Roe v. Wade had long been a prize jewel in the crown of leftist accomplishments. And Democrats fought hard against appointing the new justices who recently overthrew it. Now that it’s gone, the liberals are destroying every obstacle they can to get it back. Next target: the U.S. Senate filibuster.

The U.S. Senate is currently split between 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 2 independents who caucus with their Democratic colleagues. Because of this 50-50 split, Vice President Kamala Harris has often stepped in to cast the tie-breaking vote on gridlocked bills, essentially giving the Democratic party a majority by one vote. While this bodes well on paper for the Democratic party, U.S. Senate dynamics often prohibit such a razor-thin majority from effectively passing bills—thanks to the filibuster.

Dating back to the ancient Roman senate, the filibuster is a tactic used by minority legislators to stall (and hopefully permanently block) a bill before it can be passed by the majority. Historically, a filibusterer would take the floor and speak for hours at a time—a 1908 U.S. Senate filibuster lasted eighteen hours—and since the U.S. Senate could not conduct business while a senator was talking, the bill would be stalled. (Since 1970, however, filibusters have not been required to be actual speeches; often, a minority senator will simply threaten to filibuster, which suffices to stall the bill under the current U.S. Senate dynamics.)

In the U.S. Senate, a 60-vote supermajority is required to end debate on a certain issue, which, practically speaking, means that a minority can use the filibuster to block a bill until 60 senators can be convinced to vote for it. And unfortunately for the Democratic party, they do not hold 60 seats in the Senate.

Democrats have found ways to work around the filibuster obstacle, such as compromising with Republicans or passing bills under the “budget reconciliation process” which allows certain bills to be passed with the 51 votes they currently have. But the long and short of it is, if Republicans won’t compromise, and the Democrat-sponsored bill can’t fit under budget reconciliation terms, then it’s very hard for Democrats to pass their initiatives. And, with such a momentous issue as abortion on the line, the party does not intend to let it stay that way.

The party has already tried once this year to get rid of the filibuster. In January, U.S. Senate Republicans stopped a Democrat “voting rights bill” for the fifth time in six months, and, failing yet again to reach the 60-vote count, U.S. Senate Democrats responded by attempting to change filibuster rules to allow the bill to pass by a 51-vote majority. Unfortunately for the Democrats, they couldn’t even unify their own party behind the motion. Democrats Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) opposed removing the sixty-vote margin, with Manchin arguing that

“Eliminating the filibuster would be the easy way out. It wasn’t meant to be easy. I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation . . . putting politics and party aside is what we’re supposed to do.”

Thus, with two Democrats joining the Republicans, the filibuster was preserved on a vote of 52-48. As it is now, an abortion law also looks unlikely before the November election.

However, despite being unable to pass important bills without Republican support, and now even unable to unify their own party to remove the filibuster roadblock, Democrats aren’t giving up. Their next goal—announced in advance—is to gain at least two more seats in the U.S. Senate. They can’t convert Manchin and Sinema, so they’ll simply fill two more seats with senators who will toe the party line. In her remarks to the Democratic National Committee a few weeks ago, Vice President Harris spelled out the game plan:

“Democrats, with just two more seats in the Senate, we can codify Roe v Wade. We can put the protections of Roe into law. (Applause) . . . I cannot wait to cast the deciding vote to break the filibuster on voting rights and reproductive rights.  I cannot wait.  (Applause.)  Fifty-nine days.  Fifty-nine days.“

If Democrats can flip two U.S. Senate seats in this election, then they will have the votes to overcome Manchin and Sinema’s immovable moderate stance, and with a new 50-50 vote on removing the filibuster, Harris will step in with the tiebreaker. That’s the new game plan: no annoying pro-filibuster majority, no filibuster. No filibuster, no Republican bill-blocking. No Republican bill-blocking, and Roe v. Wade is back again. This time, as a federal law passed by Congress and signed by the president.

This so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” is the Democrats’ attempt to codify Roe‘s national abortion protections, which were removed when Roe was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling. As LifeNews summarizes, this bill would:

• “Eliminate all state and federal parental consent laws in relation to abortion”

• “Eliminate all state informed consent laws, including those that allow women to view an ultrasound prior to abortion”

• “Prevent states from passing laws to protect babies at 20 weeks, thereby joining countries like North Korea, China, Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, and the Netherlands in not protecting unborn children later in development”

• “Force doctors and nurses opposed to abortion to lose their jobs, and Catholic hospitals could lose public funds unless they perform abortions”

• “Eliminate decades-long limitations on direct taxpayer funding of abortion – including the popular Hyde Amendment, which has saved more than 2 million lives since enacted“

And since the act has already been passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, it is two U.S. Senate seats away from being signed by a very willing president. This upcoming election matters.

This midterm campaign, multiple Democrat candidates have appeared who are specifically advertising themselves as a Democrat votes against the filibuster. Further, a recent NPR poll reported that about two-thirds of Democrat respondees said they were more motivated to vote in the upcoming election, once the draft of Dobbs was leaked to the public. The alarming flipside is that only 40 percent of Republicans said the same thing. The battle is not over; now is not the time for Republican voters or legislators to sit on their behinds and bask in the laziness of apparent victory. The battle is moving from the courts to the Congress, and Democrats are, too.

If pro-life Republicans don’t get their act together, they could very well find themselves on the mat after all. Lives depend on it.

The Facebook Overlords are operating in overdrive. On Tuesday, August 16, I discovered that the FB Overlords had “fact-checked,” not one, not two, but three of the satirical memes I had posted over the past four days on my personal Facebook page. All of the memes satirized Biden’s proposed 87,000-member Schutzstaffel: the IRSS. This is a sure sign that Dems are quaking in their jackboots about how much the public hates their Inflation Reduction Act that spends buckets of hard-earned ducats on more bureaucrats, whose job will be to squeeze more money from Americans.

Enquiring minds wonder if Biden and his merry band of congressional pocket-pickers and Zuckerberg brown-nosers had a little confab with Zuck or his lackeys, begging them to do something—anything—to stop social media jokes. Luckily for Biden and congressional Democrats, it doesn’t take much to get the dour, humorless, and literal Overlords tasked with fact-checking satirical memes to start slapping scary “MISSING CONTEXT” stickers on posts willy-nilly.

Maybe the Overlords, overloaded with their censorship duties, farmed out their dirty work to Macedonian teens with time on their hands, or maybe the scary “MISSING CONTEXT” stickers—the next best thing to censorship—were slapped on by avatars in the Metaverse where real people go to die. Clearly, someone isn’t happy about viral jokes about the Democrats hiring an 87,000-member fiscal goon squad.

Here are the memes that got the Overloads all worked up:

Word to the Meta meme-slayers: All memes lack context. All cartoons lack context. All jokes lack context. Are the meme-slayers actually saying that Facebook kinda, sorta prohibits all memes, cartoons, and jokes?

Even satirical essays lack context. What would the meme-slayers do if someone posted Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal on Facebook?

And why do satirical memes about the IRSS generate such a fevered response from Facebook? Could it be that some Democrats and their collaborationist social media moguls fully understand the power of both social media and satire not only to reflect public sentiment but also to affect it?

Could it be that the Democratic Party and monopolistic leftwing social media seek to influence public opinion just as they influenced the 2020 election by burying news stories, spreading mis- and dis-information, and engaging in well-concealed algorithmic mischief?

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried to assuage the fears of the public, justifiably alarmed at the prospect of 87,000 new recruits into the IRSS army, while concomitantly fueling class division:

Specifically, I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to increase the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels.

But the Heritage Foundation pokes a sharp stick into the sunshiny balloon Yellin tried to fly over the heads of deplorables:

But considering the sheer magnitude of 87,000 new IRS agents and an estimated $204 billion in new revenues from enforcement, is it possible for all those new audits and revenues to involve only taxpayers making over $400,000?

—Returning to 2010 audit rates for all individuals making over $400,000 would generate only 28%, or $9.9 billion, out of the estimated $35.3 billion in new IRS enforcement revenues in 2031.

—Even increasing recent audit rates 30-fold for taxpayers making over $400,000—including 100% audit rates on taxpayers with incomes over $10 million—still would fall more than 20% short of raising the estimated $35.3 billion in new revenues in 2031.

Sounds like Yellin, Biden, and congressional Democrats—including U.S. Senator Joe Manchin—have once again foisted on Americans a mess of fiscal pottage gussied up with some mis- and dis-information. And if some satirical social media jokes create problems for their political futures and their hopes for total control of American lives, those jokes must go.

This isn’t the first time FB Overlords have come unexpectedly to my tiny soapbox in the virtual public square. Like the Spanish Inquisition, they appeared and hauled me off to Meta-prison for 30 days because of this cartoon on the economy, claiming it violated their “standards” on (wait for it) “suicide”:

Silly me, I thought it was a cartoon about socialism and the economy. My apologies to all those people who contemplate suicide with a dinner fork.

Everyone who cares about the future of our declining republic seeks to influence public opinion. There’s nothing wrong with that. But there is something very wrong about the means the unholy alliance of the Democrat Party and social media use to achieve their ends—ends that include expanding the permanent, unelected, unaccountable government bureaucracy that has the power to destroy lives.

Anyone tired of “masking up” to enter an airport or get on a flight? There may be an end in sight largely thanks to U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).  Although the air travel mask mandate was set to end on March 18, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) extended the mandate until April 18. But the extension begs the question, “Will it really end then?” Now Paul and others have taken real action to end the mandates once and for all.

The first promising step is S.J.Res 37. This resolution, introduced by Paul this past February, passed in the U.S. Senate recently by a vote of 57-40. Better yet, it represents bi-partisan support with eight Democrat senators voting in support of the resolution: Michael Bennet (D-CO), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Jon Tester (D-MT). In typical fashion, U.S. Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) was the only Republican to vote against the bill.

Still, this measure, which expresses disapproval of the CDC’s mask mandate, faces significant challenges in the days ahead if it is to become law. The amount of votes it received are not enough to override President Biden’s veto threat. Moreover, proponents must garner enough support to overcome U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to let the member of the House vote on it. But should the resolution fail to pass through its trip to becoming law, all hope is not lost.

Members of Congress, 17 to be exact, have filed a suit against the CDC which would end the federal mask requirement for passengers both on commercial flights and in airports. First names on the suit are, once again, U.S. Senator Rand Paul as well as U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), both of whom filed the suit in their home state of Kentucky. Other GOP House members: Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (D-AZ), Dan Bishop (R-NC), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Warren Davidson (R-OH), Bob Good (R-VA), Brian Mast (R-FL), Bill Posey (R-FL) and Matt Rosendale (R-MT).

One of the best implications of this suit is its potential to end the government and, especially, unelected bureaucrats’ overreach in making declarations — calling them mandates, but treating them as law. According to Rosendale, those practices are nothing more than part and parcel of

“the fear mongering narrative of COVID-19. The CDC has forced Americans to wear masks on commercial flights for two years without legal standing. A mandate is not law, and Congress never passed legislation codifying the CDC’s mask wearing demands.”

And there is science to back up the ending of the air-travel mask requirement: COVID-19 transmission on airplanes is unlikely due to the ventilation systems. These systems not only mix outdoor air with recycled air via HEPA filters, but they limit air flow between rows – a key reason behind the lack of connection between outbreaks and commercial air travel. According to an article in The Journal of the American Medical Association,

“The risk of contracting COVID-19 during air travel is low. Despite substantial numbers of travelers, the number of suspected and confirmed cases of in-flight COVID-19 transmission between passengers around the world appears small.”

Confirming this view is Sebastian Hoehl, a researcher at the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. “An airplane cabin is probably one of the most secure conditions you can be in,” he noted.

Given the above information, it is clearly time to end the unwarranted and unscientific policy of mandating masks in airports and airplanes especially since the mandates have ended in virtually all other public places. If you’d like to be sure they do. . . .

Take ACTION: Please click HERE to contact your U.S. Representative and let him/her know how you feel about this. Also, please click HERE to let U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi know she should allow a vote on the measure.

U.S. Senator Paul seems to truly be the hero in this fight for “following the science” and for ending government overreach. Early last week, he introduced a pertinent amendment, a “separation of powers” so to speak, that would eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s position as the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and replace it with three separate positions effectively limiting its power.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past two years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed “dictator-in-chief.” No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” said Dr. Paul, a physician. “To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve  introduced this amendment . . .This will create accountability and oversight into a taxpayer-funded position that has largely abused its power, and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

For more information, click HERE.

Have you heard? Abortion cheerleaders were at it again! Earlier this week they attempted to overturn state legislative abortion restrictions. Their weapon? The so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act” (H.R. 3755) – led by U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and U.S. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA). The proposal passed the U.S. House by a vote of 218-211 on September 24, 2021. It was taken up by the U.S. Senate on Monday, February 28, 2022 where cloture was opposed by all Republicans and one Democrat: U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV). The motion failed by a vote of 46-48.

In spite of progress we have made since 2019 to reverse abortion on demand with the passage of heartbeat bills in Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas (the Guttmacher Institute predicts up to 25 more states may ban abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade), this bill had the potential to quash it all. It’s dastardly features included overturning:

• Waiting periods before an abortion
• Limits that abortions be performed by licensed physicians
• Requirements to provide information about their unborn child to those seeking an abortion
• Requirement to provide alternative to abortion to those seeking abortion
• Federal limits on taxpayer funding of abortion

And while all of the above are heartbreaking, there’s more! It would also have banned:

• Laws allowing medical professionals to opt-out of providing abortions (Conscience protection)
• Laws that prohibit abortion after 20 weeks when an unborn child is capable of feeling pain
• Laws that prohibit using abortion as a method of sex selection and abortions done based on a diagnosis of Down’s Syndrome
• Parental consent or notification for minors seeking an abortion

And the power of this bill can hardly be overstated. It carried with it the potential to make all elective abortions inevitable and protected by federal law. Stomping all over the 10th Amendment, it would have become the weapon against which individual states became powerless to establish their own true protection for the mother and the unborn. True protection for a woman’s health, or anyone’s for that matter, assumes a respect for life and help in a time of need.

A blessing in disguise of the states’ right to prohibit abortion is the inconvenience inherent in this right for those seeking abortion. In some cases, this inconvenience can work in the mother and her baby’s favor. Finding out about an unplanned pregnancy can, admittedly, be unsettling causing some to rush to a solution that is not a solution at all. When an abortion is not easily and immediately obtained, the time to reflect can allow the mother to realize the actual blessings associated with the pregnancy. The blessings of not only carrying a life but allowing those in your family and community the opportunity to come alongside and support you.

However, not all can see the blessing of states’ ban on abortion. The CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Adrienne Mansanares, recently bemoaned this in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun. She finds the “inconvenience” of having to travel to another state, facing fatigue from such travel, and finding childcare for other children while the “procedure” is performed a “heavy burden”. She also considers it a heavy burden on the states where the abortions are sought, “So that really puts a burden on the public health system of those states where reproductive health care is accessible and legal” as these states pick up the slack.

Which brings our thoughts to the irony of this bill’s name- -Women’s Health Protection. Not only is there nothing protective, for the mother or the baby, in assisting a woman to murder her unborn child. Neither is it healthcare.

​​According to experts, they are not safer than childbirth and women do not need them to be healthy. Nor do they suffer when they do not have easy access to abortion. Researchers (abortion activities) at the University of California San Francisco found that after 5 years, 96 percent of women who were denied abortions were glad they had not had one. The moral of the story, easy access to abortion, rather than being health care, is a disservice to women.

Praise the Lord! H.R. 3755 was stopped!

How did your U.S. Senator vote? If they opposed the bill, thank them. If they supported the bill, let them know your thoughts. Both U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth voted to end debate on this legislation. Contact your U.S. Senator using this link.

To view a longer analysis via the National Right to Life scorecard use this link.

Read more:

Manchin Sides With GOP to Kill Dems’ Radical Pro-Abortion Bill (AFN)

U.S. Senate Democrats Fail to Federally Enshrine Abortion on Demand Until Birth (FRC)

Written by Liberty McArtor

Proponents of court-packing argue that adding more judges to our nation’s judiciary is the magical solution to urgent problems, and even paint the picture that doing so is an act of goodwill. But far from being a necessity, court-packing is a brazen power-grab by one political party to fix the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices or federal judges to get the political results they want.

And when we look at the history of court-packing across the world, there’s no way around it: Court-packing is a dangerous scheme with severe implications that would erase freedom and rights for future generations and destroy America’s constitutional order.

To equip you—and all Americans—in exposing the lie and the radical plan to overthrow America’s court system, here are four common (or rather, bogus) court-packing claims debunked with facts and logic.

1. Myth: The Supreme Court has been stolen.

Fact: The U.S. Supreme Court currently has nine highly qualified, legitimately appointed and confirmed justices. The far Left just doesn’t like some of them.

The reason court-packing advocates say the U.S. Supreme Court was “stolen” is because they disagree with the political party and the president who appointed the latest three justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett). For instance, they claimed that Justice Barrett’s confirmation happened too quickly. But as First Liberty President and CEO Kelly Shackelford has noted, justices have been confirmed in the same fashion nearly thirty (30) times. In fact, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom Justice Barrett replaced, was confirmed in a similar time frame.

Ironically, stealing the U.S. Supreme Court is exactly what would happen if the coup attempt to add two, four or even six more justices were to succeed.

2. Myth: Court-packing has popular support.

Fact: Court-packing is widely unpopular—and historically has been within both parties. 

Polls conducted in the last few years show the majority of Americans oppose court-packing.

• In 2020, a New York Times-Siena College poll found that fifty-eight percent (58%) of likely voters opposed packing the U.S. Supreme Court.
  
• In 2019, Rasmussen polls found that only twenty-seven percent (27%) of Americans favor packing the U.S> Supreme Court with additional justices.

What’s more, opposition to court-packing is prevalent across the political spectrum.

Here are some quotes from several politicians and prominent figures on both sides of the political aisle, starting with the current president:

• President Joe Biden (D):

In 1983: “President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court. … But it was a bonehead idea. It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make.”

In 2020: “I’m not a fan of court packing.”

• Ted Cruz (R-TX)

In 2020: “Packing the Court means one very specific thing: expanding the number of justices to achieve a political outcome. It is wrong. It is an abuse of power.”

• Joe Manchin (D-WV)

In 2020: “I want to allay those fears, I want to rest those fears for you right now because when they talk about whether it be packing the courts, or ending the filibuster, I will not vote to do that.”

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

In 2020: “I can’t think of a more destabilizing event for America than changing the number of [justices] on the Supreme Court every election cycle, because it becomes a winner take all for the Court.”

• Jon Ossoff (D-GA):

In 2020: “We shouldn’t expand the Supreme Court just because a justice may be confirmed with whom we disagree on policy.”

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933 – 2020):

In 2019: “If anything would make the court look partisan…it would be that—one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The truth is both parties have long opposed court-packing, and the sudden flip by a select group of elites on the Democratic side on this issue exposes this scheme for what it really is: a barefaced power grab.

3. Myth: Court-packing is a routine procedure.

Fact: Changes to the size of the U.S. Supreme Court are very rare in America’s history, and the few partisan attempts at court-packing have been failures.

Congress has changed the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices only a total of seven times in American history. The radical Left distorts this fact to make you think court-packing is normal. But in nearly 250 years and 120 Congresses, the seven prior changes (many of them due to workloads and the addition of states to the Republic) do not offer a justification for packing the Court today. On the contrary, the seven changes show how rare court-packing is in America. What’s more, the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices hasn’t changed at all since 1869—that’s over 150 years!

4. Myth: Court-packing will save democracy.

Fact: Court packing will crush civil liberties by making the U.S. Supreme Court a partisan tool of whoever holds power.  

Using a baseball metaphor, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts once said of a judge’s role, “It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”

What would happen if several partisan justices were added to the U.S. Supreme Court—justices who were instructed to “pitch” and “bat” for the team that appointed them? The U.S. Supreme Court would become an extension of the party currently in power. The fundamental principle of the “separation of powers” would be destroyed.

If more and more partisan judges are added to courts every election cycle, those in the minority—people who don’t agree with the current ruling party—would have their freedom squashed under the weight of a rigged judiciary. Civil liberties like religious freedom would have no stable protection.

Far from saving the principles of our democratic republic, court-packing would lead to the demolition of constitutional rights—just like it happened in other nations, such as Venezuela and Argentina.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.