Talk about giving a clinic in how to handle the media with nothing but the truth, Marco Rubio obliged.
In this interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Rubio literally makes Bash eat her Leftist-narrative crow in front of a live audience.
BREAKING: Senator Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) strongly confronts @CNN, defends Trump as he seeks the vice presidential spot, says Trump will be too busy undoing Biden's damage to go after him or his political enemies, notes that Trump was president for four years and did not do… pic.twitter.com/DrCNacKzMx
She begins the interview by asking Rubio if Trump would go after the people who have targeted him. All fake news media is asking this question in an attempt to prevent Trump from rightfully going after the co-conspirators who unlawfully prosecuted him. And while many Americans feel that Trump would be justified in vengeance against these traitors, many of whom blatantly committed treason in 2020 and beyond, Rubio doesn’t respond in that way.
Rubio calmly explained Trump real agenda based on his response during the debate. Trump’s vengeance will be success and restoring America to greatness. Rubio continued and hammered the Biden administration by saying that a second-term President Trump won’t have time for vengeance. Because he will be busy fixing Biden’s mess from the last 4 years.
And the thing that crushed Bash and all the other lies told by Leftists is Trump’s record.
Democrats and other Leftists talk of Trump as a dictator. They say things like, “When Trump gets into office he will [insert stupid Leftist talking point here].” Why do Democrats seem to forget that Trump has already been in office. From 2016 to 2020 Trump had the opportunity to [insert stupid Leftist talking point here], and yet he did nothing. Rubio did an amazing job explaining to Bash that Trump didn’t go after any of the people who targeted him in 2016. Few would argue that Trump could have gone after Hillary Clinton and all her co-conspirators for the Russian collusion lies, but he didn’t. Instead, he spent his time rebuilding the American economy, and restoring America’s place in the world.
And what of the multiple members of the DOJ; specifically, the FBI who targeted Trump, which led to the coup of 2020. If anybody deserved to be prosecuted for treason, it’s those FBI members who helped depose Trump.
Bash recognized that she got demolished by Rubio on vengeance. So, she shifted her attention to Project 25.
Keep in mind that Project 25 has nothing to do with Donald Trump. It’s a project of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think-tank located in DC. And while the initiative has some great ideas, it has not been endorsed by President Trump or his team.
Bash attempted to tie Trump to Project 25 and positioned the project as some alt-right radical proposal. So, when she asked Rubio about the project, it was a clear setup. She wanted Rubio to condemn the Heritage Foundation Rubio and the project leader. Rubio didn’t take the bait, as he gave the best answer possible: “Is he running for president?”
Nice try at “guilt by association”. But what impressed me is that Rubio shifted back to Trump’s policies, and redefined Trump’s initiatives again like a seasoned pro. Even better, Rubio pivoted back to the Left-wing think-tanks who policies Biden has been implementing for 4 years. Policies that have given us a border invasion, out of control inflation, and so on. Again, a master stroke to pivot Bash’s strategy back onto her and the Democrats.
Impressive Repartee
What I like most about the new version of Rubio is he doesn’t need handholding when speaking on behalf of MAGA. Watch his interviews and you can see that he feels MAGA in his soul. As for Trump proteges, Rubio sits atop the list. He’s politically savvy, young, and seasoned. He’s what a newly minted Republican Party needs, as they jettison the old guard.
Rubio manhandled Dana Bash, proudly displaying toxic masculinity. And he used the truth as his weapon.
Just the other day I wrote that Biden will leave when he gets two guarantees. Enough money to call it a day, and immunity from prosecution for him and his family.
Give him that, and he’s “gone like a turkey through the corn”. Because Biden knows he’s out. Apparently, I’m not the only person who believes this.
The Conservative Treehouse wrote, “The Biden family have entered the negotiation stage, as they face two simultaneous enemies aligned in common purpose.”
Hunter Biden has been brought close into the fold, as the Intelligence Community obviously holds leverage over Dad’s disposition through the entry vector of his son. As this aspect unfolds, the Biden syndicate goes to the mattresses. The threat metric against Hunter is why he is now part of the daily advisory group around the Office of the President.
The Bidens have enemies. And they are about to see what Trump faced, unless Joe Biden bugs out and fast. Because Hunter Biden has gone from enjoying the dual-system of justice to being fair game.
The article continues, explaining Biden’s hidden messages:
Meanwhile, in a coded message, Joe Biden technically blamed the Obama network today when he called in to the NSNBC radio show and pointed fingers at the DNC elite. Everyone knows the DNC is now under the full control of Team Obama. If Biden feels the “Democrat Elite” are targeting him, he understands Barack Obama is behind the approvals to unleash internecine attacks against his administration. Death by a thousand Obama cuts.
The Obama network operate inside and outside DC. Simultaneous to this assault against him, Biden is now also facing the Intelligence Community who have decided it’s time for Joe to go. Biden is now facing two enemies, the Obama network and the Intelligence Community (IC).
I disagree with the Obama network. Obama’s network is comprised of the people who have dirt on him. But like a good soldier, Obama willingly carries water for the cabal. And make no mistake about it, the IC is part of the cabal.
The author of the article connects the dots with what most Americans recognized already. The reason Biden’s health has become an issue is related to the IC. But then there is the financial connection referenced in the article:
The IC threat became visible with the story about Joe Biden’s doctor being financially connected to the outcomes of the Biden syndicate. The Biden family selling influence for affluence is a joint collaboration of a considerable tribe. Fifty years in the DC system creates a large rolodex of affluence and influence.
The story of the Biden doctor having a financial stake in the Biden family business only comes to surface via the IC. That’s a direct shot across the bow that tells us the IC now considers Joe Biden’s disposition against their interests. The clock ticks faster. With the clock ticking faster, we leave the “if” stage of the exit and come to the “how and when” phase. This now transitions the entire process into a negotiation for the exit price.
I’m firmly convinced that Biden’s departure is not an “if”, but “when”. And I’m sad for this. Because as I said to a friend of mine recently on this subject, I want Trump to kick Biden’s boney ass in the next election.
Back to the money element of Biden leaving and the coded message
The Biden family gravy train is over. As I wrote not long ago, Biden is essentially broke.
Oh, the irony. Biden’s attempt to break Trump financially have backfired. With the family front man out of pocket, Joe Biden finds himself in massive debt, as he owes over $815,000.
The Bidens’ debt consists of a term loan of about $15,000 borrowed against his home. In 2022! Two years into Biden’s presidency and the newly minted multi-millionaire borrowed that paltry amount of money? And more debt came from a loan against a mutual fund for about $50,000.
How is it that a guy who had money to “loan” to his brother, now doesn’t have a pot to piss in? Worse, the leader of the free world is beholden to two banks.
What president borrows money, and more specifically “chump change” by most politicos’ standards? One whose family business under scrutiny. These days “the big guy” isn’t getting his cut, because Hunter isn’t “earning”.
As the author suggests, “Can the Biden syndicate get 10% in perpetuity, or will they have a more traditional DC exit price of books and foundations?” Short answer: nope. Upon exiting the White House, Joe Biden and his family go back to being regular old political white trash. No speaking circuit, fat book deals, or cushy board appointments.
I agree with the author who declares,
It’s really not a matter of “if” – in truth it never was. They are now working through the “how and when”.
There is a Kamala Harris wrinkle, that I will discuss soon.
As the Republican-controlled House is expected to take up a bill Wednesday aimed at making sure only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections, President Joe Biden is signaling he would kill the measure should it miraculously survive the Democrat-led Senate. Biden isn’t likely to need the veto pen. Democrats will, however, be forced to explain why they oppose the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which requires documentary proof of citizenship to vote for president and members of Congress.
And while they have gotten plenty of cover from corporate media in asserting that foreign nationals — including illegal aliens — are rarely ever caught voting in federal elections, such explanations may not sit well with U.S. voters who overwhelmingly support prohibitions on noncitizens voting in federal elections. Most Americans, too, according to polls, are deeply concerned about the tsunami of illegal immigrants that has swamped U.S. communities on Biden’s watch. Exactly why the Biden administration has kept the border door wide open isn’t lost on anyone who has been paying attention for the past three and a half years.
“Democrats say it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. That’s true. It’s also illegal for someone to illegally enter our country, but that hasn’t stopped millions and millions of people,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., told me Tuesday during an interview on the “The Vicki McKenna Show” in Milwaukee and Madison.
‘Petri Dish’ for Noncitizen Voting
Steil, the chairman of the House Committee on Administration, which passedH.R. 8281 in May, wants to remind anyone who will listen that Democrats already support foreign nationals voting in local elections, as they are allowed to do in Washington, D.C. Most House Democrats earlier this year voted against a measure that would have barred illegal immigrants and other noncitizens from voting in local elections in the nation’s capital. The bill is deemed dead on arrival in the Senate.
Not surprisingly, just 28 of the 500-plus foreign nationals voting in last month’s D.C. primary elections registered as Republicans, according to The Washington Post.
In a first, noncitizens are voting in D.C. Here’s what it means to them.https://t.co/1IcyuKSRdy
Steil said Democrats want to use noncitizen voting in local elections, currently allowed in a handful of states, as a “Petri dish” to test on the American people.
“In a period of time that we know that millions of legal and illegal immigrants in the country are not eligible to vote in federal elections, it’s important to enforce the laws on the books,” the congressman said.
Honor System
As it stands under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, commonly known as the “motor voter law,” voters may simply check a box on the federal form affirming they are U.S. citizens and meet other eligibility requirements. Democrats prefer the honor system. In opposing the SAVE Act, they have noted the tough penalties for foreign nationals who lie about their citizenship status in registering to vote: a fine, up to five years in prison, or both, according to federal code.
But Democrats know it is difficult to track false claims of citizenship, a longtime problem. A 2014 story by WHYY, a Philadelphia public radio station, reported on a fact that remains a significant issue in the Biden presidency a decade later: “Illegal immigrants lie to get asylum status in U.S.”
But they certainly wouldn’t lie to vote in federal elections, Democrats insist.
“We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said at the May 8 press conference in introducing the SAVE Act.
‘The Only Reason’
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, has introduced a similar measure in the Senate. He cut to the chase in a post Tuesday on his X account.
“The SAVE Act would prevent non-Americans from illegally voting, protecting the votes of American citizens. The only reason to oppose it is because you want non-Americans illegally voting,” Lee wrote.
Biden, meanwhile, is pushing Democrat legislation loosening voter integrity laws.
“The President has been clear: he will continue fighting to protect Americans’ sacred right to vote in free, fair, and secure elections,” the White House said in its opposition statement to the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act would prevent non-Americans from illegally voting, protecting the votes of American citizens.
The only reason to oppose it is because you want non-Americans illegally voting. https://t.co/Ld4QqGPMu8
But how “free, fair, and secure” are U.S. elections without documented proof of citizenship?
Biden and his fellow Democrats in D.C. appear to be backing a losing issue. A national poll conducted last year for Americans for Citizen Voting by RMG Research Inc. found that 75 percent of respondents opposed allowing foreign nationals to vote in their local elections. A recent poll found 68 percent of North Carolina voters supported a state constitutional amendment barring foreign nationals from voting in elections. North Carolina voters will vote on the citizens-only question on November’s general election ballot.
“This is a moment in time that we should all realize that we should maintain U.S. elections for U.S. citizens and requiring documentary proof of that citizenship is how you actually enforce the law,” Steil said.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
Months ago, I wrote a column about how Democrats have continued to try to block voters from being able to vote for candidates while claiming the mantle of the defenders of Democracy. This effort not only included Democratic Secretaries of State attempting to remove former president Donald Trump from the ballots, but efforts in the primary from the ballot. Many of these Democrats now calling for a “blitz primary” previously said nothing as voters were barred from having a choice in the primary. Now, in North Carolina, Democrats are seeking to bar third-party candidates from the general election . . . all in the name of perfecting democracy.
The Democratically controlled North Carolina’s Board of Elections voted against giving ballot access to new parties supporting presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. All three Democrats (Alan Hirsch, Jefferson Carmon, and Siobhan Millen) voted to prevent voters from being able to vote for Kennedy and West, though the decision will have to be reconsidered. Yet, even if reversed, they are preserving uncertainty as to whether they will be viable candidates in the minds of voters.
The excuses for this action are superficial and manufactured.
Chairman Alan Hirsch insisted that their organizations were “problematic” in how they gathered signatures and how Republicans may be supporting their efforts to allegedly “take away votes from Joe Biden.”
They also said that they were concerned that the third-party candidates were using the new party rules to gain an easier path to ballots. That is a bizarre objection. They are opting for the best approach under the existing rules. It seems openly partisan for these three Democrats to suddenly raise concerns over the existing rules when it could harm Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. Yet, Democratic commissioner Siobhan Millen worked hard to rationalize what is a raw political muscle play to prevent voters from having a choice:
“If this board keeps rubber-stamping thinly veiled so-called parties, national operatives are going to continue to come in and keep manipulating our system. Allowing unaffiliated candidates to follow the more lenient new-party rules is allowing a blind eye to partisan mischief, potentially.”
If Millen wants to see partisan mischief, she does not have to look far. She and her colleagues are engaging in precisely such mischief to deny voters choices this election to try to bolster the chances of Biden in a swing state.
Democrats continue to claim to defend Democracy while resisting democratic choice and abusing the legal process. This glaring disconnect was evident when President Joe Biden spoke on the top of the Point-du-Hoc in Normandy on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Biden again used the event to suggest that democracy was in danger in the United States with the upcoming election.
Yet, Biden has overseen widespread government censorship with federal agencies targeting those with opposing views on everything from elections and climate change to COVID-19 and transgender policies.
As Democratic secretaries of state sought to bar Trump from ballots, Biden refused to oppose the efforts. When liberal law professors and members demanded to pack the Supreme Court to guarantee a liberal majority, Biden refused to denounce it during the last campaign.
This is why some in the country may view Biden and the Democrats as existential threats not just to Democracy, but to themselves. They see a party that is engaged in efforts to cleanse ballots (of Republicans), censor dissenting voices and prosecute political opponents.
The effort in North Carolina continues this hypocritical and cynical narrative. These three Democratic board members just voted to prevent their fellow citizens from being able to cast votes for third-party candidates who are attracting increasing support among disgruntled voters.
I have previously written how President Joe Biden is the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. For his part, Biden has continued to double down on his anti-free speech policies with the appointment of figures who have long supported bans and other speech controls. The latest such appointment is Andy Volosky, who was made deputy director of platforms for the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy. Volosky has been outspoken in support of banning former president Donald Trump from social media platforms.
In my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I lay out the chilling comparisons between the Adams and Biden Administrations in the crackdown of free speech. For Adams, that led to defeat in 1800 when Jefferson ran in part on restoring free speech. To my surprise, Trump and his fellow challengers in this election have not made free speech a central issue to force Biden to defend the massive censorship system supported by his Administration.
The public does not support censorship. This is a movement that originated in higher education and has been pushed by the political and media establishment, not the voters. Volosky will now help direct digital strategies for the White House. He previously praised the banning of Trump, asking “What took them so long?” in a 2021 blog post.
In Volosky’s blog post, titled “A New, and Hopefully Welcome, Standard,” he warned that “Twitter still allows the accounts of various world leaders, governments, and spokespeople, who use Twitter for what one can only describe as propaganda as cover for autocracy, to continue to use their platform.”
He praised how Democrats have “long advocated for regulating the [social media] platforms” and emphasized how active social media users like himself and others can “keep the platforms honest.”
He added that
“We can play a role in keeping the platforms honest and improving the positive role of social in people’s lives…It’s past time for the platforms to take content moderation and user safety seriously; as social media professionals, we should be ready and eager to make that happen, and we hope that [banning Trump] can be a small step in getting that ball rolling.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon—If elected, Trump will seek justice, not retribution. Although the Democrats claim that going after those who have committed lawfare against their conservative political opponents is retaliation, in reality, it is justice within constitutional law.
MUST WATCH: Megyn Kelly Goes NUCLEAR on Trump Verdict – Says Democrats ‘Will Rue The Day’ – Republicans Must Prosecute Biden, Obama and Clinton to ‘Save The Republic’ (VIDEO)
By Ben Kew – May 31, 2024
The days of Megyn Kelly’s feuds with Donald Trump are well and truly over. In what has been widely denounced as a show trial, Trump was found guilty on Wednesday evening on all 34 charges of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment made to adult porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election. In an epic rant on her eponymous talk show, Kelly laid into the verdict and warned that Republicans must target Democrats such as Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in order to seek retribution. Here is a transcript of her remarks: READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) states it is unlawful for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It is also unlawful to steal a car. That is what locks are for. Until the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) of 2024 was proposed, the NVRA had no locks — no way to ensure that only American citizens vote in U.S. elections.
The glaring loophole in current voting law is that it does not require documentary proof of citizenship for registration. There is also no specific authority provided to state secretaries of state or local elections officials to access federal databases to confirm that there are no noncitizens on state voter rolls. The SAVE Act is designed to cure these deficiencies.
A House Floor vote on the Congressional SAVE Act (H.R. 8281) is scheduled for Wednesday, July 10. Sponsored by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, the legislation closes the loophole in federal law that enables foreign nationals — noncitizen resident aliens and illegal immigrants — to register to vote.
The U.S. is experiencing a massive wave of illegal immigrants due to the Biden administration’s seemingly deliberate abandonment of any reasonable form of border protection. We have nearly 22 million noncitizens (legal and illegal) living in our country, and that number is climbing. Public debate about noncitizen voting is rightly focused on illegal immigrants and the willingness of state agencies (particularly DMVs) to register anyone to vote as long as they are breathing.
But this story has another angle yet undiscussed — what does history tell us about who noncitizen voting disrespects and insults the most?
In the first U.S. presidential election in 1789, only white male landowners were able to cast a vote. African Americans, women, and naturalized citizens did not enjoy that same automatic and safe path to the ballot box. And now, in 2024, noncitizen voting threatens to steal the political voices of citizen voters who had to fight to get to the ballot box.
The right to vote for African American men did not come until 1868 and 1870 under the 14th and 15th Amendments, but casting those votes was not just fraught with danger and blatant racism for former slaves, but for future generations of black Americans. Disgraceful Jim Crow laws that kept blacks from voting through poll taxes, literacy tests, beatings, and even mass killings are a shameful part of our history that was not fully addressed until the passage and enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Women in America also had to fight for the right to vote. The American suffragist movement was led predominantly by fearless Republican-associated women – black and white. Many of their names remain an honored part of our history – Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They were the subject of ridicule, mockery, and even beatings before earning the right to vote in 1919 under the 19th Amendment after a nearly century-long fight, and to the chagrin of Democrat President Woodrow Wilson who thought their efforts “obnoxious.”
Today’s new voters find the path to naturalization expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating. Our country has approximately 24 million naturalized citizens, and in 2023, just over 878,000 new citizens took their Oath of Allegiance. Many are from war-torn or despotic countries offering no chance for prosperity and liberty, and they worked hard to get here through legal channels. They hold their citizenship responsibilities dear and take them seriously.
Total government fees alone to become a citizen approach $4,000 a person. On top of that, there is no government answer to how long the process takes other than at least five years of residency before application. Ask any recently naturalized citizen about the process and they would note it can take over a decade, thousands of dollars (often including immigration attorney fees), and endless frustrating calls to the government’s “we can’t be bothered to answer” line.
It is indisputable that foreign nationals are being unlawfully added to the voter rolls through Motor Voter at state DMVs and other registration drives. President Biden’s Executive Order 14019 demands that agencies amp up their voter registration efforts for anyone seeking federal government assistance — with no carve out for illegal immigrants.
Based on Census information and current noncitizen statistics, some researchers estimate that “roughly 1.0 million to 2.7 million non-citizens will illegally vote in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections unless stronger election integrity measures are implemented.”
Could unlawful foreign citizens’ ballots skew election results? Maybe. Placed in strategically important voting jurisdictions, yes. But in the current national debate about noncitizen voting, we cannot forget the critical role the past holds.
Hard-earned votes should not be negated by unlawful ones. It’s not a question of math. It’s a question of integrity, national sovereignty, common sense, and civil rights.
America doesn’t always get it right at the start gate. Full voting rights for all Americans took centuries. But eventually, we course corrected. Full, unfettered access to the ballot box for all citizen voters is now available.
Noncitizens’ unlawful votes would stomp on that progress and the suffering that went with it. Even one citizen’s political voice silenced by a fraudulent vote is one too many. The SAVE Act is what is needed to guarantee that the government takes an active role in ensuring only citizens vote.
Kerri Toloczko is Executive Director of Election Integrity Network, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to protecting all ballots of all American voters through citizen action and adherence to law.
A new poll shows a further erosion of public confidence in higher education as faculty and administrators reduce colleges and universities to mere academic echo chambers. The poll from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found only 36% of adults have a great deal or a lot of confidence in higher education, a drop from 57% in 2015.
We previously discussed how surveys at universities show a virtual purging of conservative and Republican faculty members. For example, last year, the Harvard Crimson noted that the university had virtually eliminated Republicans from most departments but that the lack of diversity was not a problem. Now, a new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.
Compare that to a recent Gallup poll stating, “roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).”
Universities have effectively purged faculty with values that reflect roughly half of this country. Students and taxpayers (for public universities) are treated as virtual captive audiences to a culture that runs from the left to the far left. In some cases, classes have moved from education to indoctrination, including universities which now employ “resident activists” or offer degrees in activism.
I have watched the steady erosion of intellectual diversity for 30 years and a rising intolerance for opposing viewpoints. Many students and their families are not keen on spending huge amounts on tuition to attend schools with little tolerance or exposure to conservative or libertarian or even dissenting views on major public issues.
While schools profess a desire for diversity, they continue to replicate their own views and values while excluding opposing views. Some openly support such exclusion. Sites like Above the Law have spent years ridiculing objections over the exclusion of conservative faculty. Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” by arguing that hiring a conservative professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach at a university. So, the views of roughly half of the judiciary and half of the country are treated as legitimately excluded as intellectually invalid.
Much like the media, which has sacrificed readership and viewership to advocacy journalism, academics continue this trend despite alienating much of the country and radically narrowing the range of thought on campuses.
Roughly one-third of respondents said that they have very little or no faith in such institutions at all.
There was a time when higher education enjoyed some of the highest levels of respect. Today’s faculty and administrators have destroyed that trust and their institutions by yielding to the impulse to exclude opposing viewpoints.
Some 68% said that higher education is going in the wrong direction. There are obviously a myriad of different factors at play from rising tuition costs to falling populations of college-aged students. However, polls are also registering opposition to the activism and extremism among faculty and administrators in our universities and colleges.
Not surprisingly, Republicans and independents are the most estranged from higher education. While trust of Democrats has also declined, a majority still have trust in higher education. That is hardly a shock when Democratic faculty now outnumber Republicans 10-1 and many departments reporting not a single conservative professor.
Now only 36% of respondents believe that a college education is worth the expense. If these were corporations, universities would be in a full panic and boards would be demanding a new organizational plan. However, these not-for-profits are more insulated from such market pressures and academics feel little pressure for reform.
Faculty members have shown that they will not voluntarily restore diversity of viewpoints. The only chance for any change will come from pressure by donors and, in the case of public universities, legislators. The alternative is to allow the academic echo chamber to continue to drown out opposing views and alienate prospective students.
For many years, I have testified and written about Antifa and its growing anti-free speech philosophy. Some Democratic leaders have embraced this violent movement, which continues to gain strength on campuses and its cities across the nation. It is also a global movement. That is reflected in the alarming election of Antifa candidates to the French National Assembly as well as the European Parliament. That is quite an accomplishment for a movement that President Joe Biden dismissed as “just an idea.”
“Antifa originated with European anarchist and Marxist groups from the 1920s, particularly Antifaschistische Aktion, a Communist group from the Weimar Republic before World War II. Its name resulted from the shortening of the German word antifaschistisch. In the United States, the modern movement emerged through the Anti- Racist Action (ARA) groups, which were dominated by anarchists and Marxists. It has an association with the anarchist organization Love and Rage, which was founded by former Trotsky and Marxist followers as well as offshoots like Mexico’s Amor Y Rabia. The oldest U.S. group is likely the Rose City Antifa (RCA) in Portland, Oregon, which would become the center of violent riots during the Trump years. The anarchist roots of the group give it the same organizational profile as such groups in the early twentieth century with uncertain leadership and undefined structures.”
As I have previously written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association. Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”
Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. Ellison’s son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”
It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.
Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”
Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists… From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
The movement continues to take hold among parties on the left. An Antifa leader who is on France’s national security watchlist was elected to the National Assembly as a member of the New Popular Front leftist bloc. Raphaël Arnault will represent Vaucluse in Provence in the French parliament after winning with 54.98 per cent of the vote, according toLe Figaro.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his moderate party worked with the New Popular Front in a power deal to defeat conservatives. Antifa was part of that front.
In Italy, Ilaria Salis, a schoolteacher by trade from Milan, Italy, has been elected to the European Parliament despite being arrested in 2023 in Budapest for allegedly taking part in the organized attack by Antifa on attendees of an event commemorating the anniversary of the siege of the Buda castle by the Soviet forces in 1945. Salis’ far-left green alliance Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra (AVS) succeeded in securing the seat with the backing of far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) party — a member of the New Popular Front alliance.
These two milestones were secured only with the help of mainstream parties and leaders who continue to delude themselves about Antifa and its true agenda. While convenient allies now to win elections, these same leaders could soon find themselves the next reactionaries denounced by these same radical groups as they gain greater power.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Kamala Harris is polling worse than Biden against Trump, but they may not have a choice if they can find a way to eliminate crooked Joe from the race.
New Poll Finds Trump Does Even Better Against Kamala Harris Than Joe Biden
By Mike LaChance – July 5, 2024
Donald Trump would beat vice President Kamala Harris by an even bigger margin than he would beat Biden, according to new polling from HarrisX. For the last week, panicked Democrats have been trying to figure out how to get Biden out of the race and perhaps replace him with Harris, but this just goes to show that isn’t going to work either. Democrats find themselves in an impossible situation and there is no one riding over the hill to save them. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories • Republican Party Committee Adopts Platform Saying 14th Amendment “Guarantees” Right to Life • New Republican Party Platform is “Unmistakably Pro-Life” • Catholic Bishop Tells Biden That Abortion is “Inherently Wrong” • Lindsey Graham: Keep the GOP Platform Pro-Life
More Pro-Life News • Poll Shows Republican Voters Want to Keep Platform Pro-Life • Republicans Can’t Surrender Their Pro-Life Position on Abortion • Planned Parenthood Exploits More Children With Trans Hormones Than Anyone • Oregon Blocks Mom From Adopting Children Because of Her Christian Faith • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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The Associated Press reported last week that federal officials are preparing to deploy state-employed hunters to kill nearly half a million owls across the Pacific Northwest in the name of “conservation.”
“U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their cousins,” the AP reported. “Documents released by the agency show up to about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades after the birds from the eastern U.S. encroached into the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service is targeting owls across Oregon, Washington, and California. According to an agency press release, no public hunting of the barred owls will be permitted while the government carries out the mass execution of roughly half a million birds. Only certain indigenous tribes, government agencies, and select companies and landowners will be granted permission to “implement barred owl management” under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“Barred owl removal, like all invasive species management, is not something the Service takes lightly,” said Service Oregon Office state supervisor Kessina Lee. “The Service has a legal responsibility to do all it can to prevent the extinction of the federally listed northern spotted owl and support its recovery, while also addressing significant threats to California spotted owls.”
“The notion of killing one bird species to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists,” the AP reported. “It’s reminiscent of past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants that prey on the fish, and to preserve warblers by killing cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests.”
The government’s owl program is also reminiscent of far-left environmental efforts to compromise traditional views in pursuit of favored policy goals, such as the destruction of forests and farmlands for solar fields or the possible killing of whales for offshore wind projects. A Harvard study reported last year “thousands of acres of forests, farms, and other carbon-rich landscapes are being converted to host large-scale solar,” driving up emissions as a result. And according to National Review, nine whales washed up on a beach in New Jersey last year, with another 22 humpback whales stranded between December 2022 and March 2023.
“More than 180 of the animals have washed ashore dead between Maine and Virginia since offshore-wind-energy development began in 2016,” the magazine reported. “And those that have washed ashore may only represent a small portion of those that have died.”
Massive wind operations have also been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of birds, including federally protected species. According to the AP, federal officials under then-President Donald Trump “stripped habitat protections for spotted owls at the behest of the timber industry.”
“Those were reinstated under President Joe Biden after the Interior Department said political appointees under Trump relied on faulty science to justify their weakening of protections,” the wire reported.
Trump’s director for the Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, called the charge “nonsense” in an interview with The Federalist.
“That’s the common accusation,” Pendley said of the “faulty science” label slapped on the Trump administration’s environmental agenda, adding “I don’t have any confidence” in the assessment.
Concerns over the spotted owl, Pendley explained, were used as a political instrument to terminate timber contracts throughout the Pacific Northwest. “So-called experts had to shut down timber harvesting,” Pendley said, and they “killed all those communities” as a result.
A 2013 article in National Public Radio (NPR) titled, “Loss of Timber Payments Cuts Deep in Oregon,” chronicled the hardships faced by residents of hollowed-out timber towns. In Josephine County, the sheriff, who was forced to lay off 80 percent of deputies, warned victims of domestic violence in a press release to “consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.”
Now, bureaucrats in the Biden administration have pivoted from blaming the timber industry on the “threatened” status of the spotted owl to pointing the finger at a rival species. “A few years ago, these experts were saying ‘it’s logging,’” Pendley said. “Nobody was saying ‘maybe it was logging’ or ‘maybe it was the barred owl.’ Now they’re saying ‘oh sorry, my bad.’”
“It’s so unnecessary what they did to the logging industry,” Pendley said.
According to the American Bird Conservancy, just 15,000 spotted owls remain in the wild, and their population is trending downward. Pendley said officials lack numbers, however, on how many spotted owls are living in federally protected wilderness areas safe from logging, such as national parks. When career officials in the administrative state were pressed several decades ago on the number of owls required to save the species, the question was met with the denial of a “magic number.”
Pendley was succeeded at the Bureau of Land Management by Tracy Stone-Manning, a virulent opponent of the timber industry who lied about her participation in a 1989 tree spiking case during her confirmation process. Tree spiking consists of inserting metal rods into trees. The rods then become deadly projectiles when the trees are processed in the mill. While intended to intimidate workers in the timber industry, spiked trees have also injured firefighters hastily working to extinguish blazes. Tree spiking was used by left-wing radicals as a form of ecoterrorism in the 1980s and 1990s.
Stone-Manning took a plea deal with prosecutors in exchange for cooperation in the case, which the lead investigator on the case characterized as “extremely difficult.”
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
In an era of U.S. elections where ballots — not voters — are the favored currency, nonprofit voter registration has become instrumental in determining which candidate comes out on top at the ballot box.
While conservatives have largelyfailed to recognize the necessity of such operations in driving Republican voter turnout, leftists haven’t. Unlike their opponents, Democrats have amassed a well-funded machine that’s accumulated their party massive electoral wins in recent cycles, even as the head of their party remains widely unpopular among the American electorate.
Central to Democrats’ efforts is the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a left-wing nonprofit that, despite claiming to be “nonpartisan,” aims to create a “New American Majority” by facilitating “registration of numerous Democratic-leaning voting populations” such as “unmarried women, [racial] minorities and millennials,” according to InfluenceWatch.
Originally known as Women’s Voices Women Vote prior to 2011, VPC was founded by Page Gardner, a prominent Democrat political operative connected to the Kennedy family, with help from John Podesta, the chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Today, the group is run by Tom Lopach, a Democrat operative and head of the Center for Voter Information (CVI), VPC’s “sister” organization that helps it conduct partisan get-out-the-vote operations.
A 2023 Restoration of America report shows just how influential VPC and CVI’s voter outreach has been in recent elections. During the 2020 contest, for example, the groups’ registration-by-mail campaign purportedly produced an additional 272,443 votes, most of which came from battleground states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Those figures are higher than the vote totals VPC claimed it netted during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles.
But VPC isn’t your typical GOTV nonprofit. A closer look at the group’s operations reveals how it uses voter data harvested through its registration efforts to enhance the left’s election machine.
How VPC Operates
VPC’s primary method of registering its “New American Majority” is through the use of mailers it sends to prospective electors.
After accumulating “commercial and public data to identify people who are eligible to vote but who need to register,” the group sends registration forms to households it believes are occupied by these eligible voters. A Tennessee registration form sent to a state resident and provided to The Federalist shows how VPC pre-populates information about the individual on these forms, such as their address.
The form also comes with a pre-paid postage envelope that includes the recipient’s return address already filled out. The envelope is addressed to the local county election office.
Communication records obtained by The Federalist show how VPC notifies state election offices about its plans to disburse these materials to prospective voters prior to doing so.
On Dec. 15, 2023, for example, VPC Deputy Director of Partnerships and Outreach Sarah Mitchell sent an email notifying Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals and members of the commonwealth’s elections department of VPC’s plans to mail voter registration forms to prospective voters on March 21. Mitchell claimed the March mailings would be the “first of three large scale voter registration mailings” the group plans to send to Virginians in 2024 and sent to “people who are turning 18 and newly eligible to register to vote, people who have moved between counties or into your state and according to our records need to update their registration, and addresses where our records show unregistered voters likely live.”
Mitchell sent a follow-up email on March 7, notifying the aforementioned officials that VPC’s second batch of voter registration mailers would be distributed to residents around June 28.
Speaking with The Federalist, Ned Jones, director of the Citizens Election Research Center of the Election Integrity Network, explained that sending multiple mailings to potential voters appears to be a strategy that allows VPC to narrow down its list of which voters it should direct its GOTV efforts toward as Election Day nears.
It seems to be their attempt to “get a feel for who’s going to vote and who might not,” Jones said. “It’s really complex.”
VPC’s multiple mailings in Virginia match a strategy the group has deployed in other states, according to Jones.
Voter Data Collection
Encouraging voters to mail their voter registration applications to their local election office is just one aspect of VPC’s strategy, however. The group also provides prospective electors with an option to register through its online portal.
Included in VPC’s mailings is a paper with a QR code that individuals can scan with their phones. After clicking on the link, users are taken to an online registration portal operated by VPC and Rock the Vote (RTV), “a left-progressive-aligned organization … whose stated mission is to engage and ‘build the political power of young people,’” according to InfluenceWatch.
Users are required to enter their email address and zip code before proceeding. Upon continuing through the process, these users are required to provide personal information, such as their full name, address, and date of birth. They’re also asked to answer a series of questions, such as “Is this your first time registering to vote?” and “Why are you registering to vote?”
In a March 5 email to Beals and Virginia’s election officials, Mitchell claimed that including a QR code on its mailings has “resulted in a roughly 20% shift from recipients returning [VPC’s] mail applications to instead filling out online voter registration applications.” She separately contended in an email sent to these same officials two days later that “close to 50% of the young people who received [VPC’s] mail chose to register [online].”
What’s most alarming, however, is that registering through the VPC-RTV portal allows these groups to acquire voters’ personal data and share it with other third parties. Located at the bottom of the registration page is RTV’s privacy policy, which stipulates that it may share an individual’s “personal information” with “partners and organizations with principles and missions that overlap with those of RTV,” “affiliates and companies with whom [RTV] share[s] common ownership,” and other listed third parties.
Data classified as “personal” by RTV includes an individual’s identifiers (name, address, Social Security number), demographic information (race, sex, marital status), professional information (employer), internet activity information (IP address, language preferences, device ID), and non-precise geolocation information (“geolocation derived from [a user’s] IP address”).
The amount of information collected by RTV is dependent on how a user interacts with its online services, according to the privacy policy.
RTV does, however, allow users to “opt out” of “supporter list exchanges.” (That’s when RTV shares users’ identifier information with “named partners and other organizations with principles and/or missions that overlap with those of RTV”).
Neither VPC nor RTV responded to The Federalist’s request for comment on what specific third parties they share personal voter data acquired through the voter registration portal with. Nor did either group respond when pressed on how long they have been collaborating on voter registration activities.
Growing Concerns
VPC’s antics have drawn attention from prominent GOP election officials.
Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi’s secretaries of state have issued press releases in recent months warning voters that VPC’s mailers are not official correspondence from their respective offices. Alabama Secretary of State Allen West went a step further by “officially discourag[ing]” the “targeted” mailings, which he said represents “partisan interference by out-of-state, third-party organizations [that] is unnecessary, confusing, and counterproductive.”
Concerns about VPC’s partisanship are not new. Last week, the Capital Research Center’s Parker Thayer shared a photo of what appears to be a VPC mailing with former First Lady Michelle Obama on the cover.
VPC did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment on how it can claim to be a “nonpartisan” organization while using Obama’s likeness on its mailers.
“Putting Michelle Obama on the front of a voter registration form is obviously a tactic to filter out Republicans, who will be more likely to throw it out after assuming it’s a Democrat fundraiser,” Thayer wrote.
Legal Remedies
Legislative efforts aimed at stymying third-party groups from flooding states with election mailers have largely failed to materialize, according to Jones. Even in states where such legislation passed, left-wing groups immediately sued to stop its implementation.
That’s what happened three years ago in Georgia, when state Republicans passed SB 202, a benign election integrity measure that included a provision prohibiting third parties from mailing pre-filled absentee ballot applications to voters. Shortly after Gov. Brian Kemp signed the measure into law, Democrat-aligned groups launched a barrage of lawsuits baselessly alleging the statute suppressed voters, particularly racial minorities.
A federal judge shot down Democrat groups’ request that a preliminary injunction be placed on the law in October, ruling plaintiffs failed to show evidence SB 202 “intentionally discriminate[s] against black voters.”
While legislative fixes to VPC’s shenanigans are lacking, some conservative legal groups are taking action against the Democrat-aligned organization ahead of the 2024 election. On June 24, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) filed a complaint with the North Carolina State Board of Elections against VPC, CVI, and Rock the Vote “for unlawfully collecting and retaining personally identifiable information (‘PII’) from voter registration applications.”
RITE alleged that the aforementioned groups violated North Carolina law, which prohibits “any person who is not an elections official or who is not otherwise authorized by law to retain a registrant’s signature, full or partial Social Security number, date of birth, or the identity of the public agency at which the registrant registered.” The legal group additionally asked the board to investigate the groups based upon these allegations.
“The board of elections must investigate and, if necessary, put a stop to this outrageous betrayal of voter trust,” RITE President Derek Lyons said in a statement. “Retaining personally identifiable information demonstrates that groups like this may be more interested in their own agendas than in merely registering voters.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Project 2025, a suggested roadmap for a second Trump Administration pulled together by the Heritage Foundation, is a nearly 1,000-page document written by a bunch of think tankers and right-wing policy experts running the gamut of conservatism.
President Joe Biden says the document “should scare every single American.” Democrats, one strategist told the Washington Post, need to “instill fear in the American people.” Donald Trump and his surrogates are already distancing the candidate from the effort.
So, I decided to read it. Listen, it wasn’t easy. But the chances that Biden, or any other person fearmongering about it, understands what’s in it, is highly doubtful.
For starters, most of the Project 2025 “mandate” is just a compendium of long-held conservative wishes for government.
The Associated Press warns the effort champions a “dramatic expansion of presidential power.” Yet, nothing in Project 2025 is even on par with Biden’s unconstitutional loan “forgiveness” plan. The alleged presidential abuses the media lays out are well within the president’s power. They’re just policies Democrats happen to dislike.
Project 2025, we are warned, suggests the firing of as many as 50,000 federal workers — which is well within the purview of the president. It will never happen, unfortunately.
Project 2025 suggests eliminating the Department of Education and its “woke-dominated system of public schools.” Conservatives have been promising to get rid of the Department of Education since Ronald Reagan first ran for the presidency. It will never happen.
Project 2025 suggests prohibiting the FBI from “fighting misinformation and disinformation.” Great! The state shouldn’t be in the business of dictating speech. Not only do bureaucrats have no monopoly on truth; they are highly prone to abusing power. This would not have been controversial even a decade ago.
Moreover, curbing the DOJ’s efforts is limiting executive power.
Project 2025 also suggests deactivating FBI investigations that are “contrary to the national interest.” The Department of Justice — now engaged in lawfare against Democrats’ main political rivals, parents, and pro-life protesters among others — exists within the executive branch. It should always presumably act in the national interest.
Project 2025 also proposes ending the “war on fossil fuels.” This, too, has been a mainstream GOP position since Democrats began openly promising to dismantle our energy economy. If voters don’t like it, they can vote of the party that promises “carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.”
“Project 2025 is not a game, it’s white Christian nationalism,” the star of “The Avengers” and budding Christian theologian Mark Ruffalo warns. “It is the Sharia Law of the ‘Christian’ crazy people who aren’t Christian at all but want to control every aspect of your life through their narrow and exclusionary interpretation of Christ’s egalitarian, inclusive, and kindly teachings.”
Project 2025, you may be surprised to learn, does not feature a single mention of “Jesus” or “Christ.” It does champion long-held social conservative positions on religious freedom, abortion, marriage, and so on.
The policy guide features eight mentions of “God” in the entire document, most of those noting our “God-given individual rights to live freely.” Though this might be offensive to Politico writers or “New Right” intellectuals who’ve abandoned “liberalism,” it is one of the foundational ideas of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
“Christian” is mentioned seven times in the Project 2025 mandate. One, a warning about the left’s threats to tax-exemptions on churches and religious schools. Another mention suggests doing more to protect minority “Middle Eastern Christians” in foreign policy. Another reference reminds us about the COVID-era authoritarians who shut down “churches on the holiest day of the Christian calendar.”
Faith is also touched on in a section about attacks on religious freedom that “compel a Christian website designer to imagine, create, and publish a custom website celebrating same-sex marriage but cannot compel an LGBT person to design a similar website celebrating opposite-sex marriage.” There is nothing extreme about that statement.
Now, obviously there are numerous other nods to socially conservative policy that comports largely with orthodox Christian positions. Not everyone in the right-center coalition might agree them–especially on abortion. Trump doesn’t even embrace them. So much for MAGA extremism. You’re free to agree or disagree with the suggestions, but there is nothing weird or unique or new about faith informing politics. Moreover, none of these policies undermine the rights of other citizens.
And though I strongly disagree with plenty of the economic and trade ideas found in Project 2025, that’s not what the left is taking issue with, of course. They’re feigning horror at decades-old social conservative positions and warning us about authoritarian policies that aren’t actually found anywhere in Project 2025.
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump campaign doesn’t want to “get in the way” of Democrats “shooting at each other” over President Biden’s re-election chances, with a source telling Fox News Digital that the former president prefers to focus on campaigning and the upcoming Republican National Convention instead of on his rival’s implosion.
Other than challenging Biden to a second debate – one that he proposes occur without any moderators – former President Trump has been measured in his attacks on Biden. When asked about the strategy, a Trump campaign source said Trump is, instead, focused on his campaign and winning.
“Democrats are in disarray,” the Trump campaign source told Fox News Digital. “Why get in the way of them shooting at each other?”
The Trump campaign has its sights set on the GOP nominating convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which begins July 15 and runs through July 18, the source told Fox News Digital. Trump is expected to be formally nominated during the convention as the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
“We have the convention coming up, we have two rallies coming up, and we have the VP announcement coming up,” the source said. “We are focused on what we have to do and the big news coming from us.”
The Trump campaign source added: “We’ll let the Democrats shoot at each other all day long.”
Biden has been reeling amid mounting pressure to step aside and suspend his 2024 campaign, including calls to quit the race from many within the Democratic Party. The concerns began to manifest after Biden’s disastrous performance at the first presidential debate against Trump last month.
Top Biden campaign aides and White House officials have been engaged in damage control ever since, with the president himself sending a letter to Democrats in Congress on Monday morning. In the letter, Biden stressed his commitment to staying in the race and beating Trump in November.
Trump is expected to sit down for his first interview since the debate on Monday with Sean Hannity on “Hannity” at 9 p.m. ET on Fox News. Trump is set to hold a rally at his golf club in Doral, Florida, near Miami on Tuesday night. On Saturday, Trump is expected to travel to Pennsylvania for another rally at the Butler Farm Show.
Former President Trump speaks during a rally at Greenbrier Farms on June 28, 2024, in Chesapeake, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Biden, in his Monday letter to Democratic members of Congress, urged them to stop questioning whether he should end his re-election bid and “move forward as a unified party.” Biden wrote that he is “firmly committed to staying in this race” and argued that any further questioning of his candidacy “only helps Trump and hurts us.”
The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest president in the nation’s history. His halting delivery and stumbling answers at the debate in Atlanta sparked widespread panic in the Democratic Party and a rising tide of public and private calls from within his own party for him to step aside.
Trump’s approval rating has surpassed 50%, and the presumptive Republican nominee leads Biden on voters’ top two issues, the economy and immigration, according to a new poll.
President Biden proclaimed at a Wisconsin rally that he will beat Trump “again in 2020,” then corrected himself after a long pause. (Fox News)
The poll by USA Today/Suffolk University was conducted on a sample of 1,000 registered voters between June 28 and 30, after Biden’s debate debacle sent shock waves through the Democratic Party. It shows 51% of respondents said they approve of Trump’s job performance as president from 2017 to 2021, compared to 41% who said they approve of Biden’s current job performance. Regarding two of the top issues of the 2024 campaign, the economy and immigration, more registered voters said they believed Trump would do a better job than Biden.
A proposal is circulating in Washington to dump President Joe Biden and hold a “blitz primary” to choose a replacement. The proposal is the work of Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor who worked in the Obama and Clinton administrations, and Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and education philanthropist. The proposal is gaining support with party insiders and repeats the hyperbolic claim that this is essential to avoid a “democracy-ending defeat.” It is disappointing to see a law professor repeating this unfounded alarmist claim. Yet, the most glaring contradiction is found in the stated desire to give delegates a choice after the party worked to prevent any choice for voters in state primaries.
The authors promise an “uplifting” path in which candidates would pledge not to attack each other. They would then have a few weeks as named celebrities like Oprah and Taylor Swift would moderate discussions. Delegates would then use ranked voting before the August 19th convention.
The authors proclaim that “we can limp to shameful, avoidable democracy-ending defeat. Or Democrats can make this Our Finest Hour. While we hope for help from Lord Almighty, the Lord helps those who help themselves.”
One wrinkle is that Biden himself spent Sunday pledging again that he is not stepping aside. He also continued his penchant for bizarre statements like stating that “even when I was running for Senate, each time I ran – quite frankly, not a joke – Philadelphia, in particularly, got me across the line. No, I’m not joking. No, I mean it, seriously. Organizationally and in terms of fundraising, the whole deal.”
Either Biden was confessing to using Pennsylvania votes to win elections in Delaware or he was hopelessly confused. Seriously.
The “finest hour” for the party is coming a bit late given the concerted effort of the Democratic establishment to strip away opposing candidates from ballots and crush anyone offering an alternative to Biden. At the same time, both the press and pundits attacked those who raised the President’s infirmity, including calling unedited videos “cheap fakes.”
At the same time, the Democratic establishment opposed any debate where Biden’s infirmities might have been observed when there was still time for voters to make another choice. They did so even though every poll showed the majority of Democratic voters thought Biden was too old and wanted an alternative choice. (Notably, I also favored a debate in the GOP primary. While Trump did not participate in any debate, he was widely available for media questions and pressers).
Now, after quashing opposing candidates when the public would have had a chance to make a state-by-state choice, insiders are calling for an “uplifting” blitz election by the party establishment and activists.
I am still curious how this will work. Donors gave money to the Biden-Harris ticket. That money would now have to be used for different candidates. Absent a formal acceptance to the alternative slate, it could raise tough questions under federal election laws. Likewise, the DNC is coming up on a number of states with drop-dead dates for ballot changes. Finally, there is the rather awkward problem of a President who is still very much alive and running.
As Biden objects over and over again that he will not step aside, Brooks and Dintersmith are already planning his political eulogy where Biden would be celebrated as a “modern-day George Washington.”
Once again, the Democratic Party seems to be channeling Monty Python in planning for a departure of a president who does not want to go.
Below is my column in The Hill on the over-wrought reaction to the Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States. Commentators seemed to compete for the most alarmist accounts from court-sanctioned death squads to political assassinations to the death of democracy. From the coverage of the immunity decision, one would think that the Madisonian Democracy was being replaced by a John Wick Republic. The academic and media accounts have little basis in the actual opinion. Despite the prediction of Rachel Maddow that this was a “Death Squad Ruling,” the only thing that seemed to die was objective reporting and commentary in the wake of the decision.
Here is the column:
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow warned that the Supreme Court had just unleashed death squads to roam our streets. CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen announced that murder was now legal (at least for presidents), while others predicted that the ruling on presidential immunity would invite “tyranny.”
Anyone reading the coverage would conclude that James Madison has been replaced by John Wick in a new “Baba Yaga” Republic.
President Biden fueled the sense of panic in an address that repeated widespread false claims about the decision in Trump v. United States. Biden told the country that “for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
That, of course, is not true.
I have long opposed sweeping presidential privileges and powers. I have long argued that a sitting president can be criminally charged in office. But the portrayal of this Supreme Court opinion by the left and the media is wildly off base.
As it has in the past, the court adopted a three-tiered approach to presidential powers based on the source of a presidential action. Chief Justice John Roberts cited Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer, in which the court ruled against President Harry Truman’s takeover of steel mills. In his famous concurrence to Youngstown, Justice Robert Jackson broke down the balance of executive and legislative authority between three types of actions. In the first, a president acts with express or implied authority from Congress. In the second, he acts where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area). In the third, the president acts in defiance of Congress.
In this decision, the court adopted a similar sliding scale. It held that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial or private actions.
The proceedings in Manhattan after the decision belie the claims that a president can now commit murder with impunity. Judge Juan Merchan is likely to find that Trump’s conduct in office in approving payments related to Stormy Daniels fall into the third, unprotected category. While some of the testimony may have intruded into protected areas, most experts anticipate that the court will reject dismissal of charges under an absolute immunity claim. Judges in the other Trump prosecutions will be performing the same inquiry, though the impact is likely to be much greater in the case of the special counsel in Washington, D.C.
In fairness to critics, Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent gave credence to their hyperbolic theories. Sotomayor wrote: “The president of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
The dissent ignores parts of the majority opinion that expressly refute such claims. For example, the majority discussed how prosecutors could present evidence in a bribery case that a president “allegedly demanded, received, accepted, or agreed to receive or accept in return for being influenced in the performance of the act.” The prosecution can overcome the presumption of immunity with such evidence.
Indeed, the majority stated that Trump’s alleged “private scheme with private actors” to create alternative slates of electors “cannot be neatly categorized as falling within a particular presidential function.” If that is established by the trial court, then Trump’s actions would not be protected by any sort of immunity.
In defining official functions, the Court referenced constitutional and statutory authority. It also recognized that a president must be able to speak to the public on matters of public interest, as Trump did on Jan. 6, 2021. While some of us believe that Trump’s speech was entirely protected under the First Amendment, the justices suggested that it was also protected as a matter of immunity.
That is a far cry from a green light for death squads. The idea that Trump could not order a slate of fake electors but could order a slew of political assassinations finds little support in the actual opinion.
Sotomayor is suggesting that the president could just declare that killing an opponent is in the national security interest. However, various laws contradict the claim that such acts are left to the discretion of the president. Not only would the military likely refuse such an unlawful order, but no court would consider it a core constitutional function. The opinion draws lines with ample protection for presidents. The court cited opinions and practices going back decades for such breathing space.
Ironically, Biden’s hyperbolic account of the court’s opinion only serves to highlight the decision of former President Barack Obama and his vice president, Joe Biden,to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in a drone attack without a charge, let alone a conviction.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Obama administration’s “kill list” policy to a group of lawyers and judges at Northwestern University Law School and received not condemnation but applause. Under Holder, the Obama administration fought every effort of the al-Awlaki family to seek information on the killing and insisted that courts had no role to play in such cases.
Yet, in the wake of the immunity decision, Holder expressed shock at the implication of the presidential power.
Could Obama and Biden be charged with murder for what they did? Most say no, because they were acting in fulfillment of their national security authority. If so, could they simply declare a political opponent to be an enemy combatant? They actually did maintain, years before this Supreme Court opinion, that such a decision was left to them and figures such as Holder.
Likewise, Biden as president has been repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution, exercising racial discrimination and seeking to excuse billions in debt illegally.
The court was trying to find a middle path in addressing such controversies. In doing so, it rejected the extreme arguments of both the Trump team and the lower courts.
Putting aside the three-tiered approach, even a finding of presidential immunity does not mean that, as Biden falsely claimed, “there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.” It only concerns when a president can be personally charged. Federal courts can enjoin presidents from unlawful conduct, Congress can investigate presidents under oversight authority, impeach them and remove them from office.
The decision does not bar any and all prosecutions of presidents. It is still true, as stated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 65, that presidents remain subject to the criminal justice system. After impeachment and removal from office, he stressed, the president, ”will still be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law.”
The opinion delineated those areas and evidence that may be barred from prosecution while allowing that prosecution is possible in other cases.
That nuance is lost in our current political environment. Biden and his allies spent months claiming that democracy will end, and gay people will simply all be “disappeared” if he is defeated. So, there was admittedly little room left to escalate his rhetoric aside from death squads and a government based on a political “Assassin’s Creed.”
After all, these finer constitutional points are not nearly as riveting as the image of death squads roaming our streets. However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in assets that stemmed from her husband’s shady wine and marijuana business ventures, a federal ethics complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon charges.
Ilhan Omar failed to report assets stemming from husband’s shady wine and weed ventures, ethics complaint charges
“These discrepancies in Omar’s disclosure reports deserve to be fully investigated,” National and Legal Policy Center’s Paul Kamenar says.
By Meghan Blonder – June 27, 2024
(The Washington Free Beacon) — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) failed to report tens of thousands of dollars in assets that stemmed from her husband’s shady wine and marijuana business ventures, a federal ethics complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon charges. The National Legal and Policy Center, led by Paul Kamenar, filed the complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics on Tuesday. The complaint dings Omar for “failing to accurately report the financial assets, transactions, and liabilities of her spouse,” Tim Mynett, citing discrepancies in Omar’s personal financial disclosures. Those discrepancies “deserve to be fully investigated,” Kamenar said. The complaint comes roughly three weeks after a Minnesota Reformerreport highlighted Mynett’s shady business ventures in the wine and marijuana industries, which have prompted lawsuits from disgruntled investors. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon – For Years, the Democrats and their media have been covering for Crooked Joe Biden’s corruption and apparent senility but are finding it more difficult as his campaign moves toward the election on November 5, 2024.
Biden Wars: Ron Klain Thanks Jen Psaki for Saying “Biden Was Bad” in Debate and Defending Klain Led Debate Prep Team from Biden Family Attacks
By Kristinn Taylor – July 1, 2024
Former Biden White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who led the Biden debate prep team for last Thursday’s disastrous debate against President Trump, thanked fellow former Biden White House alum Jen Psaki for a post that blamed Biden for his poor debate performance while defending Klain and the debate prep team from any responsibility.
Psaki also cryptically noted, “Important convos about what happens next,” as questions about Biden’s viability as a candidate have been raised since the debate. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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Athletes compete in the 5,000-meter final during the Oregon Relays at Hayward Field on April 23, 2021 in Eugene, Oregon. | Getty Images/Steph Chambers
A federal judge in Kansas temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX rule change in several states that would’ve expanded the education civil rights law’s definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and sexual orientation.
U.S. District Judge John Broomes issued a ruling Tuesday in response to a lawsuit brought by Southeastern Legal Foundation and Mountain States Legal Foundation on behalf of their clients, Moms for Liberty and Young America’s Foundation. The ruling applies to Alaska, Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and a middle school in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
The Trump-appointed judge reasoned that Title IX’s definition of the word “sex” clearly means the “traditional concept of biological sex in which there are only two sexes, male and female.”
Earlier this year, the Department of Education announced new Title IX regulations, slated to go into effect in August. The expansion of the definition of “sex” to include gender identity and sexual orientation prompted several states to sue, fearing the new rule could deprive women of equal opportunities in sports and privacy in bathrooms.
Broomes wrote that “legislative history” surrounding the 1972 civil rights law makes it clear that “sex” meant biological sex, not gender identity and sexual orientation. He added that Title IX prohibits discrimination that awards preferential treatment to one sex over the other but doesn’t prohibit differential treatment in the form of “sex separation” or “sex-specific benefits,” so long as one gender is not treated as inferior to the other.
“The Final Rule would, among other things, require schools to subordinate the fears, concerns, and privacy interests of biological women to the desires of transgender biological men to shower, dress, and share restroom facilities with their female peers,” Broomes wrote.“Moreover, to expand sex discrimination to encompass ‘self-professed and potentially ever-changing gender identity is inconsistent with Title IX’s sex-separation dictates.'”
Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, co-founders of the conservative parental rights group Moms for Liberty, celebrated the ruling, declaring, “Gender ideology does not belong in public schools, and we are glad the courts made the correct call to support parental rights.”
“We will always stand up for the rights of parents and the protection of children. All parents must have their voices heard and their right to raise their own children is part of the very fabric of a free America,” the co-founders added. “The federal government has no right to claim our children as their own or to push parents out of the classroom.”
Broomes is not the only federal judge who has blocked the Biden administration’s Title IX rule change. U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves in Kentucky, a George W. Bush appointee, temporarily halted the new regulation in a separate ruling last month.
Reeves’ ruling temporarily blocked the Title IX rule change in Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia. The decision came about not long after another federal judge in Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Trump appointee, temporarily blocked the rule from taking effect in Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana.
In his ruling, Reeves argued that Title IX’s purpose was to “level the playing field” between men and women in education. The federal judge asserted that the Department of Education’s rule change was an attempt to “derail deeply rooted law.”
“At bottom, the department would turn Title IX on its head by redefining ‘sex’ to include ‘gender identity,'” he said. “But ‘sex’ and ‘gender identity’ do not mean the same thing. The department’s interpretation conflicts with the plain language of Title IX and therefore exceeds its authority to promulgate regulations under that statute.”
Ofir Akunis was solidly entrenched in the Knesset, serving in his 15th year as a lawmaker. The popular Likud figure — formerly a party spokesman and adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu— had held a number of ministerial roles over the last nine years and was minister of science and technology in the current government.
So, why exactly would the 50-year-old (now 51), not exactly known for an active role in the Diaspora, accept Netanyahu’s offer to become the consul general to New York in a post-Oct. 7 world?
“It’s a very good question. I think that we are living in challenging times. I think that it’s not less important to be here these days and represent the State of Israel and the Jewish people from New York,” Akunis told JNS in his office on Manhattan’s Second Ave.
“I think that a political leader should do more things in his career. And I think that this is the right place to be these days. Especially these days,” he said.
While Akunis generally hews close to Netanyahu in principle, he has carved out his own path, and while he rarely contradicts Netanyahu, he has avoided being sycophantic.
Netanyahu has been known to shuffle off political rivals and annoyances to diplomatic posts, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with Akunis. The position of consul general had been open since Asaf Zamir, appointed by the previous government, resigned in March 2023 to protest the advancement of judicial reform by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu floated firebrand Social Equality Minister May Golan for the post in April 2023, but backlash from the more left-wing American Jewish community quickly put that idea to bed. The consulate had been served by a series of acting consuls general until Akunis’s arrival.
While Akunis may lack diplomatic bona fides, his appointment was largely viewed as one of a professional, technocratic hand coming on to steady a ship that’s been rocking since Hamas’ massacre.
“I think that the very main issue here is the attacks on the Israeli and Jewish students in the universities and among the campuses. This is unacceptable,” Akunis said of his top priority since taking over in May.
His very first meeting, he told JNS, concerned the attacks on Jews and Israelis at Columbia and NYU.
“This is urgent, because we are a few weeks before the new year on the campuses, and I’m calling from here to the American people and to the American leaders to do whatever they can to stop” the violent antisemitic protests that took place in the spring.
“If someone wants to protest against the State of Israel or against the Jewish communities, he can do it,” Akunis said, but not by waving Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS flags, as was seen at a number of campus protests.
“To scream and shout, ‘Oct. 7 was only the beginning,’ this is unacceptable,” he said. “This is not freedom of speech. It’s freedom of hate.”
Akunis went so far as to say last week that New York City was in danger of falling under “radical Muslim occupation,” similar to European cities that have succumbed to violent Islamist riots and so-called no-go zones that are essentially off-limits to non-Muslims.
“I think that radical Islam, influenced by Tehran and the Axis of Evil, is a huge problem, not only to the State of Israel, not only to the Jewish communities. It’s the Axis of Evil versus the Western world,” Akunis told JNS.
“How do I know it? I can hear from here, from this office — the screaming of ‘Death to America, to Israel, glory to Palestine.’ So it’s not about us anymore,” said Akunis, describing protests that have taken place outside the consulate.
He warned again of “a lot of neighborhoods” around Europe under “radical Muslim occupation,” citing London, Paris, Brussels, and Malmö as examples.
“I didn’t know that such a thing would happen here in the United States,” Akunis said. “We can see it in the streets. It’s not my imagination.”
It is critical that Americans understand that the issue has gone far beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, morphing into a broader anti-American bent, he said.
“I think that I need to send this match message to my American friends. I think that this is the right message,” asking people to open their eyes to the support for terrorism taking place on New York’s streets.
And it’s happening during a broader time of political uncertainty and upheaval in the United States. Akunis arrived in the midst of a critical election season. Asked who on the political battlefield he has found to partner with and who he is still trying to bring on board, Akunis said, “I’m trying to bring everybody to support Israel. I think that the American administration, American people, American leaders, must stand with Israel.”
He was quick to note, though, that “the Israelis are not part of the election campaign. The American people will choose the president and their administration. And we, of course, respect any result we’ll see here on Nov. 5. This is the main idea of democracy — the will of the people.
Perhaps getting in a delicate shot at those who have opined on Israel’s domestic political affairs, including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who called for Netanyahu to stand down as premier, Akunis said he was “sure that you, the Americans, will respect the will of the people in Israel.”
Regarding his early dealings with American Jews, Akunis stressed the unity he’s seen in the community members that he’s been dealing with on the street level. “This unity reflects strength, and not the opposite. We will not be victims anymore,” he said, adding that “in the darkest days, you can see the light.”
In turn, the Jewish community looked for unity from its supposed partners and allies in other American minority and religious communities in the aftermath of Oct. 7, but largely encountered “radio silence”.
While American Jewish leaders have been quick to note their deep disappointment, worry and anger on that front, Akunis inferred to JNS that those concerns are overblown by the media, which he said tends to amplify the negative.
“I’m talking with them all the time,” he said of those erstwhile partners. “Beyond the big headlines, I think that most Americans, including the communities that you just mentioned, support Israel. There’s a lot of voices for Israel.”
While Akunis said he has not received a straight answer on why those communities went silent during Israel’s darkest hour, he is “asking them to reflect on their solidarity with Israel,” and he expects attitudes will change soon.
President Joe Biden departs after speaking to the media at the White House on July 1 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Lying is certainly nothing new in politics. It is said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession, but politics is assuredly the dirtiest — filthier even than garbageman, mortician or, well, the world’s oldest profession itself.
Former President Bill Clinton (while we’re on the topic of sexual promiscuity) perjured himself, leading to his impeachment. Former President Barack Obama, in what PolitiFact called its 2013 “Lie of the Year,” promised that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” And on and on it goes.
The corporate media, whose 21st-century raison d’etre is propping up the Regime Party (Democrats) and punishing the Deplorable Party (Republicans), often joins the fray. The Russia-collusion delusion disinformation operation was laundered by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to seedy “intelligence” firm Fusion GPS and law firm Perkins Coie LLP. For years, the corporate media then dutifully pushed the false narrative. Indeed, it is unclear to this day whether MSNBC has ever read the Mueller report.
But after last Thursday’s CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, in which President Joe Biden delivered a catastrophic performance for the ages, there is only one conclusion: The yearslong effort by Biden administration flunkies, Democratic Party poohbahs and pro-Regime media stenographers to forcefully deny Biden’s obvious physical and mental decline will go down as the single greatest lie in American history.
And what an assiduous effort it was. For years, Democrats and the corporate media lied through their teeth about the blatant decline of the president’s physical and mental faculties. When Biden fell off a stationary bicycle in 2022, handlers brushed it off as no big deal. When Biden started wearing funny-looking tennis sneakers instead of dress shoes, presumably in order to stabilize his gait and prevent debilitating falls, aides informed us that Biden was just embracing a certain sartorial savviness. When former Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to pursue charges against Biden due to the fact he “would likely present himself to a jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” media apparatchiks denounced Hur as a “Trump plant” in the Justice Department. (Where is Hur’s apology?)
After multiple videos emerged of Biden freezing, staring and wandering off, The New York Times called them “misleading”; the Biden White House dismissed them as “cheap fakes.” The Wall Street Journal’s recent story in which reporters interviewed 45 officials who expressed concern about Biden’s senescence was excoriated as a “hit job.”
All along the way, costly “gaffes” — such as Biden inadvertently calling for regime change in Moscow during a March 2022 visit to Warsaw — were simply chalked up to Uncle Joe being Uncle Joe. How dare you question hardscrabble Joe from Scranton: nothing to see here!
Anything — anything — to prevent the American people from learning the truth. Axios reported last Friday how “close aides have carefully shielded (Biden) from people inside and outside the White House since the beginning of his presidency.” For Democrats and their media enablers, there can be no stone left unturned to protect their precious. The ends always justify the means, after all, just as Saul Alinsky taught.
The media’s hubris in thinking it could get away with this is astounding. Biden is the president of the United States. His decline wasn’t exactly a state secret, at least for anyone with functioning eyes and ears. This column two years ago, in lamenting Biden’s “indications of a palpable senility,” concluded that “[t]here is something very, very clearly wrong with the president of the United States.”
Really, just how stupid do Democrats and the corporate media think we are? How long did they think they could get away with this gaslighting operation?
A Gallup poll last October revealed that 32% of Americans trust the corporate media either “a great deal” or “a fair amount.” That seems far too high. These hacks deserve nothing but disgust and contempt.
Nor has the persistent media gaslighting for the past two to three years been a victimless crime. The collective victim is us: all of us. America is wildly insecure under the “leadership” of Biden. Xi Jinping is sure to move on Taiwan before year’s end. Who knows what Xi’s friends, from Pyongyang to Moscow to Tehran, might do. Who will stop them, after all?
The ultimate irony of it all? The massive lie and disinformation operation to obfuscate the president’s decline has been perpetrated in the name of — you guessed it — “our democracy.” The chutzpah!
“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” reads The Washington Post’s masthead slogan, conveniently adopted mere weeks after former President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Come again? We don’t actually know who is running the country right now. It certainly isn’t Uncle Joe. Now that is some serious “darkness.”
Never forgive, and never forget, what these lying miscreants have done to us — and to the republic.
Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wrote “The President [of the Galaxy] in particular is very much a figurehead—he wields no real power whatsoever. […] His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it.” This week, Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) seemed to be taking the Hitchhiker’s Guide as a guide for government. When asked about the alarming physical and mental decline of President Joe Biden, Goldman suggested that it really does not matter. In responding to a call for Biden’s removal under the 25th Amendment, Goldman suggested that the Republic is safe because it is safely in the hands of people around Biden. It is an argument that flips the 25th Amendment on its head and embraces the idea of a figurehead president.
After the Hur report was released noting the diminishment of the President’s faculties, Goldman was one of the most vocal in shouting the Special Counsel down. He went public declaring that the President is “sharper than anyone I’ve spoken to” on public policy issues.
He has continued brushed away the growing calls for President Biden to step aside as incapable of serving another four years. Indeed, some are calling for an investigation into whether he can carry out the duties of his office until January 2025.
“So, let’s not just focus on Joe Biden here. Let’s focus on the people around him, the administration, the policies, and most importantly, the appreciation and protection for the rule of law and our democracy that Donald Trump, every single day, has vowed to take down.”
He added that Biden is “vibrant” and that “the reality is that Joe Biden has surrounded himself with an incredibly capable team with almost no turnover.”
Other Democrats have attempted to avoid the manifest confusion and infirmity of the president. This includes Democrats who repeatedly called for formal action to remove former President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment, including Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.; Jamie Raskin, D-Md.; Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
However, it was Goldman who, as usual, came up with the most vertigo-triggering spin.
The 25th Amendment was designed to specifically avoid a figurehead presidency where family or aides perform critical functions of the office. That was indeed the concern with presidents like Woodrow Wilson when a stroke left him incapable to function as president. His wife Edith hid the truth from the public and the Congress as she and others carried out his functions.
He also had “an incredibly capable team” around him, but they were not elected president.
In the meantime, the media is still struggling to explain to the public why they did not disclose the President’s condition earlier while promulgating the “cheap fake” narrative. For weeks heading into the debate, media outlets repeated the claim that videos showing Biden’s confusion were false and misleading. Some are now reportedly admitting that they did not want to confirm “right-wing media” accounts — an admission of shaping the news for political purposes.
The greatest threat to President Biden may ultimately be the political calculus. For most of these members, their loyalty to Biden ends at the point that he endangers their own hold on power. A couple dozen members are reportedly preparing a letter calling for possible removal in the hope that they can replace Biden with someone who has a better chance of beating Trump. It is no easy feat, but Democratic operatives are furiously working out the complications under federal election laws and state laws.
In the meantime, the 25th Amendment process is looming. More citizens may become convinced by what Pelosi said about then President Donald Trump: “Congress has a constitutional duty to lay out the process by which a president’s incapacity and the president of any party is determined…A president’s fitness for office must be determined by science and facts.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democrats and their mouthpiece propaganda media, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NY Times, and WAPO, have been lying to Americans about their diabolical intentions of destroying our freedom and individual independence. Covering for the senility of Biden is small compared to their larger, more insidious lies. Now, they are sinking as more people are no longer buying what they are selling.
Democrats in Full Blown Panic — DNC Holds Emergency Meeting as Joe Biden Campaigns in New Jersey
By Jim Hoft – June 29, 2024
The Democrat party is reportedly in a state of chaos following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against President Trump. The Gateway Pundit reported on Friday that Doug Kass, a hedge fund owner and a prominent figure within the Democratic party, disclosed insider information about an emergency meeting between President Biden, his former Chief of Staff Ron Klain, and former President Barack Obama.
According to Kass, Jill Biden is pushing for Joe Biden to run for re-election, a move that has apparently created internal conflict within the campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris is allegedly “furious” about being overlooked as a potential replacement candidate.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Joe Biden said in an interview he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president.”
It comes just days after Biden’s disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump.
Biden has said he needs to get more sleep and stop holding events after 8 p.m., reports say.
Joe Biden‘s argument that his disastrous debate performance last week was a one-off is seemingly falling apart. In his latest verbal slipup, the president said he was “proud” to be the “first Black woman to serve with a Black president.”
The 81-year-old president mixed up his words during an interview with Philadelphia’s Wurd radio station when referring to his vice president, Kamala Harris, and former President Barack Obama.
“By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first Black woman, to serve with a Black president,” he said.
Biden likely jumbled the sentence because he’d earlier spoken about being the first vice president to serve under a Black president.
Earlier in the interview, he also spoke about how he was the first president to have a Black woman as vice president and had appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.
It comes just days after Biden’s debate with former US president Donald Trump, which was marked by verbal gaffes and confusing statements.
Biden is now facing increasing pressure to drop out of the presidential race. In a poll by Reuters and Ipsos, one in three Democrats said Biden should quit. The Biden camp has offered multiple explanations for the president’s slurred words, nonsensical phrases, and vacant stares, including jet lag, a cold, and incompetent aides.
But donors have publicly voiced their concerns with what they say are Biden’s age-related problems. On Thursday, the millionaire heiress Abigail Disney announced she’d stop donations to the Democratic Party until they “replace Biden at the top of the ticket.” Her statement echoed that of the Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings, who told The New York Times, “Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous.”
Biden has told supporters he doesn’t speak as “smoothly” or “debate as well” as he used to but has publicly vowed to fight on.
Axios, citing people close to the president, said Biden worked best between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. and struggled to function outside that window.
His press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said to reporters that “he’s a little slower than he used to be.”
Biden told governors he needed to get more sleep and stop holding events after 8 p.m., CNN and The New York Times reported.
Biden’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about the reports.
On Friday, Biden’s mental acuity is set to be scrutinized when he sits for an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, who used to be head of communications at the White House during Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Biden’s previous interactions with Stephanopoulos include a rare sit-down appearance in 2021, during which he defended the US’s decision to pull its troops from Afghanistan.
Welcome to flyover country on the 4th of July – the heart and soul of small town America in Fredericksburg Texas at the annual parade! pic.twitter.com/muZad4UbZd
New York Times reporter J. David Goodman in a recent report accused Republicans of having “seized on” the brutal murder of Jocelyn Nungaray in order to politicize border security. Goodman included quotes that framed Nungaray’s alleged killers as “remorseful” and criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for supposedly not caring that young women “were raped.”
The June 25 report comes after two illegal aliens from Venezuela allegedly lured 12-year-old Nungaray under a bridge, stripped her naked to the waist, bound her, sexually assaulted her for two hours, strangled her to death, and dumped her body into shallow water nearby, according to the Houston Police Department and local news reports. The accused killers, Jose Pena Ramos, 26, and Johan Jose Martinez-Rangel, 21, were caught and released by Border Patrol agents after illegally crossing the southern border this year. They are both charged with capital murder.
Goodman referred to the alleged killers as “migrants” and inexplicably included the detail that Pena regretted sexually assaulting and killing a child.
“Daniel Werlinger, one of two defense lawyers appointed to represent Mr. Pena, described his client as ‘remorseful,’ saying that he ‘understands the gravity of the situation’ that he is in,” Goodman wrote. Goodman went on to criticize Republicans’ focus on the multiple child rapes and murders that have taken place as a result of the Biden administration’s openborderpolicies.
The Times report centered Democrat political operative Matt Angle’s claim that Abbott is not sincerely concerned over child rape but is instead using the issue for political gain.
“It’s all a performance for them,” Angle told the Times regarding Abbott’s call for law and order. “These guys don’t care about this 12-year-old or any 12-year-old.” Angle also claimed that Texans are “not threatened” by the border crisis. His comments stood in stark contrast to the reaction from Nungaray’s family.
“She was amazing, I still see her face in the back of my head every day, all day. I keep getting little signs about her throughout the days, and it’s been a very, very hard time for me and my family,” Nungaray’s mother said in a news conference.
Goodman, still, neglected to acknowledge that even one preventable child murder is too many.
“[D]espite a number of high-profile cases, studies have found that migrants commit fewer crimes than legal residents,” Goodman wrote. But the report contains no information regarding the “studies” cited, and Goodman did not return a request for comment.
A previous report from the Times cited data from 1970 to 2010 that made no distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. A report from the Cato Institute reveals Goodman’s claim is misleading, stating, “[T]here is little data available about illegal immigrant criminality to answer this question. Most state governments do not record the immigration statuses of those who are convicted of crimes and federal census data on the incarcerated population do not identify illegal immigrants.”
Goodman’s focus on the overall crime rate failed to address concern over specific crimes committed by individuals whose entry into the United States was illegal in the first place. Republicans continue to argue these crimes are inherently preventable and Nungaray would not be dead if her killers had been detained by Border Patrol.
“Every single crime committed by an illegal alien invader is preventable,” former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said in a recent statement to Congress. “Crime rates do not matter. Only the raw number of crimes and the harm caused by those crimes matter. Over 10 million illegal alien invaders have entered America since Joe Biden became our President and opened our borders.”
Monroe Harless is a summer intern at The Federalist. She is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and political science.
Israel killed a senior commander in the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday, the second top field leader killed in less than a month, and the group said it retaliated by firing scores of rockets at Israeli military positions near the border. The Israeli military estimated that around 100 rockets were fired and said there were no reports of casualties.
International diplomats are scrambling to prevent the near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah from spiraling into an all-out war that could possibly lead to a direct confrontation between Israel and Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer. Hezbollah says it will stop its attacks once Israel agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Some Israeli officials have said they are seeking a diplomatic solution to the standoff and hope to avoid war. At the same time, they have warned that the scenes of destruction seen in Gaza will be repeated in Lebanon if war breaks out. Hezbollah, meanwhile, is far more powerful than Hamas and believed to have a vast arsenal of rockets and missiles capable of striking anywhere in Israel.
The nearly nine-month war in Gaza has caused massive devastation across the besieged territory and displaced most of its 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Israel’s military estimated Tuesday that around 1.9 million people — more than 80% of all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip — are now clustered into the territory’s central region.
Evacuees have been told by Israel to seek refuge in an overcrowded coastal area filled with sprawling tent camps where there are few basic services. Israeli restrictions, the ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order have curtailed humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top U.N. court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,900 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
President Joe Biden walks from the White House to Marine One on March 19, 2021, on his way to visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Newly released documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal early evidence and analysis four years ago in which U.S. government officials indicated that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China. These findings in the CDC documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, dating from about six months after the disease’s initial outbreak, are coming to light only now because of the government’s repeated delays in releasing relevant documents through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In addition, federal employees’ use of encrypted private messaging applications such as Signal or WhatsApp to evade records-retention requirements under the Federal Records Act has become commonplace in the federal workplace, despite clear violations (as we will see below).
To date, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, in that post since January 2021, has released minimal documentation under the COVID-19 Origin Act, which President Joe Biden, who appointed her, signed into law in March 2023. The new law requires Haines as director of national intelligence to declassify information about links between COVID-19 and China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology within 90 days of its enactment.
But Haines apparently didn’t make sure such documents were provided to Congress.
Avril Haines is sworn in Jan. 19, 2021, at the beginning of her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee as Joe Biden’s pick for national intelligence director. Biden took office the next day. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Heritage’s Oversight Project obtained 1,066 pages of related documents from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, through the Freedom of Information Act. The intelligence community’s official assessment of the origin of COVID-19, as of June 2023, states that it can’t be determined: “The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic’s origins because the researchers’ symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19.”
However, the documents released to Heritage’s Oversight Project include a presentation labeled “Overview of COVID-19 Disease” by Dr. John T. Brooks, who was chief medical officer for the CDC’s emergency COVID-19 response, according to his LinkedIn profile. In his presentation, Brooks repeatedly emphasizes the early analysis that the disease originated in Wuhan. According to the documents (page 386), as of May 8, 2020, Brooks was chief of science under the principal deputy incident manager for the government’s COVID-19 Response Organizational Chart.
A slide excerpt from a June 2020 presentation by the CDC’s John T. Brooks entitled “Overview on COVID-19 Disease.” Note the word “Wuhan” in red to the left of the notation SARS-CoV-2.
One document released under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, includes the above slide presentation. It shows that in data files for a COVID-19 sample analysis, staff used the word “Wuhan” in red letters (in the so-called file paths of a phylogenetic analysis depicting patterns and similarities of DNA sequences).
One source in a position to know, who asked to remain anonymous, told Heritage’s Oversight Project that a sole-sourced, unevaluated intelligence report (meaning one without other sources and intelligence collaboration) floated around the intelligence community in late summer 2020. That report specified that the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, site of the Chinese research lab called the Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is no evidence that the U.S. government’s underlying raw intelligence on the origin of the coronavirus was shared with congressional committees or declassified under the COVID-19 Origin Act.
Recent releases of documents to Heritage’s Oversight Project—through the State Department and under the Freedom of Information Act—highlight the tenuous timeline of what email traffic in 2020 labeled as an “Updated timeline of PRC coverup (April 28).” (The acronym PRC refers to the People’s Republic of China, the full name of the communist nation.) This email traffic, primarily sent to State Department principals along with several inspectors general and White House officials, detailed what it called the suppression and destruction of evidence: E.g. virus samples destroyed at genomics labs, wildlife market stalls bleached, genome sequence not shared publicly, Shanghai lab closed for ‘rectification’ after sharing genome on its own, academic articles subjected to prior review by the [Chinese] Ministry of Science and Technology, data on asymptomatic ‘silent carriers’ kept secret …
An excerpt from a State Department document details China’s suppression of data on COVID-19.
This situation, in which Congress is falling behind in gaining timely access to information from the Biden administration, highlights the inherent imbalance between the two branches of government. A significant lag of years occurred before the executive branch provided relevant information to the legislative branch.
Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, testified March 8, 2023, about China’s record on COVID-19 before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
“Since the early days of the pandemic,” Metzl told lawmakers, “China’s government has destroyed samples, hidden records, imprisoned brave Chinese journalists, prevented Chinese scientists from saying or writing anything on pandemic origins without prior government approval, actively spread misinformation, and done pretty much everything possible to prevent the kind of unfettered, evidence-based investigation that is so urgently required.”
A slide excerpt from Brooks’ CDC presentation in June 2020 entitled “Overview on COVID-19 Disease.”
Slides released under the Oversight Project’s FOIA request detail strong links to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan in early January of 2020, as well as the concentration of COVID-19 cases in early January 2020. Four months into his presidency, on May 26, 2021, Biden announced further investigation into the origins of COVID-19, instructing Haines and the rest of the intelligence community to “bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.”
The Biden administration previously had sought to avoid directly linking COVID-19 to China or other geographic locations. The administration labeled terms such as “Wuhan Flu” as “inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric” in presidential actions during the government’s continuing response to the disease.
The COVID-19 Origin Act, the bipartisan bill signed by Biden in March 2023, tasked Haines’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence with declassifying information on the origins of the deadly disease.
This slide excerpt specifies COVID-19 cases in China, as of Jan. 20, 2020, from Brooks’ CDC presentation about six months later.
However, with Democrats in control, it took over three years for Congress to conduct oversight investigations into the origins of COVID-19 by establishing the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The panel was created in early 2023, after the new Republican majority in the House took over from Democrats.
It also took over three years for Congress to resume its oversight of gain-of-function research conducted on coronaviruses in China through grants made by the National Institutes of Health, a U.S. government agency, to EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit. Such research produces a stronger version of a virus.
This slide excerpt, also from the CDC presentation in June 2020, depicts COVID-19 cases in and outside China.
The revelation that documents on COVID-19 weren’t provided to Congress comes on the heels of disclosures that David Morens, a senior adviser to Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, intentionally sought to avoid disclosure of government records under the Freedom of Information Act. (Morens also was a senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the government’s response to COVID-19.)
In letters to the National Archives and NIH regarding records retention guidelines and adherence to the Federal Records Act, the House pandemic subcommittee disclosed that Morens deleted emails and used special characters and misspellings to avoid text matches in records requests. Fauci’s adviser also used private emails to facilitate the destruction and withholding of federal records from oversight through records retention or FOIA requests.
To date, Congress has taken little to no action to curb Morens and other federal employees in the programmatic evasion of federal guidelines on retaining records.
In the information age, with an exponential increase each year in records created by the U.S. government’s executive branch coupled with intentional destruction of records, oversight by Congress consistently has failed to obtain documents from the executive branch in a timely and meaningful manner. Blatant violations of the Federal Records Act have become so extreme that some federal employees openly have included Signal and other encrypted messaging applications in parentheses in their email signature blocks, next to cell phone numbers, without fear of penalty or congressional oversight.
Congress should reaffirm its right to quickly access data and information, including classified information, from the executive branch via congressional inquiries and subpoenas. Without this ability, we risk that oversight by Congress will be delayed for years, undermining the purpose of oversight and potentially rendering it ineffective.
The Washington Post is reporting that Special Counsel Jack Smith may try to convict former president Donald Trump all the way through the election and up to 11:59 am on January 20th. After the oath, the Justice Department has long maintained that it will not prosecute a sitting president.
There is also a long-standing policy of the Justice Department to abstain from criminal proceedings before an election to avoid the appearance of trying to influence the outcome. Smith has signaled that he will discard that policy and that he is prepared to try Trump not only up to the election but through the election.
He is now reportedly willing to try Trump up to January 20th.
Smith has made trying Trump before the election the overriding priority in his two cases against the former president. He failed repeatedly to force a shorter schedule on appeal before the Supreme Court. His arguments were revealing. He suggested that the public should have a possible conviction before they cast their votes. It flipped the DOJ policy on its head in openly seeking to influence the election.
The Supreme Court was not persuaded, though Smith did succeed in effectively cutting the appellate process a bit shorter. He then lost in spectacular fashion before the Court on presidential immunity.
According to the Post, he is not giving up the ghost and is now committed to a trial running up to Inauguration Day: “Current officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed … that if Trump wins the election, the clock on the two federal cases against him would keep ticking until Jan. 20, when he would be sworn in as the 47th president.”
Even with Smith’s continued push to try Trump at all costs before the Inauguration, it could be a challenge. There is a 30-day period before the Supreme Court case is effectively returned to district court.
Judge Tanya Chutkan has been highly favorable for Smith and highly motivated in seeking a trial before the election. That led to problems highlighted in the recent opinion. Chutkan was so motivated that she failed to create an adequate record on these issues. That record will now have to be established. If Chutkan rules as she did earlier, she is expected to be hostile to Trump’s claims on his conduct falling within official functions. However, she will need to make the record and her decision could again be appealed. The Court left clear guidelines that will make it difficult for Chutkan to, again, dismiss such claims.
Moreover, the pre-trial motions were stopped with the latest appeal. They must now be addressed. Finally, she pledged to give the Trump team over 80 days for preparation after the appeal, which will be added to the 30 days, the period for the remand record, and the pre-trial motions.
There is also the need for the court and Smith to deal with the Fischer decision limiting the use of the obstruction charges — impacting two of the four counts against Trump. As I have previously written, Smith has various options but could trigger a new reversal on appeal if he follows his signature inclination to resist legal limits.
In other words, Smith’s appetite for a trial before the Inauguration may exceed his ability to force that expedited schedule.
A.F. Branco Cartoon—The country is currently suffering from a grave illness called Democratitis, and the only cure seems to be Trump. Democrats’ disastrous policies are implemented by those controlling Biden because we know Biden doesn’t have the mental faculties to implement anything.
SHOCK POLL: Reality Bites! – 84% of Americans Believe They Will Be Worse Off Under a Second Joe Biden Term
By Jim Hoft – June 10, 2024
Raheem Kassam joined Steve Bannon on Monday morning to discuss the latest YouGov presidential election poll. Raheem scoured the latest poll and found this shocking nugget in the cross tabs: 84% of Americans believe they will be worse off under a second Joe Biden term. That means EVEN DEMOCRATS know life will suck under a second Biden term! Steve Bannon: Democrats are in trouble. You’re never going to see Tester or Sherrod Brown or these guys on a stage with Joe Biden because he is the cooler, brother. Your thoughts? READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
Top Stories •New Polling Shows Christian Voters Refuse to Support Biden •Biden Says “I Know Right From Wrong,” But Supports Abortions Up to Birth •Trump Exposes How Biden Supports Abortions Up to Birth •Governor Glenn Youngkin Vetoes Bill to Replace “Mothers” With “Birthing People”
More Pro-Life News •Pro-Life Groups Call on Republican Party to Keep Pro-Life Platform •Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice: There is No Right to Kill Babies in Abortions •Major Pro-Abortion Group Cuts Its Abortion Hotline in Half as Funding Shrinks •Argentina President Javier Milei is Still Fighting to Protect Babies From Abortion • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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President Joe Biden delivered an address from the White House last night on the presidential immunity decision by the Supreme Court. While pledging that he will defend the rule of law, President Biden misrepresented what that law is in the aftermath of Trump v. United States. While we have often discussed false constitutional claims by the President as well as other false statements, an address of this kind is particularly concerning in misleading citizens on the meaning of one of the most important decisions in history.
As I have previously written, I am not someone who has favored expansive presidential powers. As a Madisonian scholar, I favor Congress in most disputes with presidents. However, I saw good-faith arguments on both sides of this case and the Court adopted a middle road on immunity — rejecting the extreme positions of both the Trump team and the lower court.
One of the most glaring moments in the address came when President Biden declared that “for all…for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
That is not true.
The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.
The Court has often adopted tiered approaches in balancing the powers of the branches. For example, in his famous concurrence to Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), Justice Robert Jackson broke down the line of authority between Congress and the White House into three groups where the President is acting with express or implied authority from Congress; where Congress is silent (“the zone of twilight” area); and where the President is acting in defiance of Congress.
Here the Court separated cases into actions taken in core areas of executive authority, official actions taken outside those core areas, and unofficial actions. Actions deemed personal or unofficial are not protected under this ruling.
It is certainly true that the case affords considerable immunity, including for conversations with subordinates. However, this did not spring suddenly from the head Zeus. As Chief Justice John Roberts lays out in the majority opinion, there has long been robust protections afforded to presidents.
There are also a host of checks and balances on executive authority in our constitutional system. This includes judicial intervention to prevent violations of the law as well as impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors.
President Biden’s hyper-ventilated response is crushingly ironic. He was vice president when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge. When former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the “kill list” policy (that included the right to kill any American citizen), he was met with applause, not condemnation.
The Obama-Biden administration then fought every effort by the family to sue the government. President Biden would have been outraged by any attempt of a Republican district attorney to charge him or President Obama with murder. He would also be outraged by prosecutors pursuing criminal charges for the deaths associated with the deluge of undocumented persons over the Southern border.
In his address, President Biden also claimed that “the law would no longer” define “the limits of the presidency.” That is also untrue. This case was remanded for the purpose of defining what of these functions would be deemed private as opposed to official. Even on official actions, former president Donald Trump could be prosecuted if the presumptive immunity is rebutted by prosecutors.
What was most glaring for many civil libertarians was President Biden’s portrayal of himself as a paragon of constitutional fealty. He declared that “I know I will respect the limits of the presidential powers as I have for the last three-and-a-half years.” That was also untrue. President Biden has racked up an impressive array of losses in federal courts where he was found to have violated the constitution. This includes rulings that his administration has exceeded his authority and engaged in racial discrimination in federal programs. Indeed, Biden has often displayed a cavalier attitude toward such violations.
For example, the Biden administration was found to have violated the Constitution in its imposition of a nationwide eviction moratorium through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Biden admitted that his White House counsel and most legal experts told him the move was unconstitutional. But he ignored their advice and went with that of Harvard University Professor Laurence Tribe, the one person who would tell him what he wanted to hear. It was, of course, then quickly found to be unconstitutional.
Biden showed the same disregard over the unconstitutionality of his effort to unilaterally forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student debt. Courts have already enjoined that effort as presumptively unconstitutional (though an appellate court in one of those cases relaxed aspects of the injunction).
While some of us have challenged these predictions, the other presidential candidates are missing a far more compelling argument going into this election. While democracy is not on the ballot this election, free speech is.
For many of us in the free speech community, President Biden has become the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. As discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” the Biden Administration has helped fund and maintain an unprecedented censorship system in the United States.
That record is hardly supportive for a president claiming to be the defender, if not the savior, of the Constitution.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the Supreme Court’s historic presidential immunity decision. I am not someone who has favored expansive presidential powers. As a Madisonian scholar, I favor Congress in most disputes with presidents. Yet, the reaction to the Court’s decision has been baffling from academics who did not raise a whimper of opposition when President Barack Obama killed an American citizen without a trial or a charge. When former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the “kill list” policy (that included the right to kill any American citizen), he was met with applause, not condemnation. Moreover, even the government conceded before the Supreme Court that official acts did deserve protection from prosecution. The issue was only where to draw that line. The Court found that there was absolute immunity for actions that fall within their “exclusive sphere of constitutional authority” while they enjoy presumptive immunity for other official acts. They do not enjoy immunity for unofficial, or private, actions.
I felt that there were good-faith arguments on both sides of this issue. The reaction, however, of politicians and pundits is to again denounce and even threaten the justices. Rage has again replaced reason as commentators misrepresent the opinion and race to the bottom in reckless rhetoric. It is not clear what these paper-bag pundits are more upset about: the fact that the Court ruled in favor of immunity or that the Court again failed to yield to years of harassment and threats from the left. What they fail to understand is that this is precisely the moment that the Court was designed for.
Here is the column:
Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, liberal politicians and pundits seemed to move from hyperbole to hyperventilation. When not breathing into paper bags, critics predicted, again, the end of the republic. CNN’s Van Jones declared that it was “almost a license to thug, in a way.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) declared: “My stomach turns with fear and anger that our democracy can be so endangered by an out-of-control court” and denounced six justices as “extreme and nakedly partisan hacks — politicians in robes.”
Blumenthal has previously shown greater intestinal fortitude, as when he threatened the justices that they would either rule as Democrats demanded or face “seismic” changes to their court.
Jones warned the justices that “politically it’s bad” for them to rule this way. The comment captures the misguided analysis of many media outlets. The Supreme Court was designed to be unpopular; to take stands that are politically unpopular but constitutionally correct.
Court independence
Indeed, the Democrats have become the very threat that the court was meant to resist. Recently, senators demanded that Chief Justice John Roberts appear to answer to them for his own decisions. (Roberts wisely declined.)
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer previously declared in front of the Supreme Court, “I want to tell you, [Neil] Gorsuch, I want to tell you, [Brett] Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” Now Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) announced that she will seek the impeachment of all six of the conservative justices. She was immediately joined by other Democratic members.
Notably, scholars have long disagreed where to draw the line on presidential immunity. The court adopted a middle approach that rejected extreme arguments on both sides. Yet, because Ocasio-Cortez disagrees with their decision, she has declared that this “is an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture.”
Previously, Ocasio-Cortez admitted that she does not understand why we even have a Supreme Court. She asked “How much does the current structure benefit us? And I don’t think it does.”
Other members, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have called for packing the Court with additional members to immediately secure a liberal majority to rule as she desires.
For these pundits and politicians, justice is merely an extension of politics and subject to the whims of the majority. These are same voices who chastised Judge Aileen Cannon for “slowwalking” her decisions by holding hearings on constitutional questions. They pointed to Judge Tanya Chutkan, who supported the efforts of special counsel Jack Smith to try Trump before the election, turning her court into a rocket docket. Chutkan quickly set aside this challenge, as well as other objections from Trump.
Indeed, at the oral argument, Chief Justice Roberts marveled at the conclusory analysis by Patricia Ann Millett in upholding Chutkan. He referred to the opinion celebrated by the left as little more than declaring “a former president can be prosecuted because he’s being prosecuted.” Chutkan and the DC Circuit were fast but ultimately wrong. Indeed, the Supreme Court noted that the judge created little record for the basis of her decisions.
In a perverted sense, Democrats are giving the public a powerful lesson in constitutional law. As Alexander Hamilton stated in The Federalist No. 78, judicial independence “is the best expedient which can be devised in any government to secure a steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws.”
This is the moment that the Framers envisioned in creating the Court under Article III of the Constitution. It would be our bulwark even when politicians lose faith in our Constitution and seek to dictate justice for those who they dislike.
An ‘Age of Rage’
In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” I discuss other such moments in our history. This is not our first age of rage. During periods of intense fear or anger, people often turn on free speech or other rights as inconvenient or outdated.
We have heard the same voices of the faithless today. MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal has called the Constitution “trash” and argued that we should simply just dump it. Law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for the Constitution to be “radically altered” to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
None of these threats or bloviating will work. The court is designed to stand against everyone and everything except for the Constitution. It was forged for this moment.
Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro professor of public interest law at the George Washington University School of Law.
A.F. Branco Cartoon—Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asks you not to believe your lying eyes during Joe Biden’s years of stumbling and mumbling through his presidency. She even tries to put a positive spin on his debate with former President Trump.
Karine Jean-Pierre Furious as Unedited Clips of Biden Freezing Up and Being Led Offstage by Obama Spread Like Wildfire Online — Calling it a ‘Cheap Fake Video Done in Bad Faith’ (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft – June 17, 2024
During a press conference, DEI White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at conservative media outlets for circulating what she described as “cheap fake videos” of Joe Biden looking old, feeble, and senile.
The controversy centers around a video clip that went viral, depicting Biden being led offstage by Barack Obama after freezing up at a Democratic fundraiser. The video is the third one from last week that shows Biden either being frozen or wandering. The Hollywood Reporter’s Chris Gardner posted a video that went viral of Biden briefly applauding the crowd. He then stood frozen until Obama grabbed him by the wrist and led him offstage with a hand on his back. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
The New York Times headline seemed to gloat: “Stephen Bannon Reports to Prison After One Final Podcast Episode.”
“The show will be his last for four months, but the longtime adviser to Donald J. Trump has no intention of surrendering his influence,” the newspaper of record for the Democratic Party and the American left declared in its online subhead on Monday.
And so, the corporate media stories went, reporting on Bannon’s failed attempt to secure an 11th-hour reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court. Bannon surrendered to federal authorities at a Connecticut federal prison to begin serving his time on contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena. Loathed by the left and ruling-class Republicans, the conservative firebrand became the latest casualty of a two-tiered system of justice in America.
As Bannon begins his term, 15 cabinet officials in the Biden administration continue to defy congressional subpoenas, and Merrick Garland, the attorney general of the United States, continues to insist he’s above Congress. On June 13, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the Committee on House Administration, issued subpoenas to 15 administration cabinet members seeking documents related to Biden’s constitutionally suspect executive order commanding federal agencies to assist in voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns. The agency chiefs failed to comply by Steil’s deadline of June 26.
“Not a single agency has responded with their strategic plan or with any details about the implementation of the EO,” the Wisconsin Republican said in a statement to The Federalist. “Additionally, we know that as many as 40 outside groups assisted and advised the agencies on implementation – we have received nothing on the role these groups played in the design of the strategic plans.”
Seems like contempt of Congress. Will the cabinet secretaries be bunking with Bannon anytime soon? Don’t count on it.
What about Garland?
On Monday, House Republicans sued Garland, who has refused to turn over the audio recordings of a “confused” President Joe Biden’s interview with Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur about the president’s mishandling of classified documents. Republicans want a federal court to compel Garland to follow their subpoena. The attorney general effectively told Republicans to go pound sand, citing executive privilege in refusing to release the audio — audio that could be particularly damaging to Biden after his disastrous debate performance last week.
“The congressional inquiry began with the release of Hur’s report in February, which found evidence that Biden, a Democrat, willfully retained and shared highly classified information when he was a private citizen. Yet the special counsel concluded that criminal charges were not warranted,” the Associated Press reported. What the story failed to note is that the special prosecutor deemed charges unwarranted because the octogenarian president “would likely present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur told the House Judiciary Committee in March that the White House pushed him to change portions of his report thought to be particularly damaging to the false narrative that Biden’s mental acuity remained sharp.
Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has been in jail since March for likewise ignoring a congressional subpoena. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear either man’s emergency appeal.
Before beginning his sentence, Bannon told reporters that he is a “political prisoner.”
Now, who will hold Garland and his colleagues in the Biden cabinet accountable for their contemptible conduct?
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
NEW YORK (AP) — Victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Iran, Syria and North Korea on Monday, saying their governments supplied the militants with money, weapons and know-how needed to carry out the assault that precipitated Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, seeks at least $4 billion in damages for “a coordination of extrajudicial killings, hostage takings, and related horrors for which the defendants provided material support and resources.”
Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to comment on the allegations, while Syria and North Korea did not respond.
The United States has deemed Iran, Syria and North Korea to be state sponsors of terrorism, and Washington has designated Hamas as what’s known as a specially designated global terrorist.
Because such countries rarely abide by court rulings against them in the United States, if the lawsuit’s plaintiffs are successful, they could seek compensation from a fund created by Congress that allows American victims of terrorism to receive payouts. The money comes from seized assets, fines or other penalties leveled against those that, for example, do business with a state sponsor of terrorism.
The lawsuit draws on previous court findings, reports from U.S. and other government agencies, and statements over some years by Hamas, Iranian and Syrian officials about their ties. The complaint also points to indications that Hamas fighters used North Korean weapons in the Oct. 7 attack. But the suit doesn’t provide specific evidence that Tehran, Damascus or Pyongyang knew in advance about the assault. It accuses the three countries of providing weapons, technology and financial support necessary for the attack to occur.
Iran has denied knowing about the Oct. 7 attack ahead of time, though officials up to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have praised the assault. Iran has armed Hamas as a counter to Israel, which the Islamic Republic has long viewed as its regional archenemy.
In the years since the collapse of Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Iran and Israel have been locked in a shadow war of attacks on land and at sea. Those attacks exploded into the open after an apparent Israeli attack targeting Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, during the Israel-Hamas war, which sparked Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel in April.
Neighboring Syria has relied on Iranian support to keep embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in power amid a grinding civil war that began with the 2011 Arab Spring protests. Like Iran, Syria also offered public support for Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack. North Korea denies that it arms Hamas. However, a militant video and weapons seized by Israel show Hamas fighters likely fired North Korean weapons during the Oct. 7 attack
South Korean officials, two experts on North Korean arms and an Associated Press analysis of weapons captured on the battlefield by Israel point toward Hamas using Pyongyang’s F-7 rocket-propelled grenade, a shoulder-fired weapon that fighters typically use against armored vehicles. The lawsuit specifically cites the use of the F-7 grenade in the attack as a sign of Pyongyang’s involvement.
“Through this case, we will be able to prove what occurred, who the victims were, who the perpetrators were — and it will not just create a record in real time, but for all of history,” said one of the attorneys, James Pasch of the ADL, also called the Anti-Defamation League. The Jewish advocacy group frequently speaks out against antisemitism and extremism.
Hamas fighters killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 during the Oct. 7 attack. Israel invaded Gaza in response. The war has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It doesn’t say how many were civilians or fighters.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of over 125 plaintiffs, including the estates and relatives of people who were killed, plus people who were physically and/or emotionally injured. All are related to, or are themselves, U.S. citizens. Under U.S. law, foreign governments can be held liable, in some circumstances, for deaths or injuries caused by acts of terrorism or by providing material support or resources for them.
The 1976 statute cited in the lawsuit, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, is a frequent tool for American plaintiffs seeking to hold foreign governments accountable. In one example, a federal judge in Washington ordered North Korea in 2018 to pay $500 million in a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of Otto Warmbier, an American college student who died shortly after being released from that country.
People held as prisoners by Iran in the past have successfully sued Iran in U.S. federal court, seeking money earlier frozen by the U.S.
The new lawsuit joins a growing list of Israel-Hamas war-related cases in U.S. courts.
Last week, for example, Israelis who were taken hostage or lost loved ones during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sued the United Nations agency that aids Palestinians, claiming it has helped finance the militants by paying agency staffers in U.S. dollars and thereby funneling them to money-changers in Gaza who allegedly give a cut to Hamas.
The agency, known as UNRWA, has denied that it knowingly aids Hamas or any other militant group.
___
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. AP writers Courtney Bonnell and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Former President Donald Trump listens during his debate with President Joe Biden on Thursday night on CNN. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
In what is undoubtedly one of the most significant constitutional decisions it has ever issued with respect to the separation of powers and the powers of the presidency, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 decision Monday saying that former presidents are entitled to broad immunity from criminal prosecution after they leave office for acts committed while in office.
The decision in Trump v. U.S., with a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is just as historic as the high court’s March 4 decision in Trump v. Anderson, in which the court held unanimously that Trump could not be disqualified from the presidential ballot under the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. U.S. is one, however, that will likely have a bigger impact on how presidents are likely to act in the future while in office.
In the wake of criminal charges that brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith for acts Trump undertook while contesting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Trump asked the Supreme Court to decide whether a former president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his “official” acts as president.
This is an issue of first impression before the high court. The closest case on point is Nixon v. Fitzgerald (1982), in which the court held that a president has absolute immunity from civil liability arising from any acts “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”
Trump argued that former presidents should be absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for any “official acts” they undertook as president, with the sole exception being for acts which led to a president’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and subsequent removal from office by the Senate after a trial.
As support, Trump cites the Constitution’s impeachment judgment clause, which provides: “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
Trump noted that, although the Democrat-run House impeached him twice while in office, the Senate acquitted him both times following a trial. Moreover, Trump claims, the second impeachment trial covered “much of the same conduct charged in the indictment.”
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the D.C. criminal case, rejected Trump’s immunity claim, holding that a former president “may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.” Her ruling was affirmed on appeal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which declined even to extend the Fitzgerald standard to the criminal context.
Writing in Federalist No. 70, Alexander Hamilton decried feebleness in a president and said that an effective president must be vigorous and ever-prepared to act energetically, decisively, and with dispatch if he is to best serve our national interests. The president of the United States, Hamilton wrote, should never hesitate out of fear of the possibility of being criminally prosecuted after leaving office for decisions he made while in office—especially in times of crisis.
While rejecting Trump’s broader argument premised on the impeachment judgment clause—Roberts stated in his majority opinion that “the text of the Clause provides little support for such an absolute immunity”—the Supreme Court, sensitive to the concerns raised by Hamilton and by the Fitzgerald court, still gave Trump’s lawyers most of what they wanted. The high court provided Trump (and all future former presidents) with a broad measure of protection for official actions he and others undertake while in office.
Indeed, Roberts noted that while former presidents are less likely to be prosecuted than they are to be sued, the threat of being sent to prison would no doubt have a far greater chilling effect than the possibility of paying a civil monetary judgment.
Roberts noted that, although a president shares certain powers with Congress, Article II of the Constitution vests certain powers—such as the power to issue pardons, veto legislation, nominate judges, or negotiate treaties—exclusively with the president. The court made it clear that presidents are absolutely immune for actions taken within their exclusive constitutional authority.
The high court stated that, as Trump’s lawyers had conceded during oral argument, former presidents are not immune for unofficial acts that they undertake in office (Bill Clinton’s deposition testimony, where he likely perjured himself, in the Paula Jones case would be a quintessential example of an unofficial act undertaken while he was still in office). But the court provided some guidance about how to distinguish between what is an official act and what is an unofficial act, while leaving it up to the trial court take the first crack at applying these standards to the allegations against Trump.
Borrowing from Fitzgerald, the court held that former presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for actions they undertook within the outer perimeter of their official responsibilities, and that it is the prosecution’s burden to present enough evidence to overcome that presumption by showing that such a prosecution would pose no “dangers of intrusion upon the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”
Moreover, Roberts stated, a reviewing court may not inquire into a president’s motives, since conducting such a “highly intrusive” inquiry would undoubtedly involve courts examining sensitive internal deliberations based on mere allegations of wrongdoing. Such “broad-reaching discovery,” Roberts wrote, could “seriously cripple the President’s exercise of his official duties.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court added that testimony or private records of the president or his advisers probing such conduct may not be admitted as evidence at trial, adding to the government’s burden of persuasion.
While leaving many issues for the trial court and, potentially, the D.C. Circuit to ponder, the high court’s majority did dispatch some allegations against Trump. The court held that Trump’s discussions with Justice Department officials clearly fell on the side of official acts that fall within a president’s “conclusive and preclusive” authority for which he cannot be prosecuted (which may also have an impact on pending criminal charges against former Assistant Attorney General Jeff Clark).
The majority also cast serious doubt—without deciding the issue—on the viability of the charges against Trump stemming from his communications with then-Vice President Mike Pence. The court noted that communications between presidents and vice presidents about the scope of their official responsibilities are considered official acts, which would seemingly cover the scope of Pence’s duties under the Constitution and the Electoral Counts Act with respect to the Electoral College certification process.
However, since the vice president is also the president of the Senate, a legislative body, the Supreme Court remanded this issue to the trial court to assess whether a prosecution involving Trump’s alleged attempts to influence Pence’s oversight of the certification proceedings would “pose any dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive branch.”
The court touched upon—again, without deciding—other aspects of the case against Trump. These included Trump’s interactions with state officials claiming that the election results in those states were tainted by fraud and his involvement in arranging for contingent electors (referred to as “fake” electors by the mainstream media) to cast votes for him in states where there was still ongoing litigation. Roberts said that this would involve “a close analysis of the indictment’s extensive and interrelated allegations.”
Regarding Trump’s speeches and social media posts on and around Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol riot occurred, Roberts left open the possibility that some of those remarks, “perhaps as a candidate for office or party leader,” might fall on the side of unofficial conduct. But the chief justice added that “Presidents possess extraordinary power to speak to his fellow citizens and on their behalf,” and as a result, “most of a President’s public communications are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities.”
Roberts concluded his majority opinion by stating:
The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive. The President therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. That immunity applies equally to all occupants of the Oval Office, regardless of politics, policy, or party.
Precisely so!
Once the case is remanded to the lower court, Chutkan will have to assess the impact of Monday’s decision. The thumb on the scale will favor Trump, not the special counsel. Moreover, Chutkan also will have to grapple with the extent to which Fischer v. U.S., which the high court announced Friday, applies to Trump.
In Fischer, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of one of the Jan. 6 defendants and narrowed the scope of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, a federal statute enacted in the wake of the Enron scandal that addresses obstruction of an official proceeding. Two of the four charges pending against Trump in that case allege violations of that section of the code.
Chutkan may also decide to take up an issue raised by Justice Clarence Thomas in a concurring opinion, and which Judge Aileen Cannon is currently considering in the Florida classified documents case—whether Smith’s designation as special counsel by the Justice Department violates the Constitution’s appointments clause, since Smith was neither nominated by a president nor confirmed by the Senate to that position. Thomas left no doubt what he thinks about that issue.
All of this makes it extremely unlikely that Trump’s D.C. case will be heard before the Nov. 5 election, if ever. Monday’s ruling will also have a dramatic effect on the pending charges against Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, potentially crippling that already-troubled prosecution as well.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Fischer v. United States rejecting the use of obstruction of legal proceedings against January 6th defendants will potentially impact hundreds of cases. For some, it may lead to dismissals or, in the cases with multiple charges, resentencings. One of those cases that will be impacted is the pending prosecution of former president Donald Trump who is facing four charges, including two obstruction counts. However, it is not clear if Special Counsel Jack Smith will yield to the decision or possibly take the dubious path laid out by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her concurrence.
Smith has long tended to push the law to the breaking point to bag defendants. That was the case when his conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell was unanimously reversed as overextending another law.
It is doubtful that he will go quietly into the night after the Fischer decision. In most cases, a prosecutor would go back and secure a superseding indictment in light of the loss of the obstruction claims. Those claims were central to the narrative of the government under the current indictment.
That is not Smith’s style. He may decide to push even harder for a trial before the election on the remaining counts. Smith has made the trial before the election an overriding priority throughout his appointment. He also has a very favorable and motivated judge in United States District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
He could also take a not-so-subtle hint from Jackson in her concurrence. Jackson supported the majority in finding that the obstruction provision, Section 1512(c), was enacted after the Enron case to address the destruction of documents and records.
Section 1512(c)(1) prohibits corruptly obstructing an official proceeding by altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a record, document, or other object with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding. However, a second provision under subsection (c)(2) allowed for charges that would “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The Court held that the obstruction cases under Section 1512(c)(2) must be tied to impairing the integrity or availability of evidence.
However, in a single justice concurrence, she added a way that Smith and other prosecutors might still be able to shoehorn January 6th into a Section 1512 offense:
“That official proceeding [Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote] plainly used certain records, documents, or objects—including, among others, those relating to the electoral votes themselves. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 65–67. And it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding “in ways other than those specified in (c)(1).” Ante, at 8. If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed. That issue remains available for the lower courts to determine on remand.”
Notably, no other justice joined Jackson in the concurrence. However, Smith and Chutkan could reason that it was not expressly rejected and presumably, the three justices in dissent would support the broader reading since they were willing to sign off on the ultimate extension of the obstruction of justice statute. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
However, that still leaves less than a majority and an application that runs against the grain of the opinion. Just saying that a proceeding involves “certain records” is transparently artificial and forced. Even the submission of an alternative slate of electors is not the destruction of electors certified by the secretaries of state.
Those challenges under the same loose theory could have been viewed as attempting to negate or destroy certifications from the states. It would likely, in my view, result in another reversal. It is, in my view, too clever by half.
That may not concern Smith who may still want to use the obstruction counts to increase the likelihood of convictions on the other counts. In such a circumstance, the overturning of the two obstruction convictions might still leave the conviction for conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against the rights of citizens.
We will see in the coming weeks, but Smith is likely waiting for the other shoe to drop in the Trump immunity case. That could add additional complications if the case is remanded by the Court for further proceedings. There is little time for a trial before November if the district court must hold hearings on claims that statements or actions were taken by Trump as part of his office.
Chutkan sought to meet Smith’s demand for a trial before the election by converting her court into a virtual rocket docket. The cost of the fast pace was that she created little record on these issues. That might have to be done in a remand and will exhaust additional days on the rapidly shrinking calendar for Smith.
Either way, Monday will throw the final card on the table for Smith and the Court will determine if what is left in his hand. It may not deter Smith. It often seems like both bad gamblers and special counsels tend to double down on weak hands. If history is any measure, Smith is likely to bet the farm on whatever remains.
The problem is that the farm does not belong to him.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Minnesota Governor Walz stated that Biden had a bad night during his debate with Trump but continued on to say we all should still support him.
Trump vs. Biden: 4 highlights from the first presidential debate
By Mary Margaret Olohan and Tony Kinnett – June 28, 2024
The president made garbled remarks discussing the need for more Border Patrol officers, to which Trump responded: “I really don’t know what he said. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
(The Daily Signal) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump squared off on Thursday night in the first of two scheduled debates of the 2024 presidential campaign. CNN hosted the debate, which took place in Atlanta. The network declared that the first presidential debate would be held without a live audience, but would include two commercial breaks — the first presidential debate in history to have ads. CNN also granted the debate moderators a new power; namely, the ability to mute one candidate when the other was speaking. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Kicking the can till after the election. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Murthy v. Missouri where Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant.
SCOTUS Murthy Decision: Coney Barrett Enables Biden’s Mass Censorship Regime
By Benjamin Wetmore – June 27, 2024
Yesterday, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Murthy v. Missouri where Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “Neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established Article III standing to seek an injunction against any defendant” meaning that, there is no stopping the government’s censorship regime while the case proceeds at the lower court in Louisiana.
Many legal scholars are of the opinion that the high court is broadcasting its overall views by ruling on procedure here, and that they are not interested in hearing the merits of the rest of this case. Meaning that the Supreme Court justices are signaling to the lower courts to keep the censorship regime in full swing. READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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