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‘I’m Not Gonna Yield!’: Republicans Furious After Democrat Questions ‘God-Given’ Rights at House Hearing

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During a House Judiciary hearing this Tuesday, things got a little heated as lawmakers discussed the role of religion and God when interpreting the Constitution.

According to Steve Cohen (D-TN), the notion that “all our rights are God-given” doesn’t make sense.

“I just wonder, when God decided to give women the right to vote, and why God didn’t give women the right to vote back in the 1700s,” Cohen said. “And when God decided that slavery would be illegal — God was okay with slavery until we had a war millions of people were killed, then God changed his mind? That’s hard to fathom.”

Cohen went on to provide the same analogy for abortion and interracial marriage. He clarified that he has respect for people’s belief in God, but added that he doesn’t believe the notion that every right is “God given.” “God did not decide to keep African Americans as slaves until there was a Civil War, and then God changed his mind,” he said.

IN OTHER NEWS: Greene gets schooled after her ‘divorced from reality’ rant at House Homeland Security hearing

Ken Buck (R-CO) then chimed in, saying that in the view of the Founders, and his view as well as other Americans, the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” were given to us by God. “That doesn’t mean that God makes a decision on every single law that is passed in this country,” Buck said. “That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t frown sometimes when there are horrible historical actions by human beings, like slavery, like the denial of the right to vote and some other things.”

“But life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are recognized in our founding documents as given to us by God, and those rights are the rights that everything else flows from,” Buck said.

Dan Bishop (R-NC) then accused Cohen of not caring about the rights endowed in the Constitution. “He embraces that modern Democratic Party’s view that it’s not about God, it’s not about God’s will or what God has created in mankind, you cannot trace rights to the existence of God … that’s all passe … Okay, that’s what we’re up against,” Bishop said.

Bishop declared that he is “absolutely certain that Thomas Jefferson and the other authors of the [Declaration of Independence] were correct.” He continued with his rant before being cut off, but he refused to yield his time.

“I’m not gonna yield! Because I’m gonna make this statement really clear.”

Watch video below or at this link.

 

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George Conway Wants One Federal Building Named for Trump

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Attorney George Conway, the prominent Republican-turned-Democratic congressional candidate, is calling for one federal building to be named after President Donald Trump, once his time in office is up.

On Monday, Conway issued a dire warning about President Trump and his “megalomania.”

“The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time,” Conway wrote on social media. “We certainly don’t have three years. We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”

On Tuesday, Conway responded to his fellow Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, who had written, “There will be no buildings named for Trump, no rest stops, not even a plastic urinal in a national park latrine. Nothing. All that will linger is disgrace and shame.”

Schmidt’s remarks came from his Substack post in which he appeared to compare President Donald Trump’s desire to construct a massive 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, “dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial,” as The Washington Post reported, to Adolf Hitler’s desire to remake Berlin.

“I’d like it to be the biggest one of all,” Trump told reporters. “We’re the biggest, most powerful nation.”

Trump has already leveled the East Wing of the White House to make room for his $400 million ballroom, which the U.S. Department of Justice now claims is necessary for national security.

He also just announced the shuttering of the Kennedy Center on July 4 for a two-year renovation project that he says will cost $200 million. He’s remade the White House Rose Garden — twice. He’s refurbished the Lincoln Bedroom’s bathroom. And he wants to revitalize Washington Dulles International Airport.

But Conway disagreed — at least in part — with Schmidt’s demand that no buildings should be named for Trump

“I strongly disagree with my friend Steve here,” said Conway.

“I think a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility—the most modern and secure one, because our president deserves the best—should be named after Trump. If elected to Congress, I pledge to do my best to enact this into law.”

 

Image via Reuters

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‘Unacceptable and Intolerable’: Pirro’s Gun Crackdown Comments Trigger Right-Wing Revolt

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U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is under fire over her anti-gun remarks, becoming the latest Trump administration official caught in a firearms backlash. Her threat to jail anyone who brings a gun into Washington, D.C., has set off a revolt across the political spectrum, spearheaded by right-wing gun groups and GOP lawmakers.

“You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail,” Pirro said on Fox News Monday afternoon. “I don’t care if you have a license in another district, and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail, and hope you get the gun back, and that makes all the difference.”

The New York Times reported that Pirro’s remarks “could deepen a growing rift between gun owners and the Trump administration.”

U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) slammed Pirro, warning her, “Come and Take It.”

“I bring a gun into the district every week,” he wrote to Pirro. “I have a license in Florida and DC to carry. And I will continue to carry to protect myself and others.”

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) declared, “This is not how this works,” and urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to “have a quick conversation” with Pirro for a “course correction here.”

READ MORE: Trump Rages at NYT Overnight — Says He Is Now Seeking $1 Billion From Harvard

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) added, “The District of Columbia has been ‘shall issue’ since 2017 when the requirement that you must have a ‘good reason’ to carry a handgun was struck down. Non-residents can obtain a permit in DC — don’t ask me how I know.”

U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), citing the Second Amendment, wrote: “Shall NOT be infringed is NOT a suggestion.”

“Our Second Amendment freedoms don’t disappear when we cross state lines or enter our nation’s capital city,” he added, before calling for a nationwide concealed carry reciprocity law.

Gun Owners of America, also, called for passage of the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act in response to Pirro’s remarks, as did other gun rights groups.

“Unacceptable and intolerable” is how the National Association for Gun Rights characterized Pirro’s remarks, before turning its focus to the law.

“Jeanine Pirro threatening to arrest people for carrying in DC, even if they are law-abiding and licensed, shows how broken and out of touch these gun laws are,” the group said. “This is why we need Real Constitutional Carry nationwide. Bureaucrats act like the 2A does not exist and brag about jailing people for exercising their rights.”

The NRA did not mention Pirro by name, but also called for passage of the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, before declaring, “Your right to self-defense should not end simply because you crossed a state line or into Washington, D.C.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough, a former Republican U.S. Congressman, now an independent, called Pirro’s remarks “Unconstitutional drivel.”

Another former GOP congressman Joe Walsh, now a Democrat, called Pirro’s remarks the “latest piece of evidence in the Trump administration’s war against gun rights.”

“What Pirro just made is an un-constitutional threat against every American’s right to the 2nd Amendment, on national tv,” The Lincoln Project commented. “Trump and his admin are again trying to strip you of a constitutional right.”

Indeed, as Politico reported, President Donald Trump himself just last week said, “You can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns,” in relation to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal agents. Pretti was a licensed, concealed carry holder.

Trump went even further, saying, “certainly he shouldn’t have been carrying a gun,” and, “I don’t like that he had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines, that’s a lot of bad stuff.”

FBI Director Kash Patel recently said, “you cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem also said that she didn’t “know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

 

Image via Shutterstock

 

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Trump Rages at NYT Overnight — Says He Is Now Seeking $1 Billion From Harvard

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President Donald Trump extended his late-night tirade against The New York Times early Tuesday, after posting a series of attacks late Monday night. The Times reported that the Trump administration had dropped its $200 million demand for a payment from Harvard University, setting off a fresh burst of anger from the president.

“Why hasn’t the Fake News New York Times adjusted its phony article on the corruption and antisemitism which has taken place at Harvard,” Trump railed Tuesday morning. “They never call for facts, or factchecks, because the Times’ is a corrupt, unprincipled, and pathetic vehicle of the Left.”

“They wrote only negatively about me in the last Election, and I won in a landslide,” Trump claimed, contrary to the certified results. He then took aim at what he claimed was the Times’ “rapidly falling circulation.”

In a post just past midnight, Trump had charged that the Times got its reporting about Harvard “completely wrong.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“I hereby demand that the morons that run (into the ground!) the Times’ change their story, immediately,” the President wrote, despite the First Amendment’s strong protections for the press.

He then attacked the paper’s reporting on the election and polling results.

“The New York Times coverage of me is so purposely wrong. We will soon see how I do in my lawsuit against these fraudsters! FAKE NEWS!” he declared.

The president appeared to be referring to a report in The New York Times, which said in part that “President Trump has backtracked on a major point in negotiations with Harvard, dropping his administration’s demand for a $200 million payment to the government.”

Less than one hour earlier, Trump escalated his battle with Harvard University, calling the 389-year-old institution “Strongly Antisemitic,” while alleging it had been “behaving very badly.”

“We are now seeking One Billion Dollars in damages, and want nothing further to do, into the future, with Harvard University,” Trump wrote.

Pointing to discussions about a “job training concept” that he suggested had dissolved, the president called it “merely a way of Harvard getting out of a large cash settlement of more than 500 Million Dollars, a number that should be much higher for the serious and heinous illegalities that they have committed. This should be a Criminal, not Civil, event.”

AFP reported that Trump’s allegations did not specify “the basis for criminal action or charges he envisaged could be involved.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

Image via Reuters

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