, and society as a whole.”

    The exceptions granted by the Grutter case were narrowly tailored to government-funded universities’ admissions policies, and were intended to be a temporary remedy that would include “sunset” provisions. But corporations have applied them as a precedent to race-based policies on staffing and training, and expanded them to include new racial goals.

    “To the extent that corporate America has thought that Grutter provided some kind of fig leaf to the illegal discrimination they’ve been engaging in for the last two decades, this would be a really good time for them to rethink that,” Morenoff said. “It never made sense for corporate America to argue that there was a diversity rationale exception to our civil rights laws,” he said.

    However, if the Supreme Court decision reverses Grutter or the Johnson executive order, even that questionable pretense would be gone. Rather than standing on thin ice, Morenoff said, “they’re standing on no ice at all.”

    This is the next battleground – using this Supreme Court precedent to eliminate discrimination by sex and race from corporate America.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Is One of America’s Most Powerful Liberal Groups Illicitly Lobbying for this Foreign Billionaire?

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    Image via Pixabay free images

    Members of Congress want to know if one of America’s most powerful liberal political groups is evading federal laws requiring them to report lobbying on behalf of foreign billionaires.

    U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Paul Gosar (R-AZ) want League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski to answer questions about LCV’s fundraising, lobbying, and political activities, and whether it is complying with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

    The League of Conservation Voters, a radical environmentalist group, is one of the nation’s most powerful political organizations.

    OpenSecrets reports the LCV donated $15,129,989 to federal political candidates in 2020.  They also spent $42,272,125 on ads supporting or opposing federal candidates in 2020, making them the nation’s 15th-biggest political spending.

    But members of Congress want to know if the LCV is lobbying lawmakers at the behest of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a radical leftist who opposes American energy independence.

    The members write:

    “Following ‘intense lobbying’ from LCV and related groups that led to passage of the [Inflation Reduction Act,] you met then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who told you Democrats ‘passed what you wanted’ and asked whether LCV would ‘have our backs’ in the 2022 election. Following the election, in an end-of-year memo on December 19, 2022, LCV detailed how the ‘LCV Victory Fund and affiliated entities invested more than $100 million’ to elect Democrat candidates that align with LCV’s eco-agenda agenda in the 2022 elections. Previously, in the 2018 cycle, LCV spent $80 million on candidates that support its eco-agenda.  

    “LCV has registered to lobby on several activities within the jurisdiction of the Committee, including issues like opposing offshore drilling plans, supporting a ‘pause and review of the federal oil and gas program,’ and supporting the restoration and expansion of a number of national monuments. The Committee is concerned that LCV’s relationship with foreign donors, such as Swiss national Mr. Wyss, who are prohibited from contributing, either directly or indirectly, to domestic political campaigns may impact LCV’s political and lobbying activities relating to America’s ability to achieve energy independence. As you are aware, such political and lobbying activities may require compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.   

    “The central purpose of FARA is to ‘promote transparency with respect to foreign influence within the United States by ensuring that the United States government and the public know the source of certain information from foreign agents intended to influence American public opinion, policy, and laws.’ Hence, FARA requires any person or entity, including non-profits, to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) if they act as an agent or at the request ‘of a foreign principal or of a person any of whose activities are directly or indirectly, supervised, directed, controlled, financed, or subsidized in whole or in major part by a foreign principal.’ Registration under FARA is also required for any entity that attempts, on behalf of a foreign principal, to influence any section of the U.S. public or a U.S. government official in ‘formulating, adopting, or changing the domestic or foreign policies of the United States.'”

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Fiction Becomes Fact

    By
    Amanda Head
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    Sometimes reality is even stranger than fiction…

    Is conservative satire site Babylon Bee psychic?

    Let Amanda explain the controversy below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Congress May Blow Lid Off Backroom Deal For Trump Tax Return Leaker

    By
    Donny Ferguson
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    1

    Americans may soon learn why the man who stole the confidential financial information of 18,000 taxpayers got the lightest possible criminal sentence from the Biden administration after leaking the tax returns of one of those people – President Donald Trump.

    U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) announced in a statement he has “sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting information about the prosecution of Charles Littlejohn, the former IRS contractor who leaked the tax returns of President and Trump and thousands of others to ProPublica and the New York Times.”

    “During Littlejohn’s sentencing, Biden-Harris Justice Department prosecutors stated that the scope and scale his unauthorized disclosure was unparalleled in the IRS’s history yet allowed Littlejohn to plead guilty to only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information, resulting in only a five-year prison sentence, three years’ supervised release, and a $5,000 fine,” the statement explains.

    “It remains unclear why the Biden-Harris Justice Department chose to allow him to plead guilty to only a single felony count,” the statement notes.

    Jordan’s letter reads, in part:

    “The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to investigate the unprecedented leak of protected taxpayer information by Charles E. Littlejohn. Despite confessing to leaking ‘thousands of individuals’ and entities’ tax returns’ to ProPublica and the New York Times, the Biden-Harris Administration charged Mr. Littlejohn, a former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) contractor, with only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information. Due to the Trump Administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability, the Committee has learned that the scope of Mr. Littlejohn’s leak was much broader than the Biden-Harris Administration had led the public to believe. Accordingly, we respectfully renew our request for documents relating to Mr. Littlejohn’s prosecution.

    “During Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, Justice Department prosecutors stated that the ‘scope and scale’ of Mr. Littlejohn’s unauthorized disclosure was ‘unparalleled in the IRS’s history.’ They claimed at the time that the data stolen by Mr. Littlejohn included ‘returns’ and ‘return information’ for approximately 18,000 individuals and 73,000 businesses. Yet, the Justice Department under President Biden allowed Mr. Littlejohn to plead guilty to only one count of unauthorized disclosure of tax information, which resulted in a five-year prison sentence, three years’ supervised release, and a $5,000 fine.

    “During Mr. Littlejohn’s sentencing, the judge expressed that she was ‘perplexed’ and ‘troubled’ by the overly lenient plea agreement, stating: ‘The fact that [Mr. Littlejohn] is facing one felony count, I have no words for.’

    “On February 8, 2024, the Committee wrote to the Biden-Harris Justice Department requesting documents about the Department’s decision to pursue one charge against Mr. Littlejohn despite the severity of his actions. On March 18, 2024, the Biden-Harris Justice Department responded by defending Mr. Littlejohn’s single felony charge and his five-year prison sentence. The Biden-Harris Justice Department failed to produce any substantive or nonpublic information to the Committee.

    “After President Trump took office, the IRS disclosed to the Committee that over 405,000 taxpayers were victims of Mr. Littlejohn’s leaks and that ’89 [percent] of the taxpayers [we]re business entities.’ While it is now clear that Mr. Littlejohn’s conduct violated the privacy of hundreds of thousands of American taxpayers, it remains unclear why the Biden-Harris Justice Department chose to allow him to plead guilty to only a single felony count. It appears that the Biden-Harris Justice Department authorized a plea agreement in this case that did not ensure full accountability for criminal conduct that was unprecedented in its scope and scale.”

    How the FBI Colluded with Big Tech’s Twitter to Censor Hunter Biden Laptop Story

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – While the establishment media continues to ignore the disturbing ‘Twitter Files’ released by Elon Musk showing how Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, more information now indicates it was worse than we first thought.

    As Musk noted, it’s not a direct First Amendment violation for a private company to censor the news, but it absolutely is if it’s done at the behest of our government.

    And while I will argue that as the nation’s new ‘public square,’ Big Tech does violate the First Amendment when it censors news, there is now no denying that in the Hunter laptop case it did so with input from the FBI.

    I will save the public square censorship discussion for another time.

    These new disclosures provide more evidence that under the purported guise of stopping Russian election interference, the FBI ended up being guilty of employing its own U.S. election interference.

    And Twitter (like Facebook and LinkedIn, et al.) took the ball and ran with it.

    Based on the Twitter emails recently released by Elon Musk and reported by former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, the Daily Caller reports:

    The FBI explicitly warned Twitter about a potential “hack-and-leak” operation involving Hunter Biden shortly before the platform censored the New York Post’s story based on emails from Biden’s laptop, according to a signed declaration by Twitter’s former head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth.

    The FBI, along with several other agencies, warned Roth that “state actors” might attempt to leak hacked materials shortly before the 2020 election in a bid to influence its results, according to the declaration filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in December 2020, two months after the platform censored the NYP’s story. Roth stated that the conversation occurred during weekly meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, in which they warned him of potential threats to election security.

    “These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” Roth wrote.

    As Taibbi notes, Twitter, like all of Big Tech, including Twitter, is staffed by leftists and hence skewers its policies and actions to favor the left.

    This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

    The Daily Caller continues explaining the background to the Bureau’s own ‘election interference’ events:

    Roth’s revelations about the meetings with intelligence agencies are similar to those of Mark Zuckerberg, who said in August that Facebook censored the Hunter Biden story after federal law enforcement officials asked him to restrict “misinformation” and “Russian propaganda” ahead of the 2020 election.

    The FBI agent overseeing these weekly meetings was Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, according to the NYP; however, Chan claimed not to recall whether the topic of Hunter Biden came up at these meetings in a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general that alleged collusion to censor speech by federal agencies and Big Tech. Chan was also one of two FBI agents who met with Zuckerberg to warn him of potential Russian election interference before Facebook censored the story.

    However, while the FBI insinuated and influenced Twitter and Facebook and other platforms, like LinkedIn, indirectly to censor the laptop story, it never explicitly provided Big Tech any evidence or statement claiming officially that the laptop info was hacked.

    And this only makes Twitter’s decision more egregious.

    As the Daily Caller concludes:

    Taibbi tweeted an email indicating that Twitter’s trust and safety team initially explained to other employees that it made the decision to suppress the story — the company even went so far as to prevent it from being sent in private messages — because it violated Twitter’s policy for sharing “hacked materials.” Typically, such a ruling would require an official statement from law enforcement identifying the material as hacked, something that Twitter never received, according to Taibbi…

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Trump’s Net Worth Takes Roller Coaster Ride

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    Image via Piaxabay

    ANALYSIS – Trump lovers and haters are having quite the ride as Trump’s net worth seems to be on a rollercoaster.

    The Wall Street debut of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) – whose flagship product is the social media platform “Truth Social” – boosted Donald Trump’s stock on paper, but the value of his shares has since plummeted. (RELATED: Truth Social Co-Founders Sue Donald Trump)

    Will Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign help boost his worth again?

    As I recently wrote about, Trump’s net worth soared to at least $6.4 billion – up nearly $4 billion – last week after investors approved his social media company’s merger with Digital World. Tuesday, March 27, was its first day as an independently traded public company.

    This briefly made the former president one of the 450 richest people in the world.

    Even though Trump Media, which trades under the ticker DJT (Trump’s initials) is losing money and generating scant revenue, Wall Street had valued the company at as much as $11 billion based on the stock’s closing price Friday, according to Renaissance Capital.

    By Monday afternoon that valuation tumbled to about $8.8 billion.

    It closed at $48.66 per share, a 26.5% drop from its $66.22. The plunge came after Trump Media unveiled its 2023 results for the first time, revealing full-year revenues of $4.1 million on a net loss of $58.2 million.

    Trump’s company has said it expects to continue losing money for a while, and at least one expert says it’s likely worth far less than the stock market suggests.

    Trump, who owns 78.5 million shares in Trump Media, about 57% of all shares, saw his stake in the social media business fall in value by $1.4 billion. At Monday afternoon’s prices, that stake is now worth approximately about $3.8 billion. (RELATED: Wall Street Journal Rips Into Biden for Now-Infamous Tweet)

    Trump’s nearly 79 million shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are now – by far – his largest asset, worth nearly twice as much as all his real estate, resort and cash holdings combined.

    Meanwhile, CNN reported: “The problem for Trump Media is its main product — Truth Social — is shrinking.” It added “Monthly active US users on iOS and Android plunged in February to 494,000, down 51% year-over-year.”

    “By comparison,” CNN noted, “X has 75 million monthly active US users. Even Threads has more than 10 times as many users as Truth Social.”

    CNN continued:

    While Trump Media made just $4.1 million in revenue in 2023, rival X (formerly known as Twitter) raked in more than 100 times that much — $665 million — in 2013, ahead of its initial public offering in November 2013. Twitter also generated just over $5 billion in revenue in the final year before it was taken private by Elon Musk.

    In fact, Truth Social’s financials are comparable to that of The Messenger, the upstart digital news outlet that imploded earlier this year. Citing an investor deck, CNBC reported in January that The Messenger posted 2023 revenue of $3.8 million and a net loss of $43 million.

    But this year may decide the future of Trump’s net worth, at least related to his media company. Matthew Kennedy, senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital said, according to CNN:

    2024 is the make-or-break year for this company. For TMTG the thing that matters now is getting in front of the cash cannon that is the 2024 presidential election. And the company does have one notable advantage. Trump-backed super PACs have raised millions. Where do you think they’ll spend their digital ad buckets?

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Clueless Deputy Chief of Space Force Takes Sides in ‘Woke Wars’

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    4
    PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. -- Col. DeAnna Burt, 50th Space Wing commander, speaks to Airmen and civilians attending the Women's Leadership Symposium at the Peterson Club on Tuesday, Mar. 7th, 2017. Attendees came from a variety of bases, including Buckley, Peterson, Schriever, Vandenberg and Cheyenne Mountain. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Laura Turner)

    ANALYSIS – You would think that a senior U.S. military officer would finally have figured out that they should stay out of the ‘woke wars’ 

    Unfortunately, Lt. Gen. DeAnna Burt, deputy chief of space operations at the U.S. Space Force (USSF), appears to have not gotten the memo.

    Even as the Pentagon cracks down on ridiculous Drag Queen shows, and the Congress pushes to eliminate woke policies like taxpayer-funded abortion travel, and ‘diversity’ programs that are more divisive than inclusive, Burt decided now was the time to rail against what she called “anti-LGBTQ+ laws” at the state level.

    She made her speech at a Pentagon ‘Pride’ event last week.

    Fox News reported that she “claimed that such laws affect her hiring and promotion decisions, sometimes leading her to choose a “less qualified” candidate because of a preferred candidate’s ‘personal circumstances.’”

    Yes. She said that.

    Fox said that Burt told those attending the event:

    Transformational cultural change requires leadership from the top, and we do not have time to wait. Since January of this year, more than 400 anti-LGBTQ+ laws have been introduced at the state level. That number is rising and demonstrates a trend that could be dangerous for service members, their families, and the readiness of the force as a whole. 

    Fox News explained:

    The “anti-LGBTQ+ laws” Burt mentioned appeared to be referencing the legislation passed by more than 20 states restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, as well as numerous bills limiting the amount of time in which an abortion can be performed during a pregnancy.

    Most of these GOP-led state laws are perfectly reasonable, and designed to protect unborn children, and their mothers, as well as protect kids being pushed into irreversible transgender medical procedures.

    They are also totally outside her purview, and democratically established by state legislatures.

    But to Burt, they are so dangerous she prefers to hire less qualified candidates due to their ‘personal circumstances,’ rather than subject them to these states’ laws. 

    Fox News quoted her as saying:

    When I look at potential candidates, say, for squadron command, I strive to match the right person to the right job. I consider their job performance and relevant experience first. However, I also look at their personal circumstances, and their family is also an important factor. 

    If the good match for a job does not feel safe being themselves and performing at their highest potential at a given location, or if their family could be denied critical health care due to the laws in that state, I am compelled to consider a different candidate, and, perhaps, less qualified. 

    Which part of ‘don’t get into partisan politics or the culture wars’ doesn’t she understand. And hiring less qualified people for a job based on ‘personal circumstances’ sounds like discrimination to me. 

    Not to mention horrible leadership, dangerous to national security, and bad for America.

    But it’s not just one senior leader at USSF. According to leaked emails, last month, two Navy officials derided critics of the service’s promotion of LGBTQ+ Pride as “bigots” and “a—holes.”

    These two ‘Pride Pushers’ reportedly schemed on how to best post a “rainbow wingtip graphic” for LGBTQ+ Pride Month on the Navy social media accounts.

    As I wrote about then, the Navy only had one Pride image up on social media for less than a day on June 1st, the start of ‘Pride Month,’ before removing it.

    None of the other services posted Pride imagery this year, a stark difference from last year when ‘Pride Month’ began.

    This is hopefully part of a broader Pentagon policy to pull out of the ‘woke wars’ and keep partisan, ideological, racial, and sexual politics out of our military.

    I noted earlier: “Only the Coast Guard and the National Guard made posts for Pride Month, but neither service changed its profile pictures or header image. Hopefully, they will soon get the memo.”

    Well, now I add – these navy officials and Lt. Gen. Burt should also get the memo, or even better, an invitation to a Congressional hearing to explain themselves.

    It’s time to focus on real wars, not woke ones.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    General Milley Stoops To Trump Lows With ‘Wannabe Dictator’ Jab

    By
    Paul Crespo
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    3
    Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

    ANALYSIS – General Milley’s comments were beneath him, even if Trump provoked him. As I wrote about earlier, former President Donald Trump made typically inappropriate remarks when he implied outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, due to his back-channel calls to China’s top general, deserved the ‘DEATH’ penalty for treason (all caps were in Trump’s post on Truth Social).

    While no one should take Trump’s bombastic social media posts too seriously, I did say Trump was wrong to add fuel to an already flammable political environment in our country with his comments. I have also criticized Milley for his many overreactions to Trump’s words and deeds during his time in office.

    In doing so, Milley made Trump out to be something he wasn’t, placed himself smack in the middle of the Democrat Party narrative of Trump, and undermined the commander-in-chief and the presidency.

    In my view Milley has also been at the very least deliberately and willfully ignorant of the extreme woke policies the Pentagon has been pushing. Still, despite all my jabs at Milley, I respected his decades of service to the uniform and our country.

    It’s a shame then, that Milley chose to take the low road on his way out of the DC swamp, demeaning himself and the institution, while himself politicizing the military against Trump.

    As the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote:

    Gen. Milley retired this week after four years as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We are unique among the world’s militaries,” the top military officer said at a retirement ceremony on Friday, noting that service members swear an oath to the Constitution.

    “We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or a queen, or a tyrant or a dictator. And we don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator.”

    Readers will catch the parting shot at Mr. Trump. The media certainly did. And who could blame Gen. Milley for loathing Mr. Trump? Casually floating the idea of harming a U.S. military officer is conduct unworthy of a wannabe Commander in Chief.

    Yet it was still dispiriting to hear Gen. Milley’s remarks about a former President, in public, while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Like it or not, he commands political support in the country. That doubtless includes a large chunk of the enlisted ranks of the United States military services. The end-of-tour catharsis of a swipe at Mr. Trump isn’t worth polarizing the force over politics.

    I agree wholeheartedly with the Journal. Milley knows better, and with his bitter and snarky jabs at Trump chose to take the low road rather than the high road on his way out. 

    Despite my great misgivings about the truly woke new Joint Chiefs Chairman, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, I also concur with the Journal’s parting words: “We hope that turning down the temperature of politics in the U.S. armed forces is a priority for the new chairman—perhaps behind only the military threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Message to Brown: We need an apolitical military leadership no matter the provocations from any political leader. That also means being non-ideological and non-woke. 

    It’s a shame Milley couldn’t see that while he was chairman, and also couldn’t just leave gracefully.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

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