Below is my column in the New York Post on the reappearance of Marc Elias in leading the effort to undo the victory of Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. While some have distanced themselves from the controversial Democratic lawyer, Sen. Bob Casey has embraced Elias in his effort to retain the seat. Despite being sanctioned and ridiculed by courts in prior cases, Democrats continue to enrich Elias, who is the personification of the hypocrisy of some self-appointed “save democracy” champions. Casey continued on Tuesday to refuse to concede. Every candidate has a right to have all of the votes counted. However, regardless of the outcome of the effort, Casey’s association with Elias destroys any moral high ground for him and his campaign.
Here is the column:
Marc Elias is back and that is not good news. Despite the Pennsylvania race being called by the AP almost a week ago, Elias is working with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to try to change that outcome. It is not surprising that Casey was left with Elias.
For many, Elias is a notorious figure who captures the hypocrisy of the “save democracy” crowd. Elias is an attorney who has been sanctioned in court and denounced by critics as a Democratic “dirty trickster” and even an “election denier.” Despite his checkered history, Elias remains the go-to lawyer for many Democratic campaigns.
It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.) During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff.
Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress.
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ultimately sanctioned by the FEC over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm. (I previously discussed the comparison to the criminal charges against Trump for treating the mislabeling of payments as “legal expenses.”).
Elias continued to be accused of not defending but thwarting democracy. In Maryland, Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.”
His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”
The point is that it does not have to make sense. Democratic campaigns fund Elias and his various profitable enterprises to seek to change the outcome of called elections.
That is the case with Casey. Trump won Pennsylvania’s presidential election, and Dave McCormick received tens of thousands more votes. With 99 percent of the votes counted, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer relented in reversing his decision to bar McCormick from the orientation for new senators.
What is most striking is the strategy of Elias. The state has roughly 87,000 provisional ballots to count, but those ballots were generally challenged for defects or suspected invalidity. Even if they were to count, it is unlikely that they will break so overwhelmingly for Casey to overturn the result. Indeed, only about 30,000 were coming from Casey strongholds in Philadelphia and Allegheny County. However, Elias just wants to get within .5% to trigger a mandatory recount.
It is reminiscent of Trump demanding an additional recount in Georgia, maintaining on a call that all he needed was to “find 11,780 votes” to change the outcome. All Elias needs to do is find 40,000 votes.
Of course, when Trump made that comment, Elias and Democrats insisted that he was seeking to defraud the state by demanding a new recount.
It is not the first time Elias seemed to morph into those he denounced. Previously in New York, Elias unsuccessfully sought to flip the result in a congressional race by claiming that the Dominion voting machines somehow switched or changed votes. Sound familiar?
Casey will eventually have to accept defeat, but Elias will remain the break-the-glass option for Democratic campaigns when other lawyers have lost the appetite for challenging election results.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Trump appoints Elon and Vivek to clean house in Washington D.C. of excess Regulations, Bureaucracy, and waste from Government. DOGE
BREAKING: Trump Announces Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will Head Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”)
by Cristina Laila – The Gateway Pundit – Nov 12, 2024
President Trump on Tuesday announced Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will head the Department of Government Efficiency. “I am pleased to announced that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement,” Trump said in a statement. 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 • Trump Appoints Pro-Life Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State • Exit Polls Confirm Kamala Harris Lost Because Voters Opposed Her Radical Abortion Agenda • Republicans Keep House After Winning White House and Capturing Senate • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Has No Plans to Retire Anytime Soon
More Pro-Life News • Abortion Was a Losing Strategy for Democrats as Americans Rejected Kamala Harris • Pro-Life Group Unveils “Make America Pro-Life Again” Roadmap to Save Babies From Abortions • Harris Had Less Support From Young Women Than Biden Despite Running on Abortions Up to Birth • This Election Was a Defeat of Liberal, Pro-Abortion Lies. But We Have to Keep Fighting Them • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
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Democracy appears to be losing its appeal on the left. After campaigning on panic politics and predicting the imminent death of democracy, some on the left are now calling to burn the system down in light of Republicans not only taking both houses and the White House but Trump likely winning the popular vote.
Some seem to believe that what happened on November 5th is a license to become a modern version of Guy Fawkes (“Remember, remember, the 5th of November; Gunpowder, treason and plot; I see no reason; Why gunpowder treason; Should ever be forgot”).
Protesters after the election called for tearing down the system as a whole, insisting that “Trump is not an individual. He’s a figurehead of a system that’s rotten.” Even before the election, law professors and law deans called for a break from the Constitution. Those voices will likely be amplified after the massive electoral loss by Democrats.
Others are seeking to evade the results of the election to still bring Harris to power. CNN’s Bakari Sellers wants to pressure Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign and replace her with Harris. Former Harris aide Jamal Simmons wants Biden to resign to allow Harris to become president despite the vote of the majority.
It is an ironic twist after Democratic politicians and pundits repeated the mantra that, if we did not elect Harris, this might be our last election. After losing that election, democracy appears to be the problem. The majority of Americans voting for Trump have been called“anti-American” by Gov. Hochul. Other politicians and pundits have called them racists, misogynists, or weaklings seeking domination by strongmen and bullies.
The problem is now with young and minority voters. Trump won white women voters by eight points at 53 percent. Harris actually fell slightly in the support of women overall. Conversely, roughly 43 percent of men voted for Harris. Forty percent of women under 30 voted for Trump. Even CNN reports that Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, Black voters in 48 years, and Hispanic voters in more than 50 years.
THIS IS A SPOOF. IT ASKS THE QUESTION, WHAT IF THIS DID HAPPEN?
So, it appears that it is time to move on. The call for Biden to simply do what the public did not want to do (in making Harris president) is particularly ironic. Many voters were repulsed by the Democrats simply making Harris the nominee after all the primaries were over. This was the candidate who could not garner any appreciable votes in the prior presidential primaries before being made Vice President by Biden. Now, the idea is that she would be elevated by the unilateral act of Biden.
Without a hint of self-awareness or recognition of the hypocrisy, Simmons insisted that this would “Fulfill [Biden’s] last promise — to be transitional.” Most people understood that to mean democratically transitional in opening the way for the election of new leadership. He did so after he was forced to step aside after winning every Democratic primary and tens of millions of votes.
Nevertheless, Simmons argued that “Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public wanna see is the time.” That would certainly be dramatic as well as anti-Democratic. Yet, Simmons explained that “this is the moment for us to change the entire perspective of how Democrats operate.” Indeed, it would. It would confirm that the Democratic Party is an effective oligarchy, the very thing that they just campaigned against.
Sellers is more modest. He just wants Harris on the Supreme Court. At no point in history has anyone suggested that Harris was a leading legal mind. Nothing in her history suggests that she is a competent, let alone promising, candidate for the highest court. Harris has previously suggested her support for possible radical changes on the Court, including court packing. She is also a decidedly anti-free speech figure in American politics.
None of that matters any more than the results of the election. Harris would be put on the Court not due to any specific talents or skills but because it would be “consequential.” He wrapped up by saying “let Republicans go crazy, ape, I’m even mentioning that option.”
Others are not pushing Harris but are pushing Sotomayor to resign to allow for one of the fastest confirmations in history. Under this theory, a lame duck president would muscle through a confirmation before Trump could come into power. Of course, that ignores the possibility that you could vacate the seat and then fall short in the sharply divided Senate. That includes the possible loss of senators who might balk at such a maneuver, including outgoing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
The one option that does not appear to be popular is to listen to the voters and actually return the Democratic Party back toward the center of our politics. The problem is now the voters themselves.
French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau once famously insisted that “War is too important to be left to the generals.” The Democrats appear to be working on a new view that democracy is too important to be left to the voters.
Below is my column in The Hill on the growing calls for an organized resistance to the Trump Administration by Democratic governors and prosecutors. They may find, however, that the resistance movement this time around will be facing significant legal and political headwinds.
Here is the column:
The single most common principle of recovery programs is that the first step is to admit that you have a problem. That first step continues to elude the politicians and pundits who unsuccessfully pushed lawfare and panic politics for years. That includes prosecutors like New York Attorney General Letitia James and politicians like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who affirmed this week that they will be redoubling, not reconsidering, their past positions.
For its part, The Washington Post quickly posted an editorial titled “The second resistance to Trump must start now.” They may, however, find the resistance more challenging both politically and legally this time around.
It is important to note at the outset that there is no reason Democratic activists should abandon their values just because they lost this election. Our system is strengthened by passionate and active advocacy. Rather, it is the collective fury and delirium of the post-election protests that was so disconcerting. Pundits lashed out at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half of the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.
Others blamed free speech and the fact that social media allows “disinformation” to be read by ignorant voters. In other words, the problem could not possibly be themselves. It was, rather, the public, which refused to listen.
I don’t think I could’ve said this any better. My friend Jenny spitting facts early in the morning. It’s time for the political elite in this country to realize America told you exactly how they felt on election day. This goes to the media as well. America is done with the… pic.twitter.com/v73sK7gnkF
That does not bode well for the Democratic Party. As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout. Ordinarily, recovery can begin with “a terrible experience” when someone hits rock bottom. After a crushing electoral defeat and the loss of the White House and likely both houses of Congress, one would think that Democrats would be ready for that first step to recovery. However, those hoping for a new leaf on the left do not understand the true addictive hold of rage.
In my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore rage and our long history of rage politics. There is a certain release that comes with rage in allowing people to do and say things that you would never do or say. People rarely admit it, but they like it. It is the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.
Over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts. For months, Democratic leaders denounced Donald Trump and his supporters as fascists and neo-Nazis. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others suggested that democracy itself was about to die unless Democrats were kept in power.
Just before the election, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called those voting for Trump “anti-American.” By Hochul’s measure, over half of the American electorate is now “anti-American.”
James is the face of lawfare. She may have done more to reelect Trump than anyone other than the president himself. She ran on nailing Trump on something, anything. In New York, she was joined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in this ill-conceived effort. They fulfilled the narrative of a weaponized legal system. Every new legal action seemed to produce another surge in polling for Trump. Yet there James was, soon after the election, with another press conference promising again to unleash the powers of her office to stop Trump’s policies.
Then there was Pritzker, doing the community theater version of “The Avengers” and declaring, “You come for my people, you come through me.” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) added that he too will “fight to the death” against Trump’s agenda. Rather than lower the rhetoric, these rage-addicts ran out for another hit.
Our prior periods of rage politics were largely ended by the public in major election shifts like the one this month. Things, however, are different this time around both politically and legally. The problem for the resistance is the very democracy that they claimed to be saving. Democrats lost after opposing policies supported by an astonishing share of the public at a time of deep political division. That effort included opposing voter ID laws favored by 84 percent of the public, among other things. They are now committed to opposing policies central to this election blowout, including deportations of illegal immigrants, which is favored in some polls by two-thirds of Americans.
Likewise, Democrats have already doubled down on attacks on free speech, including blaming their loss on the absence of sufficient censorship. On MSNBC, host Mika Brzezinski blamed the loss in part on “massive disinformation.” Yet, according to some polls, free speech ranked as high as second among issues on Election Day.
According to CNN, Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, the best among Black voters in 48 years, and the best among Hispanic voters in more than 50 years. Harris actually lost a bit of support with women, and Trump won handily among some groups of women.
None of that seems to matter this time. We have an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public. Yet, with both houses of Congress under Republican control, the investigations and impeachment efforts that hounded Trump throughout his first term will be less of a threat in his second term. For that reason, the center of gravity of the “second resistance” will shift to Democratic prosecutors like James, Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was just reelected. Various Democratic governors are also pledging to thwart Trump’s policies despite the results of the election.
The “second resistance” will try to use state power to oppose the very issues and policies that led to this historic political shift. That means that there will be a legal shift in the focus of litigation to inherent federal powers versus state powers. That battle will favor the Trump administration. In fairness to these Democratic politicians, they are certainly free to go to the courts, as Republicans did under Biden to argue for limitations on federal powers. But the promise of California Gov. Gavin Newsom to “Trump-proof” the state is easier to make rhetorically than it will be to keep legally.
Indeed, Trump will be able to cite a curious ally in this fight: Barack Obama. It was Obama who successfully swatted down state efforts to pursue their own policies and programs on immigration enforcement. Obama insisted that state laws were preempted in the area and the Supreme Court largely agreed in its 2012 decision in Arizona v. U.S.
Congress may even seek to tie the receipt of federal funds to states cooperating with federal mandates. For this reason, Democrats, who campaigned on the promise to end the filibuster for the good of democracy, suddenly became firm believers in that Senate rule right around 2:30 a.m. last Wednesday.
As the majority of the country walks away from the party shaking their heads, many activists are left only with their rage. Instead of reappraising the years of far-left orthodoxy and intolerance, some are calling to tear down the system or take drastic individual actions, including for women to break up with their boyfriends and husbands or to cut off their hair.
They will actually keep their rage and dump their relationships. Now that really is an addiction.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Gov. Tim Walz lost his own Blue Earth County in Minnesota. Trump also flipped three other counties: Winona, Nicollet, and Carlton.
Trump flips four Minnesota counties, including win in Walz’s home county.
Former President Donald Trump didn’t win Minnesota in Tuesday’s election, but he delivered another shock to Democrats, flipping four counties from blue to red—including Gov. Tim Walz’s home turf, Blue Earth County. The narrow flips tightened Trump’s margin of defeat in the state to just four points—an improvement from his 7-point loss to Joe Biden in 2020. While Vice President Kamala Harris and Walz claimed victory statewide with 50.88% of the vote to Trump’s 46.66%, the results reveal a growing divide between Minnesota’s urban and rural voters. READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Revised from 2018 and revised for 2024 Veterans Day. Our Veterans are being left in the cold while Democrat priorities have been focused on housing and feeding illegal Immigrants coming across the border by the millions. Kamala/Biden’s disastrous immigration policies are one of the main reasons Trump won.
SHAMEFUL: Biden Admin’s John Kirby Said to Ignore Afghanistan Veterans Because They Don’t Vote Democrat
By Mike LaChance – The Gateway Pundit – Sept 11, 2024
John Kirby of the Biden administration has just been caught saying something truly shameful about American veterans. He did not realize that he had hit ‘reply all’ on an email inquiry sent to his office by FOX News seeking comment on veterans and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Kirby’s response stated that there was ‘no use in responding’ because these veterans are not Harris voters. On the anniversary of 9/11, White House National Security Council communications adviser John Kirby dismissed the concerns of military veterans critical of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, writing in response to a Fox News Digital press inquiry that there’s “no use” weighing in on the veterans’ views. READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Trump supporters are rooting for Rick Scott to be the next Senate Majority Leader, hoping he can beat McConnell clones Thune and Cornyn.
KEEP THE HEAT ON: GOP Senators Feeling “Bullied” as MAGA Nation Makes Their Choice for Senate Majority Leader Crystal Clear
By Cullen Linebarger – The Gateway Pundit – Nov 11, 2024
As The Gateway Pundit reported, the Senate Republican leadership vote will take place in a closed-door session this Wednesday, November 13, 2024. The three candidates running for the position of Majority Leader are Texas Senator John Cornyn, South Dakota Senator John Thune, and Florida Senator Rick Scott. The Gateway Pundit has endorsed Scott for the position. As Jim Hoft notes, Scott is a devoted supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump and a highly successful former businessman. He has also pledged full support for the Trump agenda and will implement recess appointments to make it easier to drain the DC Swamp while also ensuring no one sabotages Trump from the inside. For these reasons, ordinary Trump supporters, along with Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, have endorsed Scott. 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 • Donald Trump Selects Pro-Life Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador • Donald Trump Could Appoint Two More Supreme Court Justices and Dozens of Federal Judges • Chip Roy Tells Biden DOJ: Don’t Destroy Evidence of 5 Full-Term Babies Killed at D.C. Abortion Biz • The Election Results are a Reminder That You’re Not Alone. Stand Up for Your Pro-Life Christian Values
More Pro-Life News • Pro-Life Americans Still Have Much Work to Do to Change Hearts and Minds on Abortion • Feminist Wants Liberal Women to Protest Trump’s Election by Getting Their Tubes Tied • No, The Texas Abortion Ban Did Not Cause a Young Woman to Die • Liberal MP Rushes British Parliament to a Vote on Legalizing Assisted Suicide • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Top Stories • Kamala Harris Ran Almost Entirely on Abortion, But White Women Supported Trump by 6% • Donald Trump Didn’t Just Win Catholics, He Won Latino Catholics by 7 Percent • Donald Trump Names the First Female White House Chief of Staff in History • Leftist Women Announce Sex Strike to Retaliate Against Men Who Voted for Trump
More Pro-Life News • Radical Abortion Activists Spend $75 Million Pushing Amendment 4 in Florida and Still Lost • Speaker Mike Johnson: Americans Chose Economy and Border Security Over Abortion Extremism • Neveah Crain’s Family Blame Hospitals for Her Death, Not Texas Abortion Ban • Planned Parenthood Asks Court to Strike Down Every Pro-Life Law in Missouri • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
As divided as America may be, this election showed there’s one thing most Americans agree on: Only U.S. citizens should vote in U.S. elections.
Voters this week in eight states — Idaho,Iowa,Kentucky, Missouri,North Carolina, Oklahoma,South Carolina, and Wisconsin — overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendment ballot questions seeking to ensure noncitizens cannot vote in state and local elections. Foreign nationals are already barred from voting in federal elections.
“We’re so often told about how divided we are in the United States, but on Tuesday we had Republicans, Democrats and independents come together in overwhelming numbers declaring that only citizens would be able to vote” in elections, a jubilant Will Martin, Wisconsin state director of Americans for Citizen Voting, told The Federalist in a phone interview this week.
The Badger State’s Citizen-Only Voting Amendment (COVA) was endorsed by more than 70 percent of voters in Tuesday’s election, according to unofficial tallies. Support topped 65 percent in each of the states with COVA questions on the ballot, according to unofficial results reported by state news organizations. In Iowa, the referendum passed with 76 percent support. In South Carolina, the ballot question earned the approval of a whopping 86 percent of voters.
In Missouri, the same ballot question amending the state constitution to make clear only citizens can vote in Show Me State elections also knocked out ranked-choice voting by a two-to-one margin.
Before Election Day, COVA advocates felt confident, but Wisconsin presented the biggest challenge. Jack Tomczak, vice president for Citizen Outreach for Americans for Citizen Voting, told The Federalist that the amendment faced “well-funded” opposition led by the leftist League of Women Voters. More than three dozen leftist groups lent their names and resources to an effort to defeat the referendum. Martin said opponents ran “shameful” ads falsely warning voters that military personnel wouldn’t be able to vote in Wisconsin elections if the amendment passed.
In Idaho, Democrat lawmakers claimed noncitizens could be barred from voting in private elections, including homeowner associations and parent-teacher associations elections. The amendment ballot questions had nothing to do with such races, just as they don’t involve federal election law.
‘Being Diminished’
Opponents, assisted by the accomplice media, pushed the left’s false talking point that foreign nationals voting in elections is nearly nonexistent and that the constitutions in Wisconsin and the other states already bar noncitizens from voting.
“Passage of the amendments marks the latest chapter of Republican’s [sic] ongoing efforts to put unfounded claims of noncitizen voting at the center of a broader political strategy,” Democratic Party mouthpiece NBC News reported this week.
In the words of outgoing acting President Joe Biden, malarky.
As The Federalist has reported, the vast majority of states’ constitutions include language that “every” citizen meeting age and residency requirements is eligible to vote. The amendments demand that “only” U.S. citizens meeting the requirements are electors.
Opponents of the COVA movement insist there’s no difference. The “every” phrasing opens the door to noncitizens being allowed to vote in state and local elections, as is the case in California, Maryland, Vermont and the District of Columbia.
In September, Frederick became the largest city in Maryland to allow noncitizens to vote in its elections. The Board of Aldermen voted 4-1 to give green card and illegal immigrants the right to cast ballots. Kelly Russell was the sole dissenting vote.
“I have talked to many people who worked to get their citizenship in order to vote who do not agree to that, who feel that their efforts and all the hard work that they did is being diminished by this,” she said, according to Fox45 News in Baltimore.
Takoma Park, Maryland, has allowed foreign nationals to vote in local elections for more than 30 years. All told, a dozen Maryland municipalities open the franchise to noncitizens. They can because there’s nothing in the state constitution that prevents them from doing so.
‘Common Sense’ Movement
Wisconsin legislative Democrats have voted en bloc against resolutions to take the citizen-only amendment to the voters. While they insist noncitizens illegally voting in elections isn’t an issue, it is. Noncitizens have voted in U.S. elections and thousands have shown up on state voter rolls this election cycle.
The problems are only magnified by an unprecedented 10 million U.S. Border Patrol encounters with illegal aliens in the nearly four years that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been in office. While it is a felony for foreign nationals to vote in U.S. elections, incidents are difficult to track and not a priority for many prosecutors.
“There are at least 25 million non-citizens in the country according to the Census Bureau and no federal enforcement mechanism to ensure their names don’t appear on the voters rolls,” Paige Terryberry, senior research fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told The Federalist in September. “Right now, the Biden-Harris administration is using welfare offices, DMVs, Public housing, healthercare.gov and more to register voters, and they aren’t verifying citizenship at these locations. States can act too, but the SAVE Act is the only thing that can fix this problem nationwide before the election.”
Each illegal vote diminishes those of eligible voters.
Since 2018, 14 states have added, or have voted to add, citizenship requirements to their constitutions, according to Ballotpedia.
Martin noted that swing state Wisconsin is a “50-50” state, as evident by former President Donald Trump’s victory in the so-called “blue wall” state by a little over 28,000 votes. Still, the ballot question scored majorities in 71 of 72 counties, Martin said.
The COVA advocate said the issue is part of a sea change in America, a return to basic guiding values.
“Theres a movement in this country toward common sense,” Martin said. “People are tired of people trying to interpret for them, people are tired of being told what to think.”
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.
Democrats are worried America elected former President Donald Trump at his worst. Republicans are celebrating that Trump is at his best.
Eight years after the Manhattan real estate mogul and reality television star shocked the world with a triumphant victory over Hillary Clinton, Trump will reclaim the White House as a veteran politician with a full term behind him.
“Figures who once hoped to act as stabilizing forces — including a string of chiefs of staff, defense secretaries, a national security adviser, a national intelligence adviser and an attorney general — have abandoned Trump, leaving behind recriminations about his character and abilities,” CNN reported. “They’ve been replaced by a cohort of advisers and officials uninterested in keeping Trump in check. Instead of acting as bulwarks against him, those working for Trump this time around share his views and are intent on upholding the extreme pledges he made as a candidate without concern for norms, traditions or law that past aides sought to maintain.”
In other words, to CNN, a second Trump term will feature a brash president without the guardrails of closet Democrats to protect them from his impulses that offend the left. But to Trump’s supporters, the presidents-elect past experience with opposition personnel is the guardrail to insulate the duly elected commander-in-chief from deep state interference. Not only will Trump be governing without “The Resistance” undermining him from within, but he’ll be governing with the right people carefully picked in the four years since he left office.
“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump said Wednesday morning. “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept.”
He knows he can’t accomplish all he wants in his final term if things go anything like his first. Trump was hamstrung for half his previous Oval Office tenure with high staff turnover and fake scandals fabricated by the Democrats alongside a hostile media. Trump’s opposition was so desperate to destroy the president they exploited a new virus to rig election rules in 2020 and launched a cascade of lawfare afterward. His triumphant comeback re-election Tuesday, won in spite of impeachment, bankruptcy campaigns, criminal convictions, and even two attempted assassinations, now has those who initiated such efforts worried about accountability branded as “retribution.” Democrats might not have worried about a potential plot for revenge had they not weaponized the federal and state governments to punish Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 election.
“If you are a commie liberal and think Trump was ‘bad’ pre-2020, take a moment and consider what a post-landslide Trump will look like after you tried to murder him on live television,” wrote Federalist CEO Sean Davis on X. “You’re going to spend the next four years regretting every thing you’ve been up to for the last five.”
Had corrupt Democrats and regime media not used a pandemic to destroy the country and rig a presidential election in 2020, Trump would be on his way out the door today.
But they couldn’t help themselves. And Trump is going to have four more years with the full knowledge of…
Trump was voted back into the White House Tuesday in an electoral landslide, giving him a public mandate to tackle the burgeoning leviathan of the administrative state. This time, the incoming president knows better than to allow the deep state to undermine his agenda supported by the voters. The lessons from his first nine years as a politician fighting criminal and civil lawfare campaigns have, as Chuck Schumer might put it, “unleashed the whirlwind,” and delivered America a commander-in-chief who will be wiser in his second term and better able to avoid the pitfalls of his first.
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.
Melania Trump also made history election night, becoming the second presidential spouse to serve two non-consecutive terms as first lady. She was already the second first lady born outside the United States. While President-elect Donald Trump works to put together the senior members of his administration, Mrs. Trump is doing the same for the East Wing with great intentionality.
She told “Fox & Friends,”“I have much more experience, much more knowledge. I was in the White House before. So, when you go in, you know exactly what to expect. You know what kind of people you need to get.” As stated in her best-selling memoir, “Melania,” she has a “strong sense of duty to use [her] platform as First Lady for good.” Her recent interviews all signal a secure, comfortable, and deliberate first lady who knows what she wants to achieve and understands the significance of legacy, with the advantage of having served four years before.
Our incoming first lady is notably demure and mindful of the importance of her role despite the lack of positive media attention she received compared to many of her recent predecessors. Her bold support of children through her BE BEST initiative took her to dozens of events all over the U.S. and abroad, including several African countries, and a trip to the southern border to see the impact our immigration system has on children and families firsthand.
She often used the hashtag #powerofthefirstlady to highlight important causes like the negative impact of opioids, which continues to be a major crisis today. Mrs. Trump has made it clear that focusing on the current and future needs of America’s children will be at the center of her second-term platform.
Melania Trump arrives on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Mrs. Trump proved her mastery of social diplomacy and imagery multiple times during her previous tenure in the White House, including her flawless execution of state visits. She made history by standing with President Trump on stage with the visiting heads of state and inviting their spouses to do the same during arrival ceremonies, something only previously choreographed by the Carter administration that has not happened since.
Traditionally, presidential spouses are escorted to the side of the stage as the two heads of state address the crowd. This subtle yet meaningful change to a ceremony, which originated during the Kennedy administration, signaled to the world the importance and value placed on spouses and, notably, first ladies.
While First Lady Melania Trump was not afraid to place her mark on entertaining at the White House, she ensured each event was meaningful and steeped in American history and tradition. Relationships with world leaders foster dialogue, understanding, respect and peace. Therefore, we should anticipate soft diplomacy through entertaining to continue and increase in a second Trump term. A royal state visit for King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia of Spain could be one of the first state visits President and Mrs. Trump hold during their second term, as the royals’ first planned visit to the U.S. was canceled due to COVID-19.
Mrs. Trump will have the honor of serving as America’s hostess for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Like First Lady Betty Ford, who acted as hostess for events commemorating the American Bicentennial, 50 years ago, this significant anniversary of our relatively young nation, will come with much fanfare.
Donald Trump, left, kisses Melania Trump at an election night watch party, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla., before he won back the presidency. (Alex Brandon / AP)
So many heads of state came to pay tribute to America during the bicentennial, that a tent was erected on the South Lawn to ensure that tours of the White House were not curtailed. It would be a fitting tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was honored with a state dinner during the bicentennial, and to our special relationship with England for President and Mrs. Trump to invite King Charles III to attend a state dinner for his first state visit as king during our Semi quincentennial.
As first lady, Mrs. Trump consistently and purposely showed her support for our armed forces with thoughtful gestures, such as selecting U.S. military musicians for entertainment at White House events, saying, “supporting our military is a fundamental belief of mine.” The state dinner in honor of Australia included the largest gathering of premier military musicians for a state dinner at the executive residence, with over 150 members surrounding the guests in the Rose Garden of the White House.
In 2018, Mrs. Trump also traveled into a war zone visiting the troops over the Christmas holiday. One can be certain that her continued support of the United States military is something that will be highlighted.
Any careful review of First Lady Melania Trump’s first term would also include her immense pride in our nation and her appreciation for preserving the Executive Mansion. Mrs. Trump said it was her testament to preserving history, “contributing something lasting and beautiful to the American people, transcending politics and partisanship.”
President-elect Donald Trump and the soon-to-be First Lady Melania Trump on their first date. (Melania Trump)
This preservation work included projects such as the renovation of the White House Rose Garden, the Queen’s Bedroom, the redesign of the rug in the Diplomatic Reception room (now on display for public tours thanks to Dr. Jill Biden) and replacing the historic Red Room’s Scalamandre silk wallpaper (that had faded to pink). Additionally, Mrs. Trump’s projects included things not regularly seen by the public, such as updating bathrooms, the doors of the private residence, the bowling alley and the total restoration of the White House Tennis Pavilion to name just a few.
Mrs. Trump did not yet have the opportunity to design a Trump china service, which is a custom most two-term first ladies proudly continue at no cost to the taxpayer. She often preferred the Clinton China, the 200th Anniversary of President John Adams moving into the White House, gold-trimmed china, which has a White House motif for her entertaining. She could also create a 250th Anniversary crystal set to further commemorate the Semiquincentennial, since it is well known that the White House needs new crystal.
The one constant for both Mrs. Trump and America is the White House itself, due in large part to the amazing Executive Residence staff that takes care of the President’s House and every first family that inhabits it. First Lady Frances Cleveland reportedly told the president’s footman, “Now, Jerry, I want you to take good care of all the furniture and ornaments in the house, and not let any of them get lost or broken, for I want to find everything just as it is now, when we come back again.”
As first lady, Mrs. Trump consistently and purposely showed her support for our armed forces with thoughtful gestures such as selecting U.S. military musicians for entertainment at White House events, saying, “supporting our military is a fundamental belief of mine.”
For First Lady Melania Trump’s return, many things will look the same; however, some things will be very different personally. Her beloved mother, who passed away earlier this year, will not be there with her. First son Barron Trump is now 18 years old and will be attending college and living in New York City.
First Lady Lady Bird Johnson eloquently said, “This house is only on loan to its tenants, that we are temporary occupants, linked to a continuity of presidents who have come before us and who will succeed us.” Like other United States first ladies, Mrs. Trump understands and appreciates the continuity of history, the importance of tradition, the value of preservation, and the power of the Office of the First Lady to be a positive, unifying office for good.
It will be up to incoming First Lady Melania Trump to create the term and legacy she wants for herself, and every indication given shows she is fully prepared to make the Office of the First Lady exactly as she wants it to be.
The Heritage Foundation’s Emma Ernst works an information booth at the 2024 Moms for Liberty national summit in Washington D.C., on Aug. 30. (Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
Christina Lewis is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Four years ago, President-to-be Joe Biden narrowly won the swing states of Arizona and Georgia by about 11,000 votes each. This time around, Heritage Action for America was determined to ensure residents of both states were registered to vote in the 2024 presidential election. This year, the conservative grassroots organization kicked its voter registration efforts into high gear. As a result of Heritage Action’s nonstop effort to boost voter turnout on Nov. 5, the registration rolls in Arizona and Georgia alone saw an increase of more than 80,000 voters this cycle.
Former President Donald Trump won Georgia on Tuesday, and while The Associated Press still has not called Arizona for him, as of midafternoon Friday, he holds a 52.6% to 46.5% lead over Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, it was a different story. After years of Republican victories, Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes and he took Arizona by 10,457 votes. Biden’s winning margin was 20,682 in another swing state, Wisconsin.
“Nationwide, Biden’s Electoral College victory was secured by only 44,000 votes in three states, underscoring the potential outcome-changing power of Heritage Action’s targeted voter registration and turnout effort in those states,” said a press release from Heritage Action, an independent partner of The Heritage Foundation.
Heritage Action announced in early July that it would continue in its “strategic effort to register enough voters in key swing states to give conservative candidates the electoral edge ahead of the election in November.”
Heritage Action hired 14 people to do full-time door-knocking in the state of Arizona and 36 people in Georgia. They door-knocked on 250,000 homes, sent 5.2 million text messages to those people, and conducted 90,000 live calls back to those homes. As a result, Heritage Action registered 81,000 people across those two states.
“We were having conversations, listening, importantly, to the people and the concerns that they had,” Heritage Action Executive Vice President Ryan Walker told The Daily Signal.
One of the key issues that affected the suburban women’s vote was energy-efficiency requirements for home appliances, according to Walker. Most people don’t know that the federal government sets energy-efficiency standards for those appliances.
“This is a really important point, because Trump ended up winning suburban women 51% to 47%, and so we were able to connect the dots between [what] … certainly was put on steroids under the Biden-Harris regime to effectively do away with the efficiency of your home appliances,” Walker said.
Heritage Action has equipped more than 2 million activists positioned nationwide to fight for key conservative policy issues. The organization’s Sentinels program trains more than 20,000 everyday citizens to go out into the political battlefields of their communities, local institutions, and state governments to uphold right-leaning principles.
This election cycle alone, six Heritage Action “Sentinels” won races across their states. Here is a list of them:
In Georgia, Noelle Kahaian won a state House race for District 81.
In Missouri, Cathy Jo Loy won a state House for District 163.
In Oklahoma, Mark Chapman won a state House for District 12.
In Texas, Hillary Hickland won a state House race for District 55.
In Utah, Lisa Shepherd won a state House race for District 61.
Randy Hough won reelection to his Board of Education seat in the Fayette County Public Schools to represent District 1 in Georgia.
“Our work has only just begun,” Walker said in a statement. “Over the next four years, we will continue the fight to reverse the Left’s disastrous immigration policies and secure the border, cut taxes for hardworking Americans, and reduce the skyrocketing inflation that has crippled the economy.”
Heritage Action was proud to be part of “one of the best ground games that the conservative movement has ever put together,” Walker said.
“I think that we’re in the golden era of conservative politics and Republican control of all aspects of government,” he said. “And for that, I think that we should be really excited.”
Below is my column in The Hill on the collapse of the lawfare campaigns against Trump. The first to go will likely be the two cases by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who became a lame-duck prosecutor at around 2:30 am last Wednesday. We are also waiting for what is likely to be a reduction or even a rejection of the Trump civil case by Attorney General Letitia James. While Democratic prosecutors are likely to continue, if not ramp up, their lawfare efforts, Trump will enter office with a fraction of the existing legal threats that have dogged him for years. For prosecutors, they are left like the ancient mariner:
Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
Here is the column:
Nearly two years ago, I wrote that Democratic prosecutors’ lawfare campaign against Donald Trump would make the 2024 election the single largest jury decision in history. Now that the verdict is in, the question is whether prosecutors will continue their unrelenting campaign against the president-elect and his companies.
The answer is that it may not matter.
The election reflected a certain gag sensation for a public fed a relentless diet of panic and identity politics for eight years. The 2024 election will come to be viewed as one of the biggest political and cultural shifts in our history. It was the mainstream-media-versus-new media election; the Rogan-versus-Oprah election; the establishment-versus-a-disassociated-electorate election.
It was also a thorough rejection of lawfare. One of the things most frustrating for Trump’s opponents was that every trial or hearing seemed to give Trump a boost in the polls. As cases piled up in Washington, New York, Florida and Georgia, the effort seemed to move more toward political acclamation than isolation. These cases are now legal versions of the Flying Dutchman — ships destined to sail endlessly but never make port.
If there is a single captain of that hapless crew, it is Special Counsel Jack Smith. For more than a year, Smith sought to secure a verdict in one of his two cases in Washington and Florida before the election. His urgency was seemingly shared by Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, but by few other judges or justices.
Around 2 am, Smith became a lame-duck prosecutor. Trump ran on ending his prosecutions and can cite a political mandate for it. Certainly, had he lost, the other side would be claiming a mandate for these prosecutions.
Trump’s new attorney general could remove Smith and order the termination of his continued prosecution. That is less of a problem in Florida, where a federal judge had already tossed out the prosecution of the classified documents case, which some of us saw as the greatest threat against Trump.
In Washington, Chutkan, who proved both motivated and active in pushing forward the election interference case, could complicate matters. Under federal rules, it is up to Chutkan to order any dismissal.
In the case of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Judge Emmet Sullivan resisted granting the dismissal sought by the Justice Department — a record that I criticized as both unusual and unwarranted.
Chutkan could run the incoming Trump administration around on any dismissal, but in the end, it should succeed in ending Smith’s ill-considered indictment. In reality, Smith was not only losing the Florida case but was likely to be reversed again in Washington due to his refusal to make sufficient changes in his indictment of Trump after the recent immunity decision by the Supreme Court.
Smith could make one last push to damage Trump in the period before the inauguration by pushing for an immunity decision from Chutkan. He would again likely find a supportive ally in Chutkan.
However, in the end, this would do little to change the fact that the Flying Dutchman will soon be without a crew or port of call.
One of the most immediate cases to resume is the prosecution in Manhattan by District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Many, including commentators like CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig, have denounced that case as legally flawed and obviously politically motivated.
Judge Juan Merchan is scheduled to rule on the immunity issue by Nov. 11 and to hold a possible sentencing on Nov. 26. Merchan has shown a pronounced bias against Trump in the past, and his counsel is likely anticipating a continuation of this pattern.
Merchan could sentence Trump to jail. However, such an abusive sentencing, even a brief one, would likely trigger an expedited appeal and would likely be stayed. Trump cannot pardon himself in a state case, but the case itself is a target-rich environment of arguable legal errors that could collapse on appeal.
Another case in New York is likely to move forward now. There is a pending appeal on the massive civil case against Trump brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. For many, James is the very face of lawfare as a prosecutor who ran on getting Trump on something, anything.
She ultimately secured another openly biased judge in Justice Arthur Engoron, who imposed an absurd, grotesque $455 million in fines and interest against Trump and his corporation. Notably, some of the judges on the appellate panel seemed to agree with that assessment, questioning not just the amount but the very use of this law in a case where there was no victim and no one lost a single dollar due to the fraud alleged.
My assumption is that the opinion is already written, held back only because of the election. It could now be issued and constitute a major change in the case. Whatever is left of that judgment, if anything, would then certainly be appealed.
Then there is the roaring dumpster fire in Georgia. An appellate court there will decide whether District Attorney Fani Willis and her office can continue prosecuting the case. If they are forced off the case, a new prosecutor must review the matter. While some criminal allegations against defendants can be established, the alleged racketeering conspiracy against Trump is legally flawed and likely to fail on appeal.
Trump will also continue to appeal civil cases such as the E. Jean Carroll case, which will linger long past the election.
Trump will not be the only defendant to see substantial changes on January 20, 2025. Trump has pledged to pardon those prosecuted over the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The public elected him despite that pledge and over the opposition of Democrats. That will affect hundreds and may come in the form of a mix of pardons and commutations, depending on the underlying charges.
One lingering question will be whether those who supported this lawfare will be deterred in the future. The thrill-kill politics practiced by figures like James proved costly in this election. Polls showed that many citizens have lost trust in the FBI and now view the criminal law process as being politicized in places like New York.
The next few weeks will determine whether Democratic leaders are ready for a new course in ending the lawfare.
President Biden could pardon Trump. It would be a poison-pill pardon. Trump does not need a pardon as the incoming president, but Biden could take the matter off the table by treating him as presumptively guilty. He could not only claim to have taken the higher ground (even though he ran on and promoted the prosecutions of Trump as legitimate) but use it as cover for pardoning his own son.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) could also move to pardon Trump on the New York charges. Hochul was widely criticized for calling Trump supporters (now the majority of voters in the nation) “un-American.” She could seek to make amends with a pardon.
In the end, Trump read the jury correctly. Once the lawfare was unleashed, he focused on putting his case to the public and walked away with a clear majority decision. It is unlikely that this will end all of his lawfare battles, but it may effectively end the war.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, 2024).
Below is my column in Fox.com on the impact of the reelection of Donald Trump and the flipping of the Senate for the Supreme Court. The election may have proven one of the most critical for the Court in its history.
Here is the column:
In 1937, it was said that a critical shift of one justice in a case ended the move to pack the Court by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was described as the “shift in time saves nine.” In 2024, a shift in the Senate may have had the same impact. Trump’s victory means that absent a renewal of the court-packing scheme and other extreme measures of the left, the Court will remain unchanged institutionally for at least a decade.
The expectation is that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas could use this perfect time to retire and ensure that his seat will be filled with a fellow conservative jurist. Justice Samuel Alito may also consider this a good time for a safe harbor departure. They have a couple of years before they reach the redline for nominations before the next election.
The election means that court-packing schemes are now effectively scuttled despite the support of Democratic senators like Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.). Given Kamala Harris’s reported support, the Supreme Court dodged one of the greatest threats to its integrity in its history.
The impact on the law will also be pronounced. Returning the issue of abortion to the states will remain unchanged. A younger generation will grow up in a country where the voters of each state are allowed to determine what limits to place on abortions.
Likewise, gun rights and religious rights will continue to be robustly protected. The checks on the administrative state are also likely to be strengthened. Pushes for wealth taxes and other measures will likely receive an even more skeptical court.
The possible appointment of two new justices would likely give Trump a total of five to six nominees on the court. Liberals previously insisted that it was time for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to leave the Court, a campaign that I opposed. The appointment of seven of the nine justices by a single president would be unprecedented. (I expect, as with the calls to “end the filibuster” as undemocratic, the liberal campaign to push Sotomayor to retire ended around 2:30 am on Tuesday night).
Trump has shown commendable judgment in his prior nominations. All three—Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—are extraordinary jurists who have already created considerable legacies. I testified at Neil Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearing and still consider him one of the most consequential and brilliant additions to the Court in decades.
These justices were subjected to appalling treatment during their confirmation process, including attacks on Barrett for her adopting Haitian children. New Trump nominees can expect the same scorched-earth campaign from the media and the left, but they will have a reliable Senate majority for confirmation.
These justices have shown the intellect and integrity that bring credit to the Court, including each voting in key cases with their liberal colleagues when their principles demanded it. Trump can cement his legacy by continuing that legacy over the next four years with nominees of the same caliber.
In this way, the election may prove the key moment in ending one of the most threatening periods of the Court’s existence. With the loss of the control of the Senate, the push for new limits on the Court and calls for investigations of conservative justices will subside for now. However, the rage in the media and academia will only likely increase.
Both media and academic commentators pushed for sweeping constitutional changes, including packing the Court or curtailing its jurisdiction. Many saw the Harris-Walz Administration as the vehicle for such extreme measures. Harris herself pledged to “reform” the Court.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, called for the scrapping of key constitutional elements in his “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.” In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, he described conservative justices as “partisan hacks.”
In the New York Times, book critic Jennifer Szalai denounced what she calls “Constitution worship” and warned that “Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.” She frets that by limiting the power of the majority, the Constitution “can end up fostering the widespread cynicism that helps authoritarianism grow.”
In a New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” law professors Ryan D. Doerfler of Harvard and Samuel Moyn of Yale called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
Other law professors have denounced the “constitutional cult” and the First Amendment as the Achilles Heel of America. Given that the majority of voters reject panic politics and radical agendas, these figures are likely to become more activist and aggressive.
I recently debated a Harvard professor at Harvard Law School on the lack of free speech and intellectual diversity at the school. I noted that Harvard had more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.” It is not that Harvard does not resemble America; it does not even resemble Massachusetts in its virtual purging of conservative or Republican professors.
We just had a country where the majority of voters chose Donald Trump. Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats. Yet, the professor rejected the idea that Harvard faculty or its students should look like America (only 7 percent of incoming students identified as conservative). So, while the Supreme Court has a strong majority of conservatives and roughly half of the federal judges are conservative, Harvard law students will continue to be taught by professors who overwhelmingly reject those values, and some even reject “constitutionalism.”
The result is that the Court will continue to be demonized while the media and academia maintain their hardened ideological silos. The rage will continue and likely rise in the coming years. However, this critical institution just moved out of harm’s way in this election. It will remain the key stabilizing institution in the most successful constitutional system in history.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” He teaches a course on the Constitution and the Supreme Court.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – After almost four years of Democrats trying to shove Marxism down Americans’ throats, We, The People, have given them the blowback they deserve with the results of the 2024 election.
TRIFECTA! Republicans Will Hold The House and Senate, Giving Trump’s Agenda Unprecedented Mandate.
By Ken Kew – The Gateway Pundit – 11/06/2024
Republicans are projected to hold the House of Representatives, according to latest projections.
While not all the races have yet been called, credible sources are now reporting that the GOP has an over 95 percent chance of keeping control of the House of Representatives. The final tally remains unclear, although it currently appears that Republicans will have a slim majority of around a dozen seats under the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. Such developments will give Donald Trump an unprecedented mandate to implement his second-term agenda, paving the way for everything from mass deportations of illegal aliens all the way through to tax cuts and deregulation. 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 • Pro-Life Leaders Urge Trump to Adopt Pro-Life Policies on His First Day in Office • Trump Will Win Arizona and Nevada, Secures 312 Electoral College Votes for Landslide Victory • Trump Won Catholic Vote by 15% as Americans Rejected Kamala’s Abortion Agenda • Kamala Harris Claims She Has a “Loyalty to God” After Saying Jesus Isn’t Welcome at her Rally
More Pro-Life News • Trump’s Win Isn’t the Finish Line, It’s the Starting Point. Now We Need Conservative Policies • David McCormick Wins Pennsylvania Senate Seat, Defeating Pro-Life Turncoat Bob Casey • “Numbers are Shocking:” Christian Voters Played Key Role in Defeating Kamala and Her Abortion Agenda • We Just Won Some Major Pro-Life Victories, But We Still Have A Ton of Work to Protect Babies From Abortion • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
Looking for an inspiring and motivating speaker for your pro-life event? Don’t have much to spend on a high-priced speaker costing several thousand dollars? Contact news@lifenews.com about having LifeNews Editor Steven Ertelt speak at your event.
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Top Stories • Republicans Take Control of Senate as Pro-Life Candidates Win in Multiple States • Donald Trump on Defeating Kamala Harris: “We Overcame Obstacles Nobody Thought Possible” • Pro-Life Americans Defeat Radical Abortion Amendments in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota • Pro-Life Americans Celebrate Trump Defeating Abortion Cheerleader Kamala Harris
More Pro-Life News • Joy Reid Calls Ron DeSantis “Openly Fascist” After Florida Defeats Pro-Abortion Amendment • Nebraska Defeats Radical Measure Creating Right to Kill Babies in Abortions • Pro-Life Republican Tim Sheehy Defeats Pro-Abortion Senator Jon Tester • Minnesota Democrats Lose Control of State House After They and Tim Walz Legalize Infanticide • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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Comments or questions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2024 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For information on advertising or reprinting news from LifeNews.com, email us.
Former President Donald Trump takes the stage during a campaign rally at the Santander Arena on Nov. 4, 2024, in Reading, Pennsylvania. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Philip Wegmann, a former reporter for The Daily Signal, covers the White House for RealClearNews.
WEST PALM BEACH, Florida—Donald John Trump, the 45th U.S. president, will soon become the 47th president, after he was projected to win not just the 270 Electoral College votes needed to return to the White House but also the national popular vote. His humiliation of the political elite is now complete.
The conservative Fox News channel was first to call the race for Trump while The Associated Press and the legacy television networks held off early Wednesday morning. After Pennsylvania turned red, however, even liberal MSNBC News conceded that the Republican’s lead over Vice President Kamala Harris had become mathematically insurmountable. The AP finally called the race at 5:45 a.m.
Trump is on track to become the first Republican to win a majority of the vote since George W. Bush in 2004, and he will become the first president to serve two nonconsecutive terms since Grover Cleveland in 1892. His triumph represents a wholesale repudiation of the establishment. Big business, Hollywood, the media, and both major political parties treated him as an unwelcome interloper. He delivered his rebuttal on Election Day.
A celebrity known for his starring role on a reality television show, a career in New York real estate, and a knack for showing up in the tabloids, Trump wasn’t even a “citizen politician” when he arrived on the political scene in 2015. He wasn’t a politician at all and had never run for office or been involved in party politics.
Dismissed by the commentariat as unserious, he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and was impeached (but not convicted) for his troubles. Four years later, he was again declared politically unviable after he refused to accept the results of his loss to Joe Biden and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell condemned him as “practically and morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 riot, but efforts by an increasingly obsolete cohort of GOP were singularly unsuccessful in sidelining the man.
Trump declared his candidacy immediately after the 2022 midterms, marched almost effortlessly through a crowded field of primary challengers, and secured a third consecutive presidential nomination. He did not regain his grasp on the GOP so much as he tightened his grip on that party.
“I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” Trump running mate JD Vance said after Tuesday’s election returns rolled in. There was no exaggeration in his words.
The first time Trump won the White House, he did so as the leader of a white working-class coalition, promising those he would call in his inaugural address “the forgotten men and women” to reverse the “American carnage” brought on by deindustrialization, globalization, and unchecked immigration. The former, and now future, president did not moderate. Opponents condemned his calls for mass deportations as “racist” and his vow to root out the ill-defined “enemy within” as “fascist.”
Those denunciations ultimately had little effect. Not only did Trump maintain his support with the white working class, but he also made significant gains with both Hispanic and black voters according to early exit polls. A multiclass, multiethnic coalition returned him to power. One demographic at the center of that electorate: young men.
Tuesday’s results amount to a repudiation, not only of Harris and Biden, but also the old breed of Republicans who made common cause with corporations and harbored a neoconservative foreign policy. The most visible among them, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, threw her support behind the Democrat. Trump’s second victory heralds a shifting political landscape that will continue sorting itself out during the presidential transition and in the four-year term to follow.
Reflecting on the breadth of his support, Trump told a crowded victory party that his winning coalition was drawn “from all quarters—union, non-union, African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American.” Surrounded by his family and campaign staff on stage, he added, “We had everybody, and it was beautiful.”
“It was,” Trump added, “a historic realignment.”
The Harris campaign had already headed to bed at that point. “Let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote to her team in an email obtained by RealClearPolitics, “and get ready to close out strong tomorrow.”
The vice president had yet to concede by mid-morning Wednesday. Famous for chiding Republican men when they talked over her— “I’m speaking”—Harris sent her campaign chairman, Cedric Richmond, on stage to tell her supporters at Howard University late Tuesday that they would not hear from her. Many left in tears. Trump World was just beginning to party.
A crowd noticeably younger than the ones Trump attracted in his two previous elections had packed into the Palm Beach Convention Center hours earlier. As their champion monitored data from nearby Mar-a-Lago, they pulled up to any of the six cash bars in the main hall. The most popular beer for the thirsty “America first” voter: Modelo, a lager from Mexico.
The MAGA faithful were prepared for a long night. News networks warned that the results might not be known on Election Day or even the morning after, a message amplified by Democrats. And there was good reason to believe the race might come down to the wire: Trump and Harris were locked in a dead heat for much of the contest as a divided nation evaluated its options. But just as he used social media to sidestep gatekeepers eight years ago, Trump targeted new, younger voters, with a new medium: the Bro Podcast.
He talked about everything from aliens to artificial intelligence with Joe Rogan, host of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” He chopped it up on the Barstool Sports podcast “Bussin’ With the Boys,” hosted by former NFL football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan. He asked Theo Von if he still uses cocaine (the comedian told the teetotaling president that the white powder “will turn you into a damn owl, homie”).
The conversations did not resemble anything like Frost v. Nixon. Podcasts are certainly much cheaper and less serious. They were instrumental, all the same, in turning out young men who are famously low-propensity voters.
Harris sought to make the race a referendum on Trump. She described him as a threat to democracy generally and an opponent of abortion rights specifically. For his part, he called illegal immigration “the biggest issue” and an inflation-addled economy “the second.”
A senior Trump adviser told RealClearPolitics it was “more like ‘Issue 1A and 1B,’ but immigration is one of them.” Either way, the economic frustrations and security fears were enough to deliver Trump a majority despite the criminal indictments and felony convictions that Democrats had hoped would throttle his candidacy. Those legal challenges made Trump the symbol of conservative martyrdom. It became visceral at the fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer when an assassin’s bullet clipped his ear. The photo of the bloody Republican pumping his fist in defiance instantly became an image for the ages.
“This is what happens when the machine comes after you,” bellowed Ultimate Fight Championship President Dana White from the main stage here Tuesday night. “He keeps going forward. He doesn’t quit. He’s the most resilient, hardworking man that I’ve ever met in my life.” Referring to Trump’s victory in the face of the challenges, White said, “This is karma.”
Whatever cosmic forces were at play, victory was not guaranteed. While Trump seemed poised to handle Biden, Harris promised to be a tougher challenge after she delivered a shot of adrenaline straight into progressive hearts. She brought in more fundraising dollars, campaigned alongside celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé Knowles, and turned the race into the definition of a dead heat.
Doubt crept into Republican hearts in the final days, especially after The Atlantic magazine reported that morale inside the Republican campaign was cratering. A senior Trump aide texted RealClearPolitics to say the opposite: “Morale is decidedly very high at this current moment.”
According to longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, Democrats have only themselves to blame for what happened in this election.
“If you want to make somebody iconic, try to throw them in jail, try to bankrupt them,” said the infamous political operative. “If you want to make somebody iconic, cook up a fake hoax to justify their removal from the presidency,” he added in reference to once-en-vogue allegations that Trump was a Russian asset. “And if you really want to make somebody iconic, try to kill them.”
Stone was not alone in viewing the political attacks—and the attempts on Trump’s life, which Democrats condemned—in the same category: “All those things failed,” he said. “They just made him bigger and more powerful.”
Trump has now dispensed with three Democratic Party opponents—Clinton in 2016 and both Biden and Harris in 2024. Each opponent had the money advantage and what was billed as a much more sophisticated political apparatus. He was able to do this, some Republicans like to say, because he was on a mission from the Almighty. But despite the personal invectives against enemies and frequent calls for retribution that defined his campaign, in his victory speech the president-elect made little mention of his opponent. He was philosophical the morning of his win.
“Many people have told me God spared my life for a reason,” Trump said, “and that reason was to save our country, and to restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfill that mission together.”
Congressional majorities are a handy thing to have in that kind of endeavor.
The GOP picked up three Senate seats to secure the upper chamber, while control of the House of Representatives was still too close to call but within reach. The highest-ranking Republican currently in office, House Speaker Mike Johnson, joined Trump on stage. Perhaps signaling that he didn’t have patience for more intramural infighting, he thanked Johnson by name and told the crowd, “I think he’s doing a terrific job.” More work will follow.
Trump has already remade the Republican Party in his own image, greatly diminishing the interventionist and libertarian wings of the GOP in the process. He now promises sweeping tariffs, a strategic retreat from global conflicts such as the land war in Ukraine, and an incessant focus on domestic challenges—the southern border chief among them. “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” he insisted. The country only needs to follow his prescription to achieve “a golden age.”
Running against him in a third election, Democrats felt they finally knew what to make of Trump. Clinton made light of his many flaws the first time. Biden defeated him during the second election by painting him as a threat to democracy. For her part, Harris attempted to split the difference.
“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man,” she told her fellow Democrats at their Chicago convention to hearty laughter. “But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious,” added the vice president—who is slated to soon preside over the certification of his election.
Some of the Republicans who came out to cheer Trump early Wednesday morning saw things similarly, especially the younger ones. They laughed at his unserious moments and listened earnestly to his serious warnings. One example was Caden Caouette, a Florida State University freshman who repurposed a Trump-Pence shirt by covering the name of the former vice president with a piece of masking tape with Vance written in Sharpie letters.
“These last couple of years really speak to it,” he said. “The economy has been bad, and then everybody crossing the border. A lot of work needs to get done, and Trump’s the man to do it.”
A first-time voter, Caouette stood outside the convention center just hours before his morning classes for a chance to cheer on the champion who had once again upended American politics. The podcasts, particularly the one with Rogan last month, he said, served as “a reminder” to vote because it was “not just something I could skip.”
A now certain return to the Oval Office, even for a larger-than-life figure like Trump, once seemed a stretch. In the end, it wasn’t.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the developments in the pending Trump cases. I previously wrote that, if Trump prevailed in this election, it was likely that Special Counsel Jack Smith would “not see a jury in either of his cases.” This morning, Smith is reportedly in discussions on the possible dropping of his two federal cases against the president-elect. The prosecutorial campaigns appear to be collapsing with the political campaigns against Trump.
Here is the column:
After years of thrill-kill prosecutions, the thrill is gone for lawfare warriors. Election Day’s greatest losers may be special counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Donald Trump’s victory was the largest jury verdict that some of us anticipated for years of unrelenting weaponization of the legal system.
Smith’s prosecutions ended with the 270th Electoral College vote secured around 2 a.m. Wednesday. His unrelenting efforts to convict Trump and then, when prevented from holding a trial, to release damaging material before the election have collapsed with the blue wall in the Midwest. Trump has said he plans to fire Smith on Day 1. That means the end of both the January 6 and the classified documents cases. That leaves James and Bragg as residue of long forgotten lawfare battles, but even their Trump’s prospects look good.
James was able to secure a fellow lawfare warrior in Justice Arthur Engoron, who imposed a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest. That ruling is pending an appeal that is expected to be a partial or even total victory for Trump. Unlike Engoron, the appellate judges expressed great skepticism in September over the size of the penalty and even the use of this law. Trump faced half a billion dollars in penalty in a case where no one lost a dime, and the alleged victim banks wanted more business with Trump and his company.
Separately, there is a hearing scheduled in front of Judge Juan Merchan for Nov. 11 on the “hush money” case involving Stormy Daniels, and a possible sentencing on Nov. 26. If Merchan seeks to jail Trump, it is unlikely to be carried out, as Trump appeals the case and the many alleged errors committed by the judge. Merchan made an utter mess of a case that should never have been filed, let alone tried. Even commentators like CNN’s senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, have denounced the case as selective prosecution and unfounded. The case should result in a conditional discharge with no jail time if Merchan can resist the temptation to unjustly punish Trump, a level of restraint that has largely proven difficult for him in the case.
Merchan created layers of appealable errors in the case. Putting those alleged errors aside, any sentencing to jail would create its own constitutional conflict with Trump’s performance of his federal duties. The question is whether the election will bring a moment of sobriety for New Yorkers who have spent years in a full rage-driven celebration of lawfare.
While Trump did not prevail in New York, he came closer than any Republican in decades. After this steady diet of politicized prosecutions in New York, Trump secured 44.3% of the vote, while Harris received 55.7%. In 2020, the margin was 23 points.
It is doubtful that the election will completely kill the appetite for lawfare in New York. As I wrote in my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” What people do not want to admit that is that they like the rage.
Rage addicts will continue to push James and Bragg to continue these unhinged campaigns. It is not prosecutorial — it is recreational. We can only hope that James and Bragg feel a twinge of humility when their cases fall apart along with the Kamala Harris campaign. And Merchan has the opportunity to use this brief sobering moment and issue a conditional discharge without home or actual confinement. He can take judicial notice of Trump’s election as our next president and end this circus in Manhattan.
Instead of listening to the braying mob, he can act as a judge and tell New Yorkers, in the immortal words of B.B. King:
“The thrill is gone It’s gone away for good All the thrill is gone Baby, it’s gone away for good
… I’m free from your spell And now that it’s all over All that I can do is wish you well.”
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Trump wins the 2024 presidential election. Now it’s time to clean up the mess and get started putting the country back on track after 4 years of one disaster after another.
THREE-PEAT: PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP WINS 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN HISTORIC VICTORY!
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Nov 6, 2024
President Trump became the second US president in history to win the White House in two non-consecutive terms! The last president to win in non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland. Nothing could stop President Donald Trump – 91 junk indictments, two assassination attempts, Democrat lawfare, being shot in the face! Trump won Pennsylvania at 1:30 AM for 19 electoral votes to put him at 267 With Alaska coming in that is 3 points to put him at 270 electoral votes and the victory! Trump is still leading in every battleground state – Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada have not been called yet! 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.
Below is my column in Fox.com on the rising rage in this election. This week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul added her voice to the rage and said that anyone voting for Trump is “anti American.” Despite such statements, I found a reason to be hopeful in a brief encounter on my way to New York for the election coverage.
Here is the column:
When President Joe Biden took the podium in his hometown of Scranton, Pa., to campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, many expected a return to the “self-professed unifier” Biden from the 2020 election, particularly after his recent comments calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.” If so, they were disappointed when it turned out to be the “take him behind the Gym” Biden. Speaking through clenched teeth, Biden seethed that he wanted to “smack [Trump] in the ass.” Even with the Harris campaign alarmed over his costly gaffes, Biden clearly could not resist the rage. He is not alone.
This entire election seems to be a type of political roid rage. In my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how rage rhetoric and rage politics have long been part of our history. Politicians will often intentionally trigger rage to rally voters not in support of their policies but in opposition to their opponents.
However, Biden’s seeming inability to keep his rage in check is a common feature of this rage politics. As I wrote in the book, “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.” It is also contagious. Across the country, people are yelling at neighbors, tearing down signs, and even assaulting each other. What they are unwilling to admit is that they enjoy the rage. They like it.
As someone who has written about rage rhetoric and covered presidential elections for over two decades for different networks, I should be accustomed to these scenes. I am not. From the scenes outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan to the scenes outside of political rallies in Virginia, I find the rage depressing and deflating.
However, in flying to New York this weekend to join the Fox election coverage, I had a moment of real hope. I was driven to the airport by a man who told me that he was just months from his citizenship and how he and his wife were so thankful to soon be U.S. citizens. He came from a MiddleEastern nation where he long admired the United States for its freedoms, particularly the freedom of speech. Indeed, in his home country, he constantly ran into trouble with his government and was warned by his imam that he had to stop acting “like an American” by speaking his mind. He could not shut up, so he decided to become an American instead.
He then told me how confused he and his wife are by this election. They love the United States and cannot understand why people are so hateful and angry. “It is like they do not understand what they have here,” he noted.
Listening to him over the course of our ride, I started to feel something that I had not felt in a while: real hope.
Sometimes, our truest citizens are found among our newest converts. As I discuss in my book, the problem with our democracy is that most citizens grew up in a nation where basic rights like the freedom of speech are guaranteed. They have never known the absence of such rights. This man and his wife have. They were not born here. They had to escape their country at great peril and cost to become U.S. citizens. They chose us and what we stand for.
They follow other great Americans drawn to these shores by something unique about this country. One was Tom Paine. The man who was credited with rallying a nation behind a revolution only landed upon these shores two years before the Declaration of Independence. His rocketing to fame with the publication of Common Sense enraged some, like John Adams, who viewed him as an unkempt, unknown rabble-rouser.
Yet, it was precisely Paine’s immigration that gave his words such clarity and power. He saw this emerging nation as unique for all of humanity, a nation where citizens could live free without the calcified social, economic, and political limits of the Old World. His voice resonated with this nation because it was so genuine and authentic.
I heard that same voice on my way to the airport. Sometimes, it takes the newest among us to remind us of who we are to not only the rest of the world but also to each other.
I do not know what is coming out of that gate on election night. I have been there before. However, half of this country is going to be very, very upset either way this goes. What we need to struggle to remember is that this election does not define us. The rage does not define us. We defined ourselves almost 250 years ago and do so every day that new citizens like my new friend come to these shores. There is hope in who we are . . . even if we forget sometimes.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
Below is my column in USA Today on the controversy at NBC after Vice President Kamala Harris was given a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live just days before the election. It was the latest push by media companies to put a thumb on the scale of the election.
Here is the column:
Will Rogers said, “Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”
Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign can attest to the truism after the vice president appeared on “Saturday Night Live” three days before the presidential election. Make no mistake, there is nothing funny about an apparent violation of federal law by NBC and “SNL.” With Harris and Trump locked in a close race, the appearance was a bonanza for the campaign. It also was presumptively unlawful.
Lorne Michaels said candidates wouldn’t appear on SNL
A month ago, The Hollywood Reporter quoted “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels saying it was implausible that either Trump or Harris would appear on the show given the clear federal rules: “You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions. You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”
The “SNL” cast and crew appeared to take the opposite meaning from Michaels’ warning. They decided to broadcast a virtual campaign commercial for Harris and later ask for forgiveness rather than permission. The skit was hardly subtle in jettisoning comedy for sycophancy. Former “SNL” cast member Maya Rudolph, impersonating Harris, said she wished she “could talk to someone who’s been in my shoes. You know, a Black, South Asian woman running for president. Preferably from the Bay Area.”
“SNL” used a faux comedic skit to echo the Democratic presidential nominee’s campaign themes. Harris assured her doppelgänger, “I’m just here to remind you, you got this. Because you can do something your opponent cannot do. You can open doors.” Rudolph even mouthed the campaign theme for Harris, declaring, “The American people want to stop the chaos and end the drama-la.” Both then espoused their “belief in the promise of America.”
NBC lawyers were clearly among the viewers who were not laughing Saturday night. On Sunday, Trump was given a chance to speak on NBC after a NASCAR race.
FCC’s rules try to ensure equal time for candidates
Since 1934, the Federal Communications Commission’s equal-time rule has required radio and television broadcast stations to give competing political candidates the same amount of time. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, a Republican, denounced NBC’s move as a premeditated and gross violation of the equal-time regulation. He said that the federal rules were designed for this very purpose, and that NBC discarded the rules to trawl for undecided voters for Harris, particularly young voters who have been a challenge for the vice president.
“NBC has structured this in a way that’s plainly designed to evade the FCC’s rules,” Carr told Fox News on Sunday. “We’re talking 50 hours before Election Day starts, without any notice to other candidates, as far as I can tell.”
“In the 2016 cycle, President Obama’s FCC Chair made clear that the agency would enforce the Equal Time rule when candidate Trump went on SNL,” Carr tweeted Saturday night.
So, the producers of “SNL” were not only warned by its creator as the new season began but also were warned by the FCC in 2016. They decided to ignore the warnings. On Sunday, NBC seemed to acknowledge the violation by filing an FCC notice under the equal-time provision acknowledging that it gave free exposure to Harris and Kaine − only days before voters went to the polls.
The true joke is on the public. With virtually all the news media supporting her, Harris has fielded a united front of celebrities from Hollywood to New York. By claiming that democracy is about to die, violations of FCC rules likely seem a trivial concern. To save democracy, there is little time for legal niceties.
Indeed, some Democrats appear to be morphing into the very people they are vilifying. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., appeared on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday to declare that Democrats will accept the result of a Trump victory only if they believe it is a “free and fair election.”
On Maher’s show, Raskin said, “We’re not going to allow them to steal it in the states, or steal it in the Department of Justice, or steal it with any other election official in the country.”
Whether on “SNL” or “Real Time,” it is always funnier if it happens to someone else.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Families are at risk under the Biden/HARRIS regime promoting taking away parental rights in the name of helping supposedly Transgender children. It is just one of many tyrannical policies on their list if she wins the Oval Office.
Paramount Global, Which Also Owns CBS, Rejects Ad Exposing Taxpayer Funded Child Transgender Mutilation Surgeries
By Margaret Flavin – The Gateway pundit – Oct 5, 2024
In yet another example of legacy media being the marketing wing for Democrats, Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, has rejected a series of advertisements from CatholicVote. The ad highlights the dangers of these surgeries as well as the disturbing fact that U.S. taxpayers are often footing the bill. The Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively obtained emails announcing the rejection: “Taxpayers, especially parents, deserve to know that they are paying for devastating and permanent surgeries that destroy the healthy body parts of children,” president of CatholicVote, Brian Burch, told the DCNF. “CBS and Paramount have been particularly aggressive in pushing transgenderism in mass media, so why would they be afraid to discuss what that means in reality for everyday families whose kids are receiving their pro-transgender messaging?”… 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 • Kamala Harris Will Put More Pro-Life Americans in Prison if Elected • I Voted for Trump Because Kamala Harris Has Nothing to Offer America But More Abortions • Kamala Harris is So Rabidly Pro-Abortion, Even Moderate Catholic Voters are Supporting Trump • Here are 7 Key Races That Will Decide Control of the Senate. Vote Pro-Life
More Pro-Life News • Texas Abortion Ban Saves Tens of Thousands of Babies, Zero Women Have Died • Even CNN Doubts Late Polling Data Showing Harris Catching Trump • Kamala Harris is a Pro-Abortion Extremist Who Hates Pro-Life Christians • If Kamala Harris Wins, She May Force Christian Doctors to Do Abortions • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Democrat-run Cobb County cannot accept thousands of absentee ballots that arrive after the Election Day deadline. Cobb County announced on Thursday that as of Oct. 30, “more than 3,000 absentee ballots requested by last Friday’s deadline had not been mailed.”
Cobb County Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas said that the county was “taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them” but that the county was “unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly.” While absentee ballot requests had “been averaging 440 per day … that number surged to 750 per day” during the final week to request an absentee ballot, the county said.
To remedy the issue, the county announced on Thursday that it would overnight the late ballots for a Friday morning (Nov. 1) delivery with “prepaid express return envelopes to ensure voters can return them by Tuesday’s deadline.”
But on Friday, the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit arguing that, despite the county taking steps to get the ballots delivered to voters by Friday, voters would be “disenfranchised.”
Cobb County Judge Robert Flournoy bought the bogus argument, ruling on Friday that the 3,000 or so voters who received a late mail-in ballot could return those ballots before 5 p.m. on Nov. 8 — three full days after Election Day — as long as the ballots were postmarked by 7 p.m. on Nov. 5.
The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party appealed the ruling to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing that state law mandates the return of absentee ballots on Election Day and that since Cobb County paid for express return postage and overnighted the ballots to voters in order to — as Cobb County said — “ensure voters can return [the ballots] by Tuesday’s deadline,” there is no need to extend the date for acceptance.
The appeal also argued that Georgia “does not guarantee a right to vote by mail.” Rather, “Voters still have many options to vote, including by voting in person or delivering their absentee ballots in person.”
The Georgia Supreme Court agreed, granting the RNC and Georgia GOP’s motion to pause the lower court ruling. This means any late-arriving absentee ballots will not be counted. The court also ordered the late-arriving ballots sent in by the 3,000 voters to be segregated until further notice from the court.
Voters who did not receive their mail-in ballot may vote in person on Tuesday.
“Democrat-run Cobb County wanted to accept 3,000 absentee ballots AFTER the Election Day deadline. We took this case to the Georgia Supreme Court. We just got word that we WON the case. Election Day is Election Day — not the week after,” Whatley said.
“We will keep fighting, keep winning, and keep sharing updates.”
For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
It has been five decades since Lorne Michaels’ “not ready for prime-time players” created Saturday Night Live, a show whose stars and characters became touchstones for all Americans, regardless of politics. But this weekend, Michaels decided to flush that all down the toilet.
On Saturday night, Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance on the birthplace of Ed Grimley and the Church Lady in a cringeworthy skit that also happened to be a blatant violation of Federal Communications Commission elections rules.
Back on Oct. 1, Michaels told The Hollywood Reporter that neither Harris nor her opponent Donald Trump would appear on the show, a statement which turned out to have all the honesty of Jon Lovitz saying, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.” Suddenly, with three days left before the election, Michaels decided that his comedy show, one of the few things all Americans still share, would become a full-blown arm of the Harris campaign.
I’d be very curious to know exactly how this happened. Did Michaels have a change of heart and reach out to Harris? Or as seems more likely, did a panicked Harris campaign beg for her star turn on the weekly broadcast? This is the same Kamala Harris who couldn’t be bothered to attend the Al Smith dinner at the invitation of Cardinal Timothy Dolan because her schedule was too tight. Suddenly, 72 hours before the election, she cancels a rally in Michigan to appear live at the home of Father Guido Sarducci?
Live from New York….It’s Democrat Propaganda!
Michaels broke a real and serious trust here, part of what makes comedy as social commentary work. It’s something SNL has often strived at: fairness and the idea that all sides are open to ridicule. Such a blatant display of partisanship destroys that.
This is why woke comedy doesn’t work. In the place of the edgy and honest skewering of society, it instead is a laundry list of pseudo-religious shibboleths wearing a shabby comic costume. The audience isn’t laughing at the joke, but at the stupidity of those they disagree with.
It is also worth noting that SNL has produced some of the most notable conservatives in Hollywood, including Dennis Miller, Rob Schneider, and Victoria Jackson.
Lorne Michaels created “Saturday Night Live” 50 years ago, but it was never supposed to shill for the Democratic Party, writes David Marcus. (Rosalind O’Connor/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images)
The reason that comedians skew more to the right is that, unlike actors, screenwriters, or directors, they don’t learn their craft in colleges or conservatories with progressive worldviews. They just sign up at a club and if people laugh, they get asked back. Comedians also need to be free to walk right up to the line of decency in their work, to challenge the things the left says should not be challenged. This is why Dave Chappelle is in hot water every six months.
In this sense, Michaels has not only done the worst disservice to his audience since he took Norm MacDonald off of the Weekend Update segment, but he’s also harmed his own cast who he decided to feature in a super expensive political ad.
In response to the FCC violation, NBC gave Trump equal time during NASCAR and NFL broadcasts, but who at the network greenlighted this mess to begin with? Whoever it is deserves to be sleeping in a van down by the river.
If there is a silver lining to Michaels’ mendacity, it is that the Harris skit was abysmal. Every time she looked in the mirror, all I could think of was Stuart Smalley saying, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
Actor Maya Rudolph and Vice President Kamala Harris appear on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” on Nov. 2, 2024, in New York City. (Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)
Michaels really ought to apologize to his audience and his cast for either his harebrained decision to hand the show over to Harris or his cowardly acquiescence to their unfair and illegal request. Whichever it is, he doesn’t exactly look marvelous.
If there is ever a time when Americans need an escape from the constant drumbeat of partisan politics, ads and signs, it is three days before an election, but Michaels didn’t care, trying to elect Harris was more important.
Michaels might think he pumped up Harris like Hanz and Franz, but all he really did was soil the reputation of his show. As Wayne and Garth might say, at least in this instance, “he’s not worthy.”
Ray D’Agostino, the county commissioner for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on Monday said of the approximately 2,500 voter registration forms officials flagged as suspicious, 57% have been verified as valid, 17% confirmed as fraudulent and 26% are still being investigated.
“We spoke to the district attorney this morning about the suspicious and, in some cases, fraudulent voter registration applications,” D’Agostino said.
“The investigation is still going on, so we can’t get into too much detail in accordance with the district attorney’s desires because of that investigation. But thanks to her staff, which have been on top of this since I guess was Monday last week when this whole two batches were provided to the district attorney’s office, they began immediately investigating those and have been doing so ever since working with our elections board staff.”
Thousands of mail ballot applications in 14 Pennsylvania counties have been challenged by activists, according to VoteBeat Pennsylvania.
“Throughout the day on Friday, several bad-faith mass challenges were filed in a coordinated effort in counties across the commonwealth to question the qualifications of thousands of registered Pennsylvania voters who applied to vote by mail ballot,” Amy Gulli, spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State, told the news outlet. “These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected.”
The bulk of the new challenges claim that any voter living outside the United States is not technically eligible to register as a Pennsylvania voter.
“I’ve been … taking frantic phone calls from overseas from all of these people,” said Forrest Lehman, election director in Lycoming County, which received 71 challenges. “It’s been emotionally draining.”
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
On Bill Maher’s HBO Show on Friday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) appeared to repeat his reservation about accepting a Trump win in the presidential election. Raskin said that Democrats will only support a “free and fair election.” Trump was widely criticized for the same position when he said“If everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results.”
Raskin previously said that he would not guarantee certifying Trump and that, if he wins, he may be declared as disqualified by Congress: “It’s going to be up to us on January 6th, 2025 to tell the rampaging Trump mobs that he’s disqualified. And then we need bodyguards for everybody and civil war conditions.”
Raskin went on HBO to repeat his reservation on accepting the results of any Trump victory:
“When I say we will support a free and fair election, no, we we’re not going to allow them to steal it in the states or steal it in the Department of Justice or steal it with any other election official in the country.‘
If it’s a free and fair election, we will do what we’ve always done. We will honor it.”
Remarkably, as the audience applauded Raskin, Maher added “That is the Democrats’ history: They honor it. That’s the big difference between the parties.” However, that is not the history and Raskin knows it.
The certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election was opposed by Democrats and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort of then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) who organized the challenge.
Jan. 6 committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) voted to challenge it in the House.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result.
Raskin also insisted on CNN that the effort to prevent citizens from voting for Trump is the very embodiment of democracy: “If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.”
Democrats not only sought to strip Trump from the ballot this election but sought to cleanse ballots of 126 House members. We are already seeing an ominous uptick of challenges, which I discuss in my column this weekend. There are also new allegations of systemic fraudulent registrations in multiple districts.
Raskin presumably expects any voters to protest “peacefully” if they are declared the losers.
I am leaving for New York today to join in the coverage. This could prove a long night, if not a long week.
Yesterday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes became the latest Democratic prosecutor to suggest a possible criminal charge against former President Donald Trump. Mayes suggested that Trump’s controversial statement on Liz Cheney going to war could constitute a criminal threat. It is absurd and Mayes knows that any such charge would collapse before any remotely objective trial judge.
The promise of a criminal investigation by Mayes may hold a type of thrill-kill enticement for voters, but it would constitute a major assault on free speech in criminalizing political rhetoric.
I have often criticized Trump for his rhetoric and particularly his personal attacks on opponents and critics. However, the question is not whether you like the Cheney comment but whether there would be any meaningful limits on criminalizing political speech.
Critics charged that some media outlets were accused of misrepresenting the comments by cutting off part of what Trump said. Drudge Report ran a banner reading “TRUMP CALLS FOR CHENEY’S EXECUTION.” It then linked to the partial quotation on MSNBC and CNN:
“I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual. Very dumb, she’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.”
However, they cut off the lines that followed. Here is the whole quote with the removed lines in bold:
“I don’t blame him for sticking with his daughter, but his daughter is a very dumb individual. Very dumb, she’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh, gee, we’ll, let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.”
The quote is clearly a reference to Cheney going to war and how she would feel about it.
Once again, I do not like the tenor or the name-calling. However, it is most clearly not a criminal threat.
What is most striking about Mayes’s promise is that no competent prosecutor would believe that such a political statement could constitute a crime. As I discuss in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” people do not like to admit it, but they like the rage. It is addictive and contagious, even for prosecutors. We have been here before with Trump. After the January 6th riot, there was an overwhelming consensus that Trump could be charged with incitement. After the riot, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine was widely praised when he announced that he was considering arresting Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks and charging them with incitement. So what happened to that prosecution? The failure of Racine to charge Trump was not due to any affection or loyalty to the former president. It was due to the paucity of direct evidence of a crime that would hold up in court. Supporters of this theory also often cut off the quote before Trump told his followers to protest “peacefully.”
Mayes will also likely drop the matter in time with no action. The important thing was to convey to Democratic voters a desire to prosecute Trump. It is now the bona fides of every Democratic prosecutor.
Even under Counterman v. Colorado, the Supreme Court ruled that criminal threats must be based on a showing of a culpable mental state. It cannot be based merely on a claim that words are objectively threatening. At a minimum, it requires the person to recklessly disregard a substantial risk that his words could be perceived as threatening. In so holding, the Court sought to offer “‘breathing space’ for protected speech.”
The need for such breathing space is even more significant in the context of a presidential campaign. For example, after his controversial garbage comment, Biden was accused of wanting to drown Trump. He has previously spoken about beating up Trump. None of that could be reasonably viewed as actual threats.
Even some figures on the left called out the media for misrepresenting the statement. The Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur wrote “Donald Trump did not call for the execution of Liz Cheney. That is a bald-faced lie. He was making a point about how she is a chickenhawk. But also, Trump shouldn’t talk about guns being ‘trained on her face,’ especially in a time where we’re worried about political violence.”
Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp added his objections: “Folks, Trump didn’t threaten to execute Liz Cheney. He actually was calling her a chickenhawk, something liberals said about her for ages. Look at the context — Trump is talking about giving her a weapon. Typically, people put in front of firing squads aren’t armed.”
Political analyst Jonah Goldberg retracted his comments on CNN and now admits that there was no threat by Trump.
The threat from Mayes constitutes political pandering of the worst kind. Suggesting another round of lawfare just days before the election is a disservice to her office and the citizens of Arizona.
13-1202. Threatening or intimidating; classification
A. A person commits threatening or intimidating if the person threatens or intimidates by word or conduct:
1. To cause physical injury to another person or serious damage to the property of another; or
2. To cause, or in reckless disregard to causing, serious public inconvenience including, but not limited to, evacuation of a building, place of assembly or transportation facility; or
3. To cause physical injury to another person or damage to the property of another in order to promote, further or assist in the interests of or to cause, induce or solicit another person to participate in a criminal street gang, a criminal syndicate or a racketeering enterprise.
B. Threatening or intimidating pursuant to subsection A, paragraph 1 or 2 is a class 1 misdemeanor, except that it is a class 6 felony if:
1. The offense is committed in retaliation for a victim’s either reporting criminal activity or being involved in an organization, other than a law enforcement agency, that is established for the purpose of reporting or preventing criminal activity.
2. The person is a criminal street gang member.
C. Threatening or intimidating pursuant to subsection A, paragraph 3 is a class 3 felony.
Below is my Hill column on the current litigation controversies around the country. We are still watching litigation playing out just a day before the election. At the same time, we have some figures like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) reserving any recognition of a victoryunless they are satisfied with the integrity of the election. While I remain hopeful that the courts have gotten a head start on addressing many issues, there is a virtual army of lawyers in place from both major parties waiting for a green light to deploy. We just had a new filing in Georgia over handing in mail ballots and the Supreme Court has ruled against a RNC challenge with a statement that essentially said “don’t sweat the small stuff” when only a tiny number of ballots are impacted.
Here is this column:
“Something wicked this way comes.” Those words from William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” capture a certain dread that takes hold of some of us tasked with covering the legal elements of the presidential election.
Just as Halloween ended, things in the days leading into Election Day have begun to get…well, spooky. Call it election jitters, but some of us have been here before. More than 200 cases have been filed around the country before the election this year. In the last week, worrisome elements have begun to pop up in various swing states.
Over the last couple of decades, I have covered presidential elections for three networks (as I will do for Fox News in this election). The lead-up to elections always includes a flurry of lawsuits. As the voting margin shrinks between the parties, the number of lawyers increases.
Some lawsuits are important efforts to make changes to remove barriers for voters or the counting of early balloting. For example, on Friday an emergency lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union secured an order for election officials in Cobb County, Ga., to overnight mail ballots to roughly 3,000 citizens and to guarantee that they be counted after a snafu by election officials. Other lawsuits are what I call “placeholders,” where campaigns establish areas of concern to be able to reference later in any specific challenges on or after Election Day.
The Supreme Court has already intervened to stop an effort by the Biden-Harris administration to force Virginia to put people back on the voting rolls who had identified themselves as non-citizens. It is a crime for non-citizens to vote. Although Virginia allows any mistaken information to be corrected (and also allows for challenged voters to file provisional ballots), lower courts ordered Virginia to enable people to vote who had said they were not citizens.
Some of these early challenges are welcomed, in the sense that we still have time to work out problems. Courts are notoriously reluctant to intervene after an election with the limited time before the certification of votes. They often refuse challengers access to vital election board information or bar cases as speculative or litigants as lacking in standing. This fuels the public’s distrust of the integrity of the election.
Some challenges potentially involve a high number of votes in swing states. For example, in North Carolina, the Republican National Committee is suing the North Carolina State Board of Elections over 225,000 people who may not have been appropriately registered because that state failed to require a driver’s license or partial Social Security number.
In Arizona, a judge had to order Democratic Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to release the names of roughly 218,000 voters who may have been allowed to register without the proof of citizenship required by state law.
There is also a growing concern over possible systemic voting registration violations in multiple districts in Pennsylvania. Initially, 2,500 forms were marked as suspicious for possible false names, duplicative handwriting or unverifiable or incorrect identifying information. Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams and her team found that about 60 percent of the 2,500 forms were potentially illegitimate. Monroe County District Attorney Mike Mancuso linked the registrations to “Field and Media Corps,” a subsidiary of Fieldcorps, an Arizona-based organization.
Field and Media Corps appears to have taken down its website, but it previously identified itself as a subsidiary of FieldCorps. It described itself as “connecting campaigns and projects with communities of color across the state. Our clients benefit from our social activism and coalition leadership experience gained through decades of leading campaigns, highlighting social inequalities, and developing BIPOC coalition building.”
FieldCorps has reportedly been working for the Harris-Walz campaign, the Mark Kelly campaign in Arizona and other Democratic campaigns. Efforts to reach FieldCorps for comment have been unsuccessful.
The concern is that companies like FieldCorps could be replicating errors across districts and states in the rush to register new voters. If these are knowing falsifications, it could constitute a federal crime.
We also have the same controversies arising in this election about changes to voting laws just before the election. In 2020, many voters were opposed to courts in states like Pennsylvania issuing last-minute changes. Many assumed that these laws had been finally worked out to guarantee the criteria for consideration of mail-in ballots and other forms of voting. However, with less than two weeks to go, a divided Pennsylvania Supreme Court voted 4-3 to order a significant change in election rules. The Election Code in the state is a model of clarity — it says that a provisional ballot “shall not be counted if the elector’s [mail] ballot is received in a timely manner by a county board of elections.” However, the court ruled that provisional ballots must be counted even if an individual has already sent in a mail ballot rejected for violating a mandatory rule, such as failure to place the ballot in a secrecy envelope or to date or sign the envelope. Late Friday night, the Supreme Court declined to block the counting of the provisional ballots.
However, on Friday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court did hold the line on another major change of the state election laws ordered by a lower court. The court stayed a decision that it is unconstitutional to reject mail ballots without handwritten dates on the return envelopes. The stay means that the law will remain in effect for the election. Justice Kevin Doughtery (joined by Chief Justice Debra Todd) wrote a reassuring concurrence for many of us having to follow these cases: “‘This Court will neither impose nor countenance substantial alterations to existing laws and procedures during the pendency of an ongoing election.’ We said those carefully chosen words only weeks ago. Yet they apparently were not heard in the Commonwealth Court, the very court where the bulk of election litigation unfolds.”
In what may be the closest election in history, late changes to election laws are inflammatory for an already suspicious electorate. According to the Gallup polling, only 63 percent are “very (34 percent) or somewhat confident (29 percent) that votes in the upcoming midterm elections will be accurately cast and counted.” That is near a record low, and there is a 45 percentage point gap separating Republicans (40 percent) and Democrats (85 percent) in their confidence in election integrity.
To my astonishment, voting officials are still committing basic errors. In Bucks County, Pa., voters were turned away in their attempt to apply in person for mail-in ballots. Some were told that there were computer or staffing problems. A court then ordered additional days to request ballots, so that matter at least is resolved. Yet such glitches are concerning. This is not rocket science. Rocket science is Elon Musk catching a massive booster rocket on what looked like a giant barbeque fork. Getting the staff and computers in place in a historic election should not be a great challenge.
Given the emotions and closeness of this election, any such irregularities will only confirm the worst expectations of some voters. They are often neither sinister nor particularly suspicious. With tens of millions voting, there are going to be problems. Election officials can help reduce the suspicions by being more forthcoming in sharing information. In past years, officials have acted reflectively to oppose any disclosures while seeking the dismissal of cases. That largely succeeded legally but proved costly politically. It left many allegations (including ill-supported theories) unresolved in the minds of many citizens.
It would be far better for the nation to resolve questions before the elections and strive for greater transparency in post-election challenges. That is why, if something wicked this way comes, we can more easily send it along its way.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Some say Gov. Walz is celebrating a bit too early on winning the 2024 election despite being slightly behind in the polls. Will his dream of turning America into the Minnesota disaster come true?
2024 election guide: Here’s what you need to know about the upcoming elections in Minnesota
By Luke Sprinkel – AlphaNews – Nov 2, 2024
The presidential election, and contests for Minnesota congressional seats and local offices, will all be on the ballot this year.
For the last two years, Democrats in Minnesota have controlled the governorship, the Minnesota House of Representatives, and the Minnesota Senate. This “trifecta” has given Democrats complete control of state government and allowed them to bring many sweeping changes to Minnesota. This Election Day, Nov. 5, Minnesotans will decide whether they want to continue living under this “trifecta,” or whether it’s time for a change. The presidential election, and contests for Minnesota congressional seats and local offices, will all be on the ballot this year. As such, Alpha News has compiled a list of what to know about the upcoming elections in Minnesota. (READ MORE)
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Compare and contrast. Fight, Fight, Fight against Kamala’s Marxist tyrannical government. It’s what’s at stake in this next election, 2024. All Kamala has is Fear, Fear, Fear, and calling Trump and his supporters Nazis, and she stated she would do nothing different than the Biden/Harris disaster if she were elected.
SICK: Kamala Harris Holds Emergency Press Conference to Attack Trump with Debunked Hoax, Compares Trump to Hitler in Latest Smear Campaign (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila – The Gateway Pundit – Oct 23, 2024
Kamala Harris on Wednesday launched a nasty smear campaign against President Trump with 13 days to go until Election Day. Harris compared President Trump to Hitler after The Atlantic released another fake news hit piece on Trump. On Tuesday The Atlantic published a nasty 4 year old smear piece on Trump with 14 days to go until the election. The Atlantic author Jeffrey Goldberg, the same guy who lied to get us into war with Iraq, said in his latest hit piece that Trump disrespected Army Specialist Vanessa Guillén, who was murdered in 2020 when she was bludgeoned to death at Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos), Texas. (SEE 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 • Kamala’s Plan to Expand Abortion into Rural America at Taxpayers’ Expense • Donald Trump Will Re-Open White House Faith Office to Protect Religious Freedom • Tim Walz Confirms He Supports Abortions Up to Birth • Poll Shows Trump on Track to Win Pennsylvania, Liberal Media Attacks Helping Him Secure Victory
More Pro-Life News • Biden May Have Lost Independent Voters for Kamala by Calling Trump Supporters Garbage • Pro-Life Advocates That Kamala Harris Put in Prison Ask Americans to Reject Her • Only 28% of Americans Say America is on the Right Track. That Almost Guarantees Trump Will Win • Independent Voters Will Likely Help Trump Win Georgia and North Carolina • Scroll Down for Several More Pro-Life News Stories
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Since the “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident, the media has been repeatedly accused of reframing news or rewriting words to benefit the President or the Biden-Harris Administration. This week, the White House Press Office and various media outlets like Politico and MSNBC have been ridiculed for denying that President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” It has created a weird dissonance as Democratic politicians denounced what the White House and many in the press denied was said. Now, the White House Press office is being criticized from a new quarter for the clean up on aisle three: the Director of White House Stenography, Amy Sands. The White House stenographers objected to the rewriting of the transcript by the Biden White House staff to suggest that the President was condemning Trump’s rhetoric, not his supporters.
The President’s attack on Trump supporters was nothing new. Leaders like Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and Biden himself has described their views as a return of the confederacy and the rise of fascism. Democrats have called the movement a modern form of Nazism and an effort to destroy democracy, round up homosexuals, and create internment camps.
The problem was the timing. As Harris was denouncing Trump for name-calling and insisting that Democrats are bringing the country together (while condemning Trump as a modern version of Hitler), Biden was literally behind her in the White House, calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.”
Fox News reportedly obtained an email in which the supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Sands went on to say that
“if there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff…After last night’s process, our team would like to reiterate that rush drafts/excerpts the Stenography Office sends to assist the Press Office are not intended for public distribution or as the final version of the transcript. Please avoid sharing rush drafts/excerpts, which are subject to review and might create confusion among staff, media, and the public while our Stenography Office completes a thorough review process.”
The White House was criticized for adding an apostrophe to the President’s comments to change the meaning of the key line.
After the statement, there was an immediate clean-up effort by Politico White House bureau chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, who was accused of changing the language by saying that “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.”
Lemire was widely ridiculed. For many, it sounded like another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment. He later turned to the apostrophe spin: “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context.” Accompanying the text is a screenshot of a transcript that has Biden saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The spin would have been more convincing if many of these pundits were not at the same time insisting that a line from a comedian delivered at a Trump event should be attributed to Trump (despite his later condemnation of any such view). It would also be more credible if Biden had not spent much of the last four years portraying the Trump movement as a new confederacy (before it was reframed as the new Third Reich).
When asked about the internal objections, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates only repeated the prior statement: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”
However, Fox noted that it remains “unclear … whether the transcript the White House cites is the one that was altered and released to the press or the final transcript that was sent to the National Archives.”
Other reporters now admit that Biden said what he said but describe it, as did CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, as “a gaffe by President Biden where he, in his explanation, inadvertently called Trump supporters garbage.” The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.
While various Democratic politicians have denounced Biden’s statements and Harris has said that she strongly disagrees with them, diehards like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocked those who were critical as “some of the worst” or just ungrammatical journalists:
“To do so, they had to refuse to listen to the actual sentence Joe Biden spoke. They had to refuse to look at the written words of that sentence. They had to refuse to understand English grammar. They had to refuse to understand what a singular possessive is. They had to refuse to understand what apostrophe ‘s’ means. They had to refuse to remember what they learned in elementary school about the English language.”
It appears that the non-partisan, career stenographers who recorded the interview contemporaneously are also on that “worst” list of ungrammatical morons.
The mainstream media is now dismissing the entire matter as just the placement of an apostrophe. Yet, many of these same voices were supporting a full-fledged investigation into the transcript of the Ukraine call during the Trump Administration over “the use of ellipses.”
I was critical of that call and supported calls for an accurate transcript, particularly on such a weighty issue. However, back then, the accuracy of such transcripts was accepted as of paramount importance. Whether it is a matter of foreign or domestic policy (or an apostrophe or ellipses), the public should be confident on the accuracy of White House transcripts, as stressed by Sands in her internal objections to the White House Press Office.
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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
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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American Family Association
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