polecat news and views: April 2025

Friday, April 4, 2025

If there's anything more frightening than a Supreme Court "which has been receptive to claims from religious groups, particularly Christian ones," the New York Times has yet to find it.

"It has been almost three years since the Supreme Court last heard arguments in a case that turned on one of the religion clauses of the First Amendment," NYT's Adam Liptak wrote on Sunday, "a curious lull in what had been a signature project for the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.: to bolster the place of faith in public life."

"The hiatus is over," Liptak noted, and according to Yale Law's Justin Driver, quoted in the story, "This spring’s trio of religion cases threatens nothing less than to raze foundational structures of American law and life."

“The Supreme Court this term could quite plausibly destroy the American public school as we have known it for the last several decades," he added.

Scary stuff, kids.

Liptak looked at three religious liberty cases set to be argued before the Supreme Court in the coming weeks.

"The first one, to be argued Monday, asks whether a Catholic charity in Wisconsin should receive a tax exemption. In April, the court will consider whether a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma is constitutional and whether parents with religious objections to the curriculum in Maryland schools may withdraw their children from classes."

"Taken together," Liptak wrote, "the three cases will test the limits of the court’s assertive vision of religious liberty, which has been one of its distinctive commitments for more than a decade."

"An assertive vision of religious liberty" is a curious phrase to use for a nation established to protect liberty, particularly religious liberty, by the descendants of people who fled Britain in search of religious liberty.

"It's right there on the label," you might say.

Let's look at that scare phrase, "particularly Christian ones."

Liptak noted that "There has been one exception to religion’s winning streak at the court in the last decade: the justices’ rejection in 2018 of a challenge to the first Trump administration’s ban on travel from several predominantly Muslim countries."

But SCOTUS didn't reject the challenge on religious grounds; it rejected the challenge because the so-called "Muslim travel ban" was no such thing. Travel restrictions were placed on countries that were found by the State Department to be state sponsors of terrorism, including North Korea and, eventually, Venezuelan officials. The fact that the other countries were "predominantly Muslim" says more about certain people's tolerance and encouragement of terrorism and little or nothing about the First Amendment.

I don't pretend to know how the Supreme Court will rule on any of the three cases mentioned in the NYT report. And while I'm no legal expert, at least two of those cases look to me like slam-dunk cases of religious liberty — no matter what religion the plaintiffs might be. There's nothing particularly Christian about keeping your kids out of classes you don't approve of, and the charity in question doesn't have to be Catholic to deserve a tax exemption.

The case involving the Catholic charter school might be on shakier ground, but I have no problem with it. Not that SCOTUS listens to me, of course.

Final thought: if it's Christian groups making successful appeals to justice from the Supreme Court, maybe it's because they're the ones with legitimate grievances concerning their First Amendment rights.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/03/31/nyt-panics-over-religious-freedom-n4938441

There's Something Very Suspicious Going on With Those Tesla Protests

There's Something Very Suspicious Going on With Those Tesla Protests

Stephen Green

You too can be reimbursed for up to $200, and all you have to do is protest Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk from the comfort of a Tesla dealership. It isn't clear whether the offer from the left-wing Indivisible Project covers the cost of spray paint, keys, or bail, but money is fungible — so wink-wink, nudge-nudge, comrade.

"Indivisible Project can reimburse groups for eligible expenses associated with your Musk or Us actions, up to $200 per group, per congressional recess!" the group's website reads, followed by a link to get the reimbursement form.

But here's the kicker. Since gaining social media attention, the page has been removed — curiouser and curiouser — but the form is still online. I suspect the people who make their living this way, or at least enjoy a nice side gig or three, are involved with various online groups where direct links to reimbursement forms can be shared.

That isn't me being paranoid. That's just me understanding how the internet works.

Indivisible Project's parent organization — more on that in a moment — was founded and is run by the husband-wife team of Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin. Greenberg is your typical NGO type — nice upbringing, good schools, brief Capitol Hill career (with Tom Perriello [D-Va.] and at State). She followed up with the creation of an online anti-Trump publication called "Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda," and the establishment of the Indivisible Civics organization.

While DataRepublican doesn't show Indivisible Civics receiving any taxpayer money, it has received $5,424,005 from somewhere, with about half of those funds going to wages and salaries and another 10% to benefits.

But here's where it gets fun. The fine print disclaimer at the bottom of the since-deleted signup page reads, "Indivisible.org is a joint website of Indivisible Project and Indivisible Action. Indivisible Project is a registered 501(c)(4). Indivisible Action is a Hybrid Polítical Action Committee. They are separate organizations."

That's legalese for "the parent organization (Indivisible Civics aka Indivisible.org) is legally and financially shielded from any stupid stuff people do with the money and encouragement of the new organization (Indivisible Project)." But again, money is fungible — so wink-wink, nudge-nudge, comrade.

Back in the '80s, we called that "plausible deniability."

I haven't been able to find anything about where Indivisible gets its funding. What I did find was The American Prospect's Peter Dreier saying that Indivisible's goal is to "save American democracy" and "resume the project of creating a humane America that is more like social democracy than corporate plutocracy."

And the way to do that is by paying agitprop protestors with mysteriously sourced dollars to try and frustrate the will of the American people as expressed in the last election.

Do you know why the Tea Party had to be squelched out of existence by the Obama IRS and the RINO establishment? Because it was a genuinely grassroots movement against government overreach. Any form of protest is to be permitted or even celebrated — provided it enjoys the imprimatur of the Establishment or the NGO/Billionaire-class, assuming you can find a functional difference between the two.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/03/31/today-in-astroturf-get-paid-200-to-protest-elon-musk-and-tesla-n4938448?utm_source=pjmediavip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Elon Musk SHOCKS Crowd with BOMBSHELL Showing What Biden Was REALLY Up to with SSI and Illegals (Watch)

Elon Musk SHOCKS Crowd with BOMBSHELL Showing What Biden Was REALLY Up to with SSI and Illegals (Watch)

Sam J. | 10:20 AM on March 31, 2025

For years, people on the Right spoke out against Biden's southern border, going so far as to point out that Joe couldn't have made it any worse even if he was doing it on purpose. Keywords, doing it on purpose. And, of course, our pals on the Left and in the Democrat Party would accuse us all of being conspiracy theorists because it wasn't like these illegals were given social security numbers or voting or anything.

Except, well, that may not have been exactly true.

Watch this:

Post continues:

... people now telling you that Elon is stealing Social Security supported Biden’s open borders — scenes of which can be seen below.

Boy, oh boy, did Elon Musk drop a bombshell last night.

USAID and Africa

USAID and Africa

by John Hinderaker in Africa, Trump administration, Trump Foreign Policy

The Trump administration is putting USAID out of business, and Africans are foreseeing the consequences. But possibly not in the way you would imagine. The Telegraph headlines: “‘We should have been hammered a long time ago’: African countries thank Trump for aid wake-up call.”

Just as Europe has realised it must stand on its own and pay up to defend itself without American muscle, African countries are realising they cannot rely on US generosity to provide health care to their people.
Steep aid cuts from some of the world’s biggest donors, particularly America, are blowing holes in African health budgets as Washington, London, Paris and others slash their assistance spending.

Interesting. It’s not just us.

The response from many African leaders has been the same as the response from jilted European Nato leaders: This is a wake up call. We must step up to stand on our own and it might even be an opportunity.
***
“[African nations] must stand on their own,” South Africa’s health minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, told the Telegraph on the sidelines of the G20 health summit in Durban.
“This message is to say please stand on your own, because no country can depend forever on another country. It’s a wake up call.
“I personally do not think it is humanly possible for a country to feed others for life. I think foreign aid was there to bridge the country over a particular period, I do not think it was meant to be permanent in any way.”

That is a strong dose of common sense. Observers, including liberal ones, have been saying for a while that foreign aid has likely retarded African development as much as, or more than, it has advanced it.

More common sense from African leaders:

Similar sentiments have been voiced in other African capitals.
“I want to thank Mr Trump actually, I think he’s slapped us not on one cheek but on both cheeks, we should have been hammered a long time ago,” Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema said. His country was receiving £460m ($600m) in aid a year from the US.
Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, has used the crisis to repeat his criticism of how aid undermines sovereignty.
“Whoever gives you aid controls your life,” he said earlier this month.
Meanwhile Nigeria has said it refuses to beg.
“We are a capable country and we are determined to own up to that responsibility. If others step in and support us, we appreciate it but we are not begging,” said Nigeria’s health and social welfare minister, Muhammad Ali Pate.

When African governments step up, waste and inefficiency are likely to be reduced:

Indeed optimists say this could be a chance to get rid of some of the worst inefficiencies and distortions of the aid system. Tangled aid architecture is often accused of inflating salaries and costs, being too centralised and unwieldy, and maybe not even delivering what recipient countries want.
There is a suspicion that some aid programmes are accepted, not because they are a domestic priority, but simply because they are being given away. When countries pay themselves, priorities could change.

Some, of course, are expressing concern over the apparent drying up of foreign aid. But that concern may prove premature. USAID is being more or less dissolved as an entity, but after the trans operas and trans comic books have been weeded out, its positive functions will be taken over by its parent organization, the State Department. I assume that aid to Africa will continue under new management, if perhaps on a reduced basis.

But these sensible reactions from African leaders make me think that ongoing aid should be sunsetted and phased out. The Telegraph gives the last word to a deputy director general in South Africa’s health department:

Prof Crisp said: “The biggest challenge was not whether funding would be reduced, it was the rapidity of the reduction, that was the problem.
“The challenge for every country I have spoken to was: ‘We needed warning’.”

Now, the warning has been given.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/03/usaid-and-africa.php

Pro-Kamala Auto Union Chief Just Obliterated the Left's Narrative on Trump's Tariff Policy

Pro-Kamala Auto Union Chief Just Obliterated the Left's Narrative on Trump's Tariff Policy

Matt Vespa

So, is Donald Trump’s tariff policy going to harm workers? No doubt, some layoffs will occur, leading to the snobby elites of the Democratic Party engaging in deranged schadenfreude, which will only sink them further with a voter bloc that they need to win back to be competitive in elections again. Democrats have no working people in their ranks, which is why they hate them so much, but I digress.

We already know what’s going to happen: there might be some layoffs, the fake news press will interview them, undoubtedly getting a soundbite they can use to weaponize against the White House, and the Trump domestic agenda will be put on blast. And yes, deranged liberals are taking to Reddit to laugh at people who lost their jobs. Not so fast, educated faux philosopher-kings, DOGE can make your jobs obsolete, regardless of what these little judges say. There’s no stopping DOGE. Are Trump’s tariffs good or bad? The market right now is unsure, but one thing is certain: The United Auto Workers Union is very much for them.

It shows how politics can make for interesting intersections among people and policy. UAW President Shawn Fain knew his rank-and-file backed Donald Trump, but he endorsed Kamala Harris anyway. Now, he took to the Sunday Morning talk shows to endorse Trump’s tariff policy, which obliterates the Left’s fledgling narrative that there’s buyer’s remorse out there because of this initiative. On Face the Nation, Fain told Major Garrett that a lot of manufacturing jobs in his sector that were shipped to Mexico could return to American soil quickly (via RealClearPolitics):

MAJOR GARRETT: Let's get back to tariffs and the auto industry. Peter Navarro, a top adviser to the president on trade, says that currently, automobile manufacturing plants are at about 60% capacity. He argues that there's lots of untapped capacity, meaning jobs could be created relatively easy, and you wouldn't need to spend two or three or maybe five years building new factories. Is that your understanding? Is that your belief?
SHAWN FAIN: He's spot on. Look, we have a situation right now in Warren, Michigan, where 2,000 workers were laid off this past year. They built the Ram truck there for years under Stellantis, and Stellantis made a decision to shift that production to Mexico. They could shift that work back in very short order and be producing Ram trucks right back there and put those people back to work.
I was just at Volkswagen this week, you know, talking with workers down there that are trying to get their first contract, and the company announced a reduction of a shift. Meanwhile, you know, Volkswagen is the biggest violator of all. 75% of their production for the North American market is made in Mexico, so they can shift product there overnight. There's excess capacity.
You know, people forget this lesson in World War II. The way that we formed the Arsenal of Democracy that won the war was, they took the excess capacity of all the automotive manufacturing plants in the country, and produced tanks and planes and bombs and engines and all those things. And it's no different right now.
We have excess capacity. They could bring work back in very short order. And yes, they're in a situation where they need to build a new plant, yeah, that's going to take a couple years, but- but there is plenty of opportunity for these companies to do the right thing and bring work back here overnight, just as quick as they shifted out of here.
MAJOR GARRETT: And Shawn, for people who are listening to you, how do tariffs make that happen? What is the relationship between a 20 or 25% tariff and getting that capacity back up to where you'd like to see it?
SHAWN FAIN: Well, because, like everything, the companies abuse the process. I mean, they're in the pursuit of driving a race to the bottom. I mean, the tariffs are -- you know, there was a major promise when NAFTA happened in 1992, the big debate, and Ross Perot talked about the "giant sucking sound," that our manufacturing base was going to disappear. He was spot on, you know.
And we saw what happened in the ensuing 30 years. We saw 90,000 plants leave. You know, like I said, we've seen 65 plants in the Big Three close. Look, right now, as we speak, in Wisconsin, we have a Deere plant threatening to be closed, and their work being threatened to go to Mexico. We have a heavy truck plant at Volvo, and Mack Truck in Pennsylvania being threatened to be taken to Mexico. There is plenty of opportunity, and that's the reality that we've seen here in America.
So, tariffs are a tool in the toolbox. They're not the end all solution. We have to fix the broken trade system. But the way tariffs work, I mean, it's a motivator, because there's going to be a penalty for everything the companies ship in here, and I've had companies tell us, point blank, that they're going to have to bring product back here if those tariffs are implemented.

Short-term pain for long-term gain, and it’s mostly a negotiating tactic. It’s not like this was some surprise domestic agenda item—Trump said he would do this. My only critique, which others have shared, is that I’d rather he’d taken a chainsaw to our current trade deals after we passed the budget reconciliation package, which will extend the Trump tax cuts first, and give Americans a substantial economic boost first.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/03/31/pro-kamala-auto-union-chief-just-obliterated-the-lefts-narrative-on-trumps-tariff-policy-n2654731?utm_source=thdailyvip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

'Journos’ & Dems Lost It Over a Patriotic Flag but Silent as Anti-Musk Banners Push Terrorism & Murder

'Journos’ & Dems Lost It Over a Patriotic Flag but Silent as Anti-Musk Banners Push Terrorism & Murder

Warren Squire

‘Journalists’ and their fellow Democrats love to pretend the Internet doesn’t exist. They think everything happens in a vacuum and we can’t easily pull up past ‘scandals’ they hyperventilated over and compare them to genuine scandals they’re currently choosing to ignore. Remember the ‘controversy’ over the An Appeal to Heaven Flag? I sure do.

Start here. (READ)

Yes, there’s a huge double standard. Days were spent covering Justice Samuel Alito’s wife flying the An Appeal to Heaven flag on their property. Democrats tried to get him to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases over it. We were told it was racist and a symbol of insurrection, etc. It was all bunk.

Here’s a video that encapsulates the drummed-up hysteria over this nothing-burger story. (WATCH)

Now we have Democrats and other unhinged individuals burning down Tesla dealerships, vehicles, and charging stations driven on by lies pushed by the Democrat Party and their legacy media mouthpieces. We’re hearing crickets now that their foot soldiers are calling for violence by displaying signs that read, ‘Burn a Tesla, Save Democracy.’

The legacy media is due for another round of layoffs. When that happens and they try to tell us how important they are you know what to do. Remind them of how they lost their minds over a harmless flag and then remained silent as their fellow Democrats called for Tesla to be burned down and five bullets to be put in Elon Musk.

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