A.F. Branco Cartoon – The New Year with Trump in office has most of the country feeling optimistic when they consider the horrific disaster of the last four years.
Wayne Root: The Difference Between This New Year’s Celebration with Trump Elected vs. What Could Have Been if Kamala was Elected. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!
Wayne Allyn Root with the most important stories in America: The entire hour is dedicated to showing the difference between this New Year’s celebration with Trump elected vs. what could have been if Kamala was elected. WHAT A DIFFERENCE!
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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.
An Emmy-winning investigative journalist, Catherine Herridge, has released a bombshell interview with a CIA whistleblower, revealing that the Biden administration has covered up officers’ injuries from direct energy weapons used by foreign adversaries. The whistleblower bravely came forward to shed light on the truth, despite facing threats and intimidation from the CIA.
During the interview, Herridge asks the former intelligence officer if they were attacked, to which they answer with a resounding “yes.” The follow-up question, whether it was an energy weapon, is also met with confirmation. These shocking revelations are further proof of the Biden administration’s continued efforts to cover up the truth and prevent accountability.
The whistleblower shared that the intelligence community has actively thwarted Congress’ attempts to uncover the truth, displaying a clear government cover-up. They elaborated, “It’s a cover-up, and it’s terrifying. It should be terrifying for all Americans.” The gravity of this situation cannot be understated, and it is crucial that the American people demand transparency and accountability from their government.
When asked about the potential for change under a Trump/Vance administration, the whistleblower expressed hope but with hesitation. They stated, “I really hope so,” followed by a call for those involved in the earlier report to be held accountable and not be allowed to intervene in this matter.
However, the CIA whistleblower’s bravery and determination to expose the truth are commendable, considering the risks they face in doing so. Their primary goal is to prevent more people from falling victim to these heinous attacks and urge Trump to take action if elected.
As the interview comes to a close, Herridge asks if the whistleblower has a final message for the American people. They respond, “I implore the American people to demand transparency and accountability from their government. We cannot let these attacks go unnoticed any longer.” Their powerful message serves as a call to action for all citizens to demand the truth and hold their government accountable.
BREAKING: A CIA whistleblower has come forward and revealed to Catherine Herridge that the agency covered up the source of an energy attack to gaslight its own agents
She is calling on President Trump to expose everything, "You know, the phrase cleaning up the swamp is thrown… pic.twitter.com/5QV494rTNN
This shocking interview has garnered widespread attention, shedding light on the government’s attempts to cover up the use of direct energy weapons by foreign adversaries on American officers. The implications of these revelations are enormous, and the American people need answers and accountability. Will a Trump/Vance administration bring about the change needed? Only time will tell.
This is all still very new so we may have to update you as new information comes out. Be sure to check back for those updates.
This is obviously very on-par for the Biden regime. Thank goodness the American people voted those bad apples out. I can only imagine what will unfold after the transfer of power takes place. You can almost bet, there will be more people to come forward.
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Washington State’s unofficial state motto has long been “Al-ki” which means either “bye and bye” or “by and by” in Chinook. The former meaning now seems official as Gov. Jay Inslee pushes for a “wealth tax.” Wealthy citizens are already saying bye to the state in anticipation of what one Democratic billionaire recently called a “boneheaded” move. The problem is that rich people can move. Unlike fixed assets like a mansion, they can take their wealth and taxes to other states without such laws.
The post from Senate Democrats supporting Senate Bill 5486 said, “The first $250 million of assessed value is exempted, meaning only the wealthiest people in Washington would pay the tax, including some of the wealthiest individuals in the world.”
I have previously written against wealth taxes from both constitutional and practical perspectives in the federal system. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) has long been a proponent of wealth taxes and the Biden Administration supported the effort.
The Wharton Budget Model at the University of Pennsylvania found that Warren’s legislation would raise $2.7 trillion in revenue, but it would also reduce capital by 3.1%, depress average hourly wages by 1.2%, and reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.2% in 2050. It is part of an “eat the rich” pitch from liberal politicians and pundits.
The federal constitutional problems are not barriers to the states. However, the effort to hammer the wealthy has never worked for states or countries. France previously saw a massive exodus after it attempted to clip the most wealthy and had to reverse its policies.
Putting aside expected legal challenges, Democratic donor Nick Hanauer criticized state Democrats for the push and said he had already spoken to the wealthiest citizens about fleeing the state.
“Even if it clears the legal, implementation & other challenges, it’s unlikely to raise much [money] given every wealthy person I’ve spoken to in the last few days has said they will leave the state. I believe them. Thoughtful taxes don’t actually drive people away, boneheaded taxes do.”
That is the problem with eating the rich . . . they have to stay put to be eaten. These wealthy individuals are already willing to pay some of the highest taxes in blue states for income. However, a wealth tax would expose their property to what is likely to become an irresistible target for politicians unwilling to make tough budget choices.
Of course, Washington could follow California in seeking a retroactive tax. Rather than try to keep the most wealthy citizens, it could seek to make them pay to leave the state like a giant Venus Flytrap.
We previously discussed the push in California to impose a retroactive tax on the many citizens and companies fleeing that state due to its high taxes and other problems. Warren wants to do the same nationally. So, if businesses are fleeing the country due to these policies, they would have to essentially pay for the freedom in a type of captivity tax. It is incredibly short-sighted. They need these businesses and they will not be able to coerce them into staying by trying to make it more expensive to leave.
The wealth tax campaigns combine fiscal negligence with political opportunism. Rather than imposing budgetary restraints and reducing budgets, Democrats promise to fleece the superrich. This short-term appeal is likely to cost the state dearly as the wealthy leave for less predatorial states.
You can stay in Washington state and get hit with a wealth tax or you can “bye and bye” and move out of the way. It appears that millionaires are already training with a financial expert in Washington to move out of the way of the wealth tax:
One of the most consistent elements of the identity politics practiced by the left is its selectivity. Whether in politics or higher education, the outrage that comes from allegedly racist or insensitive comments is confined to targets on the right. A case in point is the deafening silence after a diatribe by Rep. Jasmine Crockett D-Texas, during which she accused Hispanic voters of having a “slave mentality” and said that they “can barely vote.” There was no vaporous segment on The View or condemnations on the floor from members.
Crockett has been celebrated in left-wing publications such as Vanity Fair for schooling her colleagues, which she describes as “old as sh*t.” She offered Vanity Fair her “distilled summary of what happens within the Latino community.” Not surprisingly, it is identity politics with a race edge:
“I’ve not run into that with the Asian community. I’ve not run into that with the African community. I’ve not run into that with the Caribbean community. I’ve only run into it with Hispanics. When they think of ‘illegals,’ they think of, you know, maybe people that came out of the cartels and that kind of, like, the criminal-type book or whatever. It’s insane.”
“It almost reminds me of what people would talk about when they would talk about kind of like ‘slave mentality’ and the hate that some slaves would have for themselves. It’s almost like a slave mentality that they have. It is wild to me when I hear how anti-immigrant they are as immigrants, many of them. I’m talking about people that literally just got here and can barely vote that are having this kind of attitude.”
The attack on Hispanic voters as including people who “literally just got here and can barely vote” did not even generate objections from many Democratic Hispanic groups. Imagine if Trump or a conservative commentator made this comment.
Ironically, just before the election, I wrote how recent immigrants seemed to have a particularly strong connection to our defining and collective values. That does not appear a view shared by the congresswoman.
Crockett was, if anything, inclusive in her attacks based on gender and race. She also attacked black men and women for voting for Trump. She just dismissed black men as hating women: “I’m going to chalk up to misogyny.” What is unimaginable is that any woman or person of color could vote on the merits against the Democrats.
Notably, after her loss, Hillary Clinton offered the same attacks on women as voting against her only because they are weak and self-loathing. She claimed that Kamala, who notoriously avoided interviews and could not think of “a thing she would do differently” from Biden, “ran a flawless campaign.” The problem is again self-hating women and minorities, adding, “I don’t trust White women. I said, I’m just telling you, and I think you need to have conversations with your sisters, because they are the group that failed Hillary Clinton.”
The claim that Hispanics “can barely vote” would not be tolerated from someone on the right. It is reminiscent of the controversy involving Democratic lawyer and former Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias over what some called inherently racist comments about Georgia voters. Elias argued that Georgia voters could not be expected to be able to read their driver’s licenses correctly — a statement that seemed to refer to minority voters who would be disproportionately impacted by such a requirement.
What is striking about the Vanity Fair article is that Democrats continued to rely on identity politics despite every indication that it was not working. Now, after losing both houses and the White House, they are doubling down on identity politics.
Below is my column in The Hill on the rising rage of the holiday on the left as we approach the second Trump inauguration. From looking forward to harassment at restaurants to the purchase of Antifa-themed Christmas gifts, some appear to be planning for a hate-fest in the New Year.
Here is the column:
“May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.”
Those words, from Disney’s new Snow White actress Rachel Zegler, came shortly after half of the country, roughly 77 million Americans, voted for Donald Trump.
Only a few weeks ago, Kamala Harris and her supporters were rallying the country to choose “love over hate.” Now, the “joy” is gone. Tis the season of the liberal hate-fest.
As Washington prepares for the inauguration, we are seeing a return to rage.
During the first Trump administration, liberal servers and restaurant owners pledged not to serve Trump officials. Now, the Washingtonian is reporting on the planned resumption of the harassment of those serving in the Trump administration.
Zac Hoffman, manager at the National Democratic Club and “D.C. restaurant veteran,” told the magazine that abusing conservatives was only natural and understandable: “You expect the masses to just ignore RFK eating at Le Diplomate on a Sunday morning after a few mimosas and not to throw a drink in his face?”
One bartender stated that Trump people may “theoretically [have] the power to take away your rights, but I have the power to make you wait 20 minutes to get your entrée.”
Suzannah Van Rooy, a server and manager at Beuchert’s Saloon on Capitol Hill, declared that she would not serve some Trump officials. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans,’” she said. “It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”
This campaign of hate is all too familiar to conservatives. Many remember when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were kicked out of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. As others were denied service or chased from restaurants, Democratic members like Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, supported such harassment.
For those restaurants not willing to follow the Red Hen model, the response was equally unhinged. Mariya Rusciano runs a D.C. pizza restaurant. She posted congratulations to Trump on X after the election to encourage everyone to come together as a nation. The response from Democrats was furious, filled with pledges to boycott the restaurant and force it out of business.
It is not just service and civility that are scarce in Washington. Even while accusing Trump of putting his political and personal interests ahead of the nation, Biden is now reportedly moving to veto a bipartisan bill to relieve pressure on our overwhelmed court system.
The Judges Act, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, would add 66 new judgeships to an over-worked court system. The White House supported the bill right up until Trump won the election. While some Democrats are still trying to get the White House to change its mind, liberal groups are applauding the expected veto “to prevent President Trump from having more vacancies.”
If Biden carries out his threat, it will be not only gratuitous but illogical. The bill deliberately staggers the addition of judges over the next decade so that presidents of both parties will presumably be able to appoint them. Moreover, the Senate is still closely divided, and “blue-slipping” (whereby senators can hold up some nominations) remains in effect.
More importantly, the reason for this bipartisan effort is due to a dire need for our courts. Judges are drowning in dockets with rising caseloads. In 2004, the number of cases in district court pending for more than three years was 18,280. This year, there are 81,617. If justice delayed is justice denied, our court system is becoming a tar pit of injustice, with litigants left without verdicts or relief for years.
The word of the intended veto stripped away any pretense of the White House putting the public interest before politics. A veto would put rage before reason. In my recent book, I discussed how addictive rage is. People do not like to admit it, but they like being angry. Sometimes, people can choose madness as a release from reality. It offers a righteous license to slip from the bounds of civility and decency. It allows people to harass Republicans in restaurants or to scream profanities outside of their homes.
It allows a president to say that he might block judgeships for a struggling court system, just because he does not want his successor to make any of the appointments. It is the reason 41 percent of adults under 30 believe that killing others, like healthcare executives, is justified, according to an Emerson College poll.
We cannot seem to shake this rage addiction even after an election or during a holiday committed to peace and understanding. One liberal site, Crooked Media, is actually selling holiday items featuring the violent extremist group Antifa — one of the most anti-free speech groups in history, which routinely attacks journalists, speakers, and conservative demonstrators. Created by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor, the Crooked Media site is selling a line of Antifa items for liberals, including Antifa onesies for infants and “Antifa Dad” shirts to seemingly celebrate political violence.
It seems the joy, bipartisanship, and civility have all expired like last year’s eggnog. Even Disney’s new Snow White seems to have taken the cue from the Evil Queen and treated this election as “a blast of wind to fan my hate.”
Four states that President-elect Donald Trump won in November are expected to gain House seats after the 2030 census, and five states he lost could lose seats, according to population estimates for 2024 from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Consulting firm Election Data Services revealed that Texas and Florida would gain two seats each and Arizona and Idaho one seat each if congressional reapportionment were “held today,”The Hill reported Monday. Trump carried each state in his victories in 2016 and this year, and only lost Arizona narrowly in 2020. Republicans control both House seats in Idaho and have huge advantages in Arizona, Florida, and Texas.
Meanwhile, California would lose two seats, and Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Oregon would lose one each if apportionment were held today, the firm said. Trump lost all five states in his three elections.
The increase in seats in the right-leaning four states could help Republicans, who have struggled with slim House majorities in the past two years. At the beginning of the next Congress on Jan. 3, Republicans will hold a 220-215 majority, the smallest in modern history by number of seats, according to the Pew Research Center. That doesn’t include three GOP seats that are expected to be vacant until special elections are held early next year.
“Do the math. We have nothing to spare,” Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters this month. “But all of our members know that. We talked about that today, as we do constantly, that this is a team effort, that we’ve all got to row in the same direction.”
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Satanic Holiday display in the Minnesota Capitol building doesn’t seem to bother Gov. Walz and the Democrats of that state. Many from the GOP side of the aisle are staging peaceful protests in opposition.
Satanist display draws lawmakers and public to protest inside State Capitol
The protest featured a large crowd singing Christmas carols and joining in group prayer. A peaceful protest unfolded at the Minnesota State Capitol Wednesday, as a group of more than 100 gathered near the rotunda to voice opposition to a “holiday display” created by the Minnesota Satanists. The controversial exhibit, unveiled just days before Christmas, has ignited intense criticism among lawmakers and the public alike. In a post shared on its social media, the Minnesota Satanists celebrated the display as a victory for “religious plurality,” declaring: “HAIL RELIGIOUS PLURALITY!!! HAIL SATAN!!!” … READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Hunter Biden gets a pardon. At the same time, Political prisoners, J6ers, most of whom were peaceful and were let into the Capitol, languish in prison out of the political vindictive motivations of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
J6 Political Prisoners React to Joe Biden Pardoning Hunter-Official J6 Pardon Panel Twitter Space Tonight at 8pm ET LIVE From the DC Jail Gulag
Twitter was in an absolute uproar last night after Donald Trump lambasted Joe Biden for pardoning Hunter Biden and not the January 6 Political Hostages. Practically every major conservative voice, podcaster and influencer came together in one accord to unanimously call for every January 6er to be fully pardoned on Day One. The J6ers were the #1 trending topic on X for the last 24 hours. The Political Prisoner Podcast host, Jake Lang, even had something to say live from his prison cell in the DC Jail Gulag, where he has remained for over 1400 days without a trial… READ MORE
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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They say the U.S. presidency is the loneliest job in the world. Maybe the second-loneliest gig is that of Cabinet secretary in President Joe Biden’s administration.
A piece published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal pulls from dozens of sources who say Biden’s inner circle of trusted aides increasingly kept contact with the president at a minimum, including the people he should have depended on most to consult and advise for the good of the nation.
The president who has spent a good chunk of his term out of the office apparently was not all that keen on meetings with his Cabinet secretaries. In fact, Biden may have met more often with his criminal son’s sketchy clients than he has with his administration’s top managers.
‘Hide the President’s True Condition’
Joe Biden was such a political liability that his handlers hid him away during the 2020 presidential campaign. The man campaigned from his Delaware basement through the brunt of the election year. The cloistered strategy wasn’t as much about protecting the feeble geezer from Covid as it was designed to prevent American voters from seeing what a physical and mental mess Biden really was.
Even the Pravda Press, which was openly rooting for — and covering for — the Democrat gaffe machine, was forced to report on Biden’s bunker campaign.
“Over the past six weeks, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been running his campaign from his Delaware basement,” CBS News reported in April of 2020, showcasing a fluff piece from The New York Times about how team Biden was attempting to “keep his campaign relevant during the pandemic.”
The occasional programmed Zoom calls notwithstanding, keeping Biden “relevant” (or electable), meant keeping him hidden — literally underground.
That limited contact strategy has defined the octogenarian’s presidential tenure. Biden has held the fewest number of press conferences and media interviews of any president since Ronald Reagan’s first term, and it isn’t close, Axios reported in late June. The publication at the time noted that Biden was about to sit for a “rare interview with ABC News” … “amid growing concern about his age and acuity — and accusations that his inner circle has taken pains to hide the president’s true condition from public view.”
Quaintly, back then Axios and its corporate media bedfellows were still trying to convince Americans not to believe their lying eyes, that there were “two Bidens”: the 81-year-old who had recently froze up like so much freezer peas in his debate with former President Donald Trump, and the virile campaigning Joe.
‘Wouldn’t be Welcome’
It turns out, Biden wasn’t just hiding from voters. He was ducking his own Cabinet.
“Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said,” reports The Wall Street Journal in a piece headlined, “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge.”
The story further noted that “cabinet members — including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen — were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.”
To all the Dems freaking out about Elon "running the country," Biden is currently president and no one knows who's running the country.
Like other aging, cognitively diminished seniors, Biden had his “good days, and bad days,” one former aide told the publication. The president has routinely gotten a pass from fellow Democrats and corporate media on his memory lapses, mumbled and jumbled answers to questions, and outright lies. Remember, Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report detailing Biden’s possession and mishandling of classified documents recommended the president not be prosecuted because a jury might well see him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Meeting with the ‘Big Guy’
But as The Federalist has reported, said “well-meaning elderly man” is alleged to have interacted with Hunter Biden’s suspect clients “countless times.” Devon Archer, the younger Biden’s former business associate, testified before a congressional committee last year that Hunter put his father, vice president at the time, on speakerphone nearly two dozen times while talking to overseas business contacts. Archer discussed Hunter’s involvement on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings and the hefty checks it wrote to a guy seemingly unqualified for the job. Archer and others have alleged Burisma and other “clients” were paying for the Biden “brand.” Aka, access to the vice president.
“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” the New York Post reported, quoting from a readout from panel Republicans.
“Archer talked about the ‘big guy’ and how Hunter Biden always said, ‘We need to talk to my guy,’ ‘We need to see when my guy is going to be here,’ and those types of things,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told reporters as he left the deposition in July 2023.
There were many more interactions between Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s other business associates, according to the laptop that the Deep State and the accomplice media long claimed did not exist. As The Federalist’s Tristan Justice reported:
Biden reportedly met with Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazakhstani business partners at a famous D.C. establishment in 2015. The meeting, arranged by Hunter, took place at one of Georgetown’s most famous restaurants, Café Milano… Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanked Hunter for the introduction to his father.
“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote in an email released by the New York Post weeks before the 2020 election.
And visitor logs show Hunter Biden’s business pals paid a call on the White House at least 80 times while Biden was VP, Fox News reported. A meeting with the elder Biden at the time involved Chinese businessmen tied to a firm that Hunter Biden had invested in.
Earlier this month, the president issued a sweeping, unprecedented pardon of his multi-felon son, not merely for the serious crimes for which he was found guilty but for crimes that he may have committed during his salad days with Burisma and the other business associates seeking access to the “Big Guy.”
The Disaster of Absence
As president, Biden has held just nine full Cabinet meetings, the Wall Street Journal reported. The numbers include three such sessions in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and only one this year. By comparison, President Barack Obama led 19 Cabinet meetings and President Donald Trump called 25 in their first terms, the Journal noted, using data obtained by former CBS News reporter Mark Knoller.
While White House officials have disputed Biden’s distance and decline, the cloistering of the cognitively slipping president appears to have contributed to some disastrous consequences.
Rep. Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who chaired the House Armed Services Committee in 2021, told the Wall Street Journal that he was shut out of conversations with the president leading up to the administration’s debacle of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“I was begging them to set expectations low,” Smith, who had misgivings about how the operation would go, told the publication.
The Journal reported that “[f]ormer administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.” Many of us have often been left wondering if the president has had a pulse at all.
Witness accounts and his degenerate son’s own emails suggest Biden had plenty of vim and vigor when it was time to talk about corrupt financial deals. It was the business of protecting and leading America that he seemed disinterested in during his historically awful presidential term.
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.
In March the Republican-led House passed H.R. 3391, which would continue funding research of pediatric diseases like childhood cancer. The legislation never went anywhere in the Senate under the leadership of Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. But now Democrats are trying to use sick kids with cancer as leverage to pass 1,500-plus pages of pork.
On Wednesday Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a 1,500-page so-called “continuing resolution” that was really nothing more than a stuffed omnibus bill that included money for censorship, sweetheart deals for Congress, and other unnecessary expenditures. Almost immediately the pork-stuffed “continuing resolution” was rebuked by millions of Americans, including President-elect Donald Trump and incoming co-director of the Department of Government Efficient (DOGE) Elon Musk.
Following public pressure, the House released a trimmed-down version (116 pages) on Thursday. That measure funds the government through March 14. The new version keeps the $110 billion in disaster relief and farmer assistance from the original bill and suspends the debt ceiling for two years. The new version also removed the funding for childhood cancer.
And suddenly — after H.R. 3391 has collected dust in the Senate under the leadership of Schumer for months –Democrats are outraged about funding for pediatric cancer research.
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote that after “pediatric cancer research advocates spent years” working to get funding, “Elon began tweeting.” Elon “killed the budget deal,” according to Stein, and with it funding for childhood cancer research.
Hawaii Democrat Sen. Brian Schatz posted on X: “F-ck cancer. Especially pediatric cancer. These people want to punish these precious little kids to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in human history.”
Pod Save America host Jon Favreau blamed Musk: “Congrats to Elon Musk for giving the people what they want: less funding for child cancer research.”
But where was the condemnation from Favreau or Schatz or Stein when Schumer sat on H.R. 3391? Why haven’t they begun pressuring Schumer to do something with the legislation he already has?
If the only time you come out swinging in defense of funding for childhood cancer research is when you can use it to smear your political opponents and push through pork spending, but you stay silent when your own party sits on the legislation (after Republicans passed it), you’re not the good guy. You’re a hypocrite using sick children as leverage to further your pet projects.
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
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference on Dec. 10, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images)
The current battle in Congress over the continuing resolution to fund the government is a fight worth having to stop the bloated spending of the federal government—spending that increases our unsustainable, monumental debt; funds dangerous and unnecessary government programs; and keeps unaccountable bureaucrats in office whose goal in life is to control our lives from birth to death. This article, originally published in 2013 during a previous budget fight, illustrates that the government never really shuts down. Crucial services for national security and law enforcement will continue even if no continuing resolution is approved, as will payments for Social Security and veterans’ benefits. The rallying cry for concerned members of Congress trying to stop the federal government’s runaway spending should be the famous words of Captain John Paul Jones: “I have not yet begun to fight!”
Here is the article—and the lesson—from 2013:
If President Barack Obama “shuts down” the government by vetoing a continuing resolution, or CR, that funds all government operations with the exception of Obamacare, or the Senate fails to pass such a CR, crucial services will continue without interruption. That includes all services essential for national security and public safety—such as the military and law enforcement—as well as mandatory government payments such as Social Security and veterans’ benefits.
The key fact, as the U.S. Department of Justice itself has said, is that when there is a short-term lapse in appropriations, “the federal government will not be truly ‘shut down’ … because Congress has itself provided that some activities of government should continue.” In fact, any claims that not passing a CR will result in a “shutting down” of the government “is an entirely inaccurate description,” according to the DOJ.
Such a lapse in funding would be neither catastrophic nor unprecedented, but it would pare down government services to those most essential for “the safety of human life or the protection of property.” That would not include the hundreds of billions of dollars in the federal budget that are constantly squandered and wasted on frivolous, unnecessary, and unneeded programs.
What the Law Says
The effect of a veto of appropriated funding by the White House or the failure of the Senate to pass a CR is governed by the Constitution, federal law, DOJ legal opinions, and planning memoranda issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Under Article I of the Constitution, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law.” This constitutional limitation is implemented by the federal Antideficiency Act, which makes it illegal for federal officials to spend money in excess of appropriations or to obligate the government to enter into contracts before an appropriation has been passed to pay for such a commitment. The Antideficiency Act also prohibits the federal government from accepting voluntary services, which is why federal employees (except those deemed “essential”) have to be furloughed—they cannot volunteer their services during a shutdown even if they want to. The act contains a very expansive exception, however, “for emergencies involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
Although that exception has been broadly interpreted by the Office of Management and Budget and the DOJ to give executive agencies wide discretion over how to spend their remaining funds, the statute was amended by Congress in 1990 in response to a 1981 opinion issued by Attorney General Benjamin R. Civiletti to make it clear that the term emergenciesdoes “not include ongoing, regular functions of government, the suspension of which would not imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
A 1995 opinion by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel over that amendment confirmed the earlier DOJ opinions, although it slightly narrowed the interpretation of “the safety of human life or the protection of property” to mean that they must be “compromised in some significant degree” by the lack of funding.
A 2011 Office of Management and Budget memorandum also confirmed that the executive branch still views those DOJ opinions as establishing the guidelines for the continued operation of the government during a lapse in funding. The Office of Management and Budget refers to those government functions that can continue to operate because they meet the emergency definition as “excepted” functions. Federal employees who “are needed for the performance of those ‘excepted’ functions” can continue to be employed even in the absence of a CR or an appropriations bill. In fact, the Office of Management and Budget says that federal employees can continue to work who are necessary not just to protect life and property but to perform activities “expressly authorized by law” or “necessarily implied by law,” an extremely broad standard.
Many ‘Essential’ Functions
As a recent report by the Congressional Research Service points out, an Office of Management and Budget memorandum from 1981 lays out examples of the many government functions of federal agencies that may continue during a funding lapse:
National security, including the conduct of foreign relations essential to the national security or the safety of life and property.
Benefit payments and the performance of contact obligations under no-year or multi-year appropriations or other funds remaining available for those purposes.
Medical care of inpatients and emergency outpatient care and activities essential for the safe use of food, drugs, and hazardous materials.
Air traffic control and other transportation safety functions.
Border and coastal protection and surveillance.
Protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, and other property of the U.S.
Care of prisoners and others in federal custody.
Law enforcement and criminal investigations.
Emergency and disaster assistance.
Activities essential to the preservation of the money and banking system of the U.S., including borrowing and tax collection.
Production of power and maintenance of the power distribution system.
Protection of research property.
In its 2011 memorandum, the Office of Management and Budget also provided other instances of “excepted” situations where federal agencies would continue to function. For example, operations where a “statute or other legal requirement expressly authorizes an agency to obligate funds in advance of appropriations” such as a Civil War-era law that “provides authority to the Defense Department to contract for necessary clothing, subsistence, forage, fuel, quarters, transportation, or medical and hospital supplies” or another federal law authorizing the Bureau of Indian Affairs to continue to contract for goods and supplies.
The DOJ’s 1995 opinion again confirmed that essential government benefit payments continue because they operate “under indefinite appropriations provisions that do not require passage of annual appropriations legislation.” It pointed out that “Social Securityis a prominent example of a program that operates under an indefinite appropriation. In such cases, benefit checks continue to be honored by the Treasury, because there is no lapse in the relevant appropriation.”
And all government employees necessary to continue to make those benefit payments will continue to be employed to do so even though their salaries would normally be paid through the CR because they are “necessary to disburse the Social Security benefits that operate under indefinite appropriations.” This same rule would obviously apply to other such government benefits such as Medicare and for military veterans, as well as “the performance of emergency services that continue under that separate exception.”
The 2011 Office of Management and Budget memorandum confirmed that there would be no cessation in any government functions necessary for Obama to carry out his “constitutional duties and powers (e.g., commander in chief or conducting foreign relations).” So, for example, the president would be able to continue his very extensive (and very expensive) foreign travels in the interests of “conducting foreign relations,” even if he decides to cause a lapse in government funding with a veto of a CR.
Regarding the president’s duty as commander in chief, the Department of Defense has issued guidance outlining that “the legal authority for critical military operations to continue” is clear. Among the units and activities exempt from a funding lapse are “forward-based combat, combat support, and combat service support units.”
So, “operations such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan would continue, units preparing for deployment would carry on their training and other deployment preparations, and activities needed to support operations and training would continue.” There would also be no suspension or furlough of “units identified for deployment in plans for major regional contingencies” as well as “units assigned to carry out strategic nuclear operations.”
Recent History
There have been 17 funding gaps since 1977, ranging in duration from one to 21 days. In November 1995, when President Bill Clinton vetoed a CR and there was a funding gap for five days, only about 800,000 out of a total of 4.475 million federal employees were furloughed.
Only about 280,000 federal employees were furloughed during the December 1995 to January 1996 funding gap. During this time, the Social Security Administration initially retained about 5,000 employees and then called back an additional 50,000 employees within three days to continue paying benefits and processing new claims, keeping over 80% of the total employees of the agency employed despite the lack of a CR.
Not Much Shut Down
Based on past experience, one may safely conclude that a very large number of federal employees would continue to provide services during any government “shut down,” and essential services necessary to safeguard the country will continue, as will the crucial benefit payments on which many Americans depend.
But this would still not allow the full, continued implementation of Obamacare. As outlined in a prior Heritage Foundation issue brief, “Even if a government shutdown occurs without a defunding bill, while the administration may have some funding available from other sources to continue to implement parts of Obamacare that fall within exceptions to the ADA [Antideficiency Act], it would not be able to legally implement all of the many different parts of the law, and it is doubtful it would have the funds to implement all of the law.”
There are many parts of the law that could not be deemed “emergencies,” even under the broad reading given that term by the executive branch. And the more parts of the law that are stopped, the better off the American people will be.
In an explosive exposé, the Wall Street Journal has revealed how the mental decline of President Joe Biden was pronounced from the start of his term. However, cabinet members and other Democrats lied to the public about his declining levels of acuity and engagement. That effort succeeded largely with the help of an alliance with the media, which showed little interest in whether the President was actually running the government.
After President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the solid wall of media and staff shielding his declining mental state collapsed. Even after Special Counsel Robert Hur declined criminal charges against Biden due to his diminished state, Democratic pundits and the press covered for him, claiming that he was sharp and effective. With the debate, the public was able to see what many in the media and the White House had been hiding for years.
After interviewing roughly 50 insiders, the Journal found evidence of a knowing effort to hide Biden’s mental state. For many, Biden’s refusal to leave his home for much of the 2020 campaign was evidence of the insecurity of staff about his ability to engage with reporters. It only got worse during the term as staff virtually tackled anyone trying to ask him a question. Biden was routinely shuffled off stage after reading briefly from a teleprompter.
Behind the scenes, cabinet members reportedly stopped asking for meetings with Biden after staff conveyed that such requests were not welcomed. He held far fewer cabinet meetings and was often considered “down” for any discussions. That included a period during the calamity of the Afghan withdrawal.
One official is quoted as admitting on one occasion in 2021 that Biden “has good days and bad days and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.” That was just after he was elected. Yet, Biden was kept within the protective cocoon of media that did not press the issue and was infamous for ignoring scandals while asking Biden about his choice of ice cream on a given day.
Now, some media outlets are re-positioning on the issue as they prepare to resume hard questioning and investigations in the new Trump Administration . . . after a four-year hiatus. Suddenly, everyone is shocked to learn that Biden was mentally diminished and blaming nameless staff for misleading them.
One exception this week was Chris Cillizza, who served as CNN’s editor-at-large before leaving the network in 2022. On YouTube, Cillizza stated, “As a reporter, I have a confession to make” and admitted “I should have pushed harder earlier for more information about Joe Biden’s mental and physical well-being and any signs of decline.”
Now, everyone likes a redemptive sinner, and I give Cillizza credit for admitting his own failure to pursue the story despite many critics objecting for years over the lack of such inquiries. However, Cillizza only confessed to failing to pursue the story due to a fear of being accused of “age shaming” Biden. The suggestion is that identity politics chilled journalism, not the overwhelming media support for the President and countervailing opposition to Trump.
The “age shaming” excuse is difficult to square with the failure to pursue an array of other scandals during the term from influence peddling to policy debacles. Nevertheless, Cillizza was remarkably frank that he was only able to push on the story after leaving CNN:
“I didn’t really push on it, if I’m being honest. Now, once I left CNN and once it became a little bit clearer to me about Biden’s age, I think I did write pretty regularly and talk pretty regularly about how I wasn’t sure that this guy was up to it. And then obviously, after the June 27 debate, everybody, including me, was writing and talking about it.”
Putting Cillizza’s statement aside, there is a notable effort by some in the media to retroactively resume journalism after years of docile coverage on issues such as Biden’s incapacity.
The belated interest in the story reflects not only the limits of modern journalism but the limits of the 25th Amendment. From the outset, there was concern over Biden’s acuity and stamina within the White House. It was hidden from the public. His cabinet members like DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and others quashed claims of any diminishment with first-hand testimonials about how sharp and impressive the President was in meetings. Vice President Kamala Harris echoed those claims.
The Vice President and the cabinet are essential to the removal process under the 25th Amendment. Section 4 allows the removal of a president. One option is what I have called the “mutiny option.” It requires a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Kamala Harris could get eight Cabinet officers to go along with a letter to Congress, her status as the “Acting President” would likely be short-lived. Joe Biden would only have to declare to Congress that “no inability exists.” Biden would then resume his powers. That would then trigger a congressional fight.
In reality, the Biden term shows how they can often be part of the cover-up.
The 25th Amendment also does not define incapacity and having “good days and bad days” is unlikely to suffice. As I previously discussed, the issue of “disability” of a president was briefly raised in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a delegate from Biden’s home state of Delaware who asked how they would respond to a disability, “and who is to be the judge of it?” John Dickinson’s question was left unanswered in the final version of the Constitution.
What followed were persistent controversies over succession. This issue came to a head after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Congress finally addressed the issue in the 25th Amendment. The amendment addresses the orderly succession of power as well as temporary disabilities when presidents must undergo medical treatment or surgeries. This process is even more unlikely to occur when the media has formed a protective line around a president.
The problem was never “age shaming,” it was a shameless effort to shield this president from tough questions and public exposure.
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House Republicans announced Thursday they have reached agreement on a Plan B to avert a government shutdown by Friday midnight, The Hill reported.
“We have reached an agreement and details will be forthcoming,” House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole, R-Okla., said after leaving House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.
The House could vote later Thursday.
Earlier reports said Republicans were focused on a clean stopgap funding bill that stripped many of the new policy provisions in the bill that President-elect Donald Trump torpedoed on Wednesday, including a pay raise for lawmakers.
The earlier reports said that Trump’s desire for the debt ceiling to be raised would be put off in the continuing resolution with an eye toward raising the borrowing limit twice in 2025, The Hill reported.
It’s unclear if that’s where they landed.
Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., told reporters, “The plan is to put a bill on the floor that we think is a reasonable step forward,” as she also left Johnson’s office, according to The Hill.
President-elect Donald Trump greets Elon Musk as he arrives to attend a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Amid the uproar over the spending bill, some are suggesting it’s time for a new House speaker. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, suggested on X that Republicans should replace Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., with Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, who will head President-Elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., floated Musk as speaker, pointing out that the speaker of the House doesn’t have to be a member of Congress.
The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress . . .
Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’…
Musk has been critical of Johnson’s 1,500-page continuing resolution to fund the federal goverment.
The billionaire owner of X started his Wednesday by posting a photo of the spending bill in Congress with this question: “Ever seen a bigger piece of pork?”
By the afternoon, Trump declared his opposition. And within hours, Johnson pulled the bill he had unveiled just a day earlier.
“Elon just became the most powerful person in Washington, D.C., today,” social media influencer Wall Street Mav told The Daily Signal. “He proved he can flip enough votes in Congress to halt a spending bill.”
The continuing resolution, which would fund the government until March, was supposed to be lawmakers’ final vote before heading home for Christmas. Instead of a “clean” bill, however, Democrat and Republican negotiators loaded it with a hodge-podge of unrelated policy and additional spending, including a pay raise for members of Congress. That caught the attention of Ramaswamy, whose video Musk shared with his followers.
“Congress is about to pass a bill that blows away your taxpayer money, but they made it over 1,500 pages long so you wouldn’t read it,” Ramaswamy said. “And the worst part is, they didn’t want you to know about any of it. That’s why they made this a last-minute jam job.”
Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance threw another curveball into the government spending fight. They said in a statement they want the continuing resolution to address the debt ceiling and to “call [Democrats’] bluff” on a shutdown.
If Congress doesn’t pass a spending bill by Dec. 20, the government will shut down.
“Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF. It is [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer and [President Joe] Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief,” the statement says.
Trump and Vance just threw a MASSIVE curveball into the government spending fight.
Trump wants the continuing resolution (CR) to address the debt ceiling (suspension ends 1/1/2025) and to "call [Democrats] bluff" on a shutdown.
Trump told Fox News Digital that Johnson will “easily remain speaker” for the next Congress if he “acts decisively and tough” and eliminates “all of the traps being set by Democrats” in the spending package.
“Anybody that supports a bill that doesn’t take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible,” the president-elect said.
Does anybody really believe that Adam Schiff doesn’t want a preemptive pardon?
That’s what he claims, and that’s what he said. But he didn’t say he doesn’t want a pardon—he just doesn’t want a preemptive one. That’s like saying, “I’m not going to eat the cake right now… but leave it on the counter. Just in case.”
Schiff conveniently leaked this morsel during an interview with George Stephanopoulos, another maestro of moral posturing. Stephanopoulos—whose journalistic credibility is rivaled only by his ability to sidestep Clinton-era scandals—asked Schiff if he thought Trump might prosecute members of the Jan. 6 committee.
“We don’t need pardons because we’re proud of our work.” Schiff replied.
Oh, really? Proud of the committee’s work? Work that included hiding exculpatory evidence, cherry-picking videos, and pushing a narrative so flimsy it makes Biden’s staircase skills look stable?
Schiff previously claimed that pardons set a bad precedent. And well, Shifty can’t have his reputation impugned with the specter of a pardon. Who could blame him though for not wanting a pardon from Biden? That’s one complete list of scoundrels. Clearly, Shifty wants us to know that he’s got principles. He likes his pardon served fresh, not pre-packaged.
The Benny Hill Moment
Here’s where the comedy ramps up. While Schiff was pretending to be the virtuous hero of this melodrama, Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former Jan. 6 committee chair, was busy saying, “Sure, I’d take a preemptive pardon!” He even called it Biden’s prerogative. Prerogative? Sure. But the moment you accept a pardon; you’re basically hanging a neon “I’m guilty” sign around your neck.
This brings us to Adam Kinzinger, Schiff’s ex-committee buddy, who once declared, “The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is you think you committed a crime.”
Kinzinger’s words aged like a room-temperature tuna sandwich. Maybe these two need to get with Bennie Johnson before they lock in their final answers.
The Insurrection That Wasn’t
Let’s not forget why Schiff and his crew are squirming in the first place. The Jan. 6 narrative was their crown jewel—a supposed coup attempt that turned out to be more of a Capitol-themed field trip. When the footage finally emerged, it didn’t show rampaging hordes. Instead, we watched patriots meandering through the Capital as if it were The Louvre. One guy even stopped to straighten some papers. That’s the Left’s big insurrection, that they compared to the Civil War and the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.
They called Trump treasonous in his non-actions. But speaking of treason, Schiff’s team conveniently deleted mountains of data related to their “findings.” How many guesses do you need to understand why?
Their accusations against Trump and the protesters wouldn’t survive a light breeze, let alone real Department of Justice scrutiny.
Schiff’s Private Pardon Chat with Biden
While Schiff claims he doesn’t need a pardon, he spoke with Biden for exactly that reason. The two discussed J6, because Joe Biden is planning to pardon the entire committee. Because they are guilty.
Why would Stephanopoulos even broach the subject, if this weren’t a reasonable consideration?
The January 6 Committee was a total farce. The people selectively chosen. After their kangaroo court investigation, they reported what they were told to report. In truth, they lied about evidence. Then, they buried exonerating footage for years. Now they have their media minions running interference for them.
For years, Schiff painted Trump as the villain of democracy. But now, he’s the one looking for a legal life raft. The irony is thicker than Hunter Biden’s tax evasion file. Nobody believes Schiff doesn’t want a pardon. Doublespeak about as convincing as Bill Clinton’s wedding vows.
Today, the Georgia Court of Appeals disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her team in the prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump. The final collapse of the House of Willis came after months of her spending enormous amounts of time and money to try to stay at the lead of the high-profile case. Lawfare holds little value unless you are the lead warrior.
For over a year, some have criticized Willis for her refusal to recuse herself. When her hiring of her former lover was first disclosed, Willis could have done the right thing for her office, the case, and the public. She could have recused herself and may have preserved her office’s ability to continue with the case.
She was then given a further opportunity to do the right thing by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee who disqualified her former lover, Nathan Wade, and found an “appearance of impropriety.”
He, however, left it up to Willis to recuse herself after criticizing her conduct. Some of us noted that the finding did not jive with the order. If there was an “appearance of impropriety,” it would obviously continue with Willis remaining at the lead in the case. However, Willis let the case go dormant and committed her office to the fight to preserve her role. Now, the appellate court has forced her off the case and ordered a new office to take over any prosecution. The court ruled that
“[a]fter carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office. The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”
The court admitted that Willis had forced the hand of the court by her refusal to do the right thing in the lower court. It recognized that “an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”
Accordingly, it reversed McAffee and found that if “the elected district attorney is wholly disqualified from this case, ‘the assistant district attorneys — whose only power to prosecute a case is derived from the constitutional authority of the district attorney who appointed them — have no authority to proceed.’”
The opinion made clear that these cases cannot become the vanity projects of prosecutors. They are expected to do the right thing, even when the right thing does not come easily personally or politically.
The center of the case now shifts to another prosecutor who will have to decide whether it wants to continue the case and what (and who) to prosecute.
As I have previously written, the Georgia case has viable crimes against others for offenses such as unlawful entry into restricted areas. The case against Trump was deeply flawed. It read like a legal version of six degrees from Kevin Bacon. As my friend and fellow analyst Andy McCarthy noted, this is the first racketeering case that any of us have seen where the strongest connection between the parties was being named in the charging documents.
A new prosecutor should drop the Trump charges and end this ridiculous lawfare enterprise. If not, the case will likely collapse by its own weight due to the attenuated racketeering theory or other legal problems, including the use of evidence barred under the recent presidential immunity decision.
In the end, Willis was reelected by the voters of Atlanta who clearly accepted or supported the weaponization of the criminal justice system to target political opponents. The millions spent in the case were just treated as a cost of doing the business of lawfare.
Hopefully, a new prosecution office will restore a modicum of integrity to the Georgia legal system. It is now time to end this circus as the ringmaster leaves the center ring.
As an academic and a legal commentator, I have sometimes disagreed with the United States Supreme Court, but I often stress the good-faith differences in how certain rights or protections are interpreted. One case, however, has long stood out for me as wildly off base and wrongly decided: Kelo v. New London. The case allowed the government to seize property from one private party and then give it to another private party. There is now a petition before the Supreme Court that would allow it to reconsider this pernicious precedent. The Court should grant review in Bowers v. Oneida County Industrial Development Agency precisely for that purpose.
Many of us expressed outrage at the actions of the city leaders of New London, Connecticut, when they used eminent domain to seize the property of citizens against their will to give it to the Pfizer corporation. This anger grew with the inexplicable decision of the Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London to uphold the abusive action. After all the pain that the city caused its own residents and the $80 million it spent to buy and bulldoze the property, it came to nothing. Pfizer later announced that it was closing the facility — leaving the city worse off than when it began.
I will not repeat my fundamental disagreement with the interpretation of the eminent domain power. For my prior testimony on the Kelo decision, click here.
The Bowers case involves New York developer Bryan Bowers who challenged the decision of a county redevelopment agency to condemn his property and then give it to another developer to use as a private parking lot. Most states prohibit this abusive practice but not New York.
Justice Chase (not long after the Bill of Rights was written) rejected this type of abuse:
“An act of the Legislature (for I cannot call it a law) contrary to the great first principles of the social compact, cannot be considered a rightful exercise of legislative authority … . A few instances will suffice to explain what I mean… . [A] law that takes property from A. and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a Legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it.” Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388 (1798) (emphasis deleted).
Much has changed on the Court since 2005. It is possible that the new majority could finally correct the mistake made in Kelo. While most states have barred this abusive practice, states like New York still leave property owners at the mercy of local officials who use eminent domain to transfer property between citizens.
For Susette Kelo, she had little chance to fight a major pharmaceutical company for her home. The Supreme Court just looked on passively after local officials seized her home because she was not nearly as valuable to them as Pfizer. This abusive use of eminent domain is not just an invitation for corrupt dealings but a denial of the core protections of individual citizens under our Constitution.
It is time for Kelo to be set aside. The Court has that opportunity with Bowers.
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Mainstream legacy media is no longer mainstream due to their years of left-wing bias, lies, and outright leftist propaganda. More people than ever aren’t buying what they’re trying to sell, so folks are turning to alternate media sources that are killing their viewership numbers.
Mollie Hemingway Slams ‘Corrupt’ Propaganda Media, Says Trump is Showing Republicans How to Lead (VIDEO)
Mike LaChance – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 19, 2024
Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has become one of the strongest voices on the right when it comes to calling out the liberal media. During a recent appearance on Laura Ingraham’s show on FOX News, Hemingway pointed out that we have not had a functioning media for years, accusing them of being corrupt and regime propagandists. Later in the segment, she suggested that Trump is showing the Republican party how to be an effective leader… 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.
Crime scene tape stretches around Abundant Life Christian School as police continue to investigate the shooting committed by 15-year-old student Natalie Rupnow on Dec. 17, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Just days before Christian students’ scheduled vacation to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a lonely and radicalized high school student opened fire inside Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, killing two people and wounding six more. Police say 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name “Samantha,” opened fire with a 9mm handgun during study hall before turning the gun on herself. Now, an apparent manifesto shows the child’s turbulent home life, isolation, adoption of neo-Nazi views, idolization of school shooters, and her wish to further “evolution” drove her to the brink.
Two Remain in Critical Condition
Rupnow attended Abundant Life, a Christian school founded in 1978, with approximately 400 students from kindergarten through high school, serving 200 families across 56 churches in Dane County. She opened fire in a room of students of mixed ages, killing one teenage student and one teacher. Six people were injured: one teacher and five students. Two of the victims were released from SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital on Monday. Two victims remain in critical condition.
A second grade teacher called 911 to report the shooting at 10:57 a.m. (The local police chief originally reported erroneously that a second grade student made the call.) Police officers responded to the scene immediately, with 17 ambulances and numerous fire trucks. Law enforcement officers found Rupnow bleeding profusely from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot at 11:05 a.m. Rupnow was pronounced dead from suicide in the ambulance en route to a local hospital. The school notified parents at 11:29 a.m.
Rebekah Smith, the mother of a fellow student, told The New York Times that she believed Rupnow had enrolled as a new student in the Christian school at the beginning of the year, in hopes it would help her turn her life around.
The school does not have a metal detector or dedicated, on-campus security personnel, but has security protocols and participated in a government program to harden soft targets against mass shootings. The school kept all doors locked, conducted lockdown and evacuation drills, and broadcast an announcement telling students, “Lockdown. This is not a drill.” Pastor Kellen Lewis, whose four children attend the school, said its safety measures “probably helped save some lives” and “gave my kids that very important sense of agency—that no matter what was going on, they knew what to do.”
Parents and community leaders continue searching for what drove the teenager to murder her fellow students, with many drawing a parallel between Rupnow’s shooting and last March’s mass shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School by Audrey “Aidan” Hale. The 28-year-old Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six people: three children in the third grade class and three adults.
“I don’t know whether [the shooter] was transgender or not,” said Shon Barnes, police chief in the famously liberal city of Madison, on Monday. “I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify. And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this.”
“At this time, identifying a motive is our top priority. But at this time, it appears that the motive was a combination of factors,” Barnes added Tuesday. Police have begun scouring social media profiles identified with Rupnow, saying she appears to have idolized school shooters and adopted the neo-Nazi views espoused by the Columbine shooters.
A purported manifesto may offer insight into the mixture of toxic traits that sent the 15-year-old over the edge.
Purported Manifesto Shows Divorce, Hatred of Humanity, Racism, and Support for ‘the Revolution’
One link on Rupnow’s social media accounts linked to a document purported to be her manifesto. A reporter for Reduxx said, after speaking with Rupnow’s boyfriend, she verified the authenticity of a six-page manifesto titled “War Against Humanity.” In it, Rupnow expresses her admiration for the Columbine High School shooters, as well as racial collectivist terrorist Patrick Crusius, and Brazilian school shooter Guilherme Taucci.
“Humanity is filth,” she wrote. “My parents are scum.” The document notes her parents divorced, although she claims it did not affect her at all.
“I’ve grown to hate people, and society,” she wrote. “[A]ll of you and the world have done is pick on me and tease me.” Rupnow wrote of “getting teased and pushed around” at school, where “I always got picked on.”
“My so-called family never included me because I was too weird for them. … My father will always make me stand out in the worst possible way,” stated the manifesto. “I hate humanity for forcing me into this little hole.”
The manifesto expresses profound isolation, which observers believe she filled with harmful online content. “[M]y parents admit they didn’t want me. … I’m always the one who sat out or sat in another room because they didn’t want to interact with me at any point in time, then I stayed in my room all day long and all night and after and before school as well,” she wrote.
“I planned on shooting myself a while ago, but I thought maybe its [sic] better for evolution” to engage in a mass shooting.
Rupnow engages in racially charged rhetoric, indicating another possible motive for her shooting.
“The human scum is color, and how people are raised,” she wrote. She also used a racial epithet for black people.
“The Revolution should be well,” she said. “I am part of the real thought and the real revolution.”
“We need revolution,” she insisted.
“The wolf hunts its prey. … There is nothing more than filth,” the document concluded.
Police are aware of the manifesto but have not officially said Rupnow authored it. “A document about this shooting is circulating at this time on social media, but we have not verified its authenticity,” said Barnes.
Democrats Promote Gun Control
Democrats seized on the tragedy to promote gun control legislation. “Jill and I are praying for all the victims today,” said President Joe Biden in a statement released Monday, before pivoting promptly to eroding Americans’ Second Amendment rights. “Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” Vice President Kamala Harris promoted a similar litany of gun restrictions Monday evening, including regulations of how law-abiding citizens store firearms at home.
None of those proposals would have apparently affected the Abundant Life Christian School shooting. “I got the weapons by lies and manipulation and my fathers [sic] stupidity,” wrote Rupnow in her alleged manifesto. “There would have been no way to change what has happened.”
A Family in Crisis
Family experts say family breakdown leads to loneliness, which can lead to resentment and online radicalization. “This seems to be a family in crisis, and in a way, it could be really anyone’s family. She wrote about feeling very alone, and it seemed that she spent a lot of time alone and a lot of time on the internet, and she had come to sort of idolize other school shooters,” said Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council. “I hope that the families that are listening to this show and families everywhere will spend the holidays with their kids, really engaging with them and looking honestly at your own family and saying: ‘Is there a child of mine who’s feeling left out, who’s feeling alone? And how much time are they in their room, behind closed doors? And do I need to just go in that room with them and just sit with them and be with them?’”
Rupnow, like other recent school shooters, is female—a trend Kilgannon mourns. “We have a pornified culture, and we also have an incredible glorification of violence in our culture. Both are a function of being in a culture of death rather than a culture of life,” Kilgannon told“Washington Watch,” guest hosted by former congressman Jody Hice, on Tuesday. “The result of that is going to be that it’s not just going to be the boys who will take these aggressive actions, but you’re going to see this behavior adopted by the girls. And that really, for me as a woman, is very, very chilling and very sad.”
As of this writing, the school remains closed. It posted the following notice on its website:
“In response to the devastating tragedy at Abundant Life Christian School (ALCS) on Monday, December 16, United Way of Dane County has established the Abundant Life Christian School Emergency and Recovery Fund. All funds raised will go directly to ALCS to support those impacted by the tragic events. To give, visit www.unitedwaydanecounty.org or text help4ALCS to 40403.”
Barnes said, “We have to come together and do everything we can to support our students to prevent news conferences like these from happening again and again and again.”
‘Christ Came to Us in a Family’
Hice found the alleged manifesto “heartbreaking,” but said her violence should serve as a wake-up call “for those parents who think that a Christian school is all they need.”
Kilgannon agreed that, while attending a Christian school gives children “a huge advantage,” it can “never replace the relationship that we’ll have with our own children and that our children will have with each other if we’re blessed with more than one child. Christ came to us in a family. He could have come as King of the universe, but He chose to come humbly into a family.”
“He adopted us into His family,” noted Hice.
“Of course, I want to offer every parent in this situation love, consolation, and grace—whether it’s the parents of the perpetrator or her victims,” Kilgannon told The Washington Stand exclusively. “We all have questions we need to ask, and answer, as parents. Were there any warning signs missed by the parents and the school? Are there drugs (prescription or not) involved that increased suicidal ideation over time? How is her therapist coping? Are we praying for all these issues? Are we loving our difficult people enough especially in these challenging times? The family is in crisis. At this holy time of year, let’s take whatever time we have and spend it with our loved ones, aspiring to love each other more and more each day.”
President-elect Donald Trump and Republican vice president-elect JD Vance. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance want House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans on Capitol Hill to play hardball with obstructionist Democrats in the ongoing government funding fight.
On Tuesday night, Congressional leadership released the text of the continuing resolution that will fund the government until March 14, 2025. With funding set to expire on Dec. 20, Congress needs to act in order to avert a government shutdown on the eve of a new Congress and the presidential transition of power.
Republicans are in a tough spot—especially Johnson. Though Republicans earned a mandate victory in November, Republicans won’t actually have their trifecta until January. A Democratic senate and Democratic president still have to sign off on any plan to fund the government.
Which helps explain why the continuing resolution runs 1,547 pages and includes over $100 billion in additional government spending. The bulk of the additional funding is $110.4 billion in disaster relief aid, ostensibly for damage caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The continuing resolution includes language committing the federal government to completely pay for the rebuilding of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed in March.
It also gives an additional $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers along with a one-year extension of the farm bill.
Hundreds of pages in the continuing resolution pertains to changes in health care policy. The package includes increased flexibility for telehealth under Medicare, pandemic prevention provisions, and a reauthorization of legislation aimed at ending the opioid crisis.
Furthermore, other pieces of the continuing resolution provide a pay raise for members of Congress, the transfer of authority to D.C. over RFK stadium, and hotel and ticket price transparency.
While Johnson said Tuesday that the House originally aimed at passing “a very simple, very clean” continuing resolution, a “couple of intervening things” resulted in a larger package than anticipated. Members of Johnson’s Republican conference are expressing their disdain for the package.
“It’s not a CR, which is a continuation of the budget. It’s turning into an omnibus,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told reporters.
“Why? Because freaking Christmas is right around the corner,” Roy added. “It’s the same dang thing every year. Legislate by crisis, legislate by calendar. Not legislate because it’s the right thing to do.”
Also frustrating Republicans on the Hill is the fact that many of the provisions that have turned the continuing resolution into a longer package are a grab-bag of Democratic priorities. Democrats have laid a trap, and House Republicans from top to bottom have walked right into it.
In this lame duck period, Democrats have no incentive to deal with Republicans in good faith. This is Democrat’s last chance to protect their priorities until at least 2027, and they’re taking full advantage of their current advantages. The first advantage for Democrats is the timing: Republicans are perceived as the party in power, but don’t yet fully have it. If the government shuts down, it appears that Republicans are unable to govern immediately after the American people chose the party to do so. The second advantage is structural: Democrats are always willing to spend more money than Republicans to keep the government open, and use their profligate spending as evidence that Republicans are to blame for any government shutdown.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested as much in an X post. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government. And hurt the working-class Americans they claim to support,” Jeffries claimed. “You break the bipartisan agreement; you own the consequences that follow.”
Johnson is trying to rebuff claims that the continuing resolution is an omnibus. “This is not an omnibus, OK? This is a small CR that we had to add things to that were out of our control,”Johnson claimed. “These are not man-made disasters. These are things that are—the federal government has an appropriate role to do.”
“So, I wish it weren’t necessary. I wish we hadn’t had record hurricanes in the fall. And I wish our farmers were not in a bind so much that creditors are not able to lend to them. We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits,” the speaker added.
Trump and Vance weighed in on the fight via a joint-statement Wednesday afternoon. The incoming president and vice president threw Congress a nasty curveball by demanding the debt ceiling, the suspension of which ends January 1, 2025, is also addressed in the continuing resolution.
A statement from President Donald J. Trump and Vice President-Elect JD Vance:
The most foolish and inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.…
“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” the statement read.
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025,” the statement continued. “The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”
Trump and Vance also acknowledged that Democrats have no incentive to act in good faith: “Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF. It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief.”
Previously, Republican House leaders agreed to give members 72 hours to review legislation before voting. Johnson has reaffirmed his commitment to the 72-hour rule, which would have the House voting on the continuing resolution on Friday. The backlash has been so intense, however, that Johnson is now being forced to consider scrapping the rule in case the continuing resolution fails and Congressional leaders are forced back to the drawing board. But Trump and Vance’s statement has made forcing a vote through the House a very risky play.
What better way to spread holiday cheer than by remixing Christmas classics to remind Leftists they’ve been “YUGE” losers lately? Below is a list of Trump-themed carols inspired by the controversies and catastrophes of the Left. Each title comes with a clever backstory to deliver laughs like stockings stuffed with coal.
1. “All I Want for Christmas Is the Popular Vote”
Mariah Carey’s classic gets a twist. This hit is a nod to Democrats’ obsession with the popular vote, as they cling to their moral victories like a kid who didn’t make the nice list clutches coal. Spoiler alert: It’s the Electoral College, not your feelings, that decides the winner.
2. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fraud”
Inspired by: “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” In honor of their cries about “election interference,” this parody croons about imaginary ballots, Dominion conspiracies (on both sides), and their inability to accept Trump’s comeback.
3. “Grandma Got Run Over by Pelosi”
Inspired by Pelosi’s recent Luxembourg tumble. Grandma might’ve survived her reindeer incident, but Pelosi didn’t quite stick the landing on her latest European escapade. This slapstick rewrite mocks how she’s literally falling for socialism.
4. “Do You Fear What I Fear?”
Inspired by the Leftist media meltdown. This reimagining of the holiday hymn focuses on CNN’s ratings nosedive and their fear of being surpassed by podcasters. Who knew Joe Rogan would be their Silent Night-mare?
5. “Trump the Halls”
Inspired by: “Deck the Halls” This version celebrates MAGA wins by telling Leftists to deck their halls… with tears and old Biden campaign signs.
6. “Hark! The Climate Activists Sing”
For Greta and Co., who think Christmas lights are destroying the planet. This anthem mocks the eco-warriors’ refusal to let people enjoy Christmas without a lecture about polar bears.
7. “Silent Joe, Holy Gaffe”
Inspired by Biden’s whispering speeches and constant flubs. This one’s a solemn ode to Biden’s best “silent” moments—like forgetting what century we’re in during his last press conference.
8. “Kwanzaa Nights”
Inspired by Kamala Harris’s hilarious holiday videos. This parody pokes fun at Kamala’s attempts to connect with her authentic Black identity by reciting Kwanzaa tales that sound about as believable as her debate performance.
9. “Oh Vax of Death”
Inspired by: “O Holy Night” This somber tune reflects the fallout from Covid misinformation, vaccine debates, and Fauci’s conflicting advice. Perfect for anyone who still has their booster appointment… in 2025.
10. “Frosty the Plumber”
Inspired by: “Frosty the Snowman” A nod to working-class Americans who saw through Leftist rhetoric. The tune celebrates real jobs, not soy latte activism.
11. “Baby, It’s Cold in Luxembourg”
Dedicated to Pelosi’s literal and metaphorical fall. This jazzy number jokes about Pelosi looking for taxpayer-funded wine while forgetting her footing—symbolic of her political career.
12. “Biden Got Run Over by His Teleprompter”
Inspired by Biden’s many battles with basic sentences. This is about Biden’s public speeches, where commas are the real enemy, and every teleprompter is a banana peel.
13. “Kamala’s Laughing All the Way”
Inspired by: “Jingle Bells” A parody poking fun at Kamala’s tendency to laugh at her own confusion during interviews.
14. “Jail the Halls with Hunter’s Deals”
Inspired by: Hunter Biden’s laptop saga. This jingle recounts the eyebrow-raising business deals, “art sales,” and laptop drama that made Hunter a household meme.
15. “O Little Town of San Francisco”
Inspired by the city’s descent under Leftist policies. This hymn describes the streets of San Francisco: a place where carolers need hazmat suits and reindeer avoid stepping in “human presents.”
16. “I’m Dreaming of a Non-Woke Christmas”
For anyone tired of cancel culture. This jazzy tune imagines a world where Rudolph isn’t labeled problematic for his “toxic red nose.”
17. “You’re a Mean One, Mister Fauci”
Inspired by: “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” This song skewers Dr. Fauci’s ever-changing advice, likening him to the Grinch who stole Christmas cheer.
18. “Last Christmas, I Got My Fourth Booster”
Inspired by: Wham!’s “Last Christmas” A hilarious take on those still following CDC guidelines like it’s a new religion.
19. “Rockin’ Around the Leftist Meltdown”
Inspired by their reaction to every conservative win. This upbeat tune celebrates watching Leftists freak out over Supreme Court decisions and electoral surprises.
20. “We Three Grifts”
Dedicated to the Bidens’ holiday corruption tour. This reimagining pokes fun at the Biden family’s shady dealings, showing they’re the gift that keeps on giving… to themselves.
The Backstory
Legend has it these songs were born during a MAGA Christmas party where someone spiked the eggnog with winning. The titles practically wrote themselves as attendees reflected on 2023: a year where America got a stocking full of Leftist tears and Trump got another political miracle.
Merry MAGA Christmas, and don’t forget to keep triggering Leftists one carol at a time!
After the election, liberal pundits and media have attempted to rally the public in a shift from X to Bluesky, a smaller site that is viewed as a safe space for the left. I have been critical of the move as a retreat deeper into the liberal echo chamber after an election that showed how out-of-touch many of these writers were with the majority of voters. They would be better served engaging with a broader swath of public opinion. Today, one of the top Bluesky officials embraced Canadian-style speech controls and rejected more robust views of free speech as the model for the site. Bluesky has long been criticized as a site built on the concept of “safe spaces” in higher education for those triggered by opposing views. Many of those leaving Twitter long for the “good ole days” of when all social media platforms engaged in extensive censorship to exclude or marginalize opposing voices. This week, Aaron Rodericks, the head of trust and safety at Bluesky, confirmed the worst fears of the site. Bluesky has been hammered with complaints from conservatives and libertarians that they have been subject to not only death threats on the site but also blocked from posting. Some have demanded even more aggressive measures to block or suppress conservative or libertarian views deemed threatening or demeaning. Liberal pundits have heralded the site as allowing them to “breathe again” without hearing the type of opposing views allowed on X.
Rodericks espoused the type of anti-free speech rationalizations that are addressed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” He insisted that there are alternative views of free speech than the type of “absolutism” supported by figures like myself.
Rodericks juxtaposed what he called “free speech absolutism” against the more enlightened Canadian model, adding, “I think it just comes down to philosophies of free speech.”
He explained:
“Being Canadian shapes a lot of my perspective. There’s enough of the American perspective in the world on a day-to-day basis. For example, in the Canadian constitution… you have rights and freedoms, but they’re not unequivocal.”
It was a chilling reference for many in the free speech community since free speech is in a free fall in Canada. As we have previously discussed, there has been a steady criminalization of speech, including even jokes and religious speech, in Canada. The country has eviscerated the right to free speech and association.
Yet, that is apparently the model for Bluesky. Rodericks repeats the doublespeak of the anti-free speech movement in claiming that he just wants to create a space where all are welcomed but excluding those who are not welcomed:
“I’m glad that [critics] consider it a safe space and ideally it can be a safe space for them as well. The whole point of Bluesky is for it to be safe and welcoming to all users. I think the issue is some people are defining their identity by opposition to others and how well they can harass others and deny their existence. Bluesky may not be the right place for them.”
Not surprisingly, Rodericks used to work at trust and safety for Twitter before he was fired by Elon Musk. He has also sued Musk over a tweet. At issue is Musk’s response to the criticism of his firing Rodericks’s team by noting, “Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone.” That would seem clearly protected opinion under the First Amendment, but, of course, for the former censors of Twitter, it should not be allowed.
We have previously discussed the censorship standards at Twitter. For example, former Twitter executive Anika Collier Navaroli testified on what she repeatedly called the “nuanced” standard used by her and her staff on censorship. Toward the end of the hearing, she was asked about that standard by Rep. Melanie Ann Stansbury (D., NM). Her answer captured precisely why Twitter’s censorship system proved a nightmare for free expression.
Navaroli then testified how she felt that there should have been much more censorship and how she fought with the company to remove more material that she and her staff considered “dog whistles” and “coded” messaging. She said that they balanced free speech against safety and explained that they sought a different approach:
“Instead of asking just free speech versus safety to say free speech for whom and public safety for whom. So whose free expression are we protecting at the expense of whose safety and whose safety are we willing to allow to go the winds so that people can speak freely.”
Rep. Stansbury responded by saying “Exactly.”
The statement was reminiscent of that of former CEO Parag Agrawal. After taking over as CEO, Agrawal pledged to regulate content as “reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation.” Agrawal said the company would “focus less on thinking about free speech” because “speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”
The same standard seems to be at play at Bluesky as controversial figures like Rodericks decide which views are deemed harassing or amount to a denial of the existence of others. They will be shown, Canadian style, why “Bluesky may not be the right place for them.”
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Obamacare has destroyed millions of Americans’ healthcare, and now many want to blame and demonize insurance companies for the problems Obamacare has caused across America to the point of justifying the murder of their CEOs.
Piers Morgan Slams Beaming Former WaPo Hack Taylor Lorenz For Saying She Felt ‘Joy’ Over Murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO (Video)
By Margaret Flavin – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 5, 2024
Former WaPo reporter and notorious crybully Taylor Lorenz continues to cheer the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. Thompson, 50, was shot in the chest Wednesday morning outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan and later pronounced dead at the Mt. Sinai Hospital. Authorities in New York arrested former Ivy League student Luigi Mangione on Monday following a nationwide manhunt in the wake of Thompson’s murder. Following this gruesome murder, according to Disclose TV, Lorenz posted “we want these executives dead” on BlueSky social media… 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.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney is facing calls from GOP legislators that the FBI investigate her for “potential criminal witness tampering” related to her former role on the Jan. 6 House Select Committee, a report released Tuesday by the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight chairman, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., details.
“Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge,” the report, which was provided to Fox Digital, found.
The Jan. 6 committee was founded in July 2021 to investigate the breach of the U.S. Capitol earlier that year by supporters of Trump ahead of President Biden officially taking office on Jan. 20. The Jan. 6 committee’s investigation was carried out when Democrats held control of the House.
The committee concluded its 18-month investigation last year, when Republicans regained control of the House and sent referrals to the Justice Department recommending Trump be criminally prosecuted for his involvement in the lead-up to supporters breaching the Capitol. The committee was composed of seven Democrats and two Republican lawmakers, Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both of whom are no longer in office.
Loudermilk’s subcommittee was tapped to investigate the J6 committee and its findings in January 2023.
Rep. Liz Cheney during her primary election night party in Jackson, Wyoming, Aug. 16, 2022. (Reuters/David Stubbs)
The House Republicans’ report Tuesday specifically took issue with Cheney’s alleged “direct intervention” with Hutchinson, who was considered the star witness of the investigation, including allegedly encouraging Hutchinson to hire “Select Committee-friendly attorneys to represent her,” as opposed to keeping her original legal representation.
Hutchinson, who worked as an aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had claimed before the select committee that on Jan. 6, 2021, she was told Trump allegedly became “irate” and attempted to join supporters at the Capitol ahead of them breaching the government building. The incident reportedly unfolded after Trump delivered a speech at the Ellipse, which is a park just south of the White House fence.
Hutchinson alleged she was told Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel of a Secret Service SUV before the driver reportedly told Trump to remove his hand and that they were headed to the White House, not the Capitol. Hutchinson’s account was directly refuted by Anthony Ornato, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations under Trump after decades in the Secret Service.
Less than two weeks after firing her original attorney and hiring “the attorneys Representative Cheney suggested – Hutchinson sat for her fourth transcribed interview with the Select Committee under unusual circumstances,” the report found.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk chairs a House Administration Committee Subcommittee on Oversight hearing, July 19, 2023. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images )
“Prior to this interview, nearly every interview the Select Committee conducted included approximately a dozen people – including committee staff members, committee counsel, often a Member of the Select Committee, the interviewee, and the interviewee’s legal representation. Most of the interviews were done in large conference rooms or over zoom, allowing space for all participants. Hutchinson’s fourth transcribed interview, however, was vastly different. It consisted of only four people: Representative Cheney, one attorney from the Select Committee, Hutchinson, and Hutchinson’s new counsel. Additionally, instead of the Select Committee conducting the interview in a conference room or virtually, Representative Cheney used her private hideaway inside of the United States Capitol Building,” the report states.
The House Republican report continued that Hutchinson’s testimony to the Jan. 6 committee was crucial, arguing “it is unlikely the Select Committee could make its assertions about President Trump’s mood, attitude, and alleged culpability in the events of January 6” without her comments.
“Hutchinson is mentioned by name in the Select Committee’s Final Report no fewer than 185 times. Inexplicably, the Select Committee discredited the multitude of legitimate witnesses who, under oath, repeatedly refuted Hutchinson’s testimony. These legitimate witnesses include senior government officials and federal agents.”
Cheney, in comments provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday afternoon, defended her former committee’s investigation, while arguing Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence.”
“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who [he] really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave,” Cheney said to Fox News Digital.
“The January 6th Committee’s hearings and report featured scores of Republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration. All of this testimony was painstakingly set out in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800 page report. Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did. Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”
Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testifies before the House Jan. 6 Committee on June 28, 2022, as Rep. Liz Cheney questions her. (Fox News)
The Democratic former chair of the committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, also slammed Loudermilk’s report in a comment to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
“Representative Loudermilk has failed to discredit the work of the January 6th Select Committee. His so-called ‘report’ is filled with baseless, conclusory allegations rather than facts. That’s because there’s no escaping the reality that Donald Trump bears the responsibility for the deadly January 6th attack no matter how much Mr. Loudermilk would love to rewrite history for his political purposes,” he said.
The president-elect railed in an interview on NBC earlier this month that Cheney, Thompson and others on the J6 committee “deleted and destroyed” evidence related to the investigation and “should go to jail.”
“Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps,” he said in the interview. “They deleted and destroyed all evidence.”
“And Cheney was behind it. And so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” he continued. “For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail.”
President-elect Trump meets with Prince William at the Embassy of the United Kingdom’s Residence on Dec. 7, 2024, in Paris. (Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
Trump’s claims of the committee allegedly “deleting” evidence was supported by a previous report released by Loudermilk earlier this year claiming the select committee “deleted” records and hired “Hollywood producers” to promote a political narrative while investigating Jan. 6.
The report released Tuesday found that the Jan. 6 committee failed to archive “as many as 900 interview summaries or transcripts,” despite a process for committee chairs to properly archive data, including interviews.
Liz Cheney lost support from many Republicans for her role in the House Jan. 6 Select Committee investigation. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
“As part of its investigation, the Subcommittee learned that the Select Committee failed to archive or provide the Subcommittee with any of its video recordings of witness interviews, as many as 900 interview summaries or transcripts, more than one terabyte of digital data. Concerningly, of the documents that were archived, the Select Committee delivered more than 100 encrypted, password protected documents and never provided the passwords. It is unclear why the Select Committee chose only those documents to be shielded by password,” the report found.
The Jan. 6 committee, the report found, failed to archive more than “one terabyte of digital data” after Thompson reported archiving more than four terabytes of data in a July 2022 letter. The subcommittee ultimately received less than three terabytes of digital data.
“One terabyte of data is equivalent to 6.5 million document pages such as PDFs or office files, 500 hours of high definition video, or 250,000 photos,” the report noted.
Thompson previously denied the claims of deleting evidence in a July 2023 letter to Loudermilk, detailing that the committee had called on the federal government regarding the “proper archiving of such sensitive material to protect witnesses’ safety, national security, and to safeguard law enforcement operations.”
Thompson provided three “facts” in response to the report Tuesday in comment to Fox Digital.
“Here are the facts: (1) The Select Committee was properly constituted, as every court that heard challenges found. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro would not have gone to prison for contempt of Congress had there been a legitimate issue. Not even the Republican-controlled Supreme Court stayed their sentences, despite Mr. Loudermilk’s entreaties. (2) The Select Committee followed all House Rules, and it did not withhold or destroy any record that was required to be archived. Moreover, every record the Select Committee had was turned over to the Department of Justice, which was in turn provided to the former President’s defense team through the discovery process during his criminal proceedings. Most of those records are publicly available through the Government Publishing Office’s online repository,” he said.
“(3) The Members of the Select Committee and the witnesses who came before us – who were mainly Republicans from the Trump administration – acted honorably and out of patriotic duty to the Constitution. The Select Committee’s Final Report was not based on any single witness’s testimony, and it painted a damning picture of the former President’s dereliction of duty. That work stands on its own.”
Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with former Rep. Liz Cheney in Malvern, Pennsylvania, Oct. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Thompson added that Loudermilk failed to “to find a single valid problem with the Select Committee’s work,” that reflects what he said is an “inescapable conclusion.”
“Donald Trump orchestrated a multi-part conspiracy that attempted to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election by summoning a mob to Washington to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history,” he said.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tapped Loudermilk to investigate both the Jan. 6 incident itself and the Jan. 6 House Select Committee’s report on the Capitol breach in January 2023.
“Over the past twenty-four months of this investigation, my subcommittee staff have faced incredible obstacles in pursuit of the truth; missing and deleted documents, hidden evidence, unaccounted for video footage, and uncooperative bureaucrats. At one point, the work of the subcommittee was completely halted due to the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, and subsequently faced internal efforts to derail the investigation. However, our team persevered through the delays; and, when Mike Johnson took the gavel as Speaker of the House, he allocated even more resources to our investigation and committed to more transparency for the American people,” Loudermilk wrote in a letter to colleagues accompanying the report.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is taking flak from his own conference over his 11th-hour rush to secure another continuing resolution to fund the government, according to multiple reports. With the deadline of midnight Friday to pass a CR to keep the government open through March 14 and Johnson’s commitment to a 72-hour rule for lawmakers to review the legislation, one lawmaker called it a “dumpster fire” while another called it having to eat a “crap sandwich,” The Hill reported.
Worse for conservative lawmakers, included in the CR is $100.4 billion in disaster aid and another $10 billion in economic assistance for farmers, turning the short-term funding bill into an omnibus, according to sources.
“It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., told reporters. “This is what Washington, D.C., has done. This is why I ran for Congress, to try to stop this. And sadly, this is happening again.”
Added Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas: “We get this negotiated crap, and we’re forced to eat this crap sandwich. Why? Because freaking Christmas is right around the corner. It’s the same dang thing every year. Legislate by crisis, legislate by calendar. Not legislate because it’s the right thing to do.”
Johnson defended the add-ons at a Tuesday press conference.
“This is a small CR that we had to add things to that were out of our control. We’ve got man-made disasters,” Johnson said. “I wish it weren’t necessary. I wish we hadn’t had record hurricanes in the fall. And I wish our farmers were not in a bind so much that creditors are not able to lend to them.”
Adding to the angst is that as of Tuesday morning, text of the CR hadn’t been published, pushing the 72-hour window well into Friday. Many lawmakers were planning to leave Washington, D.C., on Thursday for Christmas recess.
“Same crap we already knew,” one House Republican told the Washington Examiner. “No text. No timeline.”
Another Republican, who was in Johnson’s closed-door conference meeting Tuesday morning, told the Examiner that despite Johnson’s pledge to give lawmakers the full 72-hour window for review, he “clearly is OK if we don’t.”
“I think that he can do better,” Burlison said of Johnson, according to The Hill. “He can communicate better. The fact that we haven’t seen the language today and we’re supposed to vote on it this week is unacceptable.”
Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that President Joe Biden is seriously considering preemptive pardons for political allies. In granting what I have called “White Knight pardons,” Biden would achieve more of a political than legal purpose. Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy, end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries. Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.
Here is the column:
There are growing indications that President Joe Biden is about to fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting “prospective” or “preemptive” pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants “success [to be] my revenge,” Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.
While there is little threat of any viable prosecution of figures like the members of the January 6th Committee, the use of “White Knight pardons” offers obvious political benefits. After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests.
The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of preemptive pardons averted it. It is enough to preserve the narrative in the face of a stable constitutional system . Indeed, Biden’s pardon list has replaced the usual Inauguration Ball lists as the “must-have” item this year. Pardon envy is sweeping over the Beltway as politicians and pundits push to be included on the list of presumptive Trump enemies.
The political stunt will come at a cost. Preemptive pardons could become the norm as presidents pardon whole categories of allies and even themselves to foreclose federal prosecutions. It can quickly become the norm in what I recently wrote about as our “age of rage.”
It will give presidents cover to wipe away any threat of prosecution for friends, donors, and associates. This can include self-pardons issued as implied condemnations of their political opponents. It could easily become the final act of every president to pardon himself and all of the members of his Administration. We would then have an effective immunity rule for outgoing parties in American politics.
Ironically, there is even less need for such preemptive pardons after the Supreme Court recognized that presidents are immune for many decisions made during their presidencies. Likewise, members have robust constitutional protections for their work under Article I, as do journalists and pundits under the Constitution’s First Amendment.
We have gone over two centuries without such blanket immunity. In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss our periods of violent political strife and widespread arrests. Thomas Jefferson referred to John Adams’s Federalist government as “the reign of the witches.” Yet even presidents in those poisonous times did not do what Joe Biden is now contemplating.
Moreover, presidential pardons have a checkered history, including presidents pardoning family members or political donors. Bill Clinton did both. Not surprisingly, Clinton last week attempted to add his own wife’s name to the sought-after Biden pardon list. He added, however, “I don’t think I should be giving public advice on the pardon power…It’s a very personal thing.”
That is precisely the point. The power was not created to be used for “very personal things,” like pardoning your half-brother and a fugitive Democratic donor on your last day in office. Yet, despite that history, no president has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading.
We have a constitutional system that allows for overlapping protections of individuals from abusive prosecutions and convictions. It does not always work as fast as we would want, but it has sustained the oldest and most stable constitutional system in history. These figures would prefer to fundamentally change the use of the pardon power to maintain an apocalyptic narrative that was clearly rejected by the public in this election. If you cannot prove the existence of the widely touted Trump enemies list, a Biden pardon list is the next best thing.
After years of lying to the American people about the influence-peddling scandal and promising not to consider a pardon for his son, Biden would end his legacy with the ultimate dishonesty: converting pardons into virtual party favors.
In doing so, he has ironically lowered the standard and expectations for his successors. Joe Biden has become the president that Richard Nixon only imagined. He would establish with utter clarity that this power is not presidential, but personal and political . . . and many in the Beltway are waiting to give him a standing ovation.
The shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, immediately prompted renewed calls for gun control from President Joe Biden and others. As I have previously written, these calls often appear entirely disconnected from the actual crime or the constitutional protections afforded gun owners, including President Biden demanding a ban on assault weapons after a shooting with a handgun.
President Biden’s call for greater background checks and enforcement was a bit incongruous after he pardoned his own son on gun charges. More importantly, the Wisconsin case only highlighted why these standard demands for gun control would not have impacted that case.
This was a juvenile who is believed to have used a 9mm handgun in the attack. Natalie Rupnow, 15, was not supposed to have a gun and would not have gone through background checks. While both Biden and Kamala Harris have raised limiting or banning the popular 9mm, Harris admits that she is one of millions with the weapon and it would not be subject to any of these proposals.
The president once again denounced the availability of what he collectively calls “assault weapons,” a common reference to such popular models as the AR-15. Efforts to ban this model have already failed in the courts on constitutional grounds, though litigation is continuing on that issue.
In 2008, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, recognizing the Second Amendment as encompassing an individual right to bear arms. The Supreme Court further strengthened the right in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen.
That is why laws to ban or curtail sales of the AR-15 run into constitutional barriers. Even the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down a California ban on adults under 21 purchasing semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15.
These calls for greater gun controls remain either factually ambiguous or legally dubious. For example, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe declared after the Wisconsin shooting that it is time to “change the context of gun ownership.” While admitting that he did not know all of the facts, McCabe said:
We’re [going] nowhere because it keeps happening. We know it’s going to happen again. It’s happening today. It’s going to happen again in the near future. I can guarantee you that and every time it happens, we do just about nothing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can’t do. We could do things. We could — we could support and enact legislation that changes the — the — the context of gun ownership in this country and emphasizes gun safety and responsibility with the firearms that you own and keeping them out of the hands of children and doing — and really vigorous, consistent background checks across the country. We could stop selling people — stop — you — eliminate the ability to purchase guns without a background check.
It is unclear what “changing the context” means, particularly when the context is first and foremost constitutional.
Likewise, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) called for his House colleagues to “stand up to gun manufacturers” but stopped short of explaining what that would actually mean:
Thoughts and prayers without action means more school shootings, more dead kids.
More ACTION is needed by our elected officials.
And more BACKBONE to stand up to gun manufacturers.
This is uniquely a United States problem that doesn't have to happen.
Pocan has previously called for “common sense” laws without tackling the more difficult question of how to produce the sweeping changes given the narrow scope of constitutional limits for an individual right.
Wisconsin has robust gun control laws that did not prevent this shooting because Rupnow was not subject to the background checks and other regulations. She was not supposed to have the weapon and 9mm is not one of the guns that Democrats are calling to ban.
None of this means that people of good faith should not work on new initiatives and measures to combat gun violence. However, politicians like President Biden have misled the public for years about the narrow range of constitutional options for gun control legislation. The suggestion is that “this did not have to happen” despite the fact that none of these proposals would have stopped this from happening.
In a tragedy of this magnitude, our leaders have a duty, first and foremost, of honesty in speaking with the public.
Wisconsin’s capital city is in shock after a 15-year-old girl pulled out a 9mm pistol Monday morning and shot up her study hall, killing a teacher and a fellow student at the Christian school she attended before turning the weapon on herself and ending her life, Madison Police confirmed.
Natalie Rupnow injured six others, including two students with life-threatening wounds and a teacher and three other students who suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the attack on Madison’s Abundant Life Christian School, according to police.
While Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes wasn’t commenting on motive Monday evening, an unidentified law enforcement source told the Associated Press that the shooter “had been dealing with problems and expressed some of those in writings,” CNN reported. There were reports that Rupnow, who police say liked to go by “Samantha,” had penned a manifesto, although Barnes said police had yet to verify the authenticity of the document. “The good news,” the chief said, is that Madison police have shared the information with its partners at the FBI.
There’s no doubt the suspected killer was disturbed, as evidenced by her violent outburst at the K-12 private school with a mission “to develop students who are committed disciples of Jesus Christ through an excellent, comprehensive, Biblically-integrated educational program.”
She planned the attack in advance, a “law enforcement official familiar with the investigation” told CNN.
‘I Don’t Think That’s Important’
There was speculation Monday that the shooter was transgender, although other sources disputed the claim. Some said she had an “online obsession with school shooters.”
Barnes insisted that he doesn’t care whether Rupnow was transgender, as some reports indicated. It’s not important, he said, when asked by a leftist reporter about “misinformation” online. The Madison journalist effectively wagged her finger at parental rights group for claiming the shooter was transgender, “which is a reaction that we see across the country linked with mass shootings to claim that trans people are dangerous.”
Barnes, a far-left police chief in one of the most LGBTQ agenda-pushing cities in America, said he wished people would “leave their own personal biases out of this.”
“I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not and quite frankly I don’t think that’s even important. I don’t think that’s important at all,” the chief told reporters at an evening press conference. “I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify …”
Barnes subsequently acknowledged that Rupnow’s gender identity “is something that may come out later.”
While investigators continue to search for answers, the transgender question could prove to be very important. Just ask the families at Nashville’s Covenant School.
‘It is Vitally Important’
In March 2023, a 28-year-old woman who identified as a transgender man stormed into the private Christian elementary school and murdered three third-graders and three staff members before Metro Nashville Police officers fatally shot the killer.
Michael Patrick Leahy, CEO and editor-in-chief of Star News Digital Media, has been seeking the release of the Covenant killer’s manifesto for a year and a half. He’s a plaintiff in a lawsuit demanding the police department turn over the shooter’s voluminous writings. Leahy’s flagship publication, the Tennessee Star, has obtained and published dozens of pages of the writings, screeds that offer a glimpse into the twisted mind of a mass shooter.
“We clearly have a huge mental health problem with young people in America today,” Leahy told The Federalist Monday night in a phone interview. “It is very clear that the killer in Nashville suffered severe mental health problems and had in fact been treated for psychiatric difficulties for 22 years. Now, the reports indicate that a 15-year-old girl is responsible for the heinous murders today at a Christian school in Madison, Wis. She purportedly left behind a manifesto, according to some sources.”
“It is vitally important that these documents left behind by young mass murderers be released to the public so that we can understand the deep problems of mental illness that drove them to these actions, so that we can prevent such terrible crimes in the future,” Leahy added.
As the Tennessee Star has reported, the FBI hastily acts to thwart the release of such documents. In the Covenant killer case, the federal agency sent a memo to the Nashville PD “strongly” discouraging the disclosure of so-called “legacy tokens” left behind by mass shooters. The memo was sent just two days after Star News Digital Media filed a federal lawsuit against the FBI demanding the agency release the trans killer’s writings. As former national political editor at the Star News Network, I, too, am a plaintiff in that lawsuit, plodding in federal court for the better part of two years.
The memo explains that mass shooters “often leave behind items [memory tokens] to claim credit for the attack and/or articulate the motivation behind it.” The 90 pages the Tennessee Star published include a wealth of insight from a severely mentally ill 28-year-old woman who identified as a male named Aidan.
As the Star reported, the FBI recommended withholding such items from the public, citing concerns about “conspiracy theories,” copycat attacks, and advancing “the false narrative that the majority of attackers are mentally ill.”
“The FBI also raised the ‘existing precedent’ for the destruction of ‘legacy tokens,’ noting ‘the decision to destroy the ‘Basement Tapes’ produced by the offenders of the Columbine High School attack,’” the publication reported.
Leahy notes the memo also argues that releasing manifestos and other legacy tokens could have negative impacts on “certain vulnerable communities.” The Biden administration has joined LGBT activists in painting the trans population as under the constant threat of violence.
Madison’s police chief on Monday repeatedly thanked the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for their quick response and assistance at the Christian school.
“In this instance it appears to me the FBI may have done the same thing in Madison that they did in Nashville in 2023, that is swoop in and take control of information and refuse to release it,” Leahy said.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden seems to be pardoning criminals, embezzlers, and child porn criminals and is set to preemptively pardon half of Washington, DC. for crimes against Trump. So it’s not a far stretch for him to pardon drones that he says he knows nothing about.
White House Declares Mysterious Drones “Legally and Lawfully Operated” — Pentagon Says These are Not Military Drones
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 16, 2024
The White House declared on Monday that drones spotted over the northeastern United States are operating “legally and lawfully.” This statement comes amidst growing public concern and demands for transparency, fueled by President-elect Donald Trump’s call for answers regarding what he termed “an alarming mystery.” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby attempted to downplay the situation, attributing the sightings to “commercial, hobbyist, or law enforcement drones, all operating legally and lawfully,” while noting that some reports may have been misidentified aircraft or… 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.
Leftism has metastasized into every facet of our society, leaving in its wake a trail of destruction, hypocrisy, and, above all, irony.
A Joe Biden presidency stands as Exhibit A, a perfect storm of incompetence and corruption. And if you think it couldn’t get worse, consider what the looming specter of a Kamala Harris presidency did. The mere thought shook America’s foundations so hard that the higher voter turnout completely defied conventional wisdom. But now, as Donald Trump ushers common sense back into the political arena, we’re starting to see just how far Leftism has swung the pendulum — and how catastrophic its consequences have been.
Justice Turned Upside Down
Take the case of Daniel Penny. A decorated Marine who acted to protect fellow subway passengers in New York City went trial for it. The coroner’s report confirmed that Penny’s actions didn’t kill the individual; he merely incapacitated him. Yet Penny faced prison because he’s white, and the perpetrator was black. Thank God he was exonerated. Penny had to fight for his life. Contrast this with a Black man in a similar case who was spared conviction because the judge ruled his troubled background excused his actions. Switch the races in Penny’s case, and it wouldn’t have made the evening news.
Then there’s Derek Chauvin, the police officer vilified and convicted in the George Floyd case. The coroner’s report revealed Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose and his own refusal to comply with officers. But none of that mattered in the court of public opinion, shaped by Leftist narratives. Chauvin became a sacrificial lamb to appease the woke mob.
This warped sense of justice isn’t limited to law enforcement. A pedestrian in NYC was recently stabbed to death by a 13-year-old migrant after refusing to take a photo. The killer shouldn’t even have been in the country. But thanks to Leftist policies, America has become a sanctuary for lawlessness.
The Generation of Freaks
Perhaps the most egregious legacy of Leftism is the cultural havoc it’s wreaked on an entire generation. We now have kids who don’t know their gender and are utterly confused about sexuality — thanks to the normalization of extreme ideologies. Instead, we teach them of a gender unicorn as a choice pre-K students make.
This isn’t progress; it’s chaos. Schools push gender ideology onto children not even old enough to read. Drag queens are heralded as role models while parents who question this madness are branded as bigots. We’ve gone from celebrating achievement to applauding confusion.
In Leftist America, mediocrity and failures aren’t just tolerated — they’re rewarded. Incompetent leaders are celebrated as visionaries. Think of how Kamala Harris is hailed as a trailblazer despite her record of gaffes and failure. Or how bureaucrats and academics rake in awards and millions for getting everything wrong.
Meanwhile, true grit and perseverance are derided. J.D. Vance, who rose above poverty and a drug-addicted mother, is labeled “privileged” because of his race. Yet Hunter Biden, the 54-year-old lawyer born into unimaginable privilege, is painted as a hapless victim of circumstance.
The Left’s oppression Olympics have turned logic on its head. A rich white man like Hunter Biden can now identify as an oppressed trans-Guatemalan midget quadriplegic on the victim scale.
Crime Pays
Leftism’s impact on public safety is equally damning. Crime is rampant, yet cities defund the police and vilify those who uphold the law. Criminals are coddled while law-abiding citizens are left to fend for themselves. Consider the irony: a Marine who acted heroically sat in prison, while violent offenders roamed free thanks to progressive district attorneys.
The Bigger Picture
Leftism has infiltrated every aspect of life, from education to entertainment to governance. It celebrates weakness, sows division, and punishes those who dare to push back. Yet, even as its failures mount, Leftists double down on their destructive agenda.
But there’s hope. Americans are waking up. DEI programs are being dismantled. Woke corporations are walking back misguided policies. And common sense, embodied by Trump and the movement he represents, is making a comeback.
Leftism is a cancer, but it’s one we can defeat. The path forward isn’t easy, but it’s clear: reject the
lies, embrace the truth, and hold firm to the principles that made America great. Let the Left drown in the irony of its own hypocrisy, while we rebuild a nation grounded in reality.
And if nothing else, let’s take solace in one undeniable fact: every morning, the Left wakes up knowing that Trump is coming back. For them, that’s the ultimate nightmare — and for us, it’s the ultimate hope.
At least two people were killed, and six others were injured in a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday, with police saying the suspected shooter was found dead at the scene. During an update Monday afternoon, Madison Police Chief Shon Barnes said a teacher and a teen student were killed. Barnes added that two students are also in critical condition, with life-threatening injuries.
A handgun was used by the shooter and the shooting was confined to one space, Barnes said. A motive for the shooting has yet to be determined.
Emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, where multiple injuries were reported following a shooting on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)
“Every child, every person in that building is a victim and will be a victim forever. We need to figure out and try to piece together what exactly happened,” Barnes said.
Barnes added that the shooter’s family was cooperating with police.
He said he did not believe that the school, which serves 200 students according to the school’s website, had a resource officer.
Police say that they train for active shooter situations “almost quarterly,” and that they had most recently conducted the training roughly two weeks ago.
At roughly 10:57 am local time, police responded to reports of an active shooter at the Abundant Life Christian School. They identified a “juvenile” deceased at the scene who they believe was responsible for the shooting. They are encouraging local residents to avoid the area.
Emergency vehicles are staged outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., where multiple injuries were reported following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
Barnes said officers did not fire their weapons when responding to the scene.
“This is something you prepare for, but that you hope you never have to do,” a police spokesman told reporters. “Today is a sad, sad day.”
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers ordered the flags of the United States and the state of Wisconsin to half-staff across the state immediately until sunset on Sun., Dec. 22, 2024
“There are no words to describe the devastation and heartbreak we feel today after the school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison this morning,” Evers said in a statement.
“As a father, a grandfather, and as governor, it is unthinkable that a kid or an educator might wake up and go to school one morning and never come home. This should never happen, and I will never accept this as a foregone reality or stop working to change it.”
My full statement on the school shooting at Abundant Life Christian School today in Madison.
I'm directing flags across the state to be immediately lowered to half-staff as we honor those whose lives were senselessly taken in this tragedy. pic.twitter.com/HYIjVYcqaF
Police said this remains an active and ongoing investigation and more information will be released as it is available.
“We currently need people to avoid the area,” police added.
Students have been fully evacuated from the school, and police have conducted multiple clears of the building. Barnes said they were conducting a third check using bomb-sniffing dogs “just in case.”
Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., where multiple injuries and deaths were reported following a shooting, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (Google Maps)
Police say they set up a unification center for students and parents immediately following the shooting.
The school also acknowledged the shooting in a post on Facebook, requesting prayers from the community.
“Prayers Requested! Today, we had an active shooter incident at ALCS. We are in the midst of following up. We will share information as we are able. Please pray for our Challenger Family,” the school wrote.
Emergency vehicles are parked outside the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, where multiple injuries were reported following a shooting on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Scott Bauer)
A former student of the school, Aaron Nienaber, told Fox News Digital that he attended high school at Abundant Life Christian from 2000 to 2004 and was shocked and saddened to see this happen at a place he cherished.
“It’s very sad to see this happening at a place where I have so many fond memories with the students and faculty and especially playing on the sports teams. This is not something that anyone would have ever seen coming at this small tight-knit school and community,” Nienaber said.
The FBI’s Milwaukee bureau says it has deployed agents to the scene to assist in investigating.
The White House has also confirmed that President Biden has been briefed on the shooting.
Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to Anders.Hagstrom@Fox.com, or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.
Below is my column on Fox.com on the settlement of ABC News of the defamation case brought by President-elect Donald Trump. The settlement has enflamed many on the left as well as reportedly some at ABC News. However, ABC likely saw this as a no-win situation as it faced potentially embarrassing depositions.
Added by WhatDidYouSay.org
Here is the column:
The late Richard J. Daley famously declared that “we as Democrats have no apologies to make to anyone.”
That doctrine seems still to be alive and well with many in the party when it comes to President-elect Donald Trump. After ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos apologized to Trump this week to settle a defamation lawsuit, many Democrats were apoplectic.
Marc Elias, the controversial lawyer involved in the funding of the infamous Steele dossier by the Clinton campaign, denounced ABC News for bending a knee to Trump. He then trolled for contributions for his own organization as “unapologetically pro-democracy.”
Of course, ABC was not apologizing for advancing democracy but for alleged defamation. The network and the anchor expressed “regret” for stating that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a New York civil case. (The jury found that Trump had sexually abused and defamed E. J. Carroll). While Trump was never convicted of rape, Stephanopoulos repeated the claim ten times in his interview with Re. Nancy Mace, (R., S.C.).
What made the settlement interesting is that ABC was previously relying on the statements of the judge in the New York case, Judge Lewis Kaplan, who declared that the charge of rape was “substantially true…as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”
Stephanopoulos played up his defiance of Trump with CBS’s late-night host Stephen Colbert. To the delight of Colbert, who regularly attacked Trump on his show and openly supported both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Stephanopoulos proclaimed that he wouldn’t be “cowed out of doing my job because of a threat.” He added, “Trump sued me because I used the word ‘rape,’ even though a judge said that’s in fact what did happen. We filed a motion to dismiss.”
So what happened?
Well, two things and both are related to the timing of the settlement.
First, the settlement came just before ABC and Stephanopoulos were to be called for depositions, as ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisette M. Reid. That discovery was likely to prove more embarrassing for the network than it would Trump and could have revealed internal messages on the controversy.
The danger is on full display in another courtroom where CNN has been losing critical motions in a defamation case where punitive damages could result. Anchor Jake Tapper and CNN are being sued by Navy veteran Zachary Young after falsely suggesting that he and his organization were exploiting desperate Afghan refugees. Discovery uncovered malicious and unprofessional emails from producers promising to “nail” Young and making the segment his “funeral.” Disney was not eager to put its matinee personality, Stephanopoulos, through a similar meat grinder.
Second, the settlement occurred after an election in which Trump won the trifecta of the White House, Congress, and the popular vote.
Like most media, ABC was known for its unrelenting attacks on Trump and favorable coverage toward his opponents. The network’s iconic show, The View, has become an unhinged, partisan rave session against Trump, Republicans, and the majority of American voters. The show’s hosts now regularly read retractions or corrections to blunt allegedly defamatory screeds from its hosts. It has gotten to the point that the ABC General Counsel may soon need a chair at the table.
Disney is trying to adopt a more neutral stance after years of opposition for its stances on political issues and accusations of ultra-woke products. It is still struggling to appeal to over half of the country, including the most recent controversy involving the star of its soon-to-be-released remake of Snow White.
After the election, actress Rachel Zegler declared herself “speechless” over the results. That would have been a welcomed state for Disney, but the actress then found her voice in the most polarizing way, publicly praying “May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace.” Zegler was clearly miscast in the film. It was the evil Queen that was supposed to harken “a blast of wind to fan my hate.”
On top of these controversies, ABC News was attacked by many over its handling of the Trump debate with Vice President Kamala Harris and it’sbiased “fact-checking.” With networks like MSNBC and CNN in a ratings and revenue free fall after the election, Disney clearly wants to start fresh with the new administration. Both are facing possible sales at potentially bargain basement prices. The media echo chamber against Trump failed spectacularly in this election. With record levels of distrust of mainstream or legacy media, the public has increasingly shifted to new media.
In the meantime, Trump has been running the table on lawfare with the dismissal of the two federal cases and a victory on presidential immunity in the Supreme Court. The Georgia prosecution is falling apart over the conduct of the prosecutors rather than that of the defendant. The New York civil case faced a highly skeptical court over the grotesque award against Trump and his corporation. Even Democratic politicians like Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) now feel comfortable admitting publicly that the New York hush money prosecution was “bullsh*t.”
For many politicians and pundits, the election seemed to flip the magnetic poles of the country. We now have ABC News giving millions to the Trump Presidential Library as democratic donors move toward a boycott of the Biden President Library.
With networks like MSNBC and CNN struggling for their very existence, ABC is intent on having a chair when the music stops. While the ABC settlement may not be an admission of guilt, it is a recognition of the reality after this historic election.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee has triggered a controversy after adopting the alternative spelling of “women” as permissible. Students will now be allowed to spell “women” as “womyn.” Parody and reality seem to have emerged given a past Babylon Bee skit (below).
The new 2024-2025 school year study lists include the feminist term “womyn” as an acceptable alternate spelling for “women.”
“womyn” however, has itself now been criticized as offensive. While some feminists wanted to de-masculinize the word and use either womyn or womxn, transgender advocates oppose the term because it is used by feminists who exclude transgender individuals. They also reject the alternative of “wombyn” as referring to a person with a womb as an alternative. That has led some, such as Jennie Kermode, chair of Trans Media Watch, to reject the term “womxn” in favor of “women” as now encompassing trans women.
A Scripps spokesperson pointed to the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary, which has now recognized the alternate spelling for “women.”
Shakespeare might respond, “Inanity, thy name is womyn.”
Babylon Bee, however, appears to have gotten here first:
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Investigators say they have found “substantial evidence that many of these companies have been submitting fraudulent claims for EIDBI services that were not actually provided or that were not covered by the EIDBI program.”
FBI searches Minnesota autism service providers in connection with fraud investigation
by Luke Sprinkel – AlphaNews.org – Dec 12, 2024
Federal agents searched two autism service providers on Thursday morning. One of the provider, Smart Therapy Center, is located in Minneapolis and reportedly has connections with Feeding Our Future, a now-defunct nonprofit at the center of another federal fraud investigation. According to a search warrant obtained by Alpha News, the federal government has reason to believe that Smart Therapy Center has committed wire fraud, healthcare fraud, and conspiracy to commit wire and healthcare fraud. Star Autism Center in St. Cloud was also searched by federal agents today in connection with the alleged fraud.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
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A drone fell out of the sky and crashed into a New Jersey homeowner’s backyard Thursday night — prompting the town’s mayor to even drive to the scene to survey the site himself. The aircraft smashed down in a residential area of Pequannock Township in Morris County around 8:45 p.m. Thursday, according to police and dispatch audio. Officials determined the craft was “a hobby or toy type of drone” and “not a large commercial or military grade drone,” the Pequannock Police Department told The Post.
A drone spotted flying over New Jersey this month.@MendhamMike via Storyful
It comes on the heels of New Jersey cops warning of possible “copycats.” The video player is currently playing an ad.
“What we think is it started as some sort of Picatinny Arsenal base surveillance drill or operation but once it exploded online, this became a copycat situation,” one Garden State police chief theorized.
The US Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center is located at the Picatinny Arsenal and is one of the sites where several mystery drone sightings have been reported, which has prompted concern. As a highly secure facility that develops and tests new bombs, guns, ammunition and warfare devices for all branches of the military, it is a target for espionage by foreign adversaries.
When The Post arrived at the crash site Thursday night, the resident was putting his trash cans out and declined to comment. However, as paranoia grips the state, the report of one crashing into a homeowner’s backyard had the mayor rushing to the scene.
The mayor of Pequannock, Ryan Herd, pulled up in a Ford Econoline work van to survey the crash scene for himself.
Multiple drones are seen over Bernardsville, NJ, on Dec. 5. AP
In the middle of the Ocean on a ferry and nothing around and then bam- drones appear out of no where in the middle of the sea.
Our government knows what it is but they aren’t telling us.
Herd told The Post “It is definitely not” one of the massive, car-size drones that purportedly have been hovering overhead. He said he’s “absolutely” concerned that “nobody knows whose drones are flying over us and what they’re flying over us for and where they’re taking off and landing.”
“Drones are flying over our houses, which is our private property. My family is here,” he added.
The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the incident.
Meanwhile, there was a second report of a downed drone that hit a powerline in nearby Randolph Township less than an hour later. The report turned out to be unfounded, the Morris County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
In a follow-up phone call Friday morning, Herd urged residents not to chase after, shoot at or attempt to catch any of the large drones.
“We can’t be putting up Class 1 and Class 2 drones trying to follow these drones. God forbid something happens and it crashes into the big drone, and the big drone crashes into a house and kills six people — that’s going to be a problem,” he said.
Suspected drones over the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey on Dec. 5.@DougSpac
Local officials have told The Post that many sightings farther afield could be either civilian copycats flying their own drones or people mistaking planes, helicopters or satellites for UFOs.
After receiving reports of drone activity last month near Morris County, New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary bans on drone flights over a golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey — owned by President-elect Donald Trump — and over Picatinny Arsenal Military Base. The FAA says the bans were in response to requests from “federal security partners.”518
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Thursday that federal investigators have been unable to verify any of the 3,000-plus reports of car-size drones patrolling the nighttime skies in recent weeks. Pentagon officials have said they do not believe the drones are a foreign asset.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said earlier this week the aircraft are “very sophisticated,” noting that “the minute you get your eyes on them, they go dark” — but promised residents that the devices are not a threat to public safety. Murphy said New Jerseyans should not shoot them out of the sky — but welcomed federal authorities to take them down to study, NJ.com reported.
In the aftermath of the contentious Supreme Court arguments in United States v. Skrmetti over state bans on puberty blockers and gender-altering surgeries, the United Kingdom reaffirmed that it finds the risks far outweigh the benefits of such treatments for minors under the currently available scientific evidence. The move by the liberal Labour Party stands in sharp contrast with the portrayal of the Biden Administration and the treatment of the subject by the liberal justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was widely criticized for analogizing puberty-blocking drugs to taking aspirin. It appears that doctors in the UK are not ready to tell minors to just “take two puberty blockers and call me in the morning.”
UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said last week, “Children’s health care must always be evidence-led. The independent expert Commission on Human Medicines found that the current prescribing and care pathway for gender dysphoria and incongruence presents an unacceptable safety risk for children and young people.”
The decision follows the release of the Cass Review, which was raised by the conservative justices as contradicting the factual representations of the Biden Administration, even leading Justice Samuel Alito to suggest that Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and the government might not have fulfilled their duty of candor to the tribunal. He noted that the Cass study found scant evidence that the benefits of transgender treatment are greater than the risks. He then delivered the haymaker: “I wonder if you would like to stand by the statement in your position or if you think it would now be appropriate to modify that and withdraw your statement.”
🔥🔥🔥Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito presses Elizabeth Prelogar on the experimental nature of "gender-affirming care."
Streeting cited significant doubts about the benefits of puberty blockers while noting the “significant risks” to children.
The government will allow puberty blockers to be administered to children in clinical trials. It is not clear if the Supreme Court will take “judicial notice” of the new decision, but it can.
In fairness to Sotomayor, she was trying to argue that all treatments have risks in making her aspirin analogy. Yet, the comment was taken as trivializing the alleged harm and trauma raised by many in this debate. These studies clearly show greater risks than those associated with aspirin. However, what the Biden Administration was arguing (and the liberal justices were seemingly supporting) is that states would be barred by the Court from reaching the same conclusion as the UK and other countries. Indeed, Streeting echoed what the states argued to the Supreme Court that the government must “act with caution and care when it comes to this vulnerable group of young people, and follow the expert advice.”
Almost twenty years ago, the country was outraged by allegations of an African-American stripper that she was hired and then gang raped by white Duke Lacrosse players. The story followed an all-too-familiar pattern. The media, professors, and pundits immediately treated the allegations as true and declared the crime as a manifestation of our racist society. Many demanded immediate suspensions of all of the students as the racial and class conflicts were emphasized in the media. As I wrote previously, Duke University joined the mob against its own students and discarded any semblance of due process or fairness. Now, the accuser Crystal Mangum has admitted that she made the whole thing up in an interview on the independent media outlet “Let’s Talk with Kat.” The problem is that little was likely learned in higher education from the experience.
The students found themselves in a nightmare as the media flash mob formed to call for their punishment. They were arrested and subject to the unethical and unprofessional treatment of former Durham County district attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong pandered to the press and the community in public speeches despite criticism from some of us that he was fueling the rage against the students despite serious questions over this account. He declared publicly:
“The information that I have does lead me to conclude that a rape did occur. The circumstances of the rape indicated a deep racial motivation for some of the things that were done. It makes a crime that is by its nature one of the most offensive and invasive even more so.”
From the outset, there were obvious problems with the account, including a lack of supporting forensic evidence that would ordinarily be found at the scene.
Nifong was later disbarred for his misconduct, including withholding exculpatory evidence. Even after the allegation was shown to be a hoax, former North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper took the easy way out and declined to charge Mangum despite her ruining the lives of these students. She was later arrested and convicted of murdering her boyfriend.
Now, Mangum is admitting, “I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong, and I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me…[I] made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God.”
It is heartening to see Mangum come to grips with what she did and ask for forgiveness. However, there remains a lack of such remorse from many in the press and higher education who helped lead this mob against these students. Years later, many continued to resist efforts to afford due process protections to those accused in higher education.
The media followed its usual pattern of dispensing with countervailing facts to fuel the racial elements or play up the class differences. Nancy Grace declared, “I’m so glad they didn’t miss a lacrosse game over a little thing like gang rape!”
Former prosecutor Wendy Murphy, who praised Nifong’s handling of the case, said publicly that “I never, ever met a false rape claim, by the way. My own statistics speak to the truth.”
Feminist and journalist Amanda Marcotte writes for publications such as Salon and Slate. She captured the blind rage even after ethics charges were raised against Nifong, stating:
“I’ve been sort of casually listening to CNN blaring throughout the waiting area and good f**king god is that channel pure evil. For awhile, I had to listen to how the poor dear lacrosse players at Duke are being persecuted just because they held someone down and f**ked her against her will—not rape, of course, because the charges have been thrown out. Can’t a few white boys sexually assault a black woman anymore without people getting all wound up about it? So unfair.”
Marcotte later deleted the statement and criticized Nifong.
The greatest unfairness to these students came not from such extreme voices but mainstream media, which showed little interest or comfort in exploring contradictions and gaps in the account.
As is often the case, the hoax was later revealed and there was a collective shrug from most in the media as we await the next cathartic case or controversy.
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Although Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined the FBI did not deploy undercover agents at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, he did reveal the agency had 26 confidential human sources from various field offices in Washington, D.C., that day.
Horowitz’s assessment was disclosed in a report released Thursday on the FBI’s handling of confidential human sources and intelligence gathering in the lead-up to Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. Horowitz wrote that three of the 26 confidential human sources were tasked by FBI field offices before Jan. 6 “to report on domestic terrorism subjects who were possibly attending the event.”
He wrote one was tasked “to report on the activities of a predicated domestic terrorism subject who was separately planning to travel to D.C.” for the election certification vote; another was “to potentially report” on two domestic terrorism subjects from another FBI field office who were planning to travel to D.C. that day; and a third who informed their handling agent they intended to travel to D.C. on their own initiative and who then was tasked “to potentially report” on two domestic terrorism subjects identified by other FBI field offices who were planning to travel to D.C. that day.
He added none of the three was authorized “to enter the Capitol or a restricted area, or to otherwise break the law on Jan. 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on Jan. 6.”
Of the 26, Horowitz wrote four entered the Capitol during the riot, an additional 13 entered the restricted area around the Capitol — a security perimeter established in preparation for the certification vote — and nine neither entered a restricted area nor entered the Capitol or otherwise engaged in illegal activity.
“None of the CHSs who entered the Capitol, or a restricted area has been prosecuted to date,” Horowitz wrote. “The WFO [FBI Washington Field Office] did not know that a total of 26 CHSs would be in D.C. for the events of January 6 because only 4 field offices had informed the WFO or FBI Headquarters that CHSs under the relevant field office’s jurisdiction — 5 CHSs in total — would be traveling to D.C. on January 6.”
Horowitz determined many of the CHSs provided information relevant to the certification vote before Jan. 6 “and that a few CHSs also provided information about the riot as it occurred.”
“In addition, FBI field offices collected CHS reporting relevant to the January 6 Electoral Certification from CHSs who did not travel to D.C. for the event,” Horowitz wrote.
The report revealed among the information CHSs provided to their handling agents was that “extremist members of the Oath Keepers or other groups may become involved in unplanned violent activity on January 6”; that the number of Oath Keepers headed to D.C. “is 200+ strong”; travel plans being discussed by the Proud Boys; an individual purporting to be the leader of a group that had “500 people willing to storm the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on January 6th”; and concerns for the safety of members of Congress on Jan. 6.
Horowitz’s report referred to the Oath Keepers as “a large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some of whom are associated with militias.” It said the Proud Boys “describes itself as a ‘pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists.'”
You ever watch someone try to pass off a cheap knockoff as the real thing?
Like the guy hawking “Rolexes” with ticking second hands? That’s Joe Biden in politics.
He was supposed to be the Left’s ultimate weapon — the 81-million-vote man who would crush Trump like a Coke can. But fast-forward, and Biden is now the flat club soda Democrats found in the back of their fridge.
Disaffected Democrats , including some from within his own administration, are furious with President Joe Biden for shrinking into a political non-entity since his party was walloped in last month’s election , according to multiple reports.
“He’s been so cavalier and selfish about how he approaches the final weeks of the job,” a former White House official told Politico.
The outlet — which spoke to nearly two dozen officials, including current and former White House staffers— reported that, since the Nov. 5 vote, Biden has mostly avoided unscripted events and press questions while neglecting to address policy matters on Capitol Hill and Democratic Party.
Many party officials, Politico reported, no longer even bother to monitor Biden’s daily activities. His interactions with media have been similarly muted: In two weeks of foreign traveling since the election, Biden uttered a mere seven words to the press pack traveling with him, the outlet said.
The president is yet to hold — or schedule — a post-election press conference, something his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama did before leaving office.
“This is one of the lamest of lame ducks we’ve seen with a Democratic administration,” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesman for the progressive Justice Democrats PAC, told the Wall Street Journal . “A massive missed opportunity.”
But let’s not act like this was unpredictable, okay? Democrats handpicked the guy who needed a GPS to find his way off stage. Biden mistook reporters for lawn ornaments and fell asleep in NATO meetings. Now they want him to lead? That’s like handing a drowning man a bowling ball.
And Democrats act surprised? Come on! They spent four years hiding Biden’s mental fumbles behind teleprompters and careful choreography. Now the jig’s up, and they’re mad the Wizard of Delaware turned out to be all curtain, no magic.
Captain Demento Goes AWOL
Now, the question on everyone’s mind: “Where’s Joe?” Democrats wanted Biden to disappear during the campaign, and now they’ve got their wish. In a recent interview, Victor Davis Hanson nailed it. Hansen declared that Donald Trump is stepping in as the de facto president.
Trump visited Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame. While there, Trump arm-wrestled Macron into submission, and Prince Harry proved to be a Trump fanboy. Trump’s out here shaking hands with foreign leaders, fixing global crises, and looking more presidential than the guy who actually lives in the White House. Biden, meanwhile, is probably still trying to figure out which button calls the nurse.
Syria, Ukraine, and That One Time Biden Tried to Blink
As Hanson pointed out in his interview, Assad’s regime is collapsing, Hamas is imploding, and Russia’s war effort is more embarrassing than Biden trying to spell Mika Brzezinski’s last name. Yet here’s Biden, sitting this one out like a college kid with “senioritis.” The man has yet to make a statement about turmoil in the Middle East that has caused a world-shattering vacuum.
Meanwhile, Trump’s strides comfortably back onto the global stage like he’s hosting The Apprentice: Global Edition. And as with all Leftist messes, it will take a Trumpian effort for the “cleanup on aisle 45”.
Democrats knew what they were getting — a man whose elevator stopped going to the top floor around 1988. Three-plus years of feckless leadership culminating with 3 months of no leadership.
Frankly, nobody really misses Biden. However, they still wonder where he is. Thankfully, Trump has stepped in and stepped up. For him, this is business as usual.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren D-Mass. is under fire for her statement to Joy Reid on MSNBC explaining why Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Warren explained that this was a “warning” that “you can only push people so far.” After a public outcry, Warren walked back her statement. Yet, the statement captures the growing radicalism on the left, particularly among anti-capitalist, Democratic Socialists, and other groups. It is also notable how many of the same political and media figures who were apoplectic and unrelenting over the false claim about Trump’s “fine people on both sides” statement are largely disinterested in this and other extreme comments on the left.
Reid has long been criticized for racist and extremist commentary. Warren seemed eager to play to the far-left audience after first noting that “Violence is never the answer,” but then adding the warning to others that “you can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands.”
The senator explained that “the visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the health care system.‘
“Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the health care to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”
The comments came after various pundits and citizens celebrated the killing, including the former Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz, who expressed “joy” over the murder (only to walk that back like Warren). Some have defended Lorenz and explained how, while they may not express joy, they understand where “she is coming from” in celebrating the murder of a healthcare executive.
Wanted posters have appeared throughout New York with the images of other CEOs (and of Thompson with a red X across his face). It is the same moral relativism that we have long seen in higher education on the left where violent rhetoric against conservatives or capitalists is common.
It is unclear if Mangione’s anti-capitalist views brought him into contact with known violent groups on the left, including Antifa. Just days before the murder, I wrote about how a liberal media site was selling Antifa products in celebration of the anti-free speech, violent group.
The different treatment given the statements of Trump and Warren are striking. Notably, the false claim received endless coverage and is still reported by the media despite being debunked. The Charlottesville controversy occurred at the start of Trump’s presidency and showed how the media was not interested in whether stories were true in the shift to open advocacy journalism.
What was evident to many of us listening was that Trump was referring to the debate over the removal of controversial historical statutes and noting that there were “very fine people on both sides.” As Snopes belatedly recognized years later, “while Trump did say that there were ‘very fine people on both sides,’ he also specifically noted that he was not talking about neo-Nazis and white supremacists and said they should be ‘condemned totally.’”
None of that mattered (or continues to matter to some) in the media because the narrative was better than the facts. Many in the media did not even acknowledge that Trump denied the spin given by his opponents and said that he was referring to the underlying issue of the protest. The statement was treated as demonstrably and unequivocally endorsing violence. It is the same reason why the statement of Warren and many on the left have not been given the same level of public condemnation even in the face of an actual murder. It does not fit the narrative.
Many celebrated Warren’s warnings and the implied rationalization for the murder. Others praised her gutsy take. The far-left publication The New Republic reported the Warren statement in positive terms in an article titled “Senator Elizabeth Warren had an awfully real reaction to the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO.”
TNR has been one of the promulgators of this story and attacked Trump in 2024 in what it called a “new” defense over his comments despite the fact that he has always maintained that he was referring to the overall protest over the monument. TNR also attacked Snopes for its fact check and “helping Trump.”
As I discuss in my book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” politicians use rage rhetoric to ride waves of public anger and garner supporters on the extremes of our political system. The same motive has led some Democratic leaders to embrace Antifa in the past. However, these establishment figures often find that being embraced as a revolutionary today often means that you are viewed as a reactionary tomorrow by the same radical allies in these movements.
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American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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