By Stuart Gorin
Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, addressing an audience of more than 500 Brevard County citizens meeting
in Cocoa, Florida, on November 25, urged them to support an initiative being presented to the County Commissioners to
adopt an ordinance establishing Brevard as a “Bill of Rights Sanctuary County.”
Five different organizations joined forces to sponsor the meeting: The Ronald Reagan Club, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Florida, Truth Fest, Citizens Defending Freedom, and the Space Coast Patriots. However, later at the December 3 meeting of the Brevard County Commissioners, discussion of creating such a measure was postponed when Commissioner Rob Feltner said the proposal had to be reworked, and new commissioners on the panel needed more time to acclimate before voting on such a measure.
Newman, who is president of Liberty Sentinel Media, spoke on the Bill of Rights matter for an hour, explaining that while President Donald Trump will be in office for four more years and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for two more, it is very likely that the Socialists will continue with wokeness and tyranny, and they are still brainwashing our children. But “we have a window of opportunity,” he said, “We can’t control Congress, but we can and MUST act. We will go from the present and work our way back to early America, Anglo-Saxon, & finally Bible times.
Giving the group a civics lesson, Newman pointed out that powers in the United States are separated vertically between states and the federal government and horizontally among the executive, congressional, and judicial branches. He noted that the 10th Amendment to the Constitution states that: “Powers delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.”
Referring to the World Health Organization’s attempted one-world control over health policy with its new “Pandemic Agreement,” he said 26 Republican governors have announced they would refuse to comply with it. Newman also said that the Louisiana Senate unanimously passed a bill banning the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the World Economic Forum from having any jurisdiction or power within the state. Similar measures, he said, were passed by the Alabama legislature, Florida, Texas, and other states.
Fake news, he said, wants to associate nullifications with slavery and the Confederacy, but ironically, just the opposite occurred: nullification of federal laws was one of the key reasons that the South seceded from the union during the Civil War. Southerners criticized Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa for “enacting laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them.”
In 1842, Newman said, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Prigg v. Pennsylvania that the feds had no power to force state governments to help capture fugitive slaves. And a number of more recent decisions, including Printz v. United States dealing with gun control, have upheld that important legal principle, sometimes referred to as the “anticommandeering doctrine.” The Founding Fathers, Newman said, believed nullification was the rightful remedy. James Madison, widely regarded as the “Father of the Constitution,” explained that state governments possess a “means of opposition” to federal overreach: “refusal to cooperate with the officers of the Union.”
And Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Declaration of Independence, also was part of that. Newman pointed out that Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist, No. 78: “There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.”
Referring to the Magdeburg Confession in 1550, Newman said that pastors and city leaders there were ordered by the Holy Roman Empire to submit to authority, and citing the biblical doctrines articulated by Martin Luther, they said they could not and would resist, even by force if needed. The confession explained why the leaders of the city refused to obey the imperial law. The Magdeburg Confession called for resistance to political tyranny and argued that the subordinate powers in a state, faced with the situation where the “supreme power” is working to destroy the truth and God-given liberty and responsibility, may go even further than noncooperation with the supreme power and actively resist.
Newman noted that Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor under President Donald Trump, praised it as “a masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny.” During the summer of 2021, Newman said, elected commissioners in two Nevada counties declared that the Bill of Rights will be upheld in their jurisdictions, even if it means standing against unconstitutional acts by state and federal authorities.
According to a resolution approved in Elko County on June 2, abuse of the constitutionally protected rights of citizens in Elko and Lander counties will be “dealt with as criminal activity.” Officials in Lander County approved a similar effort. Under the leadership of constitutionally minded sheriffs and elected commissioners, the two rural counties in Nevada decided to become “constitutional counties,” where the rights of citizens will be protected from all attacks.
“The people of these United States are, and have a right to be, free and independent, and these rights are derived from the ‘Law of Nature and nature’s God,’” the resolution states, echoing the language of America’s Founders in the Declaration of Independence. “As such, they must be free from infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, unreasonable searches and seizures, capricious detainments, and every other natural right whether enumerated or not, pursuant to the 9th Amendment.”
The document, approved unanimously by the Elko County Board of Commissioners, also reaffirms the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment protecting states from the federal usurpation of unauthorized powers. Next, the resolution notes that no federal agency can create policies that supersede the Constitution and that the executive branch of government isn’t authorized to make law under America’s system of government.
The document then goes on to list a variety of “abuses” that “will not be tolerated.” Leaders of Lander County, which approved a similar move, have also been receiving positive responses from citizens. Later in 2021, Newman said, New York counties started joining the bandwagon: Lawmakers in a conservative western New York county voted unanimously to become a “constitutional sanctuary” where the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights will be protected. Under the legislation, Cattaraugus County declared itself to be a “Constitutional County, unwavering in its commitment to protect the constitutional rights of its citizens.”
He pointed out that “If state or federal government continue to overstep their bounds and intrude into the lives of our citizens with unconstitutional mandates, our legislature will step up and challenge that,” said Cattaraugus County Legislator Ginger Schroder, an attorney in private practice who drafted and pushed the resolution in response to pressure from the community.
Pointing to the Florida Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court decision on federalism, Newman said the Florida document “vests counties with the power of self-government, which must be liberally construed in favor of home rule.” He added that the High Court agrees. Referring to early Anglo-Saxon history, he said that when King Charles sought to rule as a tyrant and even dissolve Parliament in 1642, Christians fought back, and four years of civil war laid the groundwork for more civil liberty and representative government in England. King Charles, he added, was put on trial for treason, found guilty, and beheaded.
Newman also made several Magna Carta and Biblical references to the due process of law and concluded his remarks saying, “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Published originally at thetusk.org