Democrats, Leftists Cite Discredited Smear Factory to Demonize House Speaker Mike Johnson

• New House Speaker Mike Johnson had barely secured the gavel when leftist groups started attacking him for having previously worked at a premier religious liberty nonprofit law firm that has won numerous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Leftist groups and one of Johnson’s Democratic colleagues in the House noted his history as a lawyer with Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, has branded ADF a “hate group,” placing it on a “hate map” alongside Klan chapters.
• The Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map” targets groups with mainstream conservative and religious viewpoints that they disagree with. The SPLC took the program it had used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare its donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents.

Schedule an Interview: Tyler O’Neil

Never-Ending Inflation: That’s Bidenomics in Action

• It’s bad enough that the White House helped create 40-year-high inflation. But now it has the audacity to gaslight the American people by not only minimizing the problem, but pretending to be part of the solution.
• When Biden took office, inflation was below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, with prices rising a mere 1.4% over the prior 12 months. After a year and a half of Biden’s runaway government spending and borrowing, prices were rising almost that fast in a single month, with annual inflation reaching 9.1% -- 6.5 times the rate Biden inherited.
• The latest inflation data from the Biden administration’s Bureau of Labor Statistics show that prices rose an average of 3.7% over the last 12 months.
• The Biden administration has done nothing to reduce inflation. Even the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act, advocated for and signed by Biden, has not reduced inflation. In fact, by increasing deficit spending and imposing new energy taxes, the legislation is raising prices.

Schedule an Interview: EJ Antoni

Congress Must Address the D.C. City Council’s Pro-Criminal Policies

• The D.C. City Council passed a revised criminal code this past January of that was so radical that bipartisan majorities of both houses of Congress and even President Biden rejected it.
• Instead of focusing on accountability, community safety, and seeking justice, the council members driving the revisions instead obsessed over racial justice, “decarceration,” and supposed unfairness to criminal defendants.
• It all started in 2016 when the D.C. City Council created the Criminal Code Reform Commission to be the clearinghouse for its effort to revise the criminal code. While its initial suggestions were relatively innocuous, its work quickly went off the rails.
• But just because the City Council failed does not mean that the criminal code in the District does not need to be reformed. It simply means that it should be reformed by other people — in this case, Congress.
• In drafting a new code, Congress has the chance to show cities around the country how to take on crime with commonsense, bipartisan policies.

Schedule an Interview: Cully Stimson and Zack Smith