Month: November 2022

Here at usagovpolicy.com, we have periodically discussed the crisis at the Southern Border of the United States.  In August, we noted that “for the first 6 months of this year, there have been 1,227,171 border crossers encountered by the Border Patrol.”  Since then, according to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency, there have been 200,162 “Southwest Land Border Encounters” in July;  204,087 in August; 227,547 in September; 164,837 in October; and as of this writing, prior to Thanksgiving, 2022, there have been 174,845 illegal aliens encountered at the Southern Border in November.  This is 971,478 people who have entered our country in the last 5 months.  If we add these to the 1,227,171 who crossed our border illegally in the first 6 months of the year, 2,198,649 illegal aliens have been encountered at the US Southern Border in 2022 alone.

Then there are the numbers for 2021.  According to US Customs and Border Protection, last year a total of 1,734,686 illegal border crossers were encountered.  If we add those to the number who have crossed in 2022 to date, we have had a total of 3,933,335 illegal aliens enter our country in the first two years of the Biden Administration.

This represents one of the largest invasions in recent history.  The Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 numbered approximately 160,000 troops, less than the total number of border crossers this past October,    however within a month, 1,100,000 troops were landed – which is still less than the total number of illegal immigrants who have crossed our Southern Border in 2022.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he used approximately 650,000 troops, which represents less than any average 3 months of border crossers in 2022.

In fact, the invasion of our Southern Border in the past two years is larger than Operation Barbarossa in 1941, when Hitler used 3 million troops for his invasion of Russia.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, as of 2019 there were approximately 11 million illegal aliens present in the United States.    If we accept that number as arguably accurate, this means that as of the end of 2022, there are now approximately 15 million illegals within our borders.  More than the populations of New York City (8,622,357) and Los Angeles (4,085,014) COMBINED.

Stunning, isn’t it?  Isn’t there some one in charge of some agency of the federal government who is responsible for securing our Southern Border?

There is.  His name is Alejandro Mayorkas – and he believes he is doing a fantastic job.

In November of this year, “(w)hen asked point blank by Republican Rep. Dan Bishop if he thinks the border is secure, Mayorkas said he thinks it is. ‘Yes, and we are working day in and day out to enhance its security, congressman,’ Mayorkas responded.”  /  This has been the position of the Secretary for Homeland Security all along.  In a statement in March of 2021, Mayorkas said “(t)he situation at the southwest border is difficult.  We are working around the clock to manage it and we will continue to do so.  That is our job.  We are making progress and we are executing on our plan.  It will take time and we will not waver in our commitment to succeed.”

“Making progress?”  “Executing our plan?”  “Commitment to succeed?”  It is baffling to understand how almost 4 million border crashers in two years is “managing” a situation that is “difficult” – unless, of course, the plan all along has been to allow as many illegal aliens through our Southern Border as possible.  If that is the plan, then Mayorkas is clearly making progress, and succeeding wildly.

Support for this view can be found in the actions of the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress.  In February of 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order “on Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans,” in which he established the following policy: “Consistent with our character as a Nation of opportunity and of welcome, it is essential to ensure that our laws and policies encourage full participation by immigrants, including refugees, in our civic life…that the Federal Government eliminates sources of fear and other barriers that prevent immigrants from accessing government services available to them..(t)he Federal Government should develop welcoming strategies that promote integration, inclusion, and citizenship, and it should embrace the full participation of the newest Americans in our democracy.”

Secretary Mayorkas is therefore following the policy established by his boss, President Biden.  He is actually doing the job that is expected of him.

In his March 2021 statement, Secretary Mayorkas did not talk about efforts at interdiction at the Southern Border.  Instead, he addressed the extensive efforts his staff has made in establishing an “additional facility in Donna, Texas to process unaccompanied children and families.  We deployed additional personnel to provide oversight, care, and transportation assistance for unaccompanied minors pending transfer to HHS custody… We are (establishing) additional facilities in Texas and Arizona to shelter unaccompanied children and families…We are restarting and expanding the Central American Minors program.  It creates a lawful pathway for children to come to the United States without having to take the dangerous journey. Under this expansion, children will be processed in their home countries and brought to the United States in a safe and orderly way…We are creating joint processing centers so that children can be placed in HHS care immediately after Border Patrol encounters them.  We are also identifying and equipping additional facilities for HHS to shelter unaccompanied children until they are placed with family or sponsors.”

Mayorkas adds that “President Biden laid out a vision of a ‘multi-pronged approach toward managing migration throughout North and Central America that reflects the Nation’s highest values.’”  To that end, he believes that he is “keeping our borders secure, enforcing our laws, and staying true to our values and principles.”

In other words, Secretary Mayorkas’ job is not to keep illegal aliens from entering our country.  His job is to accept and process “unaccompanied children,” “families” and “refugees” as fast as possible.

Republicans in Congress have made some effort to stop this invasion.  House Resolution 582, filed in August of 2021, calls for the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas for “fail(ing) to faithfully uphold his oath and…instead presid(ing) over a reckless abandonment of border security and immigration enforcement, at the expense of the Constitution and the security of the United States. Secretary Mayorkas has violated, and continues to violate, this requirement by failing to maintain operational control of the border and releasing hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens into the interior of the United States.” Further, “Secretary Mayorkas’s actions have made the border less secure and encouraged aliens to enter the United States illegally, instead of taking actions to maintain operational control of the border. His actions have subverted the will of Congress and the core tenants of the Constitution.”

Obviously, this impeachment didn’t gain much traction while Congress was in Democrat hands.  In fact, the “will of Congress” was more divided, with Democrats attempting to grant amnesty to illegal aliens throughout 2021.  As described by Fox News; “When campaigning in 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden promised…a massive immigration reform bill…(a)lmost immediately on entering office, the Biden administration released a sweeping immigration proposal – which would eventually become the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021…(t)he bill…quickly died as it became clear the measure, which included minimal border security provisions, did not have any Republican support…Democrats looked to include various amnesty provisions in the Build Back Better Act that they were seeking to pass via the budget reconciliation process – and would therefore only need 50 votes. Democrats put forward a variety of proposals, from a pathway to citizenship for ‘essential workers’ to updating a decades-old registry. All plans were rejected by the Senate parliamentarian for being inappropriate for a budget bill.”

The dream of amnesty for illegal aliens seemed to have slumbered for most of 2022.  However, now that the midterm elections have been concluded, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has recently resurrected the concept; “The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the Dreamers and all of them, because our ultimate goal is to help the Dreamers but to get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.”

Thankfully, don’t expect an Amnesty Bill anytime soon out of the new Republican-controlled House.  In a tweet last October, the New Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said “Amnesty is a nonstarter. It won’t be taken up by a House Republican majority. Our border crisis is the worst in history and the only immigration plan should be to secure the border and stop illegal immigration.”

Instead, what we can expect are more serious efforts to impeach Secretary Mayorkas.  According to CNN, “’Mayorkas deserves (impeachment) for sure, because we no longer have a border,’ said Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a McCarthy ally who is in line to chair the powerful House Judiciary Committee, which oversees impeachment proceedings…(a)dded Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a freshman GOP firebrand who has already endorsed impeachment articles for both Biden and Mayorkas: ‘Secretary Mayorkas should be a priority.'”

Will the Republican-majority House move forward with an impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas?  That all depends on whether a majority of Republican legislators think the Secretary should be allowed to continue “making progress” on President Biden’s plan.

For the sake of our nation, the answer to this question needs to be yes.

Judge John Wilson (ret.) authored two books on illegal immigrati

If neither taxpayers nor the states themselves have Standing to challenge the Biden Administration, it seems unclear as to who exactly would have the ability to bring suit.  But a recent decision from a Texas federal judge may have provided the answer.

In Brown v. US Department of Education, Judge Mark Pittman answered the threshold question of Standing.   “Plaintiffs Myra Brown and Alexander Taylor both have student loans” the Court stated.  “Brown is ineligible for any debt forgiveness under the Program because her loans are commercially held…(a)nd Taylor is ineligible for the full $20,000 in debt forgiveness under the Program because he did not receive a Pell Grant…(b)ecause Brown loses out on $20,000 in debt forgiveness and Taylor loses out on $10,000, they disagree with the lines drawn for the Program’s eligibility criteria.”

Judge Pittman discussed the Biden Administration’s core position – nobody has Standing to challenge the Program “because where the government is providing a benefit, nobody is harmed by the existence of that benefit.”  However, the Court noted that “(t)he Supreme Court has recognized that a plaintiff has standing to challenge a government benefit in many cases. See, e.g., Ne. Fla. Chapter of Associated Gen. Contractors of Am. v. City of Jacksonville…(holding that plaintiffs who did not qualify for government benefits had standing).” (Citation omitted.)

The government argued that “Plaintiffs’ ‘unhappiness that some other borrowers are receiving a greater benefit than they are’ is not a concrete interest.”  “But,” Judge Pittman wrote, “this is untrue. Plaintiffs do not argue that they are injured because other people are receiving loan forgiveness. Their injury—no matter how many people are receiving loan forgiveness—is that they personally did not receive forgiveness…Plaintiffs have a concrete interest in having their debts forgiven.”  Thus, these Plaintiffs “inability to obtain the full benefit of debt forgiveness under the Program flows directly from the Program’s eligibility requirements,” giving them Standing to maintain a lawsuit against the Department of Education.

On the merits, Judge Pittman found, as have so many other Courts during the almost two years that the Biden Administration has been in office, that “the executive branch unconstitutionally exercises ‘legislative powers’ vested in Congress” when it used the HEROES Act as the basis for its Student Loan Forgiveness Program.  As the Court stated, “the HEROES Act— a law to provide loan assistance to military personnel defending our nation—does not provide the executive branch clear congressional authorization to create a $400 billion student loan forgiveness program. The Program is thus an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated.”

“(T)he HEROES Act does not mention loan forgiveness,” the Court states. “If Congress provided clear congressional authorization for $400 billion in student loan forgiveness via the HEROES Act, it would have mentioned loan forgiveness…’enabling legislation’ like the HEROES Act is not an ‘open book to which the agency may add pages and change the plot line.’” (Citations omitted.)

No doubt, Judge Pittman’s decision will be appealed.  In the meantime, according to Fox Business, “(a)fter the (8th Circuit decision) temporarily halted the debt forgiveness plan, the Biden administration released a statement via the Education Department that encouraged borrowers to continue to apply for forgiveness. Although the administration can’t officially cancel student loans during the halt, it said it is moving ahead with preparing for forgiveness and collecting applications. ” 

In other words, the Biden Administration is dead-set on the implementation of this program – despite its lack of legal authority to do so.  

It bears noting that the costs of this Program are objectively horrendous.  “Joe Biden’s plan to cancel…student loan debt for federal aid borrowers is expected to cost about $400 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The estimate is for a period of the next 30 years and will add to the country’s deficit, it said… (a)s of June 30, the CBO estimates federal student loan debt to be at $1.6 trillion among 43 million borrowers…(a)bout 95% of borrowers meet the criteria for forgiveness and about 45% of borrowers will have their balances completely wiped out, the CBO said.”

These financial facts underline the importance of the 8th Circuit’s stay, and the decision from the Texas federal court to stop the Biden Administration from redistributing individual student debt to those of us who did not incur that debt.

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC.

Illustration: Pixabay

At the end of August, we discussed the proposal from the Biden Administration to provide forgiveness of student loans in the amount of at least $10,000.  We noted that beginning with Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), first signed into law in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” over the years, Congress has given increasing authority to the Secretary of Education in regards to forgiveness of all or part of student loans. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 “had some provisions for forgiveness of loans'” and also gave “the Secretary of Education (even more) authority” in this regard. 

Yet, in its most recent proposal, the government cited the 2003 HEROES Act as the basis for its authority to engage in wholesale student loan forgiveness.  We then asked whether President Biden had “the authority to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in private debt to the public with the use of his pen?” 

We were not the only one with that same question.  In fact, several lawsuits have been brought in various federal courts across the country in an effort to find an answer.  Predictably, there have been different results in different jurisdictions.

Nebraska v. Biden was brought in federal court in Missouri, and heard by Judge Henry Autrey.  In his opinion dated October 22, 2022, the Court began by explaining one mystery – the use of the HEROES Act by the Biden Administration to justify its actions.  “In 2003, Congress enacted the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act… (the) Act allows the Secretary (of Education) to ‘waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs…as…necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency’…‘national emergency’ means a national emergency declared by the President of the United States.”

The Court continued; “Most recently, the Secretary has used the HEROES act to provide relief in response to the COVID-19 pandemic…(a)ccordingly, on March 20, 2020, the Secretary relied on the HEROES Act to pause the accrual of interest and repayment for all federally held student loans…(o)n August 24, 2022, President Biden announced the Department’s student debt relief plan to address the financial harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure a smooth transition back to repayment status. The Secretary announced that the HEROES Act authorizes him to provide a ‘one-time’ debt relief to federal student loan borrowers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Is this a valid exercise of the powers granted to the Secretary of Education?  Or is this in excess of the authority conferred by the HEROES Act?

Judge Autrey never reaches the issue – instead, he dismissed the case on the basis of Standing.

 “’Standing‘ is a legal term used in connection with lawsuits and a requirement of Article III of the United States Constitution. In simple terms, courts use ‘standing’ to ask, ‘Does this party have a ‘dog in this fight?’…To have standing, a party must show an ‘injury in fact’ to their own legal interests. In other words, has the party itself ‘suffered’ some sort of actual harm?” 

As Judge Autrey notes, “Standing is a threshold inquiry; it requires focus on the part[ies] seeking to have [their] complaint heard in a federal court, and it eschews evaluation of the merits. The court is not to consider the weight or significance of the alleged injury, only whether it exists.” (Citation omitted).

Here, the Missouri District Court found its opportunity to sidestep the merits of the claims brought by the State Plaintiffs. “Nebraska Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina attempt to assert a threat of imminent harm in the form of lost tax revenue in the future. Currently, federal student loan discharges are not taxable under federal law (until 2026 – another Covid-19 relief measure)…(these states) argue that they will lose tax revenue to the extent that the total amount of loan discharges they currently project to occur after January 1, 2026, is reduced because of the Department’s student debt relief plan.”

The Court was not persuaded by this argument; “These future lost tax revenues are merely speculative. Moreover, there is nothing imminent about what may happen several years in the future…(t)he effect upon future taxation is uncertain. ‘[T]hreatened injury must be certainly impending to constitute injury in fact… allegations of possible future injury’ are not sufficient.” (Citation omitted).

Based upon the lack of Standing, Judge Autrey dismissed the case.  However, on Appeal from the State Plaintiffs, “(t)he 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis…granted an administrative stay that temporarily pauses the Biden administration’s student-loan debt-relief program.” According to the ABA Journal. “The stay will remain in place until the 8th Circuit decides whether to grant an injunction pending appeal.”  

The 8th Circuit opinion is only one page – it is a temporary stay, while the parties prepare further arguments.  But at least the States now have another chance to establish the harm their tax revenues will suffer as a result of the Student Loan Forgiveness plan.

Meanwhile, another lawsuit was filed against President Biden by the Brown County Taxpayer’s Association in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.  That case was dismissed by Judge William Griesbach. 

In their case, the Taxpayer’s Association asserted that “Defendants, as executive branch officials, have usurped congressional powers under Article I, section 8 of the Constitution and created a program that obligates federal taxes and erases federal assets without any authority.”  But these Plaintiffs ran into the same problem the States face in their case – Standing.

“Plaintiff asserts that it has taxpayer standing,” the Court wrote. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly held, however, that ‘the payment of taxes is generally not enough to establish standing to challenge an action taken by the Federal Government.’” (Citation Omitted.)  Thus, “(i)n the absence of standing, Plaintiff’s case must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.” 

Recently, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett refused to issue a stay of Judge Griesbach’s order. 

Judge Wilson’s (ret.) Report concludes tomorrow

Illustration: Pixabay

China’s digital prowess is an immediate and high-level threat to the United States. It cannot be stated more plainly. How our loss of cyber security occurred over the last two decades is, perhaps, more disconcerting as the US and other democracies had plenty of warning. The Western world chose to relegate the issue to a “future potential challenge” status that it believed could be overcome by creating a friendly relationship with the communist giant. Since China’s opening to the democratic West, Beijing has failed repeatedly to abide by the rules-based international order. The West, in turn, has failed to hold China accountable for its actions. The free world is paying a high price and it may be too late to stop China.

Kinetic warfare is only one type of combat. In our digital world today, vast armies work from home behind computer screens. The digital threat mounted by China’s military since Xi Jinping assumed power is real, growing, and in some areas surpasses the United States’ capability to defend against it. Although China’s hacking teams have been hard at work since the early 2000’s, Xi first prioritized cybersecurity (AKA cyberwarfare) as a policy in 2014. He ordered increased funding for cybersecurity research and recruited talented young Chinese in universities, the bureaucracy, and security services who could wreak havoc throughout the digital world.   

“The Chinese state has systematized cybersecurity education, improved students’ access to hands-on practice, promoted hacking competitions, and collected vulnerabilities to be used in network operations against China’s adversaries, according to CyberScoop’s Dakota Cary. These better resourced and trained teams, he says, put companies at risk of further compromise and create an additional imperative for the US and allied nations to improve defenses of government networks. In 2014 Xi formed the Cybersecurity and Informatization Leading Small Group inside the CCP. 

Less recognized at the time was that China secretly was fashioning their cybersecurity on the American intelligence community’s Centers for Excellence model. After analyzing the United States’ National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, Beijing established a board of academics from universities across the country. The government developed a list of core competencies needed by Chinese students graduating with a cybersecurity degree and rolled out a full curriculum to be followed by the country’s top universities. By 2014, only two years after prioritizing and funding the initiative, the government under Xi’s direction established a new agency call the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). This allowed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Cybersecurity and Informatization Committee of the CCP Central Committee (CIC) to present the effort as a government operation to global businesses and foreign agencies.

“One of the CAC’s first acts was to publish a National Cybersecurity Strategy for China,” according to Cary. Two of the regions developing programs, he notes, were modeled on North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. China’s National Cybersecurity Talent and Innovation Base is in Wuhan. There is a 15-square-mile campus with a fourth of it dedicated to the National Cybersecurity School, the Offense-Defense Laboratory, the Combined Cybersecurity Research Institute, and supporting computational, data storage and cyber range facilities, says Cary. “The remainder of the campus,” he adds, “offered tax incentives to people and businesses wishing to set up shop next to the base.” Central government policymakers made the project a national asset in late 2016 but didn’t stop there. A year later another provincial project was nationalized in support of the cyberwarfare effort. The Guiyang National Big Data Cyber Range now hosts cybersecurity competitions, industrial hardware for OT hackers, and apparently enough server space to count as “big data,” says Cary. Unlike the democratic West, the CCP and the central government can quickly co-opt so-called private infrastructure to serve the country.

To keep the effort moving China adopted a program in 2017 that mirrors the Center for Academic Excellence-Cyber Operations certification awarded by seven US agencies, including the National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security. Today it runs hundreds of cyber hacking competitions to identify new “national resources” to be China’s digital warriors and software vulnerability researchers. The competitions are modeled again on the US Defense Department’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) which hosts a Grand Cyber Challenge. A recently released report, authored by several of the world-class cybersecurity schools in partnership with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education, and the cybersecurity firm Beijing Integrity Technology, describes the current landscape, according to Cary. The authors of the report, he says, “expect China’s deficit of cybersecurity experts to fall to 370,000 by 2027 — likely seen as a big success since 2017 estimates put the then-deficit at around 1.4 million.” Within the next decade the West can look forward to seeing the results of a mass of well-trained Chinese civil servants working behind computer screens. Their only goal: take down the West’s digital infrastructure. No kinetic warfare is necessary.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

Dobbs was decided on June 24, 2022.  The Attorney General’s statement was made the same day.  Houck was then arrested in September of 2022, for acts that allegedly occurred in October of 2021.  Could Garland and the Justice Department have sought out a case in which they could make an example of a Pro-Life activist?

Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano certainly believes this to be the case.  During his recent campaign for Governor, the Mastriano stated that “(t)he continued weaponization of the FBI and persecution of Biden’s DOJ against ordinary Americans is an outrage… (c)itizens across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania join me in expressing our outrage at this early-morning raid executed on a young family. This show of force carried out by the Biden regime against ordinary Americans is an abuse of power that stands against the fundamental principles on which our country was founded.”

As noted by Hans von Spakovsky and Charles Stimson of the Heritage Foundation, “(i)t is not a coincidence, we suspect, that this takedown of someone who, at best, committed a misdemeanor assault came almost exactly three months after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe v. Wade and abortion on demand in America. The FBI’s raid of Houck’s home was designed to send a warning to pro-life activists engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment…(t)he timing of this indictment of Houck…is suspect and calls into question the motive behind the Justice Department’s move…(i)f this was such an important violation of the FACE Act, what took the Justice Department 337 days to indict Houck? This is the simplest of simple, factual cases. Houck either pushed the escort…unprovoked, or he didn’t.  Perhaps the more important number is 91. That’s how many days elapsed between the day the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs and Houck’s indictment…(a)nd why did the Justice Department decide to send armed FBI agents to Houck’s house in a show of force? Houck has no criminal record, is a man of faith, and is the father of seven children. He is no threat whatsoever.” 

Indeed.  Given these facts and the statement made by AG Garland at the time Dobbs was decided, the motivation for the heavy-handed show of force against Houck is obvious.

The Houck family has a long legal road to travel.  But once passions cool, and the DOJ seeks other witches to burn, the opportunity for justice to prevail will increase.  In the meantime, there is a resolution pending in the House of Representatives to impeach Merrick Garland.  Dated October 22, 2021, House Resolution 743 states that “Attorney General Garland has failed to faithfully uphold his oath and has instead presided over a reckless and corrosive politicization of the Department of Justice… by his actions, (Garland has) validated the belief of many Americans that the Department of Justice has been transformed into an unstoppable, partisan, Federal weapon used to officially punish political opponents.” 

Further, in July of this year, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), also filed articles of impeachment against Garland, asserting that “Attorney General Garland has failed to uphold his oath and has instead overseen a denigration of the principles of our democratic republic by politicizing the Department of Justice, and utilitizing the (FBI) as a Federal police force to punish or intimidate anyone who questions or opposes the current regime.” 

With Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, these measures have had no chance of advancement, let alone success.  But beginning in January, the new Republican majority has signaled its intention to take up matters such as the impeachment of the Attorney General.  Prior to the midterm, then House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) “promised…that if Republicans take back the chamber after November’s midterm elections, they will investigate the Department of Justice, telling Attorney General Merrick Garland to ‘clear your calendar…I’ve seen enough. The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization…(w)hen Republicans take back the House, we will conduct immediate oversight of this department, follow the facts, and leave no stone unturned.’”

Appearing on the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon also predicted the impeachment of both Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.  “’The whole Justice Department under Merrick Garland has become radically partisan,’ Bannon said. ‘I strongly believe you’ll see Merrick Garland impeached next year by the new Congress.’”  He added that “What I want Republicans in the new Congress, is to focus on cleaning out the rat’s nest at DOJ and cleaning out the rat’s nest at the FBI.”

 Whether or not these promises are kept remains to be seen.  But in the meantime, the more the FBI points their rifles at Pro-Life activists and their children, and the more the Justice Department prosecutes misdemeanor assaults, the more the public will continue to call upon their Representatives in Congress to halt this blatant abuse of power by formerly well-respected, and formerly politically neutral, law enforcement agencies.

Judge John Wilson (served on the bench in NYC

On October 13, 2021, Pro-Life activist Mark Houck was outside the Planned Parenthood Elizabeth Blackwell Health Center abortion clinic in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, praying with his 12 year old son (Houck and his wife have 7 children).  An unidentified man approached the clinic in his capacity as a “volunteer escort” for several women heading into the clinic.  According to Houck’s wife, “on multiple occasions that  ‘pro-abortion protester’ would say ‘crude … inappropriate and disgusting things” to their 12-year-old son, such as ‘your dad’s a fag’ and other vulgar slurs.”  On this particular day, “the man ‘kind of came into [the son’s] personal space,’ Mrs. Houck said. ‘Mark shoved him away from his child, and the guy fell back… He didn’t have any injuries or anything.” 

The unidentified man tried to have Houck prosecuted by the Philadelphia DA’s office, and also brought a civil suit in Pennsylvania, but both matters were dismissed.  That should have been the end of this minor matter – but it’s not.

In September of 2022, almost one year later, the Houck family “woke up…to a team of FBI agents raiding (their) home in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania…25-30 FBI agents entered their home around 7 a.m.  ‘The kids were all just screaming. It was all just very scary and traumatic,” (Mrs) Houck told Life Site News about her husband’s arrest, which she and her children witnessed…'(t)hey had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,’ (Mrs) Houck told the pro-life news outlet.”

Mark Houck was arrested, and taken to federal court, where he was already under indictment for the violation of 18 USC Sec. 248 – the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.   Also known as the FACE Act, this statute provides for criminal penalties including up to one year in prison for a first offense, if that person “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services.” 

Passed into law in 1994, “in response to an increase in violence toward providers and patients of reproductive health services,” according to the Justice Department, “Courts have held that the Act’s protections extend not only to physicians but also to clerical workers and escorts at reproductive health facilities.”

Perhaps the Justice Department is within its rights to prosecute Mark Houck, even after local authorities declined to prosecute this matter, and a civil lawsuit was dismissed.  But his arrest raises a serious question; Isn’t it heavy handed of the Federal government to send 20-30 FBI agents to arrest a man who committed, at best, a misdemeanor assault, particularly when there is a view of the evidence that Houck was acting in defense of his child?

Further, is it any coincidence that the arrest and prosecution of Houck occurred shortly after the US Supreme Court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which held that “(t)he Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe (v. Wade) and (Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v.) Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”  

One hint regarding the true motive behind the ham-fisted arrest and prosecution of Mark Houck can be found in the statement made by Attorney General Merrick Garland after the Dobbs decision was made public. “The Supreme Court has eliminated an established right that has been an essential component of women’s liberty for half a century – a right that has safeguarded women’s ability to participate fully and equally in society…(t)he Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision.  This decision deals a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States…(a)dvocates with different views on this issue have the right to, and will, voice their opinions. Peacefully expressing a view is protected by the First Amendment. But we must be clear that violence and threats of violence are not. The Justice Department will not tolerate such acts…(t)he Justice Department will work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom. Under the (FACE) Act, the Department will continue to protect healthcare providers and individuals seeking reproductive health services in states where those services remain legal. This law prohibits anyone from obstructing access to reproductive health services through violence, threats of violence, or property damage.”  

Judge Wilson’s (ret.) article concludes tomorrow