Listen to Marc Wheat, General Counsel for AAF, on American Family Radio.
Click here to watch the video.
September 29, 2023
Advancing American Freedom released the following statement condemning the SAFER Banking Act, which would further allow marijuana to be sold without penalty across the country by backstopping marijuana “business” bank accounts.
“The sale of marijuana is a federal crime, but soft-on-crime politicians have used loopholes to ignore the law and allow marijuana to be sold across the country,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “Now they want the Fed and the FDIC to backstop illegal bank accounts. It is time for Congress to show moral leadership, or next we will be voting on a marijuana bank bailout.”
September 11, 2023
In a nation founded on the principle of religious freedom, the scourge of antisemitism should find no quarter anywhere in America, especially in the hallowed halls of Congress. And yet we’ve seen and heard an alarming rise in antisemitism emanating from elected Democrat members of Congress.
In recent weeks, Democratic Congress members known as a “The Squad” have once again earned their long-standing reputations as antisemites. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, who previously lost her seat on the International Relations Committee for using antisemitic tropes, announced that she would boycott Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s joint address to Congress. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, claimed that “Israel is a racist state.” And Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib doubled down on the antisemitic remarks of her peers by accusing the Israeli government of “committing the crime of apartheid.”
Notably, aside from a day or two of negative headlines, there were no consequences for such disgraceful conduct. No reprimands, no penalties, not even a half-hearted warning from U.S. President Joe Biden or Democrat leaders in Congress. Why?
The truth is, most elected Democrats agree with “Squad” members. Yes, their hostility towards Israel is partly rooted in a general disdain for concepts like nations and borders, but it goes much further than that. They believe that Israel is, in fact, a deeply racist state (though Jews are not a race); as such, it has no right to exist as a Jewish homeland. This is why their antisemitism often masquerades as criticism of Israel.
Not all Democrats are antisemites, but antisemites, especially high-visibility antisemites, are tolerated in only one major party in America: the Democratic Party.
When it comes to combating antisemitism, the left displays a stunning lack of urgency and commitment. It is incredibly hypocritical for a party that bills itself as the party of “social justice” to constantly turn a blind eye every time its elected members spew antisemitic vitriol. The selective outrage and hand-waving excuses are not only a slap in the face to Jewish communities; they reveal a more sinister truth about the left, which is that it has become deeply racist in its own way.
Yes, the left still loves to post “Black Lives Matter” signs on their well-manicured front lawns. But at the same time, they champion the BDS movement that seeks to punish innocent Israeli citizens for the imagined crimes of the Israeli government. They defend racially discriminatory college admissions processes that penalize white (some of whom are Jewish) and Asian students.
The left needs to grapple with a simple truth: Either discrimination is wrong—at all times and against all peoples—or it’s not. The left has no moral standing to condemn racism against blacks and Hispanics on one hand, while on the other promoting and defending discrimination against Jews, Asians and other out-groups.
The left’s failure to address antisemitism taints its entire ideological framework. It showcases a fundamental lack of moral integrity and a willingness to compromise its principles when it suits its narrative. How can a movement that claims to stand against all forms of hate justify its silence in the face of such a pervasive and dangerous prejudice?
The responsibility of confronting left-wing antisemitism lies squarely on the shoulders of its leaders. Antisemitism has found a comfortable home on the left, and that must end fast. Lip service won’t suffice; action is imperative. A genuine reckoning with the problem means unflinchingly identifying and denouncing instances of antisemitism within their own ranks.
It’s high time for the left to rise to the occasion, purge the poison of antisemitism from at least its visible leaders and mouthpieces, and prove that it truly stands for the values it claims to champion. Anything less is an abdication of moral responsibility and a betrayal of the very principles the left purports to uphold.
Paul Teller is the executive directer of Advancing American Freedom in Washington, D.C.
Read more at jns.org.
August 21, 2023
America never asked to be a superpower. The nations of the world bestowed that authority on the United States in the wake of World War II, when the great empires lay in ruins and the world turned to America to defeat the emerging threat of global communism.
We were asked to lead, so we did — and the world is better off because of it. Within 50 years, the Soviet menace collapsed under the weight of its own sins, and America stood proudly as freedom’s indispensable nation.
Today, there’s a certain kind of conservative, typified by Tucker Carlson and the guests who frequented his Fox program before it was canceled, who argues that America should abruptly vacate her position on the world stage. America, this argument goes, can simply no longer afford to lead the world, and should instead turn inward to focus solely on domestic concerns.
It is true that we face pressing problems at home under the disastrous presidency of Joe Biden. But it is wrong to think that we need to focus on those problems to the exclusion of mounting pressures overseas. The truth is, we can and must do both.
Those who argue for a more isolationist foreign policy act like the United States of America is a wounded animal that needs to hide away from the world to nurse its injuries. The misery that the Biden administration has inflicted on the country is indeed severe, but it is comparable in size and scope to that caused by the ineptitude of the Carter administration. And how did we deal with the domestic problems that typified Carter’s presidency? We elected Ronald Reagan, who simultaneously launched the greatest economic expansion on record and crushed an Evil Empire overseas.
The new, isolationist-minded conservatives frequently point to polls that show waning support for aiding Ukraine, while remaining noticeably quiet when other surveys show the opposite (as many inevitably do, because public opinion on the matter tends to be highly contingent, rising and falling based on how Ukraine is faring). They also tend to argue that the aid American taxpayers have already given Ukraine has been a waste, which even from a purely self-interested standpoint just isn’t true: In reality, we have received an incredible return on the money we’ve provided the Ukrainians. Ukraine still stands against an invading country with four times the population and ten times the GDP, which is a testament to our support. Vladimir Putin recently raised the maximum age for conscription from 27 to 30 — a clear sign that he is desperate for new troops to replace the many thousands he has already lost in the war. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia succeeded earlier this month in gathering more than 40 countries, including China, India, the United States, and Ukraine, to build consensus on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s ten-point peace plan for his country.
Despite all these reasons for optimism, the burgeoning isolationist movement is hopelessly pessimistic at its core. It begins with a premise that has never, ever been true about the United States: We can’t. Its members believe we can’t possibly check the growing power of the Chinese Communist Party while also bringing down inflation at home, or help Ukraine defend its borders from Putin’s bloodthirsty invasion while also securing our own border.
These are arguments that once would’ve been more likely to emanate from an isolationist Left, and they betray a lack of confidence in America, a dim view of our purpose, and a fundamental disconnect with the principles of our founding. In a predictable irony, the Left has largely rallied to Biden’s side when it comes to Ukraine. Parts of the right, understandably skeptical of anything Biden touches and of international elites, have unfortunately let that skepticism color their view of the war. But other conservatives, such as Tom Cotton and Mike Gallagher, have rightly recognized that the problem isn’t that the Biden administration has aided Ukraine, but that it has done so haltingly and erratically. For far too long, Biden has dragged his feet on providing tanks, fighter jets, and other weapons, preventing Ukraine from making further progress in its counter-offensive. To this day, Biden refuses to provide long-range missiles like the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which would empower Ukraine to take out key command posts deep behind Russian lines. The United States must equip Ukraine to win, and not just live to fight another day.
The Left has long believed that America is a sinful nation whose only role in international affairs should be writing large checks to other countries as a form of penitence. But responding to the outsized influence progressives have on international institutions by giving up on such institutions completely, as isolationist-minded conservatives would have us do, is not the answer. It will accomplish nothing save for ensuring that the Left captures such institutions permanently.
Beijing is salivating as it watches the war in Ukraine unfold, constantly assessing how much aggression the West will tolerate as it maps out its own invasion plans for Taiwan. Taiwan is also watching Ukraine closely and supporting its defense of its sovereign territory, confounding some on the right who wrongly hold that support for one cause necessarily precludes support for the other. The Taiwanese and the Chinese both know that if American isolationists are successful in pulling the nation away from its support for Ukraine, they will give China the green light it needs to throw the entire Indo-Pacific into chaos.
And such regional chaos would just be the beginning. Power abhors a vacuum — and if America abdicated her responsibility to lead the world, it would leave a very large vacuum indeed. Were the United States to step back from her role, it would send an open invitation for someone else to lead in her stead — and China and Russia are more than willing to take up that mantle.
However America’s foreign engagements may rate in particular polls, we can be sure that the American people would deeply detest a world in which American leadership were diminished or even disappeared outright. Conservatives shouldn’t welcome the prospect of such a world. Instead, we should take the more difficult but principled path blazed by our forebears, accepting the responsibilities of global leadership in order to secure our freedom and prosperity here at home, and to ensure stability around the world. There is nothing stopping us from simultaneously securing our border, ending inflation, balancing our budget, lowering taxes, and fixing all the other messes that Biden and the Democrats have created — save for our will to rise to these challenges in the ways our forebears did.
Tim Chapman is a senior adviser at Advancing American Freedom.
Read more at NationalReview.com.
Podcast 150: Uncovering Deeper Realities: Homelessness Crisis, Conservative Trends and Free Speech with Representative Matt Gress, Tim Chapman and Dr. Owen Anderson
Listen HERE.
July 31, 2023
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s political advocacy group is calling for a declaration of an invasion at the southern border as part of a legislative agenda to tackle the ongoing migrant crisis.
Advancing American Freedom, which was founded by the 2024 presidential candidate, released its agenda Monday to secure the border and end illegal immigration.
It calls for legislation to declare an “invasion” in response to the crisis that has seen record numbers of migrants hit the southern border since 2021.
“The United States Constitution declares that the federal government shall protect states from invasion. So long as the Biden administration refuses to do this job, Congress should officially declare an invasion so that states have the legal authority to secure the border for themselves,” the agenda states.
The use of the term “invasion” has grown in Republican circles in recent years to describe the crisis. Both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have used the term as part of their presidential campaigns – with DeSantis promising to “stop the invasion” as part of his border strategy.
Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has cited the “invasion” clause to authorize the return of illegal immigrants to the border with Mexico. That comes after there were more than 1.7 million migrant encounters at the southern border in FY 2021 and 2.4 million in FY 2022.
Democrats have taken aim at the use of the term, saying it is dangerous and encourages anti-immigrant sentiment.
“The invasion narrative some members push in this hearing room is bigoted, fact-free and dangerous,” Jerry Nadler, House Judiciary Committee ranking member, said at a hearing last week.
The policy proposals put forward by Pence’s group also call for Congress to explore a possible impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas – something that has been called for by a number of House members.
DHS has responded to those calls by urging Congress to pass legislation to fix a “broken” immigration system and provide the funding requested by the Biden administration.
Separately, the AAF agenda calls for an end to “chain migration” – which allows for immigrants to sponsor relatives for green cards into the U.S. – and also for reforms to temporary visa programs like the controversial H-1B visa program. Critics have said such visas are used by companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign nationals.
It also backs legislation already introduced in Congress – including the GOP House border security package passed earlier this year. Other bills supported are Kate’s Law, as well as measures to end the visa lottery, allow victims of illegal immigrant crime to sue sanctuary cities, reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols, and continue border wall construction at state level.
“Congress needs to hold President Biden, Secretary Mayorkas, and the Department of Homeland Security accountable for their dangerous failings at the border, while also passing legislation that gives our border agents the resources and restored powers they need to do their jobs and enforce the law, AAF Executive Director Paul Teller said in a statement. “Advancing American Freedom believes that a country without a secure border and the rule of law isn’t a country at all and will continue to call for decisive action from Congress and the administration to keep our country safe.”
The policy rollout, which will be followed by a visit by AAF staff this week, is the latest indicator of how the border crisis is likely to continue to be a top political and 2024 issue – even as the Biden administration has touted a recent drop in numbers at the border since the end of Title 42 in May.
Republicans have blamed the crisis on the Biden administration, with 2024 candidates rallying around calls to restore policies implemented when Pence was vice president. The Biden administration has said it is expanding lawful pathways while punishing illegal immigration as part of its post-Title 42 strategy.
However, the recent torpedoing of its asylum rule after a left-wing legal challenge has raised new fears that a potential new surge could be coming soon.
Read more at FoxNews.com.
July 27, 2023
Our Founding Fathers created three co-equal branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. But today, they are all ruled by a de facto fourth branch: the administrative state.
The Supreme Court accidentally elevated the permanent bureaucracy into a fourth branch of government with its 1984 ruling in Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The case established a legal doctrine known as Chevron deference, in which federal courts defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statutes as long as that interpretation is “reasonable.” Agencies quickly stretched congressional ambiguity to include congressional silence on a matter, allowing them to create laws out of thin air.
Over the years, Chevron deference has steadily empowered unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, allowing them to legislate by fiat while undermining the role of Congress and distorting the original intent of America’s founders. At the same time, the courts themselves have abdicated their responsibility to provide scrutiny and oversight by automatically deferring to government agencies. Worst of all, because deference is given to agency interpretations rather than the actual text of the law, bureaucrats can completely alter the law’s meaning while bypassing the legislative process altogether.
For American citizens and businesses caught in the bureaucracy’s crosshairs, it can be nearly impossible even to comprehend the implications of arcane regulations or what their legal obligations may be. This lack of clarity not only hampers public participation in the regulatory process — it forces those involved to spend untold fortunes just to stay in compliance.
Having been gifted such sweeping power, it should come as no surprise that the administrative state has come to relish wielding it with impunity. With little fear of judicial reversal, government agencies stretch the boundaries of their authority with each passing day. The result is an ever-growing mountain of burdensome regulations that choke out economic growth, trample individual liberties, and stifle innovation.
It is time for this bureaucratic tyranny to end.
On several occasions, the Supreme Court has signaled openness to reexamining Chevron deference, but has yet to act. Advancing American Freedom, the advocacy organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, is encouraging the court to end Chevron deference and defang the administrative state.
AAF has filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in Loper Bright Enterprises et al. v. Gina Raimondo, a case in which a federal agency is absurdly attempting to place bureaucrats on fishing boats and make the owners pay for it. Our brief asks the court to make clear that congressional silence is not tantamount to relinquishing its legislative powers, and it is certainly not permission for a fill-in-the-blank overreach of its limited powers.
All told, AAF has brought together more than three dozen conservative organizations to file briefs in five Supreme Court cases arguing against Chevron deference in just the last year.
Our argument is simple: Congress alone has power of the purse. The Chevron doctrine, by allowing mischievous agencies to seek funds outside of the appropriations process, has exceeded its delegated powers, and we are asking the court to rein in the roving powers of unelected agencies usurping powers the Constitution grants to Congress alone.
But even if our entreaties to the Supreme Court fall short, there is still reason for hope. The House recently passed the Separation of Powers Restoration Act, which would repeal the doctrine of Chevron deference. Obviously, the legislation has little chance of passing while liberals control the Senate and the White House. But it should be a priority for the next conservative administration, along with legislation clarifying that all executive branch employees serve at the pleasure of the president.
Repealing Chevron deference is crucial to restoring the proper balance of power and upholding the principles that underpin our constitutional democracy. Our founders, in their enduring wisdom, created three branches of government. It’s time to get back to the system they created.
Marc Wheat is the general counsel for Advancing American Freedom.
Read more at WashingtonExaminer.com
July 24, 2023
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A conservative nonprofit launched by former Vice President Mike Pence is representing 11 conservative groups in supporting fishermen challenging the extensive power of the federal bureaucracy.
Advancing American Freedom, which plays no role in Pence’s 2024 presidential campaign, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in which the court will revisit the longstanding precedent of Chevron deference. The group exclusively gave The Daily Signal a copy of the brief.
In Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council (1984), the Supreme Court held that whenever a law is ambiguous, a federal agency has the authority to interpret the scope and content of that ambiguity to achieve its ends, so long as the interpretation is “reasonable.”
This precedent granted executive agencies tremendous power to effectively rewrite the law, critics like Advancing American Freedom claim.
“The Left has used Chevron Deference to grow the administrative state and circumvent the approval of Congress to push their own agenda,” J. Marc Wheat, Advancing American Freedom’s general counsel, told The Daily Signal. “This is never what the Founders intended; unelected bureaucrats at various agencies do not have the power to legislate and we hope that the Supreme Court checks the Chevron Deference once and for all.”
In Loper Bright, fishermen are challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service—represented by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Federal law forces fishermen to carry inspectors aboard their vessels. A new Fisheries Service rule forces the fishermen to pay the salaries of these federal inspectors. The federal law requiring the inspections does not stipulate that fishermen must pay inspectors’ salaries, but the Fisheries Service insists that it has the power to demand payment under Chevron.
A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the Fisheries Service in August 2022, noting that the statute leaves “room for agency discretion.” Yet Judge Justin Walker dissented.
“Did Congress authorize the National Marine Fisheries Service to make herring fishermen in the Atlantic pay the wages of federal monitors who inspect them at sea?” he asks in his dissent. “Congress unambiguously did not.”
“Fishing is a hard way to earn a living,” he notes. While “Congress can make profitable fishing even harder by forcing fishermen to spend a fifth of their revenue on the wages of federal monitors embedded by regulation onto their ships,” it has not done so. “Until Congress does that, the Fisheries Service cannot.”
Advancing American Freedom filed the amicus brief on Monday, representing itself and ten other conservative organizations. Eagle Forum, the National Center for Public Policy Research, Project 21 Black Leadership Network, Students for Life of America, and Young America’s Foundation joined the brief.
The brief begins by quoting the Declaration of Independence, noting that the Founders faulted King George III for erecting “New Offices… to harass” them “and eat out their substance.”
“Here, a New England fishing business is threatened with insolvency because a Federal agency seeks to swarm the industry with bureaucrats to consume the proceeds of some 20% of the daily catch,” the petitioners write. “Bureaucracies that have grown smug and fat through Chevron deference should reacquaint themselves with their country’s history.”
“This case presents the question of Chevron deference dead on without any need to tack, offering an excellent opportunity to abandon this sinking ship and to offer lower courts a more seaworthy vessel for judicial review,” the petitioners write.
Conservative Supreme Court justices have criticized Chevron deference in recent years. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence in Michigan v. EPA (2015) that Chevron “wrests from Courts the ultimate interpretative authority ‘to say what the law is,’ and hands it over to” the executive branch. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote last fall that the court should acknowledge “that Chevron did not undo, and could not have undone, the judicial duty to provide an independent judgment of the law’s meaning.”
Federal agencies have used Chevron deference to justify many controversial policies.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, President Joe Biden directed his administration to “protect and expand access to abortion care.” Following the prompting of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued guidance claiming to find an abortion mandate in a law that had never been interpreted as mandating abortion.
The federal agency interpreted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires health care providers to provide “stabilizing treatment” in certain circumstances, as mandating abortion. If a health care provider determines that abortion is necessary to protect the mother’s life, he or she must either perform the abortion or refer the woman to a medical facility that would perform it, regardless of the relevant state law.
Advancing American Freedom, representing 25 other conservative and pro-life groups, filed an amicus brief challenging this interpretation of the law. The brief argues that this interpretation “would expand the meaning of the 1986 statute to include abortions as a form of treatment and would illegally overwrite legitimate state laws designed to protect women and the unborn.”
As in Loper Bright, Advancing American Freedom urges the Supreme Court to overturn Chevron.
Read more at DailySignal.com.