That’s all to the good. Trump is the All-American candidate for president, and that’s why Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund — the Super PAC associated with Tea Party Patriots Action, the nation’s largest Tea Party group — decided to endorse him for president. Now it’s time for everyone who wants to restore America’s greatness to rally around Trump and launch the preparations for the fall campaign.

The remaining candidate should withdraw from the race and redeploy her remaining money and manpower against Joe Biden and the Democrats. Republicans from the top of the ticket to the bottom — along with Republican party officials at the national, state, and local level, and major donors — should all be working together to prepare for the fall elections, so they can achieve victory at all levels.

That way, they will control more seats in the next Congress — with a larger Republican majority in the House, a new Republican majority in the Senate, and a Republican back in the White House — that will allow them to follow through and enact necessary conservative policy changes.

Life with Trump as president was much better — for more people — than is life with President Biden.

America was respected by our allies and feared by our adversaries.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin kept the Russian Army in check. China’s Xi Jinping didn’t dare threaten Taiwan. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un shut down his nation’s nuclear missile tests.

In the Middle East, Trump withdrew the U.S. from President Barack Obama’s ill-advised nuclear deal with Iran and, when events warranted, boldly ordered an air strike against General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. Trump directed his administration to work with Israel and with some of America’s other Middle Eastern allies; the result was the Abraham Accords, a series of bilateral agreements in which Israel opened diplomatic relations for the first time with Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, and began the process of serious discussions toward normalization of relations with Sudan and Saudi Arabia.

At home, America’s borders were better secured. Border Patrol agents were focused on interdicting drug flows, rather than simply processing illegal aliens into the country.

Economic growth was strong, and prosperity was widespread — unemployment reached decades-long lows across the board, among blacks, Hispanics, and women. Domestic energy production reached new heights, and for the first time in 75 years, the U.S. became a net oil exporter.

America can be great again, with the right leadership — with Trump’s leadership.

Tens of millions of Americans recognize this, and are looking forward to the opportunity to vote for Trump, both in their states’ upcoming primary elections and in the general election. Now the focus must shift — it’s time to secure and win the elections.

Republicans should recognize they’ve got from now until mid-September (when the first early-vote ballots will be cast) to ensure victory in the fall elections. They should use that time to draw simple but effective contrasts with the Democrats.

Nikki Haley should recognize reality — she is not going to be the presidential nominee of the Grand Old party — and she should follow the examples of Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott and others and withdraw from the presidential nominating contest, so the money and manpower resources she would have spent fruitlessly over the coming weeks could instead be redirected into more fruitful pursuits on behalf of the party’s larger interests.

Results out of Iowa and New Hampshire make it clear — the party’s voter base is united behind its nominee. It’s time for the party’s elected officials, party leaders and major donors to join the effort.

And it’s time for the party’s congressional leadership — in both houses — to get on the same page, and begin working to shape the contours of the race to the party’s advantage.

Every four years, we are told that “this will be the most important election of our lifetimes.” This time, that old adage may actually be accurate. It’s time for Republicans to stop their internecine arguments and join forces against their true political opponents. America’s patriots are counting on them.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

The city is on pace to record the highest number of  murders since George W. Bush’s first term, and carjackings are skyrocketing. It’s the soft-on-crime policies promulgated by the District of Columbia government that’s responsible for this crime wave, and everyone knows it.

What can be done to restore law and order?

A comparison of crime in the District of Columbia in 2023 versus crime in D.C. just a year earlier is instructive. In 2022, there were 182 homicides; as of Nov. 15, 2023, there were 243 homicides, representing a 34% increase.

In 2022, there were 1,839 robberies; so far in 2023 there have been 3,075, a 67% increase.

In 2022, there were 3,109 motor vehicle thefts, compared to 6,142 in 2023, a 98% increase. And while there were 485 carjackings in all of 2022, as of October 3, 2023, there were already 753 carjackings, a 55% increase.

Statistics can be dry. Sometimes stories can convey the truth with more impact.

Late one evening just a few days ago, a federal agent fired at three people seen breaking into a car parked outside a home in Georgetown, one of the more expensive neighborhoods in the nation’s capital. Federal agents don’t regularly fire their weapons to prevent crimes like auto theft – in fact, Department of Homeland Security guidelines prevent agents from firing warning shots or shooting at a moving vehicle in an attempt to stop someone fleeing the scene of a crime, even when the automobile in question is owned by the federal government, as this one was. (In fact, in this case, the vehicle was part of the Secret Service protective detail assigned to guard President Biden’s granddaughter, Naomi Biden.)

An unoccupied vehicle outside the president’s granddaughter’s home isn’t the only vehicle attached to a prominent Democrat politician to be the object of a crime in the nation’s capital, though. Last month, Texas Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar was carjacked outside his apartment building in Washington’s Navy Yard neighborhood, an upscale residential area revitalized by the construction of Nationals Park, ballfield of the city’s MLB franchise. (Cuellar was unharmed, and his car was found a day later a few miles away.)

Ideas have consequences; so do actions, even if it sometimes takes time for the effects to become evident. In this case, the District of Columbia Council took actions that sent clear signals about crime, and the consequences have become evident.

First, in the summer of 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd demonstrations, the council voted to defund the police by cutting the police budget. Last year, the council enacted the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Act, which heightened scrutiny on police officers and made it easier to fire them – an anti-police law so bad that majorities in both houses of Congress tried to overturn it.

Then, in November of 2022, the council voted to “modernize” the city’s Criminal Code. That “modernization” (read: “softening”) eliminated virtually all of the code’s mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for violent crimes, even as it drastically reduced maximum penalties available to the courts.

Moreover, the revisions established the right to a jury trial for most misdemeanor offenses, which would have overloaded an already crowded court system and reduced the resources devoted to prosecuting the more serious felony cases.

Even D.C.’s exceedingly progressive mayor, Muriel Bowser, was aghast. She vetoed the bill, but the council overrode her veto.

Not surprisingly, with an underfunded, handcuffed police force and the softening of the penalties attached to serious crimes, crime spiked. See statistics above.

Enter the U.S. Congress, which resides in the nation’s capital and has a stake in the matter – in fact, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the power “to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever” over the capital city. Despite the fact that Democrats control the Senate, and might have been expected to run political cover for the all-Democrat D.C. city government, both houses of Congress passed legislation overturning the criminal code revisions promulgated by the D.C. Council – and on March 20, 2023, President Joe Biden signed that overturning into law.

But the crime rate still soared. Apparently, criminals believe the mood in D.C. is still “soft on crime,” despite what the president and the Congress did to reverse the softening of the city’s criminal penalties.

So now the Congress is considering an even tougher action – three Republican Congressmen have introduced H.R. 5195, the Seat of Government Act. The new bill would repeal the 1973 D.C. Home Rule Act, which created the District’s current government, and would, thereby, return full control of city government functions to the Congress.

With a Democrat in the White House and a Senate controlled by Democrats, it’s hard to see how that bill could successfully run the traps and become law.

Of course, that’s what the soft-on-crime crowd at D.C. City Hall probably thought about that bill the president signed back in March, too.

Sound off about this story on The Liberty Daily Substack.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

That’s absurd, and a federal judge put a stop to the new policy before it went into effect.

Yet the Biden Administration decided to continue allowing illegal immigrants to be released into the country via “parole.” That is a direct violation of the federal court order. Thankfully, at least one federal judge – T. Kent Wetherell II, of the northern district of Florida – is willing to stand up to hold Biden and his cronies to account.

The Biden Administration’s refusal to follow the law has significant real-world consequences.

New York City officials estimate the city will spend more than $4 billion dealing with the illegal immigrants who have flooded the city as a result of Biden’s illegal immigration crisis.

And New York’s experience is multiplied all over the country, as local, state, and federal government officials make decisions to deploy taxpayer resources to support the needs of illegal immigrants instead of American citizens.

That’s wrong. And what’s really infuriating about it is that it is the direct and predictable result of the Biden Administration’s refusal to follow the law.

Enter Judge Wetherell, who, in an earlier case filed by the state of Florida against the Biden Administration, demonstrated his willingness to stand firmly for the rule of law against the Biden Administration’s refusal to do so. In that case, Wetherell ruled that the Biden Administration had to stop its “Parole+ATD” – that is, “Parole plus Alternatives to Detention” – because it violated the law.

Last week, in a new case brought by the state of Florida against the Biden Administration, Judge Wetherell issued an order denying the Border Patrol the ability to release illegal immigrants into the country via “parole,” saying the “new” Biden Administration policy was “materially indistinguishable” from the “Parole+ATD”policy he had rejected two months earlier.

“Like the Parole+ATD policy, the Parole with Conditions policy is a ‘processing pathway’ designed to relieve overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities and release large numbers of aliens into the country on ‘parole’ without even initiating immigration proceedings,” Judge Wetherell wrote in Monday’s decision. “The Parole with Conditions policy operates in precisely the same manner as the Parole+ATD policy – by allowing immigration officials to ‘parole’ arriving aliens into the country on the condition that they schedule an appointment at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility (or check-in online) within a specified period to be placed in an immigration proceeding.”

Wetherell’s ruling last week put the new policy on hold for two weeks, to give the Biden Administration time to file an appeal. Department of Justice lawyers asked for a two-week stay of the judge’s order, which he promptly denied.

Then came Friday, and – according to a report in The Washington Times – the Biden Administration continued to allow illegal immigrants into the country, “paroling” some 2,500 of them even after the judge’s order blocking the policy had gone into effect.

Judge Wetherell was not happy. Even as he acknowledged he had “a healthy degree of skepticism” about the news report, he showed his mood: “However,” he wrote, “the Court takes allegations of noncompliance with its orders very seriously, irrespective of the source of the allegations.” Wetherell ordered the Biden Administration’s lawyers to explain its continued use of the new policy he had blocked.

Here’s the problem: The Biden Administration simply does not wish to follow the law. It doesn’t make a difference how it cloaks the policy – whether one calls it “Parole+ATD” or “Parole with Conditions,” as Judge Wetherell says, it’s essentially the same policy, and it’s a policy that violates the law. And the result is the catastrophe we see on the southern border … and everywhere illegal immigrants get to in the interior of the country.

The solution to the problem is not rocket science: To end the lawlessness of the Biden Administration, we must end the Biden Administration and replace it with an administration committed to following and enforcing the law. It’s just that simple.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].