In Smearing Donald Trump, the Left Never Sleeps

Townhall 

During President Trump's first term, the fake stream media continually sprang new lies about him, fueled by a corrupt Obama and then Biden regime. Half of America had no idea that they were constantly being hoodwinked. With Tulsi Gabbard’s current findings, justice might actually prevail in this nation, but don’t count on the fake stream media to honestly illuminate any of the issues.

No Let Up

After nearly four years of masking Joe Biden’s incapacities and then getting busted, you’d think that today the media might wind down their hoax machine. No way.

The daily, lengthy list of hoaxes by fake stream media and Leftists represents a new low, if that’s possible. Beyond the hoaxes from 2016 to 2024 now being fully exposed, below are two dozen of the hundreds of false news items designed to disrupt Trump’s second term and to besmirch the character and reputation of his cabinet members and staff:

Claim: Trump's spending cuts related to weather caused the flooding in Texas.

Reality: No cuts were scheduled for any part of 2025.

Claim: CNN was aghast about President Trump’s assertion that the Biden Administration spent millions on “making mice transgender.”

Reality: Trump’s claim proved to be true.

Claim: Rep. Eric Swalwell said that no president presided over more plane incidents, 35, during their first month in office than President Trump.

Reality: During Biden’s first month 57 aviation incidence occurred.

Claim: Gov. JB Pritzker said that ICE agents raided an elementary school.

Reality: It was a U.S. Secret Service investigation unrelated to immigration.

Claim: Constituents in red districts bemoaned President Trump’s effort to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.

Reality: These “protests” were funded by far-left groups.

Claim: NASA astronauts, in space for nine months, were “not stranded.”

Reality: NPR described the astronauts as stranded in prior reporting, and changed their narrative when President Trump sought to bring them home.

Claim: The White House was seeking a new Secretary of Defense.

Reality: Not even remotely true.

Claim: Trump referred to European nations as “parasites.”

Reality: Trump refuted this -- as did the Italian prime minister.

Claim: The Trump Administration stalled a UN program in Mexico to curtail imported fentanyl chemicals from reaching the drug cartels.

Reality: The Department of State actually is expanding the initiative.

Claim: President Trump sought to end Medicaid and other assistance programs.

Reality: Assistance programs for individuals, such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, were explicitly excluded in Trump’s budget cuts.

Claim: DOGE posted classified information on their website.

Reality: The posting was an employment headcount, publicly available for years.

Claim: Kristi Noem called all Venezuelan immigrants “dirtbags.”

Reality: Her description was directed at the gang members of Tren de Aragua.

Claim: The NYT wrote that RFK, Jr. sought to “ban fluoride in drinking water.”

Reality: The Times reported earlier that fluoride might lead to lower IQ scores in children.

Claim: President Trump was “going after” Social Security.

Reality: He has repeatedly pledged to protect and enhance Social Security.

Claim: Veterans’ care was in jeopardy due to layoffs at VA hospitals.

Reality: Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins said that this was garbage.

Claim: Rep. Jasmine Crockett, following the Reagan National Airport plane crash, claimed that President Trump had frozen the hiring of air traffic controllers.

Reality: Air traffic controllers were exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

Claim: President Trump took down Barack Obama’s portrait in the White House.

Reality: The portrait was moved a few feet away from its previous location.

Claim: The Trump Administration wants to end sanctions on Russian energy assets, including the Nord Stream pipeline.

Reality: Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff both said this claim was bogus.

Claim: An illegal immigrant in U.S. custody simply disappeared.

Reality: The individual was part of Tren de Aragua, and a judge ordered his removal.

Claim: JD Vance broke Vatican rules when photographed in the Sistine Chapel.

Reality: Vance was given permission by the Vatican.

Claim: Funds for the Women’s Health Initiative would be slashed by the DHHS.

Reality: Secretary RFK, Jr. recognizes the project as “mission critical.”

Claim: Pete Hegseth sought $140k in “upgrades” to his government residence.

Reality: The AP admitted this claim was completely false.

Claim: The Trump Administration sacked firefighter health and safety programs.

Reality: The programs remain a top priority for the administration.

Claim: President Trump’s policies scare away foreign investments in the U.S.

Reality: He has thus far secured trillions of dollars in investments, potentially leading to 451,000 new jobs.

 Lies for the Taking

Half of America, even highly educated people, fall for this baloney every day. Why? They are constantly fed lies. Concurrently, the dupes will not investigatebeyond their “trusted” go-to “news” sources.

Ignorance is not bliss; it is harmful to our nation.

On the Fringe and Badlands Media- July 26

 

Leftists Can’t Take a Joke

posted J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

It is important to debate ideas.  Debating those who disagree with you clarifies your own thoughts and shores up weaknesses in your reasoning.  Civil argument is wonderful exercise for the mind.  Healthy minds make good citizens.  Good citizens maintain strong societies. 

It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to conclude that one of the first signs of a crumbling society is the inability of its people to argue peacefully among themselves.  

I think most people born before 1990 would agree that public debate has disintegrated over the last three decades.  We are no longer able to argue passionately — perhaps even shouting at each other — and end our disagreements by shaking hands, smiling, and moving on.  Everything today is a vicious grudge match that participants treat as existential in nature — either I win this debate or my worth as a person is zero!

Ideological zealotry has replaced thinking.  Thinking requires a person to accept the limitations of his knowledge and the possibility that he might be wrong.  Ideological zealotry short-circuits the mind’s capacity for reason and prevents those so afflicted from enjoying true creativity.

In my experience, this affliction primarily torments those who would identify as being part of the political left.  No doubt they would call me a partisan and explain all the ways my Christian beliefs trap me in a mental prison.  They would be wrong.  People who are confident in their beliefs should welcome outside challenges.  

At some point as we move from adolescence to adulthood, those with enough curiosity to chase answers in this life have an epiphany: Truth abides regardless of how vigorously it is tested.  It is only when we are willing to leave the relative safety of what we already know to ask questions about what we do not that we can intellectually, morally, and spiritually prosper.  A person’s convictions are only as strong as that person’s willingness to test those convictions daily.  Faith leads us to truth, and truth leads us to faith.

In this regard, modern leftists fail.  They are currently unwilling and unable to test their beliefs.  They are not capable of admitting past mistakes or acknowledging the limits of their knowledge.  Perhaps because so many reject the existence of God, they are more inclined to see themselves as gods in this world.  To question their beliefs, in other words, is to question their theology and their religious devotion to themselves.  

This was not always the case.  There was a time when leftists debated me on many subjects, and when we were done, we shook hands and continued as friends.  What has changed?  Two observations stand out — one moral or philosophical and the other institutional.  

First, it was not so strange to find Christian leftists in the past.  No matter how much they might depend upon Marx as a crutch, their charitable inclinations, suspicions of free markets, or anti-war worldviews was grounded in their Christian faith.  As such, they knew that they did not have all the answers and that the surest path toward truth required an acknowledgment of one’s limitations, a willingness to seek penitence, an eagerness to heed one’s calling, and a desire to obey God’s will. 

In my estimation, scientists who believe in God are much more creative intellectuals than their atheistic colleagues.  I have long suspected that this is so because the former are certain that there is much that they can never know, while the latter are certain that they will know everything.  When one believes that man is master over everything, an intellectual dullness sets in.  When one knows that God is master over everything, scientific exploration is like getting a backstage pass to see some of God’s handiwork.

The second major change over the last few decades is that the political left cemented its control over the university campus, creative arts industry, and government bureaucracy.  Although this “march through the institutions” has been a century in the making, it wasn’t so long ago when non-leftist thinkers still occupied valuable territory in the worlds of academia, publishing, and government.  If for no other reason than ensuring their own professional survival in environments where diversity of thought continued to exist, leftists once interacted with non-leftists more civilly.

Any vestige of that past is now long gone.  As leftists came to dominate the institutions, they became much more vocal in pronouncing their beliefs as undeniable and much more adamant in imposing those beliefs upon everyone else.  In fact, leftists seem to have misinterpreted their present perch atop the institutions as veritable proof that everything they believe is the absolute truth.  They have no interest in debating people with contrary worldviews because they have convinced themselves that their current cultural superiority is unimpeachable evidence that all other worldviews are wrong.  They will not defend their beliefs with logical reason because they are certain that conflicting beliefs are ipso facto unreasonable.

For decades, Americans mocked “political correctness” as something foreign to our culture.  It was common to hear leftists and non-leftists alike preface a joke by saying, “This isn’t politically correct” before laughing about politically incorrect things.  One of the unifying elements of American society was a general agreement among Americans of all political stripes that free speech is invaluable and that self-censorship is anti-American.  I had many conversations with leftists and non-leftists over the years who all expressed a similar sentiment — that American society would demonstrate that it had grown beyond petty racial, ethnic, sexual, and class divisions when everyone learned to “take a joke.”  

Tragically, nobody can take a joke this century.  Words must be analyzed with intense scrutiny.  Hidden biases must be diagnosed.  Innate privileges must be identified.  Language must be policed.  People are desperate to have their feelings hurt and to express publicly how they have been offended.  Were I to tell everyone with pronouns in his bio, “Toughen up, buttercup,” I would be guilty of various -isms, supremacies, and general “hate speech.”  

When hate is criminalized, the powers that be need only adjust their hate knobs accordingly to censor all dissenting speech.  “Political correctness” in America is no longer a laughing matter.  Good people have been fired, canceled, stigmatized, and even prosecuted for offending the political left.  Free speech in America remains on life support because leftists have imported foreign self-censorship.

Perhaps most bemusing is how many leftists born before 1990 now embrace this malignant oppression.  Leftists who once would have laughed at the idea that men should compete in women’s sports or that kindergarteners should be forced to attend “drag queen story hour” now speak of “transgenderism” as if it were a sacred “truth.”  Leftists who once advocated for a “colorblind” society now obsess over race.  Leftists who once argued that free speech is worth any fight now demand that governments and social media companies censor everyone with whom they disagree.  

Leftists will not debate because they cannot debate.  They are ideological zealots no longer capable of independent thinking.

In this regard, writer Michael Schwarz recently brought a hilarious video from The Babylon Bee to my attention.  In this satirical gem entitled “Liberal Goes Back in Time to Kill Hitler,” a “woke” social justice warrior reluctantly realizes that she and Adolf have much in common — including their love for socialized medicine, abortion, gun control, government censorship, environmental regulation, antisemitism, and authoritarian expertise.  

The whole thing is a hoot.  But beware: This video is “politically incorrect.”  You might be “canceled” for promoting it.  And leftists certainly won’t understand it.  They are simply not capable of appreciating how much they now have in common with Hitler’s Nazis.  They no longer know how to think.  They know only how to repeat slogans, impose “correct” beliefs, and punish apostates.  Besides, it’s hard to laugh when you’re busy goose-stepping.

Supreme Court to Take Up Ban on Gun Ownership for Marijuana Users

 

Jeff Charles  | July 26, 2025 11:00 AM | Townhall

The Supreme Court will consider hearing a gun control case related to a federal ban on firearm possession by marijuana users.

The high court is reportedly expected to have a private discussion on whether it will take up the case of US v. Cooper on September 29. The law has been roundly criticized by gun rights advocates who argue that it is a violation of the Second Amendment.

The case centers on LaVance LeMarr Cooper, who was prosecuted for owning a firearm as a marijuana user, which made him a “prohibited person” under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), a federal criminal statute that bars certain people from owning firearms or ammunition.

This subsection targets those who unlawfully use controlled substances.

A police officer pulled Cooper over in Iowa during a traffic stop. They found a loaded Glock 20 in his vehicle. He did not have any felony convictions, but did have a misdemeanor conviction in 1996 for driving with a suspended license and marijuana possession.

Cooper later admitted to smoking marijuana on a regular basis — about three to four times per week. Prosecutors charged him with violating the federal statute. He waived his right to a jury trial and consented to a bench trial. This means he did not dispute that he owned a firearm while being a marijuana user.

The district court found him guilty on both counts and sentences him to over three years in prison  for the offenses — even though he was not intoxicated at the time of the traffic stop.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in February vacated Cooper’s convicted and remanded the case. The panel rules that the lower court failed to properly apply the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in Cooper’s case.

The Bruen ruling mandates that all current and future gun control laws must be similar to restrictions enacted during the Founding Era. 

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The government argued that the court cannot excuse an individual who violates the statute, which applies to any drug user regardless of whether they pose an actual threat to public safety. The state further insisted that the statute aligns with historical traditions of disarming potentially dangerous people, such as “common drunkards” or those who are mentally ill and are dangerous.

The court rejected the notion that blanket bans on marijuana users are constitutional. Instead, it ruled that these cases should be taken on a case-by-case basis. “Keeping firearms out of the hands of drug users does not always violate the Second Amendment—but it can, depending on the individual,” the panel explained.

The “common drunkards” law was originally applied to militia members who were on duty. It did not apply to civilians. It addressed those found drunk “when under arms” during military exercises, guard duty, or other militia functions. Even in these cases, the individual was only disarmed and confined while they were actively intoxicated.

When the person sobered up, they were no longer confined, and they were allowed to have their guns. 

The Fifth Circuit ruled in another case that sober, habitual marijuana users cannot be disarmed for past use and also acknowledged that the statute does not pass the Bruen test. Other courts in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas have issued similar decisions.

The Justice Department is actively defending the statute despite the Bruen ruling and his currently battling legal challenges in multiple states. The agency argues that those who habitually use marijuana and other drugs pose a heightened risk to public safety. It insists that Bruen still allows the government to disarm people who are “dangerous or irresponsible,” applying this label to anyone who uses drugs.

I hope the Supreme Court does decide to take up this case. The federal statute barring gun ownership among marijuana users clearly does not pass the Bruen test. The vast majority of marijuana users are not committing gun crime — a reality that anti-gunners won’t acknowledge.

Barring these individuals from exercising their right to keep and bear arms is as irrational as banning firearms because some people use them to commit crimes. The truth is that the Second Amendment says this right “shall not be infringed.” It does not say “shall not be infringed unless you like to light up a joint every now and again.”

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Townhall's VIP program and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.

AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/jeff-charles/2025/07/26/supreme-court-to-take-up-ban-on-gun-ownership-for-marijuana-users-n2660954

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The Danger of Taking It All Too Seriously

RedState 

One of the biggest problems the left has is an over-abundance of pride. It forms the backbone of almost all of their issues. 

You can't tell them anything because they're so confident in both their ignorance and your villainy that any information that remotely defies their expectations and preconceptions goes in one ear and right out the other. 

Because of this, they live in a sort of un-reality where they're beset by enemies on all sides, everything about their lives is falling short of where it should be because everyone else is blinded by an evil system, and their only recourse is to angrily rage against anything and everything that upsets them. 

It's no way to live, but unless there's a crystallizing moment, or greater influence in their life to free them from the feedback loop they're stuck in, these people will continue to live in a fantasy world where their pride keeps them prisoner. Unwilling to admit they're wrong, unwilling to embrace facts, and wholly convinced of their moral superiority even as they say and do things that are reprehensible. 

If they would just take a moment to sit back, think for a moment, and learn that life isn't that severe, they'd begin lightening up. They'd become happier people, and what's more, they'd start laughing at themselves. 

And laughing at yourself is one of the healthiest things you can do. 

Earlier on Friday, I wrote that South Park's satire of Trump and the MAGA movement is actually a good thing, particularly for conservatives. It's a good reminder that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. That we absolutely should laugh at ourselves and note our own ridiculousness sometimes. 

I think the last thing we want to happen to us is for us to cease being the happy warriors Andrew Breitbart talked about all those years ago. We fight fiercely, but with honest-to-God smiles on our faces. We're anxious for the fray, but we have fun doing it. We're capable of putting it down and grabbing a beer and talking about more important things than politics. 

We don't stew over a comment, or bawl over someone speaking a truth we can't handle because we find it so offensive it makes us shake. We're not so proud that our emotions are easily manipulated by people who know how to use our pride to their advantage. 

Earlier this week, I noted that the Democrats had fed the best of radicalism for so long that it's finally devouring them. They relied on severity, fear, and loathing for so long that the people they were constantly pushing them on became the radicals that believed them and are now pushing them out. These are humorless, angry, and wildly tedious people. 

And America is largely leaving them behind. A majority of people believe they're becoming too radicalized to deal with. It's one of the reasons Trump won in 2024. 

It's my honest belief that conservatives should avoid falling into that trap. I don't think we should become so serious and hateful of the opposite side that we forget to self-reflect and crack jokes about ourselves. 

That was the trap the left fell into, and not only are they miserable, they're losers.  

If we're to maintain ourselves, and indeed America, humor is our best friend, even when it's pointed at us. I think we could really learn from the mistakes the left made in terms of refusing to control their prideful self-image that couldn't be joked about in any fashion. 

And I do hope that we never largely begin making each other afraid to laugh. I think the moment we start policing each other's sense of humor here on the right is the moment we start to crumble, not just as an ideology, but as a nation. 

I think that level of severity is too stressful to live with anyway. 

The Left Would Rather Embrace Mass Immigration Than Help Struggling Americans

The praise of immigrants over troubled native-born Americans demonstrates the Left’s tendency toward convenience and replaceability.

The  Federalist

For a Haitian family in Springfield, Ohio, the house on Chestnut Avenue represented their future in this country. They’re now wondering what can be salvaged,” a recent feature in the Washington Post described. The article — one of several of its kind — attempts to elicit empathy for hard-working, religious Haitian immigrants, trying to grasp their slice of the American dream. In that respect, the WaPo largely achieves its goal. The pro-immigration rhetoric, however, is not only about celebrating diligent émigrés — it’s about maligning the blue-collar Americans they’ve come to replace.

Burying the Lede About Immigrants

That diabolical motive hides behind the story of Fernande and Rocher Vital, an automotive plant worker and evangelical pastor, respectively. In 2024, they bought a “century-old Folk Victorian” in Springfield, Ohio — the same town that served as an epicenter of political rhetoric regarding Haitian immigrants in last year’s presidential election. With the surrounding anti-immigrant sentiments, the family contemplated leaving.

Yet some things about the Vitals’ story are buried deep in the piece. They are not true U.S. citizens — they came to America through a special U.S. program that gave Haitians temporary protected status (TPS). This permissive policy, covering roughly 1.1 million people from various countries toward the end of Biden’s term, should concern Americans.

Trump attempted to terminate TPS for Haiti during his first term but was blocked by a federal judge. An appeals court reversed that decision, but due to “injunctions and other rulings,” the protections remained intact, according to the National Immigration Forum. Biden redesignated Haiti for TPS through February 2026, but after winning on promises to secure the border, the current Trump administration once again planned to terminate the program in September of this year. This has unsurprisingly been met with more judicial pushback.

The Vitals arrived in the United States during Trump’s first term “and saved money through the Biden administration.” Another Haitian immigrant mentioned in the article enjoyed premium medical service in the United States and was “chipping away” at those medical bills. Again, that should raise eyebrows — how many non-U.S. citizens receive thousands of dollars in U.S. medical care and don’t pay for it?

The most arresting observation in the article, however, comes when the author compares immigrant laborers to those who are native-born.

“Business leaders in their reliably red county praised immigrants for reviving the local economy. Americans struggled to pass a drug test, one factory boss told a TV news crew. Not Haitians.”

In other words, native-born Americans are damaged goods, struggling with broken homes and substance abuse, and far from the ideal of a dependable laborer.

What the Left Really Thinks About Working-Class Americans

Undoubtedly, native-born, working-class Americans in all of their contemporary struggles can make for difficult employees. Vice President J.D. Vance’s own memoir offers a quite visceral example of that analysis, as does the viral 2019 documentary American Factory, describing a Chinese company’s attempts to revitalize an abandoned factory in a depressed town near Dayton, Ohio. What business owner, forced to choose between a native-born — perhaps even entitled drug addict — and a humble immigrant with a clean record, wouldn’t choose the one more likely to show up to work on time and competently fulfill an eight-hour shift?

Yet this calculus, however economically understandable, betrays a deep ignorance regarding how America got here. For decades, U.S. economic policies effectively privileged cheap foreign competitors over domestic industries, causing the offshoring of millions of industrial jobs to Asia and elsewhere.

The sexual revolution — manifested especially in the normalization of no-fault divorce — wreaked havoc on lower-income communities, whose social capital declined. An increasing number of children grew up in broken homes and suffered all manner of negative consequences — poor mental health, declining educational prospects, increased substance abuse — because of it. Opioids poured into these communities, and crime skyrocketed.

In the kind of republic the framers envisioned, this is a travesty of failed domestic policies, which are supposed to protect American families and laborers. Policymakers and industry leaders failed generations of working-class Americans — all for the sake of “more consumer freedom” and cheaper, foreign-made goods. In that republic, the nation would acknowledge and repent of the destruction of entire communities — ones that were integral to its rise as a superpower.

Instead, our elites in politics, the academy, and entertainment ridiculed blue-collar Americans as backward hicks and bigots, who deserved to be cast aside. We shame them for their sins and failures, when the very policies the elite class trumpeted as our collective future devastated the Rust Belt and Appalachia.

Yes, individuals are responsible for their bad decisions — to become addicts, to leave their spouses, to fail to keep a steady job. But this didn’t happen in a vacuum: These people’s economic and social safety net collapsed within a single generation.

The Left’s Own “Throw-Away Culture”

The celebration of recently-arrived, hard-working immigrants at the expense of troubled native-born Americans, quite poignantly demonstrates the left’s own tendency toward the often-called modern “throw-away culture” of convenience and replaceability. When it comes to energy, recycling, or “buying local,” the left unhesitatingly speaks the language of sustainability, community, and anti-consumerism. But when it comes to native-born working-class Americans, leftists have no problem denigrating their fellow citizens as “deplorables.” Immigrants, in contrast, “get the job done,” as the musical Hamilton declares.

Yet, immigrants did not build America (even if they played a critical role). Settlers did, as John Daniel Davidson’s recent Federalist article reminds us. Today, a pro-immigrant ideology seeks to repudiate that ancestry as inherently racist and colonialist and replace the past with newcomers who will keep goods and services cheap and strengthen liberal voting blocs.

This is reprehensible. Our fellow citizens are our neighbors — if not our very flesh and blood. If they are struggling to keep a job or stay sober, we should not cast them into the darkness but help them, pray for them, and uplift them. Civic friendship — and Christianity, if we still hold to it — demands we do better for an America that feels left behind. That course — which undoubtedly requires a massive shift in our national social and economic priorities —  may not be as easy as welcoming in millions of immigrants grateful for a better life. But it’s the right thing to do, as Vice President Vance argued when he spoke of the ordo amoris, the “order of charity,” that prioritizes those closest to us. Indeed, it’s the American thing to do.

Rogue ERLC Bands With Soros-Tied Group To Push Amnesty Bill

The  Federalist

The George Soros-linked Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) is pushing mass amnesty under the cloak of evangelicalism instead of representing the interests of Southern Baptist Churches who fund its existence.

In a letter sent to Congress, the ERLC claimed that the recently re-introduced DIGNITY Act is “necessary reform” to “protect our communities.” The DIGNITY Act would provide mass amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who broke the law by placing them in a twilight-legal status after they’ve paid a certain fee.

It’s terrible legislation — to say the least — but perhaps it is not surprising that ERLC would try to champion it.

The ERLC — the Southern Baptist churches’ policy and lobbying arm — was involved in the creation of the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), which bills itself as “a national movement of Christians committed to learning more about what the Bible says about ‘welcoming the stranger,’ and living out these biblical principles.” The EIT previously backed an immigration bill in 2013 that, according to a report from the Heritage Foundation, would have “granted amnesty to some 11 million illegal immigrants.”

Currently, the EIT opposes mass deportations and has advocated for granting “a pathway to Legal Permanent Residency” for illegal aliens as long as they pay a fine and acknowledge they broke the law, as reported by The Federalist’s Elle Purnell.

EIT is also reportedly affiliated with the National Immigration Forum (NIF), a leftist-aligned 501(c)(3) bankrolled by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. In fact, The Soros group bragged in 2015 that “In the course of our work, we were able to generate engagement by … some conservative voices, such as evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists through grantee National Immigration Forum.”

As pointed out by reporter Megan Basham, EIT is merely “a front group for the secular, open borders lobbyist” NIF.

And, increasingly, ERLC has drawn the ire of religious leaders for its uselessness and divisiveness.

Just recently, former Southern Baptist Church President Jack Graham expressed support for defunding the ERLC, calling the organization “the single most divisive entity of the SBC since the days of [former ERLC President] Russell Moore.”

The SBC Executive Committee established a task force to evaluate the ERLC’s effectiveness. The task force found in 2021 that the ERLC is “a source of significant distraction from the Great Commission work of Southern Baptists.” Two main criticisms lodged at the ERLC, according to Purnell, are that it is “useless and ineffective on the right political issues, and that it actively devotes resources to the wrong ones.”

And just nine months ago, as pointed out by columnist and attorney Jon Whitehead, the ERLC promised that they would conduct an “Advocacy Assessment” questionnaire before taking any policy action.

According to the Advocacy Assessment, the ERLC considers factors such as whether they “have a biblical basis to speak,” whether “advocacy on this issue [will] upset certain segments of the SBC” and, “if yes, is it still necessary to take a position/say something?”

Other assessment questions include “What has been the historic position of the ERLC/CLC since the Conservative Resurgence” and whether the ERLC’s advocacy has “a chance to meaningfully advance issues of importance to the Southern Baptist Convention.”

And yet apparently the ERLC went through these questions and still determined that backing the DIGNITY Act is the right thing to do.