Trump Is Right. Ending Birthright Citizenship Is Constitutional.

From the Daily Signal

By Hans von Spakovsky

President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that he is preparing an executive order to end birthright citizenship has the left and even some conservatives in an uproar.

But the president is correct when he says that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not require universal birthright citizenship.

An executive order by Trump ending birthright citizenship would face a certain court challenge that would wind up in the Supreme Court. But based on my research of this issue over several years, I believe the president’s view is consistent with the view of the framers of the amendment.

Those who claim the 14th Amendment mandates that anyone born in the U.S. is automatically an American citizen are misinterpreting the amendment in a manner inconsistent with the intent of the amendment’s framers.

Universal birthright citizenship attracts illegal immigration. By granting immediate citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of the legal status of the parents, we reward and encourage illegal and exploitative immigration.

Most countries around the world do not provide birthright citizenship. We do so based not upon the requirements of federal law or the Constitution, but based upon an erroneous executive interpretation. That should be changed.

Many Republicans, Democrats, and independents believe the 14th Amendment grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, even if their parents are here illegally. But that ignores the text and legislative history of the amendment, which was ratified in 1868 to extend citizenship to freed slaves and their children.

Contrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of “birthright” citizenship.

Critics of the president’s possible action erroneously claim that anyone present in the United States has “subjected” himself or herself “to the jurisdiction” of the United States, which would extend citizenship to the children of tourists, diplomats, and illegal immigrants alike.

But that is not what that qualifying phrase means. Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual.

The fact that tourists or illegal immigrants are subject to our laws and our courts if they violate our laws means that they are subject to the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. and can be prosecuted. But it does not place them within the political “jurisdiction” of the United States, as that phrase was defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment.

This amendment’s language was derived from the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power,” would be considered citizens.

The amendment was intended to give citizenship only to those who owed their allegiance to the United States and were subject to its complete jurisdiction. Sen. Lyman Trumbull, R-Ill., a key figure in the adoption of the 14th Amendment, said that “subject to the jurisdiction” meant not owing allegiance to any other country.

Universal birthright citizenship attracts illegal immigration. By granting immediate citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of the legal status of the parents, we reward and encourage illegal and exploitative immigration.

Today many people do not seem to understand the distinction between partial, territorial jurisdiction—which subjects all foreigners who enter the U.S. to the jurisdiction of our laws—and complete political jurisdiction, which requires allegiance to the U.S. government as well.

So while a foreign tourist could be prosecuted for violating a criminal statute, he could not be drafted if we had a military draft or otherwise be subject to other requirements imposed on citizens, such as serving on a jury. If a foreign tourist has a baby while in the U.S., her child is a citizen of her home country and owes no political allegiance to the U.S.

In the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872, the Supreme Court stated that this qualifying phrase was intended to exclude “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.”

This was confirmed in 1884 in another case, Elk vs. Wilkins, when citizenship was denied to an American Indian because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not the United States.

American Indians and their children did not become citizens until Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. There would have been no need to pass such legislation if the 14th Amendment extended citizenship to all people born in America, no matter what the circumstances of their birth, and no matter the legal status of their parents.

Most legal arguments for universal birthright citizenship point to the Supreme Court’s 1898 decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark. But that decision only stands for the very narrow proposition that children born of lawful, permanent residents are U.S. citizens.

The high court decision says nothing about the children of illegal immigrants or the children of tourists, students, and other foreigners only temporarily present in this country being automatically considered U.S. citizens. Those children are considered citizens of the native countries of their parents, just like children born abroad to American parents are considered U.S. citizens, no matter where the children are born.

The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment as extending to the children of legal noncitizens was incorrect, according to the text and legislative history of the amendment. But even under that holding, citizenship was not extended to the children of illegal immigrants—only permanent, legal residents.

U.S. immigration law (8 U.S.C. § 1401) simply repeats the language of the 14th Amendment, including the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The federal government has erroneously interpreted that statute to provide passports and other benefits to anyone born in the United States, regardless of whether their parents are here illegally and regardless of whether the applicant meets the requirement of being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.

As a result, the president of the United States has the authority to direct federal agencies to act in accordance with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, and to issue passports and other government documents and benefits only to those individuals whose status as U.S. citizens meets this requirement.

The everything bubble: When will it finally crash?

By Brandon Smith

Much like the laws of physics, there are certain laws of economics that remain constant no matter how much manipulation exists in the markets. Expansion inevitably leads to contraction, and that which goes up must eventually come down. Central banks understand this reality very well; they have spent over a century trying to exploit those laws to their own advantage.

A common misconception among people new to alternative economics is the idea that central banks only seek to keep the economy afloat, or keep it expanding forever. In reality, these institutions and the money elites behind them artificially inflate financial bubbles only to deliberately implode them at opportunistic moments.

As I have outlined in numerous articles, every economic bubble and subsequent crash since 1914 can be linked to the policy actions of central bankers. Sometimes they even admit to culpability (to a point), as Ben Bernanke did on the Great Depression and as Alan Greenspan did on the 2008 credit crisis. You can read more about this in my article 'The Federal Reserve Is A Saboteur — And The "Experts" Are Oblivious.'

Generally, central bankers and international bankers mislead the public into believing that the crashes they are responsible for were caused "by mistake." They rarely if ever mention the fact that they often use these crises as a means to consolidate control over assets, resources and governments while the masses are distracted by their own survival. Centralization is the name of the game. It is certainly no mistake that after every economic implosion the wealth gap between the top 0.01 percent and the rest of humanity widens exponentially.

Yet another crash is being weaponized by the banks, and this time I believe the motivations behind it are rather different. Or at least the goals are supercharged.

The next phase of the financial elite's plans for centralization involve a complete restructuring of the global monetary climate, something Christine Lagarde of the IMF has often referred to as the great "economic reset." The term "economic reset" is more likely code for "economic collapse," one epic enough to facilitate a completely new monetary framework with a new global reserve currency. A historically unprecedented economic reset would require a historically unprecedented financial bubble, which is exactly what we have today.

The 'Everything Bubble' as many alternative analysts are calling it is built upon multiple crumbling pillars. Here they are in no particular order:

Central bank stimulus

Bailouts and QE measures on the part of central banks have been used as a stopgap since the 2008 crash to prevent market reversal whenever they appear. Most of all, central banks have been particularly obsessed with keeping stocks in a perpetual bull market, which Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan admitted was part of maintaining a certain positive "psychology" within the public. In other words, the purpose of stimulus measures was to give the masses a false sense of security, not heal the real economy.

The other primary initiative behind stimulus was to prop up debt poisoned governments and corporations around the world. However, the intention was not necessarily to help these institutions climb out of the red. No, instead, the goal was to keep them semi-solvent long enough for them to take on even more debt, to the point that when they do collapse the aftermath will be so devastating that recovery would be impossible.

The timing of central bank tapering of QE should be treated as an alarm on the crash of the everything bubble. With the Federal Reserve cutting off QE measures, the Bank of Japan using "stealth tapering," and the European Central Bank warning of high inflation and the need for tapering, it is clear that the era of easy money is almost over. When the easy money is gone, the crash is near.

Stock buybacks

Using steady loans from the Federal Reserve as well as Trump's tax cut, stock markets have been inflated beyond all reason by corporations implementing the equities manipulation scheme of stock buybacks. By artificially reducing the number of stock shares on the market, companies can increase the "value" of the existing shares and fuel a bull market rally. This rally has nothing to do with actual wealth creation, of course. It is a game of phantom wealth and inflated numbers.

Stocks in particular will require ever more debt on the part of corporations along with never-ending near zero interest rates in order to keep the farce going. The central banker, though, have other plans.

Near zero interest rates

Low interest rates should be considered a part of the stimulus model, but I'm setting them separately because they represent a special kind of market manipulation. The option for corporate entities to borrow from the Fed at almost no cost has done little to improve the effects of the 2008 credit crisis. In fact, corporate debt levels are now near all-time highs not seen since the last crash. This time, though, dependency on low cost loans has conjured a monstrous addiction within the business cycle. Any increase in interest rates will trigger painful withdrawals.

Central banks around the world are now increasing that pain as they hike rates well beyond what many analysts were expecting a few years ago. Corporate debt in particular is highly vulnerable to this new tightening policy. Without low rates, corporations can no longer afford to hold the debts they have, let alone take on more debt in a futile attempt to keep equities propped up.

Central banks argue that "inflation" is the excuse for hiking interest rates at this time. True inflation has been well above Fed targets for years, and the banking elites showed no care whatsoever. I suspect that the real reason is that the next phase of the reset is near, and a little chaos is needed.

For decades, the Fed has kept the neutral rate of interest well below the rate of inflation. For the first time in at least 30 years, the Fed under Jerome Powell is seeking to increase neutral rates to make them equal to the pace of inflation (official inflation). The Fed has approximately two to three more rate hikes (including the September rate hike) to reach the pace of inflation. I believe this is our window on the next crash; the moment at which the Fed completely reverses its past policy of artificial support for the economy.

Federal Reserve balance sheet

I have written at great length about the correlation between the Fed's balance sheet and equities and I will not go into great detail here.  Simply put, with each increase in the balance sheet over the past decade, stocks rallied in tandem. As the Fed cuts assets, stocks enter volatility. A divergence has occurred the past two months between the Fed balance sheet and stocks, but I believe this is temporary.

Corporate buybacks are at all-time highs in 2018, and it's obvious that this is meant to offset the Fed's waning support for the markets. As interest rates increase and the Trump tax cut dwindles, though, buybacks will die.

If we consider the possibility that the Fed's assets also include stock shares as many suspect, then the Fed asset dumps would also increase the number of existing shares on the market and sabotage corporate efforts to reduce shares through stock buybacks. I predict stocks will once again converge with the falling Fed balance sheet by the end of this year and that they will continue to drop precipitously through the last quarter of 2018 and the rest of 2019.

Timing is everything

Central banks need cover before they can launch their "global reset," and what better cover than a massive international trade war? Trump's trade war is an excellent distraction which can be used as a rationale for every negative consequence of the central banks pulling the plug on stimulus life support. Meaning, the disasters the central bankers cause through tightening into a weak economic environment can be blamed on Trump and the trade conflict.

I don't think it's a coincidence that almost every escalation in the trade war happens to take place at the same time as major central bank announcements on rate hikes and balance sheet cuts. The latest trade war salvo of $200 billion in tariffs against China is leading to a Chinese announcement on retaliation — all of this taking place on the exact week of the Fed's September meeting which is expected to result in yet another rate hike and expanded balance sheet cuts.

The Fed's tightening policies have resulted in a severe reaction by emerging markets which are already crashing and have diverged greatly from U.S. markets. American stocks will not escape the same fate.

The Fed's neutral rate efforts suggest a turning point in late 2018 to early 2019. Balance sheet cuts are expected to increase at this time, which would also expedite a crash in existing market assets. The only question is how long can corporations sustain stock buybacks until their debt burdens crush their efforts? With such companies highly leveraged, interest rates will determine the length of their resolve. I believe two more hikes will be their limit.

If the Fed continues on its current path the next stock crash would begin around December 2018 into the first quarter of 2019. After that, other sectors of the economy, already highly unstable, will break down through 2019 and 2020.

Worse than a hundred hurricanes

Worse than a hundred hurricanes 
By Becky Akers

As the late, great Florence graphically testifies, we are smack in the middle of "hurricane season." Far worse, though, is the other storm natural disasters always unleash: unconstitutional, corrupt, incompetent and even lethal government.

The Constitution is as trashed as the homes in Florence's path. Only with academic interest, then, do we note that the country's highest law never empowers the feds to provide erroneous forecasts of weather, sell subsidized "flood insurance" to encourage building in dangerous areas, squander over $15 billion on "first responders" who exacerbate emergencies and steal yet more billions from taxpayers for "disaster relief."

The country was surprisingly young when Congress first grabbed such authority — or so the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] claims: the bureaucracy "can trace its beginnings to the Congressional Act of 1803. This act, generally considered the first piece of disaster legislation, provided assistance to a New Hampshire town following an extensive fire."

Leviathan lies about everything, all the time. So I verified that "an extensive fire" did indeed ravage "a New Hampshire town," and that it spawned legislation in 1803. It's also true that the Act "provided assistance" — but not in the way we interpret that, with bureaucrats and billions of the taxpayers' dollars drowning the place. Rather, the bill "authorized and directed" the "secretary of the treasury" "to cause to be suspended for months, the collection of bonds due to the United States by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town." Or, as a modern source puts it, Congress "provided relief for Portsmouth merchants by waiving duties and tariffs on imported goods."

Desisting from thievery, allowing entrepreneurs to keep their profits, differs as dramatically from "making federal funding for recovery available to individuals impacted by" Mother Nature as your morning shower does from Florence's deluge.

But nowadays, "Federal funding will also be available to state and eligible local governments, as well as certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work on those affected counties." In other words, our rulers will force us to compensate the hurricane's victims. Many have already contributed to private efforts at relief. Americans are famous as the world's most liberal donors, nor must the government compel us to compassion. Yet it nonetheless taxes us so that politicians can "generously" redistribute the loot in Florence's wake. Their robbery of us downgrades charity to naked theft.

Remember, too, that most folks would never have built, much less rebuild, in a coastal neighborhood but for federal encouragement to do so — again on our dime: "The National Flood Insurance Program aims to reduce the impact of flooding on private and public structures. It does so by providing affordable insurance to property owners, renters and businesses..." And why is FEMA's insurance "affordable?" Because a private company would have to charge astronomical rates to cover the liability of a neighboring ocean: even as long ago as 1986, "Federal flood insurance ... costs those who qualify, by virtue of owning property in an official hazard zone and enlisting in the program, only about one-third of what private insurance premiums would be."I.e., politicians and bureaucrats bribe people to risk not only our money but their lives by residing in areas prone to weather that kills. And an article published in the Department of Homeland Security's own Homeland Security Affairs bemoans such recklessness: "Moral hazard is defined as when people do not assume the full risk of an action or decision; people are not [then] inclined to make a fully responsible or moral choice..." This "redistribution of risk" is especially culpable when it comes to floods because "flood-related hazards are the most prominent and significant hazards in the United States and account for the highest percentage of major disaster declarations and direct economic losses."

Count on the state to exploit every tragedy: "The NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program] was created as a mitigation program with the goal of preventing future loss of life and property from ... flooding." But as always with Leviathan's schemes, the NFIP's results diametrically diverge from its alleged purpose: "...from 1978 through 2015, 3.8 percent of policyholders have filed for repetitive losses, accounting for a disproportionate 35.5 percent of flood loss claims and 30.5 percent of claim payments." (Nor does such moral hazard come cheap: "...the impacts of 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2012 hurricane seasons have generated $24 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury and revenue is unlikely to cover future catastrophic losses or repay the billions of dollars in debt.")

We can't even depend on accurate warnings of impending storms, thanks to the federal "National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which manages the National Weather Service and its underling agencies, including the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, where the nation's weather models are run..." Those "models are significantly flawed in comparison with commercial and European alternatives. American forecasting also does poorly at data assimilation, the process of integrating information about atmospheric conditions into modeling programs; in the meantime, a lack of available computing power precludes the use of more advanced systems already operating [elsewhere]. And there are persistent management challenges, perhaps best represented by the legions of NOAA scientists whose innovations remain stranded in research labs and out of the hands of the National Weather Service operational forecasters who make the day-to-day predictions..." Moreover, "...accuracy is everything, often the difference between life and death, given that extreme weather — tornadoes, flash floods, heat waves — kills more than 500 Americans each year. 'An incremental improvement would make a huge difference,' [Cliff Mass, a meteorologist and professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington] says. Industries like shipping, energy, agriculture and utilities lose money when predictions fail. Even slightly more precise wind-speed projections would help airlines greatly reduce fuel costs." Yet these botched forecasts cost us $1 billion annually.

Despite government's horrific record on all things weather, even conservative Americans expect its "help" during calamities like Florence. Why?

Chris Farrell: Rosenstein Needs to be Fired for Suppressing FISA Docs

Chris Farrell: Rosenstein Needs to be Fired for Suppressing FISA Docs

September 17, 2018- JW Director of Investigations and Research Chris Farrell appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on the Fox Business Network to discuss the Department of Justice’s response to President Trump’s FISA declassification request.

View Article
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/in-the-news/chris-farrell-rosenstein-needs-to-go/

Fighting back against globalism requires an honest movement to decentralize

By Brandon Smith

Over a decade ago, critics of the liberty movement would often argue that it was not enough to simply point out all the problems plaguing our economy — we needed to also offer solutions. Of course, a common Alinsky tactic is to demand your opponents solve all the world's ailments before they can earn the right to complain about problems. "If you can't give us a solution, then stop going on and on about the problem," they would squeal.

I don't agree that our right to analyze the instabilities of our financial system is predicated on our ability to fix the issue outright. In fact, that sounds rather insane. How can we fix the problem if we don't educate the public on the problem first? However, I do think that the only people who have the drive and the knowledge to ultimately come up with a solution are those in the liberty movement. Who else is going to try? Who else is even qualified?

I have seen many ideas come and go over the years. The thing about solutions is that while you might get most people to agree on the problem, getting a majority of them to agree on a solution is a nightmare. Then, once enough people agree on a solution, you then have to find a way to motivate them to act on it. The masses often want desperately to help themselves, they just don't like it when a lot of effort or sacrifice is required.

This is why we only tend to see organized activism and a push toward self-sufficiency after a crisis has already struck. Most human beings require obvious incentive before they become motivated. They need immediate gratification. The people that can see the long game, who can see the incentives years or generations down the road, we call "leaders." The hope is that one day every individual can be educated to the point that they can self-lead; that each individual will become an innovator and problem solver in their own right.

One solution to fight back against subversive globalism that I have promoted for most of my career as an analyst for the movement is decentralization. And I still hold to this day that it is the only practical way to protect free people from the threats created by international banks and globalist institutions bent on shaping the world to their will. This solution, though, requires individual action.

Globalists desire a world system that forces everyone to participate, either through fear or necessity. This system is designed to promote dependency (slavery) while also promoting a feeling of isolation and helplessness. It is meant to erase self-reliance as a model for living, while also squashing any potential for voluntary organization. To go to war with such a system, we have to achieve the opposite goals.

Liberty activists have to lead by example, first by educating the public on the concept of the non-aggression principle — the principle that force is not an acceptable method of compelling a group of people to organize in the way you wish. Force is not incentive, it is criminal. Force is only an acceptable reaction when someone else is trying to harm or enslave you and those around you. This concept is paramount to the long-term survival of any society. It should be codified and taught to each new generation.

Next, liberty activists need to organize locally into voluntary groups based on mutual aid. Modern civilization has been directed over many decades to assume that participation in the system is mandatory and that the survival of the system is paramount over the rights or prosperity of the individual. But a system that is hostile to individual liberty does not deserve to exist. It should not be allowed to survive.

People have to walk away and build something else.

Voluntarism is the key to changing decades if not centuries of misallocated human labor and time. Imagine a world in which every person is a "free agent," and they join groups (or partnerships) based on shared goals or shared beliefs rather than being born into servitude — fuel to keep a global machine that does not care about them running. They join these groups based on their abilities, merit and how they might help a particular project progress. Then they leave the group whenever they wish or when the project is done.

In other words, voluntarism is a kind of return to a tribal system, but one in which many tribes exist temporarily based on what they plan to achieve. The incentive to better one's self would be high in a voluntary society, for you are competing against every other individual that is also improving their own skill sets and knowledge for a spot in each project or tribe.

Voluntarism is perhaps a lofty vision, but one that can be pursued in steps. One of the first steps is individual self-sufficiency and production.

Decentralization requires each person and group to become production capable. There was a time not more than a century ago when the majority of Americans learned skill sets through family or apprenticeship that gave them the ability to produce necessary goods and services. This idea has all but disappeared today. The principle of self-reliance is treated almost as a joke in popular media now. And many municipalities actually punish individual attempts at growing one's own food or collecting water. Production is discouraged through overt taxation and bureaucracy. Nevertheless, these things have to be done if we are to break from the existing system.

Learning a trade skill is something anyone can do to improve their chances at survival. Organizing into trade groups that barter their skills and goods is the next step.

Tribalism is commonly presented in the mainstream as a barbaric and outdated mode of living, which is why I highly recommend it. The more centralized civilization becomes, the less varied its ideas are, the less self-sufficient it is and the more easily controlled it is. This is the point, of course. Globalists use any means at their disposal to enforce centralization not because they think it will serve to better mankind, but because it gives them more dominance over mankind.

Tribes may have their differences or even come to conflict if they do not respect the nonaggression principle. But any war that erupts between two tribes is never going to match the horror of the centralized military industrial complex with its never-ending wars on a global scale. By the same token, tribalism prevents the possibility of a single world system that claims to "end war" while enslaving the populace through dependency and force. One ring to rule them all is not the answer. It never was.

It is my belief that the human endeavor to improve life and improve how we interact with the Earth itself must be worked toward by decentralized efforts, otherwise the chances of civilization being led down a destructive path by a small group of psychopathic people is high.

Today, most innovation is bottlenecked through control mechanisms that only benefit the elites. They promote their puppets to government and in exchange government provides them special protection. Most science revolves around their goals alone, not the betterment of humanity. Most social discourse is designed to divide people in anger and cultism rather than provide greater understanding. Geopolitically, they preach about the erasure of national borders and the unification of society, while at the same time using trickery and subversion to trigger wars all over the world. They have a monopoly on the direction of human progress, but not a monopoly on human thought... not yet.

Our job is to dismantle their monopolies by starting our own competing systems that serve our interests far better. In this way we create redundancy that shields us from economic collapse, engineered or otherwise. In fact, if we become more independent as producers and organize our own local economies, we might even welcome the collapse of the globalists system as a useless parasitic husk, rather than fear its collapse as a sign of the "Apocalypse."

Globalist efforts to co-opt decentralization movements are rampant, which tells me that the model is indeed a threat to them. The cryptocurrency scam is one such example; it was originally sold to the liberty movement as a "decentralizing" currency system that would provide anonymity in trade and an alternative that would crush central banks. Instead, we find that crypto provides the exact opposite of anonymity as a perfect tracking mechanism through the blockchain and that international bankers love blockchain tech as they invest heavily in the arena.

Another example of co-option is the propaganda surrounding the narrative of the new "multi-polar" world order. The claim that nations are moving away from the dollar-based reserve currency system as a means to "decentralize" is a lie. They are in fact moving away from the dollar, but also quietly into the arms of the IMF and its SDR basket as various countries congeal into a single global currency system. That is to say, they are getting ready to trade one centralized system for an even more centralized system.

There is no decentralization happening today, and it will not happen on a national scale ever. It must happen at the local level; from the bottom up, not the top down.

I also realize that if movements to decentralize locally become successful and the idea catches on, globalists will attempt to use violence to stop us. If this occurs, at least we will be far more equipped to respond as self-sufficient and organized producers. The violence question must be answered in a separate article from this one. Independence comes first, and we can declare it by decentralizing away from the existing and festering totalitarian model.

Female High School Friend of Kavanaugh Says Latest Allegation ‘False,’ ‘Absurd’

From the Daily Signal   LAW NEWS

EXCLUSIVE: Female High School Friend of Kavanaugh Says Latest Allegation ‘False,’ ‘Absurd’

Rachel del Guidice 

A woman and friend who knew Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a high school student says allegations of sexual misconduct from a third accuser are “false.”

“This claim is absolutely false and absurd,” Meghan McCaleb, a friend of Kavanaugh’s since high school, told The Daily Signal of allegations from Julie Swetnick, which were made public Wednesday.

Swetnick, who says she is a graduate of Gaithersburg High School in Gaithersburg, Maryland, claims she saw Kavanaugh “drink excessively at many of these parties and engage in abusive and physically aggressive behavior towards girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, ‘grinding’ against girls, and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts.”

Gaithersburg High is a public school in Montgomery County, Maryland, about 10 miles north of Georgetown Prep,  the private school Kavanaugh attended.

“We never hung out with anyone from Gaithersburg High School, there was never any drug use at our parties, and the fact that she is coming out and saying that is such an insult to Brett and to all of us,” McCaleb said.

“It makes our community look bad and our reputation, and Brett was just not like that ever. No one was.”

Swetnick is represented by lawyer Michael Avenatti, who also represented porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump.

Michael Avenatti

✔@MichaelAvenatti

Below is my correspondence to Mr. Davis of moments ago, together with a sworn declaration from my client. We demand an immediate FBI investigation into the allegations. Under no circumstances should Brett Kavanaugh be confirmed absent a full and complete investigation.

9:42 AM - Sep 26, 2018

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Michael Avenatti

✔@MichaelAvenatti

Here is a picture of my client Julie Swetnick. She is courageous, brave and honest. We ask that her privacy and that of her family be respected.

9:44 AM - Sep 26, 2018

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Swetnick, according to her declaration, has done work for the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department, among other government institutions.

“The fact that Michael Avenatti is coming up with this the day before the hearing is outrageous,” McCaleb said.

“I can just tell you that Brett was always a responsible, decent, polite guy, and he would never, ever do anything like this, ever,” she said.

Kavanaugh denied Swetnick’s allegations in a statement Wednesday, saying, “This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I don’t know who this is and this never happened.”

Trump tweeted about the latest allegation Wednesday:

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

Avenatti is a third rate lawyer who is good at making false accusations, like he did on me and like he is now doing on Judge Brett Kavanaugh. He is just looking for attention and doesn’t want people to look at his past record and relationships - a total low-life!

11:47 AM - Sep 26, 2018

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Kavanaugh faces two previous late-breaking allegations of sexual misconduct.

Deborah Ramirez, 53, who attended Yale University at the same time as Kavanaugh, accused him of exposing himself to her at a party.

“I was embarrassed and ashamed and humiliated,” Ramirez told The New Yorker, which first reported the allegation.

The first allegation of sexual assault came from a Northern California woman, Christine Blasey Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist, who told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh held her down, groped her, and tried to remove her clothes in a bedroom during a house party in the early 1980s in Montgomery County.

“I have never heard of her in my life and I do not know one person who went to Gaithersburg High School,” McCaleb said of Swetnick.

McCaleb attended and graduated in 1984 from Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, an all-girls Catholic high school, and was friends with Kavanaugh throughout high school and after.

Kavanaugh graduated from the all-boys Georgetown Preparatory School in 1983.