Welcome back in for Al’s Afternoon Tea! First, a quick thank-you to John Z for filling in on The Brew at the last minute yesterday due to a death in the family.

We can’t wait until the end to share what is on The Stream menu, so we’ll just do it now!

Earlier today, The Stream issued an invitation to “Join Us in 40 Days of Prayer and Fasting for the Nation.” Read all about it, along with the history of fasting in times of turmoil and please commit to partnering with us. Here’s why this is important:

This time, it really is for all the marbles. If the “shining city on a hill” that reflects the light of freedom provided through the Gospel fails, the tyranny that is already overtaking parts of the West will have prevailed. And we simply cannot let that happen.

DOJ Releases Letter from Would-Be Assassin Announcing Bounty on Trump’s Head

The same Department of Justice that is tight-lipped about what’s been discovered about the first would-be Trump assassin, Thomas Crooks, had no problem yesterday quickly releasing a letter from second wannabe assassin Ryan Routh announcing a $150,000 bounty for anyone who finished the job of killing the former president.

You’d want to put the decision not to redact that line down to incompetence and carelessness, but this is the same regime that is calling this same Donald Trump a “threat to democracy” on a daily basis. (The first image that popped into my head: The “Wanted for Treason” posters that popped up in Dallas in the days before JFK was killed there.)

Former Attorney General Bill Barr told Fox News Digital he is “dumbfounded” the DOJ released the letter with the bounty announcement, noting, “It served no purpose other than to risk further violence.”

Which is exactly the point. Now Barr just needs to have the intestinal fortitude to admit that the logical conclusion based on all the evidence — from the lawfare to the rhetoric to the ease of access both would-be assassins had to Trump — is that higher-ups in the current regime, including the department formerly headed by Barr, want Trump eliminated.

If this wasn’t enough of an incentive to pray for an even fiercer hedge of protection around Trump, former Secret Service agent turned radio host Dan Bongino’s report yesterday will seal the deal. Bongino’s Secret Service sources tell him they are convinced the agency’s communications have been compromised, whether via a mole, electronically hacked or both.

By the way, Routh’s letter made very clear he was at the golf course to murder Trump, in case the media — or the FBI — wanted to say he was just hanging out in the bushes for 12 hours hoping to collect errant golf balls.

The DOJ also revealed Routh had been in Florida for about a month, casing Trump’s golf course and Mar-a-Lago. Routh was unemployed, so who was paying his way? And where would he have gotten the cash for the bounty?

A judge ruled Routh must remain in jail. Meaning, he missed out on a chance to hang out with his man, Volodomir Zelenskyy, yesterday in Pennsylvania.

Zelenskyy Visits Ammo Plants in Swing State, Stumps for Harris on Taxpayer Dime

Who’s currently serving as president of the United States? Joe Biden? Jill Biden? Kamala Harris? Those “national security” leaders who endorsed Harris, as John Zmirak postulates? Why not just say this guy:

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Pennsylvania democrat Governor Josh Shapiro signed artillery shells to be used in war. This was at a munitions factory in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Democrats are now the party of war and they're proud of it. Sad. pic.twitter.com/I8CK0sr5Fc

— David J Harris Jr (@DavidJHarrisJr) September 23, 2024

Yes, that’s Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky happily signing munitions at an ammo plant in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, signaling how good the Biden-Harris war in Ukraine is for Quaker State business … before blasting Trump and running mate J.D. Vance. His Pennsylvania visit was as much a campaign event for Harris as the Oprah town hall was. And he flew in and around on a U.S military plane.

Let’s see: When Donald Trump merely asks Zelenskyy about the nefarious activities of Joe and Hunter Biden in Ukraine, he is impeached.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris fly Zelenskyy into a swing state on a U.S. military jet to bash Trump five weeks before the election. How is that not an impeachable offense?

When Hillary Clinton’s campaign invents the Trump-Russia collusion story, we get three years of investigations. When Harris actually brings the leader of the foreign country into ours to stump for her, will it generate more than a yawn?

Worth noting that Zelenskyy was flown to Pennsylvania on an U.S. Air Force C-17.

The Biden-Harris admin is using military assets to fly a foreign leader into a battleground state in order to undermine their political opponents. https://t.co/OSebVUuBEg pic.twitter.com/biMGTfAc1J

— Dan Caldwell 🇺🇸 (@dandcaldwell) September 23, 2024

Trump: “Deport Illegal Immigrants.” Harris: “Down With Deportation!”

The Kamala Harris depicted in all her campaign ads is not the real Kamala Harris, no more than those comedians a few years back in KFC commercials were the real Colonel Sanders.

The real Kamala Harris is the radical who first corroded San Francisco, then California, and most recently the national stage. Here’s another example. A video of newly minted U.S. Senator Kamala Harris in 2018 joining a group of protesters shouting, “Down with deportation!”

A newly resurfaced 2018 video obtained by DailyMail shows Kamala Harris chanting alongside protesters and Jussie Smollet:

“Down down with deportation.”

“Up up with agitation.”

“Down down with deportation.”

I’m sure she’ll say she’s since changed her position… pic.twitter.com/hxF109t0Zl

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) September 23, 2024

And don’t try to tell me, Community Notes, that Harris isn’t in favor of agitation from those Trump wants to deport. Remember what happened in March down Texas way?

This is the moment when TX National Guard became overrun by migrants rioting to get across the border here in El Paso today

We were there and saw it all happen. Absolute chaos here. pic.twitter.com/VN6Kf663ie

— Jennie Taer 🎗️ (@JennieSTaer) March 21, 2024

Texas announced just last week that more than 100 suspected members of the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua were among those involved in the March stampede.

Oh, and when Harris talks about protecting women? That same Ten de Aragua gang, in addition to taking over apartments and hotels across the U.S.,  is now forcing women into prostitution in eight states, according to law enforcement documents leaked to the New York Post.

This election truly is between Trump’s vision of deporting illegal immigrants and restoring order to cities and communities and Harris’s dream of an overrun America crumbling into chaos.

Harris is also all in on the transgender madness and allowing males to dominate women’s sports.

School Bans Parents Who Wore Pink XX Bands at Girls’ High School Soccer Game

Bow High School in New Hampshire has banned parents who wore pink XX wristbands in support of their daughters, who were forced to compete against a male in a recent soccer game. The parents donned the XX apparel after the school shrugged off their complaints about the boy playing for Plymouth Regional High School, saying there was nothing administrators could do.

Turns out the school was willing to do something. Administrators went nuts over the wristbands. As The Blaze reported, they stopped the game, ordered the parents to remove the bands, and demanded police issue “no trespass” orders to them. Said parent Anthony Foote, ““My daughter’s playing in the homecoming game this weekend, and I’m banned until the 23rd. I can’t watch her play in homecoming — which is ridiculous.”

Another parent, Kyle Fellers, says he’s been banned for the rest of the season. He shared the order from the school with the New Hampshire Journal.

You are prohibited from attending any Bow School District athletic or extracurricular event, on or off school grounds. This NO TRESPASS order will remain in effect for the remainder of the fall sports season. If you are found on District property in violation of this order you will be arrested and prosecuted for Criminal Trespass under New Hampshire law.

Both Foote and Fellers reject the school’s claim that they engaged in any disruptive or harassing behavior. As the New Hampshire Journal reports, “multiple videos show a small crowd of people uneventfully watching the game.”

That is, until school officials came down to accost the parents.

Here’s the cool thing: It’s yet another sign that Americans are getting fed up with the woke gestapo. While Fellers did take off his XX wristbands after being confronted and, not wanting to be a distraction, watched the rest of the match from his car, others in the crowd put on the wristbands and refused to take them off.

Fellers and Foote are both considering legal action against the school.

Transgender Fencer Whips Competition Only Months After Taking Up Sport

Once upon a time, far from Florin and Guilder, a female colleague of mine and I, both obsessed with The Princess Bride, decided to take up fencing together at the Swordplay LA fencing studio in Burbank — a top school for “stage fencing,” helping train and choreograph fencing battles for film, TV and stage, as well as training competitive fencers. For some reason, though we both imagined ourselves to be the Dread Pirate Roberts, we chose competitive fencing.

Although fencing is as much a sport of wit, strategy, flexibility, discipline, precision, and reflexes as it is strength, speed, and reach, Rosie was no match for me whenever we got to actually bout. Despite my inexperience — and being no Inigo Montoya — I matched up about evenly with the vastly more experienced and skilled (and pretty large) woman in the studio, who if I remember, was starting to get attention at women’s competitions in the area.

So I know from experience that males have a natural, irrefutable advantage in the sport. If I had taken my mediocre self to compete in women’s events, I would have been cheating.

A fencer named Annika Rose Suchoski has no such scruples. The towering Suchoski, 39, took up the sport a mere six months ago, yet took (stole) second place at this month’s Fortune Fencing Regional Championships in Ontario. It was Suchoski’s very first tournament.

Expect to see more of this. As Breitbart reports, in 2022 USA Fencing “threw open all its women’s categories to men claiming to be transgender without exception.” Transgender people, according to USA Fencing, may participate “in a manner consistent with their gender identity/expression, regardless of the gender associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.”

Put on an “expression” of femininity and you can accessorize with medals at the expense of women.

The Giggling Fencer

I don’t want to leave you with the grumbles. In fact, one of our fencing cohorts who started about the same time as Rosie and I did, taught us the opposite. I believe his name was John, but I’ll never forget his face. Short, balding, with a goatee and glasses, John wasn’t exactly a great fencer. But he actually proved a difficult opponent for the most amazing of reasons.

Despite fencing being a very demanding, intense, exhausting sport with little margin for error – like life – John was so in love with fencing that he would actual giggle through the bout. Yes, giggle. As I struggled to dispatch him with cool, brutal efficiency, thrusting hard, cold steel toward his torso, he would act like he was being tickled. Regardless of the score, regardless of how far I’d press him to the back of the strip, his joy never left.

I’d finally win, we’d offer the traditional salute, off would come the masks, and with sweat pouring down the face plastered with the wide grin, he’d beam, “Dang, that was fun!”

Is that not the attitude Paul calls on us to have? That regardless of the attacks, thrusts, lunges, ripostes and bad calls life throws our way, regardless of how fiercely the enemy wants to force us off the strip, we fight hard but always with the joy of the Lord?

When the bout is over, we all want to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It seems like God wants to hear us respond, “Dang, that was fun.”

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.