Judge Doughty issued a preliminary injunction forbidding numerous federal agencies, including the FBI, the Justice Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as many individuals within the executive branch like White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, from communicating or meeting with: “[S]ocial-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
The injunction bans the feds from working with outside groups such as the Stanford Internet Observatory that induce social-media companies to suppress and delete “protected free speech.” And it even prevents the government from “notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (‘BOLO’) for postings containing protected free speech.”
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a temporary stay of Judge Doughty’s injunction while the case is on appeal before the 5th Circuit, and said the appeal will be heard on an expedited basis.
Judge Doughty’s 155-page opinion has page after page after page detailing the extensive meetings, emails, and other communications between government officials badgering and threatening social-media executives to censor and close accounts. Platforms like Facebook were actually providing their government handlers with reports on how they were carrying out the government’s directed censorship.
The FBI’s continued claim that it was only concerned with “disinformation” by foreign countries is directly contradicted by the evidence in the case. Judge Doughty concluded that the “FBI made no attempt to distinguish whether those reports of election disinformation were American or foreign.” And it is obvious from the facts that the many government officials and agencies involved were only concerned with censoring any views, opinions, and claims – foreign or domestic – that disagreed with, or criticized their (and the government’s) political, social, and medical orthodoxy on multiple issues.
They were engaging in viewpoint discrimination, a direct and blatant violation of the First Amendment, and according to Doughty, “virtually all of the free speech suppressed was ‘conservative’ free speech.” While the First Amendment normally only applies to the government and not private parties like Twitter and Facebook, these social-media platforms essentially became agents of the government. Through them, the government used its “coercive power or exercised such significant encouragement that the private parties’ choice [to censor] must be deemed to be that of the government.”
A refresher on the sordid history of the federal government’s free speech abuses, and specifically the FBI’s, is in order. The FBI engaged in a nefarious campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders of civil rights organizations that included illegal wiretaps and informants. Why?
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Because the FBI pinned them as radicals whose activities and misinformation were a security threat, with J. Edgar Hoover labeling King as the “most notorious liar in the country.”
But only as they determine what is the “truth.” That is the road to tyranny.
Abby Carr is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HANS VON SPAKOVSKY
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Every U. S. president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Joe Biden has proclaimed the third week of July to be National Captive Nations Week. In the first proclamation, President Eisenhower condemned “the imperialistic and aggressive policies of Soviet communism” and urged the American people to recommit their support of the “just aspirations” of the captive nations for freedom and national independence.
Eisenhower did not mince words, declaring that communism had created “a vast empire” that posed “a dire threat” to America’s security and all the free peoples of the world. The word “empire” anticipated President Ronald Reagan’s reference to the Soviets’ “evil empire” in a 1983 address.
President Ronald Reagan acknowledges the applause after delivering what is known as the “Tear Down This Wall” speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, June 12, 1987. (AP Photo/Ira Schwartz, File)
DISMANTLING THE MYTHS OF THE SOCIALIST PARADISE
One president who understood full well the importance of Captive Nations Week was Reagan, who said in 1988: “On behalf of Vice President Bush and myself, this pledge we make to… all the peoples of the captive nations around the world: America will never forget your plight, and we will never cease to speak the truth [about communism].”
A little more than one year later, the Berlin Wall fell and the 100 million captive peoples behind the Iron Curtain were at last free after over four decades of communist captivity.
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When we conceived the idea of a Victims of Communism Memorial, the first person we consulted was Professor Dobriansky, who became the first chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He is, we believe, the only American to play a major role in the construction of two Washington monuments – the statue of the 19th-century Ukrainian poet and national hero, Taras Shevchenko, and the Victims of Communism Memorial, which features a bronze replica of the Goddess of Democracy erected by freedom-seeking Chinese students in June 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
Lev Dobriansky lived a full life centered on one powerful idea: “Let us constantly strive to bring about the freedom and independence of all captive nations and peoples.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY LEE EDWARDS
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Earlier this year, Mainor was the only Democrat to vote for a school choice bill that ultimately died in the Georgia House after passing the Senate along party lines. Her party leadership wasn’t happy.
“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor told Fox News digital. Much worse than not standing with her, the party establishment made her a target, with some even promising a blank check to whomever would primary her.
Mainor took a big political risk on Tuesday. Holding her deep blue district near Atlanta will be an uphill battle if she chooses to run for the same office as a Republican. This fact shows true courage on Mainor’s part.
As Georgia House Speaker Pro Tempore Jan Jones said Tuesday, “Representative Mainor has demonstrated a courage of her convictions that I admire. She has fought to give choice to Georgia families trapped in failing public schools, and we welcome her to our team to continue fighting for educational opportunities for all of Georgia’s children.”
Mainor said Tuesday that “this wasn’t a political decision for me. It was a MORAL one. I will never apologize for being a black woman with a mind of my own.”
These Democratic defections haven’t led to a full-throated bipartisan push for school choice among elected officials, yet. The political tides are turning and the willingness of lawmakers like Mainor and Cotham to stand with families is putting pressure on other politicians.
Although school choice support is strong across ideological lines, Democrats by and large take their cues from the teachers unions, who are more focused on maintaining power than empowering parents.
That time has come for school choice. Families have woken up after seeing the failures of teachers-union-induced remote learning. Parents are now paying attention and holding politicians accountable.
Both political parties can gain voters – and even sitting legislators – on the popular issue of parental rights in education. The Democratic Party needs to adjust to the times and listen to their constituents, not just those in the teachers union, if they want to win in the long run.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE BY COREY DEANGELIS
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New York Times columnist Dowd caused something of a commotion over the weekend by criticizing Joe Biden, a rare event for the Left-leaning press.
In a piece titled “It’s Seven Grandkids, Mr. President,” Dowd berated the president, correctly, for ignoring his seventh grandchild, Navy Joan Roberts, born to Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts. She (and her Republican sister Peggy, apparently a fan of the president) are shocked that Biden, a self-declared family man, would be so unkind to Hunter’s out-of-wedlock daughter.
BIDEN NIBBLES ON FRIGHTENED YOUNG GIRL DURING TRIP TO FINLAND, WEIRDING OUT TWITTER USERS
The Dowd sisters have finally cottoned onto what millions figured out long ago: Joe Biden is a fraud. The president’s big flashy smile and corny language have conned voters for years, but Americans are figuring out that the president is not at all who he pretends to be.
For example, he is not the genial, grandfatherly fellow he pretends to be. On Monday, Axios published a scathing piece titled “Old Yeller,” about Biden’s bad temper, “rages” and “moodiness,” including his copious use of vulgar language.
The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and her sister have finally cottoned onto what millions figured out long ago: Joe Biden is a fraud.
More fundamentally, please remember the core promises of his 2020 campaign: that he would govern as a political moderate and work to bring the nation together. He tossed those pledges out the window the minute he occupied the Oval Office.
To win the 2020 election, he did a deal with then-rival Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., more or less adopting the progressive senator’s agenda in return for his followers’ votes.
Biden promised to return decency and honesty to the White House. With transvestites baring their bosoms on the South Lawn, cocaine appearing in the West Wing and, worse, scandal enveloping the president, we can agree that pledge has been broken, too. Biden is accused, credibly, of taking bribes and receiving payoffs from foreign companies while serving as vice president; the majority of voters now think these charges are true.
Instead of responding to these horrifying allegations, the president brushes aside the mounting evidence of apparent wrongdoing as “malarkey” or, worse, challenges the press by asking, “Where’s the money?”
Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian owner of Burisma and the country’s former minister of ecology and natural resources, claims to have forked over millions in bribes to Hunter and Joe Biden; he says the money went into so many shell corporations “it will take ten years” to trace; my guess – we’ll get there eventually.”
Foreign policy guru Eliot Cohen published a piece in the Atlantic in recent days, thanking Biden for having prevented Donald Trump for occupying the White House for another four years but also writing, “The president has no business running for president at his age.”
In a fawning interview over the weekend, CNN’s Fareed Zacharia flattered the president before asking about Biden’s “hardened supporters” who think “the next thing [you] should do is step aside and let another generation of Democrats take the baton.”
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The paradox is fructive, both in that it shows us how the group so quickly became the new grassroots of the conservative movement, and why their message has been so persuasive.
On the two floors of the elegant hotel where the event took place were to be seen bright floral dresses mixed with hugs and laughter as attendees met and mingled. Many it appeared were experiencing that oh-so-modern phenomenon of meeting a social media friend for the first time in real life.
There was also something of a secretive nature to the affair as, for example, the media, for the most part, were not allowed into the breakout sessions where strategy was discussed, but can you really blame them for this?
The left and their media allies piled on with a bizarre and ridiculous claim that Moms for Liberty supports the ideology of Hitler. At best this take is insane, at worst it is malicious and politically driven. When I asked the chair of that Florida chapter what she made of the backlash, she smiled, shook her head and said, “They just lie.”
And this really is the crux of the problem. Much of the left has decided that certain conversations touching on identity simply cannot be had, even if that conversation is central to public policy.
Perfectly reasonable positions, like not exposing young children to sexually explicit images are forbidden, leaving frustrated, often furious parents powerless to have a say in their kids’ education. The members of Moms for Liberty I spoke to simply will not accept this. They do not accept that worrying about your kids is hatred.
Many of the moms and dads I spoke with had run for their local school boards in states from Florida to Pennsylvania and Indiana to name just a few. When I asked one woman how her chapter of Moms for Liberty operates, she told me, “We mainly organize around local elections, that’s where change happens.”
2024 presidential candidate gives remarks at Moms for Liberty’s Joyful Warriors National Summit in Philadelphia on June 30, 2023. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
This hyper-focus on the local was evident in how little talk there seemed to be about the 2024 GOP nomination, even at a conference that had impressively drawn almost all the major figures in the race, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley. The general attitude I heard was that most people liked all of them.
Many were stoic, I heard a lot of, “water off a duck’s back” or “badge of honor,” but not all. Some admitted that it did hurt, especially at first, that having such vile rhetoric hurled at them did have an impact.
And why should it not? Why would an assault of slurs from the left at the right be any less emotionally harmful than the other way around? Of course, it hurt. But as one woman told me, “I know I’m not any of those things, and I just pray for the protesters.”
Speaking of those protesters, they were, for the most part, that strange kind of political activist who tries to shut down anyone covering them and their message. When you do find someone willing to be interviewed it is thwarted almost immediately by black bloc Antifa types who block your camera.
Protesters descend on Philadelphia as former President Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis give remarks at ‘Moms for Liberty”s ‘Joyful Warriors National Summit’. (Fox News Photo/Joshua Comins)
One older man I spoke to was a perfect embodiment of this. His sign called Moms for Liberty fascists. I said, “Why do you think they are fascists?” He said I should ask his wife, who wasn’t there, because she is a librarian.
I persisted, basically saying, “If you’re calling someone a fascist shouldn’t you at least know why?” “Again,” he replied, “she knows more about it.”
This is doubtless the attitude that many in the mainstream had as they covered the conference. You could see the suspicion in their eyes as media credentials were picked up. After all, this was a real live hate group, right? The journalists were ready to expose the bigots.
When Moms for Liberty is given a free and fair platform, when people actually hear them out instead of hurling insults at them, their message is effective. It resonates, even with those predisposed to oppose them, and obviously, the vociferous critics and protesters know this too.
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During one protest a leader of the Young Communists took to the microphone to say, “There is no room for these conversations in Philadelphia,” and that really summed it up. These leftists aren’t afraid of the conversation because it’s harmful or legitimizing. They are afraid because their own arguments don’t stand up.
The greatest contribution that Moms for Liberty has made in its brief existence is not just demanding to ask important questions, demanding that progressives answer them, but also giving millions of Americans across the nation the courage and backup to do the same.
One got the sense these three days in the nation’s birthplace that this organization is just getting started, that its righteous fire is spreading fast, and that anyone trying to get between them and their kids should know they won’t stop fighting until that threat is gone.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM DAVID MARCUS
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Well, we are pushing back. The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and California have no right or legal justification to force truckers to follow their radical climate-change policies. That’s why I, along with 18 other state attorneys general, are taking Biden to court.
Iowa’s trucking industry employs about 100,000 Iowans. That is nearly one in 13 of our state’s workers. Meanwhile, Biden’s illegal truck ban puts the whole industry at risk. The Biden administration has set us on track to devastate the nation’s biofuels industry, hike prices for businesses and truckers, and designate California as a leading decision-maker in the trucking industry.
BIDEN ADMIN ECO RULE CURBING OIL DRILLING, MINING FACES WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION
States are forced to comply with California’s zero-emissions standards to compete in the market. This incentivizes truck manufacturing companies to spike prices for gas and diesel vehicles so that Americans won’t buy them.
Eight other states have already adopted California’s sweeping truck ban, including Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington. Connecticut, Maine and North Carolina are following in their footsteps.
Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it say that California gets to make the rules for the rest of the country. On the contrary, the Constitution requires equal sovereignty among the states, meaning that one state does not get special treatment to set the standards for everyone else.
States are forced to comply with California’s zero-emissions standards to compete in the market. This incentivizes truck manufacturing companies to spike prices for gas and diesel vehicles so that Americans won’t buy them.
As attorneys general, we aren’t going to take a backseat as the Biden administration and California attempt to impose their radical climate agenda and regulate truckers out of business. It’s time to hit the brakes on the California truck ban, and our lawsuit will do just that.
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Leftist outrage greeted the Supreme Court’s recent ruling banning affirmative action. That anger is misplaced; it should be directed at the failing inner city public schools that graduate generation after generation of Black and Brown children incapable of succeeding in college, or in life.
If every child in the United States were receiving a decent education, we would not need affirmative action.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissenting opinion that the court’s decision blocking race-based admissions “creates a leadership pipeline that is less diverse than our increasingly diverse society, reserving “positions of influence, affluence and prestige in America” for a predominantly white pool of college graduates.”
Specifically, only 37% of Black children at Wakefield’s school were considered proficient in English language arts and only 28% of Hispanic kids made the cut. In math, 33% of Blacks made the grade and only 20% of Hispanics. Wakefield is not unique; New York State data overall is even worse.
School officials in New York and in other Democrat-run states hope to hide such unacceptable performance by eliminating student testing and grades; they have also eased graduation requirements, hoping puzzled parents won’t notice that their children cannot do the work necessary at the next level. Worse, Democrat officials have cruelly blocked the spread of charter schools which, with their documented success in educating minority kids, show what a sham the public system is.
The left says standardized testing is racist, but recent scores posted by minority children at public charter school Success Academy, prove that’s a lie. Eighth graders at all Success schools, mostly low-income minorities, recently took New York Regents tests meant for high school juniors and seniors. Some 99% passed the algebra exam and 95% passed the English test, way outperforming public high school students.
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On Bowman’s website he solicits donations, claiming “that Our movement does not accept money from Corporate PACs or lobbyists, and depends entirely on contributions from people like you.” Except that the teachers unions gave him $22,500 in 2022 alone and more than $33,000 overall, according to Open Secrets.
Of course, that’s just the money part. The teachers unions spends tens of millions of dollars each year funding mostly Democrat candidates also turn out hundreds of thousands of “volunteers” across the nation to harvest ballots and get out the vote.
Jamaal Bowman is not special, except that he outrageously boasts of being an educator; almost every Democrat is complicit in turning a blind eye to the failure of our public schools and the damage done to the hopes and dreams of minority children left behind by that underperformance. Condemning kids to second-class status does not matter; the dollars spewed by the teachers unions are more important.
So, expressing outrage at the Supreme Court for banning colleges’ use of race to admit students is the height of hypocrisy. How about focusing on making sure kids of all colors have the academic preparation necessary to get into schools on their own merit instead? Drop the bigotry of low expectations and enact real reforms in our schools, letting every kid learn and compete.
George W. Bush called education the “great civil rights issue of our time.” He was right; tragically, Democrats do not care.
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Considering the dire state of his approval ratings, it’s no surprise that Biden tried to buy his way out of the problems his administration has created. But that’s not the American dream—that’s the socialist dream, and I am glad the Supreme Court rejected it. The decision represents a major victory not only for the American taxpayer, but for the rule of law.
Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative powers in Congress. Our Founders recognized that no part of this legislative power is more important—or more effective—than the power of the purse. And as most high school civics students understand, the power to spend money and forgive debts rests with Congress alone. But the Biden administration, through its unilateral decision to erase debt owed to the United States, seized an alarming and unprecedented degree of Congress’s constitutional authority. As we argued in our brief, “where the President has failed in his duty to faithfully execute the law, it is the province and duty of the Court to remind him of that obligation.” In rejecting President Biden’s executive action, the Supreme Court did exactly that.
But the Court’s opinion is important for reasons beyond its defense of the separation of powers. The American higher education system is in shambles, and decades of federal meddling are directly to blame. The Court’s decision today was a step in the right direction, but more action is needed to reign in a higher education system that has become largely unaccountable to those it purports to serve.
Colleges, of course, are happy participants in the scheme. Institutions of higher learning gorge themselves on taxpayer money at the federal trough. Under our current system, an hourly wage earner in rural Tennessee is forced to subsidize a dean of Diversity Equity and Inclusion earning six figures. Well-paid administrators have rapidly multiplied on university campuses over the last two decades, with some elite colleges employing more administrators than academic faculty—and others, more administrators than students.
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A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court, Friday, June 23, 2023, in Washington. ((AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Do we really want taxpayers bankrolling a system where elite universities, which already boast multi-billion-dollar endowments, charge American students over $50,000 a year to prop up bureaucrats who add questionable value to their degrees? Indeed, considering the leftist dogma being pushed on many of these college campuses, these administrators often detract from our students’ educations. This is the system our federal government has created, and it is fundamentally unjust.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN
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Today, a new kind of Maoism is developing in the American left, and it is a direct threat to the American traditions of individual rights, the rule of law, the Constitution, and personal freedom.
I was recently reminded how real the threat of renewed Maoism is – and how little it is understood – when a Chinese American woman confronted me at a hotel during breakfast.
She was so emotional, she was shaking. She said, “you must save America.”
Her message resonated with me intellectually and emotionally. As an historian, I have deeply studied Mao and the Chinese Communist dictatorship (see “Trump vs. China,” which I wrote in 2019 with my colleague Claire Christensen).
The Maoist levels of violence and mass murder have not occurred here (thank God), but the patterns of psychological coercion and propaganda are thriving. Maoist-style groupthink and forced confession and coercion have been spreading through our top universities and the corporate news media for decades. They have recently permeated our governmental bureaucracies, military, and even large American corporations.
I was especially impacted by the woman’s warning, because I previously spoke with Xi Van Fleet for my podcast Newt’s World. Xi is a survivor from Communist China who played a leading role in standing up to the Loudon County, Va., school board. Board members were committed to teaching propaganda and ignoring parents’ concerns about transgender policies. Xi’s anger and clarity of message earned a great deal of media coverage and helped oppose the school board position. Now, she has a new book coming out in October titled “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Dimon wrote, “Our identities are who the usurpers of power say we are, and we get persecuted or rewarded accordingly. … Maoist identity politics has come to America – just switch ‘class’ to ‘races,’ and things fall into the exact same places.”
Mao Tse-Tung, chair of the Chinese Communist Party, on a balcony clapping his hands. (Getty Images)
As my coauthor Christensen wrote to me, you can see new Maoist patterns in America through the left’s radicalization of youth, destruction of history, and widespread use of propaganda.
“Recall the objective of Mao’s Cultural Revolution (in addition to eliminating his opposition) and the aim of the Red Guards was to destroy the ‘four olds:’ old ideas, old customs, old habits, and old culture. Mao made an enemy out of history and tradition,” she wrote.
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We need to be clear about the nature of this new Maoism with American characteristics – and take head-on those who use Maoist tactics to dominate our schools, media, bureaucracies, companies, and society.
Our freedom is at stake.
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We don’t do that anymore. Projects that once took months or a couple of years now take decades.
The U.S. is among the slowest nations in the developed world in approving infrastructure projects – particularly when it comes to energy.
Why? As co-chairs of a bipartisan group of governors working on energy policy, we submit that the primary culprit is lousy permitting policies that needlessly drag out projects and which now endanger the massive infrastructure investments the federal government has made since 2021.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey speak to reporters outside the White House, Feb. 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
By setting a maximum two-year time limit and establishing guidelines to ensure each project review is spearheaded by just one federal agency, Congress made substantial headway in reducing some of the uncertainty and redundancy plaguing the process.
We hope Congress and the administration view this success as a down payment –important progress but not sufficient.
Setting deadlines for federal review solves only part of the problem. Projects approved after years of rigorous environmental assessment and a thorough public comment process can face new delays from endless legal challenges.
Every state has an example like this. In Utah, a transmission line to carry electricity through the state to deliver low-carbon electricity to California from a wind farm in Wyoming just got approval – also after 15 years.
In Louisiana, a state-of-the-art coastal restoration project is finally moving forward after six years of review. Time is of the essence to protect communities threatened by shoreline erosion, but the project was still delayed despite being fast-tracked by both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Further reforms could backstop indefinite challenge periods by establishing clear and durable standards for the public comment process and limiting judicial review once those standards have been met.
In fact, states can play an important role here. Democratic and Republican governors, through the National Governors Association, are already working together across party lines and state lines on solutions to safely speed up the process for all types of projects: wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear, oil, natural gas, coastal restoration, electric transmission, coal, pipelines, transportation and water infrastructure, forest projects, broadband, and critical minerals.
And because states and territories play a leading role in developing and building infrastructure projects, a better process would leverage state expertise. Through reforms to allow revenue-sharing and other support, states could hire staff, unleash innovative technologies and apply their on-the-ground expertise to further speed the process without compromising safety.
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John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, is governor of Louisiana.
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