Secure Freedom Minute

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump meets today with his Austrian counterpart, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. While trade and U.S.-European relations are expected to top their agenda, Mr. Trump could strike an important blow for liberty if he’ll use the occasion to call out Austria’s suppression of free speech.

For most of a decade, Austrian prosecutors have been abusing their powers to harass, hector, intimidate, smear and impoverish a courageous woman named Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff.  Her so-called “crime”?  In a private setting in Vienna, Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff accurately observed that the Prophet Mohammed had married a 6-year-old girl and consummated the marriage at 9.  She asked rhetorically, if that’s not pedophilia, what would we call it?

Austria, like Europe more generally, is enforcing what amounts to Islam’s Sharia-blasphemy restrictions.  This practice is fundamentally at odds with America’s commitment to freedom of speech – and to the survival of Western civilization.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Here’s a thought experiment that may seem far-fetched, but it isn’t:

Would you be comfortable if a hostile power could monitor and control virtually every aspect of your life – including how and whether things work in your home, what is done with your personal communications and information and even our country’s defense?

Incredible as it sounds, we may be within days of such a prospect becoming virtually certain.  Communist China is poised to secure its stated goal of dominating the world’s fifth-generation – or 5G – wireless networks.

The United States can still avert this potential crisis for its citizens and national security by changing the model for access to wireless spectrum from the current one that enables the Chinese 5G takeover to one that will facilitate an open access, free market approach – and thwart Beijing’s plans.  But we must flip this model now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Tomorrow, a country half-a-world away will hold an election that seems likely to have a profound impact globally.  Nigerians will go to the polls to choose which of two candidates will preside over the likely, coming implosion of their country.

Absent an urgent and effective diplomatic intervention by the United States, the real winners will be Sharia-supremacists – the Fulani militants, Boko Haram and ISIS – that have been ratcheting up murderous attacks on Christians and others who stand in the way of the new Caliphate they seek to establish in the heart of Africa. 

The losers will be millions of refugees who will, predictably, seek safety elsewhere and the countries of Africa, Europe and even North America woefully unprepared to accommodate them.

Our vital interests and those of countless others require a U.S. Special Envoy for Nigeria and the Lake Chad region now.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Congress is expected shortly to approve legislation that would, ostensibly, end the impasse over border security and avoid a further, partial government shutdown. President Trump has yet to say publicly whether he’ll sign it.

The specific temptation for Mr. Trump is the claim that he’ll get money for 55 miles of border fencing, said to be a down-payment for more in the years ahead.  He also expects to be able to move funds from other accounts and order further barrier construction without specific congressional permission.

Unfortunately, these options are likely to be effectively foreclosed by language Open Borders lawmakers have sneaked into the 1,000-page spending bill. Press reports indicate that it will enable state and even local officials to veto construction of any further border barriers. 

The President must veto any such legislation and use his authority to secure the border.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair recently issued a stinging public criticism of Jeremy Corbyn, his successor as Labour Party leader, for tolerating anti-Semitism.  The truth is that Corbyn has been an overt anti-Semite for decades. 

What’s new, though, is that in the UK’s present political environment, Corbyn can not just get away with such behavior, but can prosper by doing so. Ironically, that’s the case at least in part because, when in office, Mr. Blair deliberately transformed the British electorate by allowing in millions of South Asians and others, many of whom embrace inherently anti-Semitic Sharia-supremacism.

Unfortunately, similar forces are now at work in the United States, as well. The anti-Semitism of the “Red-Green axis” personified by the newly elected Somali Rep. Ilhan Omar is an ominous warning of what similar demographic changes portend for our country’s values and policies, too.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Congressional negotiators have reached an agreement that would allow the construction of just 55 additional miles of barriers along the southern border.  That’s a small fraction of what President Trump has been seeking – and, more to the point, what the nation requires.

After all, we face not only caravans bringing thousands of individuals seeking taxpayer-subsidized asylum in the United States, many of whom come bearing contagious diseases. That’s a serious public health, as well as public safety, problem.

Even worse is the death and destruction delivered to 70,000 Americans annually by drug cartels.  They should be considered – and treated – as terrorists and effective barriers placed wherever needed to keep out both such enemies and what amount to their lethal chemical weapons.

President Trump is under tremendous pressure to take this so-called “deal.”  America needs him once again to just say “No.”

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

The New York Times reported yesterday that a lawmaker in the United Kingdom singlehandedly blocked legislation that would have strengthened Britain’s existing prohibition on female genital mutilation. Deplorable as this Member of Parliament’s action is, at least it’s still illegal in the UK to mutilate girls and women’s genitalia.

Unfortunately, that is not the case in nearly half the states of this country. 

Last November, District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that the U.S. statute enacted in 1996 to prohibit FGM is unconstitutional, due to a drafting error.  In the absence of such a federal prohibition, it is currently perfectly legal to mutilate little girls in 23 American states.

The New York Times should devote attention to the urgent need for American lawmakers to fix the federal statute – and to enact appropriate protections against female genital mutilation in every state in the Union. 

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

On Wednesday, retired U.S. Senator Jon Kyl marked Ronald Reagan’s 108th birthday with a call for the realization, at last, of one of the Gipper’s most important visions.

In 1983, President Reagan famously launched the Strategic Defense Initiative to develop anti-missile defenses capable of protecting the American people.  

Today, our need for such protection is – if anything –even greater.  Specifically, we face emerging threats from advanced hypersonic Chinese and Russian missiles designed to overwhelm our current, modest defenses.

What is needed now is the sort of space-based layer of anti-missile systems contemplated by Mr. Reagan’s SDI program, but that was repeatedly blocked by congressional Democrats.

As Sen. Kyl noted, President Trump has resolved to provide such a defense. But he’s going to face similar opposition and needs our support to ensure that we win this one for the Gipper – and for America.

This is Frank Gaffney.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

Tomorrow, thousands of Americans and others from all over the world will be convening with President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The program will afford opportunities for the participants to engage in fellowship, repentance, renewal and, of course, prayer.

My hope is that the plight of persecuted Christians will receive special attention – and redress. The numbers afflicted are staggeringly vast. By some estimates, as many as 300 million are being brutally repressed across the planet.

Fortunately, President Trump has made clear his own personal commitment to helping those suffering simply because they follow Jesus Christ.  In particular, as he demonstrated in his intervention on behalf of Pastor Andrew Brunson in Turkey last year, the Trump administration understands the importance of holding the persecutors accountable and imposing real costs for their crimes against humanity.

This is Frank Gaffney.  Find out how you can help at SaveThePersecutedChristians.org.

This is Frank Gaffney with the Secure Freedom Minute.

President Trump’s State of the Union address last night was one of the finest I have ever heard. His report on our economic progress was inspiring.  His profiles of American heroes in the audience were authentically moving. And his message coming into a sharply divided House chamber was an inspiring call, not simply for bipartisanship or unity, but to “choose greatness.”

In one particularly memorable passage, President Trump drew a sharp line between the source of our greatness and the alternative that some insist should be our future, instead.

After depicting the latest national devastation at the hands of the radical left in Venezuela, Mr. Trump declared: “America was founded on liberty and independence, not government coercion, domination and control.  We are born free and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will NEVER be a socialist country.”

Amen.

This is Frank Gaffney.