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Charlie Kirk launches GOTV campaign to enlist 1 million 'Students for Trump' in 2020

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk is launching a massive get-out-the-vote campaign Tuesday aimed at identifying and enlisting 1 million student supporters of President Trump ahead of the 2020 election.
The “Students for Trump” campaign will look to target students on more than 300 campuses, in what Kirk describes as the biggest operation of its kind.
“This is the most aggressive voter identification GOTV program targeting students on college campuses for a Republican president ever,” Kirk told Fox News. “The road to the White House goes straight through college campuses and the left is targeting a lot of their messages on policy directly toward students—student loan forgiveness, unrealistic socialist programs—we’re doing everything we can to make sure Trump does get re-elected.”
WATCH CHARLIE KIRK ON 'FOX & FRIENDS' TUESDAY AT 6:30 A.M.
The project is affiliated with Kirk's conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA. The Students for Trump push originally was launched last election cycle by conservative commentator Ryan Fournier, who then partnered with Kirk and Turning Point USA to expand its reach.
Kirk told Fox News that “Students for Trump” has a budget of $15 million, 150 staffers and a presence on more than 1,400 college campuses due to its affiliation with Turning Point USA. He described it as a “nationwide effort” with a “hyper-focus” on key swing states.
Kirk told Fox News that the goal is to “identify” Republicans on campuses and motivate them to the polls with pro-Trump rallies, voter registration events, digital advertising and more.
“We’re going to encourage students to vote in the states where their campuses are,” Kirk said, specifically referring to students at colleges in Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Ohio—key states critical to a Trump victory.
“Democrats believe that this is their path of least resistance—that they’ll be able to waltz onto campuses, put their messages across with little to no cross-examination, and what we’re doing is going to be a very large component,” Kirk said.
He'll have his work cut out for him.
According to a Gallup poll from March, only 28 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 approve of the president’s job performance.
And Democratic presidential candidates indeed are openly appealing to students with student loan forgiveness programs and other promises of free or subsidized higher education.
Kirk argued, though, that “Students for Trump” will bring “much-needed sobriety and reality to political promises being made by the left.”
“The probability that these gallivanting politicians will be able to forgive massive student loan debt and deliver free health care is quite low,” he said. “It would add decreased economic mobility and freedom and opportunity, and adding this type of reality is so overdue and needed.”
Kirk added that while it is “very difficult to run up against an entire political party” pushing for student loan forgiveness, he argued that “a large part of the college population includes students who went to community college first and worked their way through college.”
“The majority of students do have student loan debt, but there are a fair amount of students that work and have been paying off their student loans religiously—do they get any form of reimbursement?” Kirk said. “We will target those students in these key states that have worked their way through college—and there are plenty of them.”
Kirk added that the issue of student loan debt forgiveness is being used by Democrats as “a carrot to make more students go vote for them, despite the unrealistic nature of it.”
“We see Trump policies working for young people, whether it be the best economy, lowest unemployment, or wages finally going up for the middle class—we want to get that reality out there in the face of a massive Democrat campaign,” Kirk said. “The battle of ideas is going to be more consequential on college campuses in the next 18 months than I think ever before.”
The president's eldest son is expected to be involved with some of the group's events.
“I am thrilled to see [Kirk] and his successful team focus on motivating and turning our college students to help my father get reelected in 2020,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a statement.
The Students for Trump launch party is scheduled to be held next month in Las Vegas, timed with the start of the fall semester.

Nike dropped Betsy Ross-themed Fourth of July sneaker after Colin Kaepernick complained, report says

Just don’t do it.
That was the message ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick delivered to Nike over the planned release of a USA-themed sneaker, which featured a Betsy Ross flag on the heel, according to a report.
Nike nixed the released of the Air Max 1 USA after having already sent the sneakers to retailers because the protesting quarterback said he felt the use of the Betsy Ross flag was offensive and carried slavery connotations, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Nike nixed the released of the Air Max 1 USA after complaints from ex-NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal’s report stated: “After images of the shoe were posted online, Mr. Kaepernick, a Nike endorser, reached out to company officials saying that he and others felt the Betsy Ross flag is an offensive symbol because of its connection to an era of slavery.”
"Nike has chosen not to release the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July as it featured the old version of the American flag," a spokeswoman reportedly said.
In response, a Nike spokeswoman told the Journal: “Nike has chosen not to release the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July as it featured the old version of the American flag.”
The sneaker originally was slated to be released on Monday, and posts hyping its release said it would cost $140.
Kaepernick, the former quarterback who famously kneeled during the National Anthem starting in 2016, was named as the face of Nike’s latest “Just Do It” campaign last year. After the announcement, Nike’s stock initially fell more than 3 percent, before online sales increased.
A report from Edison Trends said the company’s online sales grew 31 percent the week the campaign was launched. The surge was stronger than the 17 percent increase recorded last year during the same period, the report stated.
“There was speculation that the Nike/Kaepernick campaign would lead to a drop in sales but the data does not support that theory,” the company said in a statement.

Lurching left: Are Democrats blowing their chance to beat Trump?

It's standard practice in presidential politics: Candidates move to the left (or right) to win the nomination, then tack toward the center in the general election.
But the Democrats are in danger of marching so far left that they go over a cliff.
That's not just my view. Mainstream reporters, who tend to be less sensitive to liberal positions that match their personal views, are openly acknowledging and debating the dramatic shift. It was even on the front page of The New York Times.
For those whose most fervent desire is to evict Donald Trump from the White House, there's growing concern that the Democrats are blowing it.
The two debates in Miami last week crystallized how most of the candidates are taking stances that would antagonize many millions of Americans once you get out of the liberal bubble.
And the few contenders who are positioning themselves as left-of-center moderates are muting those views in the face of palpable progressive pressure. So with Trump already signaling that he plans to run against a socialist party, they — including Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar — are being lumped in with the left-wingers.
We're talking here about big, fundamental stuff, especially on health insurance and immigration. And in some instances, these are positions that no presidential candidate other than Bernie would have dared take in 2016. But now, the aspirants are torn between the burning desire to beat Trump and the overwhelming urge to be in lockstep with a "woke" party. And those two imperatives are coming into direct conflict.
The Democrats are now a party where all 10 candidates on stage raised their hands to support health services for illegal immigrants. As recently as 2016, Hillary Clinton drew flak for not having fully embraced a New York plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. And no one aggressively challenged Julian Castro when he called for decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
The Democrats are now a party where several top contenders (including Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, despite the latter's subsequent attempt to fudge the issue) support government-run health care that would abolish private medical insurance for more than 150 million Americans.
The Democrats are now a party calling for free college tuition or free community college, which would be hugely expensive.
The Times news story flat-out declares the debates showed that "many of the leading presidential candidates are breaking with the incremental politics of the Clinton and Obama eras, and are embracing sweeping liberal policy changes on some of the most charged public issues in American life, even at the risk of political backlash."
And: "With moderate Democrats repeatedly drowned out or on the defensive in the debates, the sprint to the left has deeply unnerved establishment Democrats, who have largely picked the party nominees in recent decades."
Two leading Clintonites, James Carville and Rahm Emanuel, are on the record as ripping the leftward march. Says Carville: "This is an election that Trump can’t win but Democrats can lose."
Even more biting are pieces by two moderately conservative but anti-Trump columnists for the Times.
David Brooks, who says he couldn't vote for Trump in a million years, writes under the headline "Dems, Please Don't Drive Me Away":
"The party is moving toward all sorts of positions that drive away moderates and make it more likely the nominee will be unelectable. And it's doing it without too much dissent."
Brooks says, for instance, that "Democrats are wandering into dangerous territory on immigration. They properly trumpet the glories immigrants bring to this country. But the candidates can't let anybody get to the left of them on this issue. So now you've got a lot of candidates who sound operationally open borders. Progressive parties all over the world are getting decimated because they have fallen into this pattern."
Bret Stephens says the Dems are becoming "a party that makes too many Americans feel like strangers in their own country."
He goes into an us-versus-them riff:
"They speak Spanish. We don't. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn't. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes. They willingly got themselves into debt. We're asked to write it off. They don't pay the premiums for private health insurance. We're supposed to give up ours in exchange for some V.A.-type nightmare. They didn't start enterprises that create employment and drive innovation."
And when a candidate like Biden offers more incremental change, essentially a return to the Obama era, he is mocked and dismissed for living in the past.
It's not like the hard-left proposals will be magically forgotten in the fall of 2020. The Democrats sure are giving Trump plenty of ammunition.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump mulls federal action to intervene on homelessness in cities like LA, San Francisco

President Trump sat down with Fox News host Tucker Carlson for an exclusive interview during his visit to Japan for the G20 summit and shared his plans to combat rising homelessness and mental illness in America.
During the interview, Trump told Carlson he is "looking at it very seriously" and said some people forced to live on the streets are "living in hell."
"It's disgraceful. I'm going to maybe and I'm looking at it very seriously," Trump said. "We're doing some other things that you probably noticed like some of the very important things that we're doing now.  But we're looking at it very seriously because you can't do that.
"You can't have what's happening -- where police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat. I mean, they're getting actually very sick, where people are getting sick, where the people living there living in hell, too."
Trump continued, saying most people suffering from homelessness have an accompanying mental illness and sometimes don't realize they're living in their own filth. He also said the issue needs to be addressed before it starts affecting healthy working people as well.
"Some of them have mental problems where they don't even know they're living that way," he said. "In fact, perhaps they like living that way. They can't do that. We cannot ruin our cities.  And you have people that work in those cities.  They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago."
Trump blamed the liberal politicians for exacerbating the problem and said he's been fighting them on all fronts, including within the city limits of Washington, D.C.
"And this is the liberal establishment. This is what I'm fighting," he added. "They -- I don't know if they're afraid of votes. I don't know if they really believe that this should be taking place.  But it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And we may be -- you know, I had a situation when I first became president, we had certain areas of Washington, D.C. where that was starting to happen, and I ended it very quickly.
"When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the President of the United States and they're riding down a highway, they can't be looking at that. I really believe that it hurts our country.
"They can't be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco.  San Francisco... so we're looking at it very seriously.  We may intercede.  We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.  It's inappropriate."
Trump also said it shouldn't fall on the federal government to address the issue, but didn't give any indication that it would deter his administration from getting involved.
"We're really not very equipped as a government to be doing that kind of work," he told Carlson. "That's not really the kind of work that the government probably should be doing. We've never had this in our lives before in our country.  And it's not only those few cities, it's a couple of other ones."
The president's comments came after figures released last month stated the number of homeless people in Los Angeles County jumped 12 percent over the past year, officials announced Tuesday, despite $619 million in government spending to help alleviate the problem.
The annual point-in-time count recorded nearly 59,000 homeless people countywide, with the largest number -- 36,000 -- coming from the city of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a county agency which conducted the count, delivered its report to the Board of Supervisors at its Tuesday meeting.
The 2018 tally found a slight decrease in the homeless population at just over 53,000 people. Supervisor Janice Hahn called the new numbers "disheartening."
The count found a 24 percent increase in homeless youth, defined as people under 25, and a 7 percent jump in people 62 or older. An estimated 29 percent of people experiencing homelessness are mentally ill or have substance abuse issues, officials said.

Planned Parenthood Cartoons

Pro-life ‘Conscience Protection’ Rule is Delayed Amid Democrat-led Lawsuit

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 2:45 PM PT – Sat. June 29, 2019

The Trump administration delays a health care rule protecting religious liberty, to fight a lawsuit brought forth by Democrats.

President Donald Trump speaks during a ceremony where he will sign an executive order that calls for upfront disclosure by hospitals of actual prices for common tests and procedures to keep costs down, at the White House in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2019. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

On Saturday, The Department of Health and Human Services stated the “conscience protection” rule will be postponed.
The legislation would allow health care officials to refuse to perform procedures that go against their beliefs. But various Democrat coalitions allege the act promotes discrimination to patients.
Sources said the rule, is a small part of president Trump’s fight, to rebuild faith and freedom in the U.S.
“And just today, we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students, and faith-based charities,” said President Trump “Together, we are building a culture that cherishes the dignity and worth of human life. Every child born and unborn is a sacred gift from God.”
The rule was supposed to be implemented last week. The HHS said the earliest date the rule could now go into effect would be November 22nd.

Trump calls Ivanka, Pompeo ‘Beauty and the Beast’

President Trump on Sunday compared his daughter Ivanka and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “Beauty and the Beast.”
Trump was introducing the pair while addressing a gathering of Air Force personnel at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, near the South Korean capital of Seoul, when he drew on the tale as old as time.
“Mike, come up here Mike,” Trump told Pompeo, before telling the crowd, “And you know who else we have here, Ivanka — alright come up Ivanka,” as cheers rose from the gathered.
“What a beautiful couple — Mike — Beauty and the Beast,” he said, as the pair strode to the podium.
Just hours earlier, Trump had become the first sitting US president to step foot on North Korean soil when he met with leader Kim Jong Un on the northern side of the Demilitarized Zone separating the north and south.
The North in April demanded Pompeo, the nation’s top diplomat, be left out of peace talks — and issued a stinging rebuke of him Wednesday, accusing him of “reckless remarks” and “sophistry” for claiming sanctions on the Hermit Kingdom were bringing them to the negotiating table.
Ivanka serves as a domestic adviser to Trump.
Trump was returning to Washington Sunday following a whirlwind trip east for the G20 summit in Japan.