Townhall Review | Commentaries

“If this Court does not intervene, secular courts will force Yeshiva’s rabbis to yield to secular government on a religious decision.”

That’s the opening line of the reply brief from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty to the Supreme Court asking the Court to protect their client from a bad law and a bad series of court rulings.

At stake is whether New York City can force an orthodox Jewish university to formally recognize a student group that exists to explicitly undermine and oppose orthodox Jewish beliefs. Because these beliefs touch on human sexuality—the cause celebre of our era—every court that has heard Yeshiva’s case has ruled that it must comply with a secular law banning what the government views as “discrimination” based on sexual orientation.

But Yeshiva’s beliefs about human sexuality aren’t discriminatory. Furthermore, the orthodox school has the constitutional right to operate according to orthodox beliefs.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will step in and correct this injustice.

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President Joe Biden took square aim at all 74 million of his fellow Americans who voted for Donald Trump, denouncing what he called “Maga Republicans” as “semi-fascist.” He portrayed them as a clear and present danger to what he described as our nation’s “democracy.”

The speech was angry, divisive—and profoundly cynical. Throughout the primary season, Democrats have been pouring money into Republican races. Their strategy has been to boost the candidates who can most readily be characterized as “Maga Republicans,” on the theory they will be easiest to beat in a general election.

Someone should ask President Biden a simple question. Are his Democrat colleagues so hungry for power that they’ll risk electing semi-fascists? Or is the President dividing us to motivate the Democrat base or, even, God forbid, to bait some disturbed soul into a violent response?

Americans, left and right, deserve so much better from our President. Shame on Joe Biden.

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The Queen is dead, long live the King.

The death of Queen Elizabeth II brings Britain’s second Elizabethan Age to an end. In the modern age, no monarch has been the equal of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, in dignity and long reign. The nation’s outpouring of grief is not only for the loss of their queen, but the loss of the truths and principles to which she had dedicated her long and historic reign.

There will not be another like her, at least for a long time. 
 
Elizabeth was only 25 years old when she became queen in 1952. Her service was long, indeed the second-longest of any known monarch in history. Her Christmas messages often revealed her explicit affirmation of Christian truth.

She reigned through 15 British prime ministers—her first was Winston Churchill—and she, in herself, was the continuity of government. 

Duty fell to her at such an early age—and she carried it so well, for so long, on behalf of so many.

May God now guide Britain’s new king and his nation.

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A weary world, adrift without strong American leadership, needs a new Iron Lady at Great Britain’s helm. So it’s welcome news that Liz Truss, England’s new Prime Minister, apparently models herself on the great Margaret Thatcher.

Truss is a realist when it comes to China, viewing it as an adversary, rather than a strategic competitor. And she may well take a harder line on the Iran nuclear deal than her predecessor, which is all to the good.

But what’s most inspiring about Liz Truss are her plans for Britain itself. She has promised to “transform Britain into an aspiration nation with high paying jobs, safe streets, and where everyone everywhere has the opportunities they deserve.”

Her job won’t be easy. But we have a “special relationship” with Great Britain, and what happens there matters for us. Liz Truss understands the role of government—to serve, uplift, and protect their people. We wish her all good fortune.

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Turn on the news or pick up a magazine. Rather than spiraling inflation, out-of-control crime, or illegal immigration, the media is focusing on climate change.

As we were told during the pandemic—the science is settled. Except it’s not. 

The left claims global warming is a clear and present danger. In fact, today’s estimated average temperature is .1 degree Celsius lower than the average worldwide temperature between 1979 and 2000. Whatever that is, it’s not global warming.

Finally, principled scientists are pushing back against the hysteria. More than a thousand—led by a Nobel Prize winner—just signed the World Climate Declaration, noting there’s no clear climate emergency.

Indeed there’s not. The left and their friends in the media want to terrify Americans. Their goal? Our submission to a socialist, globalist system that cripples our country, but leaves adversaries like China strangely untouched.

We are weakening ourselves as China asserts itself.

 

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The New York Times just published a hyperventilating expose about conservative state officials “weaponizing” against climate action. Of course, it has the same old tropes: science denial, words like “conspiring,” and of course accusations of secrecy. 

As someone involved in the investment industry, I’ve watched for a decade as left-wing activists have secretly conspired to use investor money to push an agenda at odds with the investors’ interest. 

They’ve done it quietly, often funded by undisclosed sources. Now that the silent majority is awake and a number of State Treasurers are actually confronting this trend. So now—all of a sudden—the New York Times is worried about states making financial decisions. 
 
These officers are simply doing their job. They're asking companies to stick to their day job and stop sticking it to their state’s energy industry. These state officials aren't the ones who started the politicization of business, but they're the ones who are getting busy with efforts to stop it.

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President Biden’s recently announced plan for forgiveness of student debt has set us up for a massive financial and moral disaster.

The administration has chosen relatively privileged young people in our society and said, “We're going to help you pay your debt. We're going to forgive your debt. Meanwhile, the persons who worked hard not to take on student debt, you get nothing out of this. Indeed, you’re going to have to pay their bills.”

But there is an aspect of this that needs to be highlighted. That is: The Federal government's infusion of untold trillions of dollars in higher education is what has led to the vast escalation in educational costs. Who would have figured? You give colleges and universities the opportunity to participate in these loan programs and they begin to double and triple their budgets. 

It's a pernicious cycle, whereby students have to take out more in loans because the costs of tuition and other fees are going up.

This debt forgiveness plan by the Biden administration will only make matters worse.

 

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President Biden has made a massive political mistake with his student loan forgiveness program. 

Estimates start at $300 billion and go as high as a trillion dollars in giveaways. 

Of course that's inflationary. Of course it's unfair, but it's also unconstitutional. It is the largest executive action in American history. 

We've never had anything like this massive giveaway to favored individuals. It is raw vote buying, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. 

The Washington Post criticized this. It is not on anyone's favorites list. 

The president himself did not bring it up at a rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. He's embarrassed by his own half-baked scheme to forgive the people who are not paying back their loans. 

It disadvantages, of course, everyone who did and got the credit scores to prove it. 

It advantages those who do not work and do not want to work. 

Remember when you vote in November,  Joe Biden gave away a trillion of your dollars. 

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We just got a unanimous win for religious liberty and sound medicine at the 5th Circuit Court. Let me explain.

In 2016, the Obama administration redefined the word “sex” in our nation’s civil rights laws to entail “gender identity”—and then it issued a healthcare mandate forcing healthcare providers to perform sex reassignment procedures and insurance agencies to pay for them.

Good doctors sued and won an initial protection. The Trump administration did not appeal that victory and worked to undo the Obama regulation.

Now the Biden administration is bringing back the transgender mandate—but they won’t be able to enforce it on certain conscientious objectors, thanks to the good lawyers at Becket and their win last week.

The Obama-Biden transgender mandate is bad medicine, bed ethics and bad law. A religious liberty win is important, and we must continue our work in opposing transgender ideology. The human costs of getting human nature wrong are high.

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Last week, President Biden denounced his political opponents in unusually strong terms. He described them as “semi-fascists.”

Ironically, he had just congratulated himself for uniting the country. But calling people “fascists” not only divides them; it dehumanizes them. And then, history teaches us that very bad things can happen.

There’s another level of irony here. Although President Biden may be unaware of it, fascism’s actually a system where government controls business and opposition is not permitted. By no stretch of the imagination did President Trump control business. What’s more, opposition to him was vocal and omnipresent.

By contrast, the Biden administration extracts a steep price for straying from the party line. At the very least, the administration will partner with Big Tech to have you deplatformed.

It’s time for the President to stop with the insults—and, perhaps I’m being too optimistic, begin some serious introspection.

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