To effectively tell a story, learn to write like a journalist. The same techniques writers use for Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism in the New York Times can be applied to any type of writing, like a novel, academic writing, or blogging. Thinking like a journalist allows a writer to create a compelling story that hooks the reader from the first sentence.
What Is Journalistic Writing?
Journalistic writing is the writing style news organizations use to assemble a story. A news story has a hierarchy of information, beginning with the main points at the top of the piece. News articles follow a specific set of guiding principles, like the Associated Press style (also known as AP style), for grammar and vocabulary. While newspapers and television were, until recently, the primary outlets for reporting current events and human interest stories, journalists now write for a variety of online media outlets and podcasts.
8 Tips for How to Write Like a Journalist
Journalists follow a formula for crafting a story. The same approach can be applied to any style of writing, from high school writing assignments to novels. It’s a way of disseminating information in a way that makes sense to readers. Follow these eight journalistic writing tips for your next reported story:
1. Gather the information. Gather the information you need to construct your story. In non-fiction, like in journalism, this may require visiting the location where the story takes place, interviewing witnesses and people involved in the event, and using online search engines for further research.
2. Find your angle. Every news story has an angle—the theme and focus of the piece that makes it newsworthy. A human interest story will have a different angle than a hard-hitting political piece. News stories reveal their angle in the first paragraph. Find the angle of your story and present it in the first paragraph, page, or chapter.
3. Write a strong lede. Every story needs a great opening. In news writing, this is called a lede. This opening paragraph delivers the story’s essential information by answering the five W’s: who, what, where, when, why. These are the building blocks of any good story, whether it’s a fictional narrative, technical writing, or a content marketing article. Lead with a strong summary of events that hooks the reader from the top.
4. Structure your information. Good journalism presents the information of a story in order of importance, in what is known as the inverted pyramid structure. The most important information, the lede, is at the top. The next section is the body of the story that contains other supporting details. The bottom section, the point of the pyramid, contains any extra information that might be interesting to an audience. Even in creative writing, it’s important to lead with the who, what, why, where, and when of your story to let the reader know what the story is about.
5. Use quotes. Good journalism usually includes interviews with people involved in a story. This provides different perspectives and keeps the reporter in the role of an outside observer, similar to the third-person point of view in a short story or novel. If you’re writing a non-fiction book, quotes are essential to create a well-rounded piece. In fiction, your characters will provide quotations through dialogue.
6. Write simply. Journalists use short sentences to deliver a story. News writing often uses the active voice as opposed to the passive voice—i.e. “She drove the car” rather than “The car was driven by her.” The active voice is more direct, uses fewer words, and has a quicker tempo. To hone this skill, think like a copywriter. In copywriting, the main objective is to write simply with a clear, concise message.
7. Verify your sources. Telling true stories requires a journalist to gather information from numerous sources. Reporters need to verify the information from their sources to ensure accuracy. In freelance writing, when you turn in your story, you should always provide links to where you found information and a phone number for each person you interviewed.
8. Edit your work. A newsroom is a fast-paced environment with a steady stream of stories passing from writers to editors before they go to print. All writers should do a spell check and edit their work for clarity and content. Take a cue from news writing and have a professional editor refine your story before you publish.
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivered a keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla. He addressed the future of the American man and highlighted the need to strengthen and empower American men so that they can serve as an “unrivaled force for good in the world.”
Speech text as prepared for delivery:
Good evening. It is a pleasure to be with you tonight.
I had the honor to be at your inaugural conference two years ago. After that speech, the Left called me a racist, a fascist, and a Nazi.
So when Yoram invited me to speak again this year, I thought: What’s to lose?
I spoke two years ago of the Left’s ambition to create a world beyond belonging—a world where community and shared culture—our culture—count for little. It’s part of the Left’s effort to fundamentally remake America.
I want to talk with you tonight about another aspect of that ambition. I want to talk with you about the Left’s attempt to give us a world beyond men.
We meet at a time of reckoning. As we speak, the Left controls the commanding heights of American society. They have the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate. Their voices predominate in the news media, in Hollywood, arguably sports, and of course, at our universities.
This is their hour. And they are determined to use it.
The Left know what they believe. They believe that America is a systemically racist, structurally oppressive, hopelessly patriarchal kind of place. It’s a dystopia, if only Americans would get woke enough to see it. It’s a nation that needs to be taught how unjust it truly is and after that, rebuilt from top to bottom.
That’s the Leftist project, and that’s their grand ambition: to deconstruct America.
This work of deconstruction is what unites today’s Left and binds together all their various preoccupations, from critical race theory to their economic socialism to their bizarre war on women’s sports.
But what I want you to notice, what I want to call out tonight, is this fact: that the deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men.
The Left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues—things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness—as a danger to society.
This is an effort the Left has been at for years now. And they have had // alarming success. American men are working less, getting married in fewer numbers; they’re fathering fewer children. They are suffering more anxiety and depression. They are engaging in more substance abuse.
Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling.
And that’s not just a crisis for men. It’s a crisis for the republic.
Because the problem with the Left’s assault on the masculine virtues is that those self-same qualities, the very ones the Left now vilify as dangerous and toxic, have long been regarded as vital to self-government.
Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty.
Now maybe they were wrong and today’s Left is right. Maybe virtue isn’t needed for liberty. Or maybe the only necessary virtues are the modern liberal ones of tolerance, and compliance, and I suppose, consumption. Maybe all you need to be a good citizen after all is to be a good consumer.
But it doesn’t look that way. It’s hard to argue that our democracy is in better shape now than it was thirty or forty years ago. It’s hard to believe that our liberty is now more secure.
It’s hard to accept that the pathologies gripping so many American men are good for American society. I’d contend just the opposite.
Now this is not to say that American women aren’t central to this story, far from it. American women have shaped our culture every bit as much as men, and their virtues are every bit as necessary to the success of our republic.
And indeed, the Left is carrying out its own assault on womanhood, and on the very idea of gender.
Many of my Democrat colleagues in the Senate won’t even say the word “mother” any more, for heaven’s sake. “Birthing people” is the term of choice, as if women don’t exist.
And leftwing advocates across the country are trying to destroy women’s sports, as if women and men are somehow interchangeable.
All that too is part of the deconstructionist agenda.
But I want to focus tonight on the deconstruction of men, not because men are more important, but because I believe the attack on men has been the tip of the spear of the Left’s broader attack on America. And because this attack on men is already far advanced.
But even as I describe the danger, there is cause for hope. For while the Left’s assault on manhood has been sharp and prolonged, it has not yet succeeded. And we must make it our aim as conservatives to see that it does not succeed.
More than that, we must seek a revival of strong and healthy manhood in America. We need men who will shoulder responsibility, men who will start and provide for families, men who will enter the covenant of marriage and then honor it.
We need men to raise up sons and daughters after them, to pass on the great truths of our culture and history, to defend liberty, to share in the work of self-government.
We need the kind of men who make republics possible.
And it is not too much to say that our ability to get that kind of men will determine the success of our long experiment in liberty.
***
Let me start by pressing home this point. The Left’s attack on America leads directly to an attack on manhood.
For years now, Democrats and other leftists have insisted that American society is systemically oppressive, systemically evil and unjust. They’ve said it so much and so often that to them, it’s become a truism. It’s become the very cornerstone of their worldview.
Just listen to the President of the United States. Joe Biden has, as president, repeatedly referred to America’s “systemic racism.” His Administration has loudly called for a new “gender equity” agenda to right the structural injustices of our society.
His nominees have advocated critical race theory and training in “equity” for federal workers.
This past week the Administration celebrated the introduction of an “X” gender marker on American passports. X means neither male nor female, if you’re keeping up.
All this points to how important the deconstructionist agenda is to Team Biden and to the Left. Inflation is rampant, store shelves are bare, but the Administration won’t be distracted from what truly matters, exposing just how bad America is.
Other prominent liberals have taken the next step and identified America’s many alleged woes with men in particular.
Take Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. “White supremacy and patriarchy are linked in a lot of ways,” she says. Meaning that America’s systemic racism is a systemic problem with men.
Author John Stoltenberg writes that “talking about 'healthy masculinity' is like talking about `healthy cancer.’”
Professor Suzanna Walters of Northeastern University says it “seems logical to hate men” unless they “pledge to vote for feminist women only” and “don’t run for office.”
Now this line of thinking is hardly new. The critical theory of deconstruction runs back to mid-century intellectuals like Jacques Derrida and Herbert Marcuse; and farther back to the Frankfurt School of the 1930s; and back farther still to Marx.
Nor is it new to blame men for society’s ills. Marcuse in particular is interesting in this regard. He was one of the leading lights of the 1960s counter-culture, and he thought Marx was right to call western society structurally oppressive, but wrong to see that oppression as principally economic.
No, the really oppressive thing about American society, he said, was culture.
And while Marx pinned his hopes on working class men, the proletariat, Marcuse saw those same men as the problem. They were too culturally conservative. Too hidebound. Too traditional.
Marcuse concluded the revolution would only come from the well-educated elite, who could see beyond mirages like manhood.
Which brings us back to today’s American Left. They’ve swallowed this theory whole and they are delivering this message from every platform where they have power. Which is most everywhere.
University curricula abound with seminars on masculinity and its defects. To take but one sample of what’s on offer, consider Professor David Cohen of Drexel Kline School of Law: “Traditional masculinity,” he says, “has oppressed girls and women and limited the identity construction of all boys and men.”
A seminar at Williams College, called “Performing Masculinity in Global Popular Culture,” asks “Why must masculinity be the purview of males at all?” Answering that question will cost you $75,000 a year.
Even our military academies are in on the act. West Point reportedly held mandatory events last year addressing “gender norms,” including “toxic masculinity.” One cadet said afterwards, “I’m being taught how not to be a man.”
Men are getting the message. They’re leaving higher education in record numbers. I suspect you’ve seen the recent Wall Street Journal reporting: Women now make up 60 percent of college students; men, 40 percent. Experts predict a 2:1 ratio soon, with the trend sped up by the pandemic.
But the message of toxic masculinity is not only in the academy. It’s in our grade schools, where boys are increasingly treated like an illness in search of a cure. If boys are too rambunctious, they’re diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder and medicated into submission.
Hollywood delivers the toxic masculinity theme ad nauseum in television and film.
And our expert class amplifies it. The American Psychological Association now advises that “conforming to traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development … and negatively influence mental health and physical health.” Manhood is a disease to be defeated.
The Left delivers the same message in the press, through the corporations, and through advertising. Gillette infamously ran an ad campaign for its razors in 2019 that included this voice-over: “Bullying … MeToo movement against sexual harassment … toxic masculinity … is this the best a man can get?”
And the Left is writing this same men-are-the-problem mantra into policy.
Working class men have been a particular target for this Administration. President Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate on private citizens puts millions of working class men squarely in the cross hairs. Shut up, get the jab, or get lost.
Nevermind these are the very people hailed as “essential workers” not twelve months ago. Not anymore. Now they’re expendable. Now they’re the problem.
But the Left has been pursuing its attack on men through policy for longer than the last year, and sometimes with the help of Republicans.
Over the last thirty years and more, government policy has helped destroy the kind of economy that gave meaning to generations of men.
Domestic manufacturing once supported millions of American men with good wages, who in turn started and supported families. Now that industry lies all but dead on the altar of globalism.
At the same time, advancing consolidation has made it almost impossible for family farmers to compete against multinational firms.
The result is fewer and fewer men working. And I don’t mean the elderly or disabled, I mean prime-aged, able-bodied men.
Since 1965, the number of adult men between the ages of twenty and sixty-four not working—not even looking for work, but completely and totally out of the labor force—has quintupled, soaring from 3 million in the 1960s to more than 16 million in 2015.
And the less men work, the less they marry.
Marriage rates are plummeting. And the age of first marriage continues to rise, as men push commitment off further and further into the future.
By 2010, a majority of men in this country between 25 and 34 had never married. And that trend has accelerated since.
Fewer marriages means fewer fathers in the home. By 2020, over 18 million American children lived without a father present. That’s more than a quarter of all children in America. And I probably don’t need to remind you that an absent father is strongly correlated with increased childhood poverty, childhood depression, and poor academic performance. …
I am not here tonight to tell you that men are victims. The last thing we need more of in this country is the victim mindset. And men who blame others for their problems and then slink away to do nothing, or worse, who embrace violence or cruelty, deserve rebuke.
Responsibility is one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, and men must be held responsible for their actions.
Still … can we be surprised that after years of being told they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games.
I found the comment by one young man to the Wall Street Journal particularly evocative, and particularly heartbreaking. He said, “I’m sort of waiting for a light to come on so I can figure out what to do next.” I suspect he speaks for many.
And while the Left may celebrate this decline of men, I for one cannot join them. No one should.
The crisis of American men is a crisis for the American republic.
It’s not just that millions of men out of work slows our innovation and economic growth.
It’s not just the billions of dollars in welfare payments these idle men cost the federal fisc year on year.
It’s not only the depression and darkness that now shadow so many.
It’s that liberty requires virtue. And in particular, it requires the manly virtues.
America needs good men. …
The liberty of a republic is a demanding thing.
To keep a republic, you have to be willing to fight for it.
To share in self-government, you have to stand strong against those who would try to make you dependent on their wealth or influence.
To preserve liberty, you have to discipline your passions and sacrifice in the service of others.
For centuries, lovers of liberty have praised these qualities as the highest standard of manhood. That’s not to say that women don’t possess them. But it is to say that these virtues are the bright side of the aggression and competitiveness and independence that psychologists, no less than philosophers, have long observed in men.
Assertiveness and independence are strengths when used to protect and empower others.
Want an example? Look no further than those dads at Southwood High School in Shreveport, Louisiana. The ones who just by showing up, calmed the fighting and changed the atmosphere of an entire campus. As one student said to a reporter, “Dads have the power to do that.”
Every republic needs those kind of men.
The question is, how are we going to raise up good men today?
We can start by repudiating the lie that America is a systemically oppressive nation and that men are systemically responsible.
It is a fantasy, it is a folly, it is a falsehood and we should call it out for what it is.
America may be an imperfect place, but it is the most noble experiment in liberty the world has ever seen, for the poor and the rich alike, for men and for women, for black and for white.
And though we have struggled to live up to our ideals—and failed, and risen to struggle again—there is honor in the struggle, and we are still, even now, the last best, hope on earth.
And we must tell the men of this nation that their struggle, too, is noble and that they are needed.
To each man, I say: You can be a tremendous force for good. Your nation needs you. The world needs you.
Your strength can liberate others. Your power can serve those in need. Your creativity can light new paths. Your courage can defend the weak. Your faithfulness can raise up sons and daughters after you and make their way straight. You can make this a more perfect nation.
We must say this to men of our society from the time they are small, and teach it to them in our classrooms and in our homes and in our churches.
And we must do more.
We must rebuild an economy in this country in which men can thrive. And that means rebuilding those manufacturing and production sectors that so much of the chattering class has written off as relics of the past.
In this country, we are more than mere consumers. We have been the makers of great and mighty things, and we shall be again.
The DC experts will say it’s impossible; better to outsource our production to China or Mexico or other places where labor is cheap. But free labor and slave labor should never be put on an even plane. And it is free labor worthy of free men that we are after.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I am for business, but I am for manhood first, and business as an adjunct to manhood.” He was right then, and that sentiment should be our watchword today.
We must make every effort to restore a vibrant manufacturing sector in this country that can employ working men at living wages—wages that can feed a family, and support a community. And we can start by requiring that at least half of all goods and supplies critical for our national security be made in the United States.
Speaking of communities, those begin with the family, and we must make the family the center of political life.
We should be clear in the message we send about family and unapologetic: There is no higher calling, and no greater duty, than raising a family. And we should encourage all men to pursue it.
To that end, I believe the time has come for explicit rewards in our tax code for marriage. Forget the marriage penalty. There should be a marriage bonus. And we should allow the parents of young children to keep more of their own money as well. …
The Left is telling America and its men, you’re evil. You’re terrible. You must apologize and submit to your government masters to be reformed.
I suggest we offer a different theme, one that goes like this. … America is yet that city on a hill, and the eyes of the world are yet upon us, looking to us for hope.
American men are and can be an unrivaled force for good in the world—if we can strengthen them, if we can empower them, if we can unleash them to be who they are made to be.
Then they shall, in the words of Scripture, “build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former desolations; they shall repair the ruined cities, [and] the devastations of many generations.”
President Donald J. Trump Statement on Kabul, Afghanistan - August 26, 2021
Surrenderer-In-Chief: Joe Biden lied to America and to the World when he told us “America was back.” Instead, he surrendered to the Taliban, and left Americans behind to die in Afghanistan. It's time to KNOW the TRUTH!
Failure
Address on the 20th Anniversary of September 11th
President Trump Responds on Pennsylvania’s 2020 Election
Observers watch a poll worker tabulate ballots at the Allegheny County Election Warehouse in Pittsburgh, Nov. 6.
PHOTO: JOHN ALTDORFER/REUTERS
In your editorial “The Election for Pennsylvania’s High Court” (Oct. 25), you state the fact that a court wrongly said mail-in ballots could be counted after Election Day. “This didn’t matter,” you add, “because Mr. Biden won the state by 80,555, but the country is lucky the election wasn’t closer. If the election had hung on a few thousand Pennsylvanians, the next President might have been picked by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
Well actually, the election was rigged, which you, unfortunately, still haven’t figured out. Here are just a few examples of how determinative the voter fraud in Pennsylvania was:
• 71,893 mail-in ballots were returned after Nov. 3, 2020, at 8 p.m., according to Audit the Vote PA. None of these should have been counted according to the U.S. Constitution and the state Legislature, which didn’t approve this change.
• 10,515 mail-in votes from people who do not exist on the Pennsylvania voter rolls at all.
• 120,000 excess voters are not yet accounted for by the Pennsylvania Department of State—far more votes than voters!
• From 2016 to 2020, during my term as president, Republicans out-registered Democrats 21 to 1. This translated to a 659,145-vote lead at 12:38 a.m. on election night, with “Trump” up a full 15 points.
• Hundreds of thousands of votes were unlawfully counted in secret, in defiance of a court order, while Republican poll watchers were thrown out of buildings where voting took place.
• 39,771 people who registered to vote after the Oct. 19, 2020, deadline, still voted in the 2020 election—simply not allowed.
Highly respected Audit the Vote PA found numerous data integrity problems the Pennsylvania Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors (SURE) system, including:
• 305,874 voters were removed from the rolls after the election on Nov. 3rd.
• 51,792 voters with inactive voter registrations at the end of October 2020 nevertheless voted.
• 57,000 duplicate registrations.
• 55,823 voters who were backfilled into the SURE system.
• 58,261 first-time voters 70 years and older.
• 39,911 people who were added to voter rolls while under 17 years of age.
• 17,000 mail-in ballots sent to addresses outside of Pennsylvania.
• Another analysis of Montgomery County, Pa., found 98% of the eligible voting population in the county was already registered to vote—not possible.
• A canvass of Montgomery County has identified 78,000 phantom voters, with roughly 30% of respondents unaware that there are people registered and voting from their address.
• One nursing home in Lancaster County had 690 registrations and an extremely high turnout rate of 85% in 2020, while nursing homes were closed due to Covid. One of these residents said she had not voted in the past 3 years, but had a mail-in ballot cast in her name.
• 25,000 ballots were requested from nursing homes at the exact same time.
• Numerous reports and sworn affidavits attested to poll watcher intimidation and harassment, many by brute force.
• Attorney General Bill Barr ordered U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain to stand down and not investigate election irregularities.
• Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook poured over $17 million to interfere in the Pennsylvania election, including $5.5 million on “ballot processing equipment” in Philadelphia and $552,000 for drop boxes where the voting pattern was not possible.
And so much more! This is why Democrats and the Fake News Media do not want a full forensic audit in Pennsylvania. In reality, 80,555 ballots are nothing when there is this much corruption or voter irregularities.
A team of election security experts used a “Google for servers” to challenge claims that voting machines do not connect to the internet and found some did.
It was an assurance designed to bolster public confidence in the way America votes: Voting machines “are not connected to the internet.”
Then Acting Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security Jeanette Manfra said those words in 2017, testifying before Congress while she was responsible for the security of the nation’s voting system.
So many government officials like Manfra have said the same thing over the last few years that it is commonly accepted as gospel by most Americans. Behind it is the notion that if voting systems are not online, hackers will have a harder time compromising them.
But that is an overstatement, according to a team of 10 independent cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections. While the voting machines themselves are not designed to be online, the larger voting systems in many states end up there, putting the voting process at risk.
That team of election security experts say that last summer, they discovered some systems are, in fact, online.
“We found over 35 [voting systems] had been left online and we’re still continuing to find more,” Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical advisor at the election security advocacy group National Election Defense Coalition, told NBC News.
Kevin Skoglund, senior technical advisor at the National Election Defense Coalition. NBC News
“We kept hearing from election officials that voting machines were never on the internet,” he said. “And we knew that wasn't true. And so we set out to try and find the voting machines to see if we could find them on the internet, and especially the back-end systems that voting machines in the precinct were connecting to to report their results.”
Skoglund and his team developed a tool that scoured the internet to see if the central computers that program voting machines and run the entire election process at the precinct level were online. Once they had identified such systems, they contacted the relevant election officials and also provided the information to reporter Kim Zetter, who published the findings in Vice’s Motherboard in August.
The three largest voting manufacturing companies — Election Systems &Software, Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic — have acknowledged they all put modems in some of their tabulators and scanners. The reason? So that unofficial election results can more quickly be relayed to the public. Those modems connect to cell phone networks, which, in turn, are connected to the internet.
The largest manufacturer of voting machines, ES&S, told NBC News their systems are protected by firewalls and are not on the “public internet.” But both Skoglund and Andrew Appel, a Princeton computer science professor and expert on elections, said such firewalls can and have been breached.
“AT&T and Verizon and so on try and protect as best they can the security of their phone network from the rest of the internet, but it’s still part of the internet,” Appel explained. “There can still be security holes that allow hackers to get into the phone network.”
The 35 systems Skoglund’s team found represent a fraction of total voting systems nationwide, though he believes they only captured a portion of the systems that are or have been online. Earlier this week, Skoglund showed NBC three election systems were still online even after officials had been told they were vulnerable.
For election systems to be online, even momentarily, presents a serious problem, according to Appel.
“Once a hacker starts talking to the voting machine through the modem, the hacker cannot just change these unofficial election results, they can hack the software in the voting machine and make it cheat in future elections,” he said.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which provides cybersecurity frameworks for state and local governments and other organizations, recommends that voting systems should not have wireless network connections.
Skoglund said that they identified only one company among the systems they detected on line, ES&S. ES&S confirmed they had sold scanners with wireless modems to at least 11 states. Skoglund says those include the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida.
While the company’s website states that “zero” of its voting tabulators are connected to the internet, ES&S told NBC News 14,000 of their DS200 tabulators with online modems are currently in use around the country.
NBC News asked the two other major manufacturers how many of their tabulators with modems were currently in use. Hart said that it has approximately 1,600 such tabulators in use in 11 counties in Michigan. Dominion did not respond to numerous requests from NBC News for their sales numbers.
With the 2020 presidential election only ten months away, Appel and Skoglund believe all modems can and should be removed from election systems.
“Modems in voting machines are a bad idea,” said Appel. “Those modems that ES&S [and other manufacturers] are putting in their voting machines are network connections, and that leaves them vulnerable to hacking by anybody who can connect to that network.”
The state of Michigan is currently grappling with this issue. Since the 2016 election, Michigan authorized $82 million dollars to upgrade its election systems. Some of that money was spent on tabulators with wireless modems. But now, some state officials worry that the machines may pose a security risk and are pushing to have the modems removed.
Others are not so sure, and the state has set up an advisory committee.
Jake Rollow, director of communications for the Michigan Department of State, said in a statement to NBC News, “Even though the results are unofficial, if these unofficial results were disrupted or manipulated, it could still cause confusion on Election Day.”
"The department will consider the advisory commission’s recommendations to improve the security of the process," Rollow continued. "The specific steps taken would depend on the recommendation and the timeline required to make changes effectively.”
Last fall, when ES&S gave NBC News an exclusive tour at its headquarters in Omaha, Neb., Chief Executive Officer Tom Burt defended using modems when asked about the Sprint and Verizon modems seen in ES&S's testing area.
“There’s a small percentage of jurisdictions in the country -- a lot of them are in Florida -- who have decided they want to modem unofficial results to the election office,” he said. “Generally speaking, the media in those locations are kinda clamoring to get unofficial results as quickly as possible.”
When asked if the desire for speed was at odds with accuracy and security, Burt said, “it’s not my place to judge that.”
NBC News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security, which declined to comment on the topic of modem security in voting machine tabulators and scanners.
Critics also argue ES&S has mislead jurisdictions into thinking their DS200 tabulators with modems are certified by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a claim they say is grounds for an investigation.
In a letter obtained by NBC News sent to the EAC on Tuesday, the nonprofit public interest group Free Speech for People and the National Election Defense Coalition asked the agency to look into whether ES&S violated agency regulations by implying that DS200 voting machines with modems are EAC certified.
“ES&S has repeatedly advertised its DS200 with internal modem — a critical component to ES&S’s voting systems — as being EAC certified when, in fact, it is not,” the letter said. “We therefore again respectfully request that EAC investigate and take action to correct this serious issue.”
“Once you add that modem, you are de-certifying it,” Skoglund said. “It is no longer federally certified. And I don't know that all these jurisdictions are aware of that because ES&S is advertising otherwise.”
But Skogland points to some good news. He believes there is time to make real change before the 2020 election.
“We should be unplugging all of these machines from the internet,” Skoglund said. “Even for elections nights.”
Appel agreed. “We can not make our computers perfectly secure," he said. "What we should do is remove all of the unnecessary, hackable pathways, such as modems. We should not connect our voting machines directly to the computer networks. That is just inviting trouble.”
These two tech experts also agree on the path forward, saying they are comforted by the fact that most Americans will vote this year on hand-marked paper ballots which are counted by machine and can be recounted by hand if the situation warrants.
The machines America votes on seem to be capturing the interest of some in Congress. The House Committee on Administration held a congressional hearing yesterday which was the first time the heads of the three major vendors, representing at least 80 percent of U.S. voting machines, appeared together for questioning. While lawmakers questioned them about foreign influence in their supply chains and whether they would comply with more federal reporting requirements, the presence of modems in some of their tabulators was mentioned but not pursued.
EDITOR’S NOTE (Feb. 7, 2020, 11:15 p.m.): A previous version of this article stated that Kevin Skoglund and his team had found election systems using ES&S scanners with wireless modems connected to the internet in 11 states and the District of Columbia. The coalition says it is no longer certain that the number of states is correct, so the figure has been removed from the article.
Willingboro, New Jersey
September 3, 1958 - August 15, 2021
It is with great sadness that the family of Brett M. Koch announces his sudden passing on August 15, 2021 at the age of 62. Brett was born on September 3, 1958 in Hightstown, New Jersey and later moved to Willingboro, New Jersey where he attended John F Kennedy High School. He spent his youth surrounded by a loving family. Brett brought two daughters into the world during his marriage and made sure to fill their youth with fun vacations and wild adventures. Brett loved spoiling his children over the years and supplied a lifetime of memories. Both daughters, Joline and Michelle, remained close with Brett until his passing.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Lillian and Henry, and his siblings, Kevin and Carolyn, and brother-in-law Walter Read.
Brett is survived by his daughter Joline, her husband Jim, his daughter Michelle, her husband John, his only grandchild- Emelia, his brother Richard (Barbara), his brother-in-law Fred, his niece Jennifer, his nephews Steve and Paul and their children, cousins, and long-time friends.
Brett was a loving and devoted father, but also a great friend, father-in-law, and relative to so many. He never hesitated to help others in need and would be at your house in a flash when you asked him for his expertise. He was highly skilled in computers and electronics and extremely handy in all areas of home improvement. He loved spending time with his brother, Ricky, talking with friends, and taking his bird, Peaches, for drives.
Brett’s passing signifies a loss of many things: his conversations, his help and guidance, his expertise, and most importantly, his love. Fortunately for all who knew Brett, he lives on within our memories, hearts, and minds.
Memorial Visitation will be held, Saturday, August 28,2021, 9am - 11am at the Goes - Scolieri Funeral Home, 212 Levitt Parkway, Willingboro,NJ. (609)871-1000.
In Lieu of flowers, donations are requested to the American Diabetes Association in his memory.
We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me
Growing up poor in Detroit, if I had believed, as critical race theory (CRT) proponents claim, that my destiny was based on my race, I would not be where I am today. We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me.
Recently, author and professor Ibram Kendi, creator of so-called antiracist doctrines that lie at the core of CRT, has claimed that CRT is an "imagined monster" concocted by conservatives as a scare tactic to deny talking about race. This is clearly false.
To start, it’s important to understand that the term "antiracism" as used by Kendi, which sounds non-threatening enough, does not mean what you think. Indeed, far from being antiracist, the ideology promoted by Kendi and fellow travelers is anything but. It redefines reality to assign guilt and blame based solely on race. Classifying persons in such a manner is literally the definition of racism.
This type of vocabulary manipulation is part of the reason this ideology has stealthily overcome our institutions. After all, who doesn’t want to be antiracist?
Contrary to Kendi’s recent claim, CRT and so-called antiracism are very much real, and are the vanguard of a radical, revolutionary movement that seeks to overthrow the established order in every area of society, including capitalism itself.
This divisive ideology seeks to replace the traditional American value of equality of opportunity with a regime that assumes all White people are racist oppressors and labels all racial minorities as victims.
While the classical Marxism from which CRT was born focuses on class conflict, CRT substitutes class for race, wholly ignoring the demonstrated failure of Marxist ideologies – unlike the people of Cuba who are protesting against Marxist failures at this very moment.
CRT and antiracism are founded on racist, conspiratorial drivel.
CRT’s focus has primarily been the classroom, but it’s also gaining momentum in board rooms, corporate trainings, and even the U.S. military – which is now suffering a lack of wartime readiness as a result of an excessive focus on CRT.
Kendi has even gone so far as to propose the creation of a Department of Antiracism that is permanently funded, accountable to no one and responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies based on CRT and antiracist ideology.
Another distinguishing characteristic of antiracism and CRT proponents, besides the fact that they engage in blatant racism, is that they blame all racial disparities on racism. This is an assertion that is not supported by the evidence.
Research has shown that factors such as the presence of a stable two-parent family, educational choices and economic prosperity, among others, account for the large bulk of observed racial differences, rather than the boogeyman of racism. Thus, CRT and antiracism are founded on racist, conspiratorial drivel.
The results of this extremist ideology have been devastating. The massive rioting in Portland and other parts of the country, whose damage has made them the most costly riots in U.S. history, are the fruits of a generation raised on racial grievance indoctrination.
And big city prosecutors, also steeped in CRT ideology, are often letting violent rioters go free. This does nothing more than free criminals to continue menacing their communities and victimize the very disadvantaged populations the radicals claim to be protecting.
But if there’s any silver lining in the Marxist’s aggressive zeal to force CRT on our communities, it’s that their efforts are waking up the nation like few issues in recent memory, mobilizing citizens around the country to engage school boards and local governments to remove racist conspiracy theories like CRT from schools, businesses and government.
This renewed engagement could be a promising first step in eroding the decades-long dominance of Marxism in American education.
Dr. Ben Carson was the 17th U.S. secretary of Housing & Urban Development, a member of President Trump’s Advisory 1776 Commission, and serves as chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.
We all want a society in which we can get more work done with less.
Unlike our ancestors, who had no choice but to toil in the fields, many of us spend our working days in comfortable climate-controlled buildings. This positive development occurred primarily due to two factors: increases in productivity and the division of labor. We should continue to welcome further developments in this area so that people are able to produce more with less, leaving more time for leisure, family, education, or creating new inventions.
However, unlike the healthy process of productivity and labor improvements, a new, potentially harmful type of labor phenomenon is occurring: The government is paying people not to work. This has happened for decades through many well-meaning but largely ineffective social welfare programs. But it has significantly intensified in the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns. The government has passed several rounds of stimulus packages to give additional unemployment benefits to millions of people.
While few are opposed to reasonable unemployment benefits in cases of true hardship, the COVID-19 benefits go far beyond that threshold. They pay millions of people who are perfectly capable of finding a job and working to stay home and stay out of the labor market. Through this, the government has managed stealthily, or perhaps not so stealthily, to introduce a preliminary version of Universal Basic Income. This oft-touted idea proposes to pay citizens a guaranteed monthly stipend without the requirement to work. It is intended as a way to improve quality of life and reduce poverty, at least according to its proponents. The scientific literature is mixed on the efficacy of UBI, but one troubling development following the provision of generous COVID-19 benefits is that employers are having nearly unprecedented difficulty in finding workers.
Pointing to extra government payments as a cause, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently remarked, "Enhanced unemployment benefits may be a factor limiting job growth."
While many industries have been badly affected by the pandemic, the restaurant industry has been particularly hard hit. A recent Department of Labor report indicates that there are 930,000 unfilled restaurant jobs as owners struggle to compete with the enhanced unemployment benefits. Although the Federal Reserve expects labor shortages due to COVID-19 enhanced unemployment benefits to be short-term due to the September expiration date of those benefits, many voices are pushing to establish UBI permanently.
Indeed, history shows that once such benefits are initiated, they can be nearly impossible to retract; President Ronald Reagan remarked, "The closest thing on Earth to eternal life is a government program." The long-term impact of taking millions of people out of the workforce is yet unknown. But we can be confident that there will be repercussions for social stability, crime, and economic growth.
So, what’s the right path forward?
As the consolidation of resources in the hands of the few accelerates, as leaders continue to sell out our industries, and as financialization continues to strip our industrial base of productive value in return for short-term profit, there will be more calls for policies like UBI to address the economic malaise. Nevertheless, we must reject the seemingly easy answer of UBI for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that UBI might harm those it purports to help. UBI could permanently undermine the concept of meaningful work.
Instead of trying to turn citizens into permanent wards of the state, policymakers should focus on solving the root cause of our current labor problems. We should reduce the burdens on finding meaningful work and alleviate poverty by increasing productivity, spurring entrepreneurship and innovation to birth new products and new industries. We should adopt technology that helps us get more done with less work and protect American industries and intellectual property.
To do anything less will push America further down the road of dependency on China. It will push people further down the road of despair.
Ben Carson is the founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute and the former 17th secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Does The Definition Of ‘Fascism’ Apply To The Biden Administration? By Ben Carson
Erasing the line between government and private enterprise. Ensuring only government-approved messages are heard. Squashing dissent. Intruding government into every aspect of our lives.
Here is a challenge: Define fascism without reference to a historical event or proper noun.
It’s harder than it seems. Most people associate fascism with European dictatorships of the 1920s and ’30s. That is with good reason: those were the first fascist regimes.
The term itself originated in Italy to describe the political philosophy of Benito Mussolini, who borrowed from the Italian word fascio, literally meaning “bundle” (usually of rods or sticks). Mussolini used the term to mean a group of people who are stronger together than individually, such as how a bundle of sticks bound together is much more difficult to snap than any individual stick.
While most fascist regimes had racial or nationalist elements, it was not racism or nationalism that defined them; there have been plenty of racist or nationalist governing structures that do not merit the label “fascism.” Rather, the necessary ingredient for fascism is the state’s total domination of all aspects of life, including economic life.
Mussolini defined “fascism” as “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Consistent with this, the American Heritage Dictionary includes in its definition of fascism “a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls.” By hook or by crook, and many times using violence, a fascist government will brook no dissent and will enlist all of the country’s institutions to further its ends.
During the Trump administration, the left took every opportunity to falsely claim that fascism was descending upon the land. But anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew those claims were outlandish.
There was plenty “outside the State” and “against the State” during the Trump administration (he is still banned on all major social media platforms, for example) and plenty of dissent. There were plenty of institutions that explicitly declared themselves in opposition to the aims of the government.
Nothing Outside of or Against the Regime
Fully cognizant of George Orwell’s quip that “Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’” I am becoming concerned that what many claimed to be happening under the Trump administration is becoming reality under the Biden administration.
I do not make that statement lightly. But events over the past several weeks suggest that the Biden administration, in concert with powerful American institutions, is working to ensure that there is nothing outside of or against the official government line.
Last month White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted the administration works closely with Facebook and other social media companies to identify posts it deems objectionable. While Psaki claimed the White House does not “take anything down” or “block anything,” there would be no reason for the White House to point out these statements if not in the hope of social media platforms taking action against posts contrary to the government’s preferred narrative.
Also, more news continues to come out about how the Biden administration is coordinating with private businesses to further its agenda. According to Politico, the White House is “back channeling” with various media organizations about COVID coverage, particularly arguing that the media’s focus on breakthrough infections of people who have already been vaccinated undermines the administration’s efforts to get more people vaccinated. Relatedly, the New York Times has reported the administration “continues to pressure private companies to introduce coronavirus vaccine mandates to help the U.S. raise its inoculation rates.”
Using Private Businesses to Implement Policy
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the wisdom of the administration’s policies, it should be concerning to all to have the White House directly involved in the operations of private companies. This is especially true when the White House’s focus is on heavily regulated companies, such as broadcast networks. Those are the companies least likely to be able to resist government requests, which always carry the implicit terms of, “Nice business you got there; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
It is all the more troubling that the White House is leaning on private companies to do that which the federal government cannot do itself, namely censoring individuals from expressing opinions contrary to the government’s preferred message, and mandating that everyone in America take a certain medicine. This should concern everyone because once you have endorsed the idea that the federal government can and should use private businesses as a tool to implement policy it cannot establish through legal means, there is no limiting principle. Should the government “pressure private companies” to not hire women who have had abortions? Not hire anyone who supported Trump?
It is not enough to claim the administration is doing this only in response to the COVID emergency. Washington is full of programs that were instituted in response to an “emergency” that has well since passed. This fusion of government goals and private action will just find a new problem to solve. Today it is COVID. Tomorrow it will be climate change or systemic racism.
You do not need to take my word for it: in just the past few days the administration announced “goals” for the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States (why it is the federal government’s business to set “goals” for consumer behavior was left unsaid). Standing there right behind the administration were the largest automakers in the country, cheering on the policy so long as there were sufficient government-funded “investments” and “consumer incentives” (read: subsidies). This hand-in-glove cooperation between big government and big business is exactly the kind of “corporatism” that was an essential feature of fascist states of the past.
Erasing the line between government and private enterprise. Ensuring only government-approved messages are heard. Squashing dissent. Intruding government into every aspect of our lives. The Biden administration’s actions are nothing less than creeping fascism.
I pray that the administration, and the American people, recognize this and change course before it is too late.
Dr. Ben Carson served as the 17th Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and is the Founder & Chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.
On Friday, August 7th Dr. Dan Stock addressed the Mt. Vernon School Board in Indiana over the futility of mask mandates and Covid-19 protocols in most schools.
SO, what happened after Dr. Stock spoke? Let’s just say, his speech had an impact. The school board “tabled” their plans and will “contemplate” what Dr. Stock said and make a decision by August 16th. If you would like transcripts of his speech click HERE.
If you want to stay in touch with Dr. Daniel Stock and be added to his newsletter email, send an email to medicalfreedom4all@protonmail.com requesting to be added.
In his presentation, he references a flash drive he gave the school board members to review with all of the scientific literature he referenced.
Click on the links to access the following studies.
7. Heritage Foundation Study – In fact, mask use during the pandemic has been recommended by The Heritage Foundation’s Coronavirus Commission guidelines. However, our findings do suggest that public health strategies relying predominantly on mask mandates are inadequate, and thus other initiatives, in addition to mask wearing, should have been a component of policies aimed to limit the spread of the disease.
8. Declaration of Great Barrington– The Great Barrington Declaration- As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection. Over 60,000 medical experts have signed this declaration.
