The United States will “hopefully” start moving migrants to a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within 30 days, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing House border czar Tom Homan.
The facility was first announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday.
“Hopefully within 30 days we’ll start moving people there,” Homan told the newspaper.
Homan said he planned to travel to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in the coming weeks to oversee the fast-tracked construction of the facility. Although Trump said the facility would hold as many as 30,000 migrants, Homan said they would probably start with a small number, according to The Washington Post.
The U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay already houses a migrant facility – separate from the high-security U.S. prison for foreign terrorism suspects – that has been used on occasion for decades, including to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea.
The National Transportation Safety Board says it has recovered a cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the American Airlines plane that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport late Wednesday. Details are emerging about the 67 people presumed dead following the crash.
Report of lack of ATCs at DCA comes amid lawsuit FAA trying to fill jobs based on race
A general view of the control tower at Reagan National Airport, Friday, January 31, 2025. Flights have resumed since the tragic crash on Wednesday night were an American Airlines jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
A New York Times report saying the air control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has been understaffed for years came amid a lawsuit claiming the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) discriminated against air traffic controller applicants based on their race.
The Times report said the tower at the airport was nearly a third below targeted staff levels, with 19 fully certified controllers as of September 2023, citing the most recent Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan, an annual report to Congress that contains target and actual staffing levels.
The targets set by the F.A.A. and the controllers union call for 30.
The lawsuit represents nearly 1,000 individuals who went to school to become air traffic controllers . They passed the normal test to obtain the position right before the Obama administration said the class was too white and threw out the tests with the applicants, the suit alleges.
Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who serves as co-counsel for Mountain States Legal Foundation, based in Colorado, is leading efforts for a lawsuit.
“When you travel and have a delay, it’s because there aren’t enough of these people,” Laxalt told the Wall Street Journal last year. “When you see these near incidents in air traffic control, it’s because there aren’t enough people. There are only 14,000 air traffic controllers. A thousand were scrapped a decade ago, and the bottom line is they’ve never made up losing all of this pipeline.”
Fox News Digital Greg Wehner contributed to this update.
American Airlines CEO thanks Trump for response to collision
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom on Friday thanked President Donald Trump for his leadership on aviation safety and his response to the deadly midair collision.
“We are all hurting as we continue to grieve the loss of our passengers and team members,” Isom said in a statement. “I thank President Trump for his leadership on aviation safety. I applaud him, Secretary Duffy and the Administration for taking quick and decisive action today to restrict helicopter activity around DCA.”
“In the days ahead, we will work tirelessly with the Administration and leaders in Congress to make our aviation system even safer, including by increasing investments in infrastructure, technology and personnel,” he added.
NTSB investigators examine the so-called, black box recovered from the American Airlines plane that crashed with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter Wednesday night near Washington, D.C. Thursday, Jan. 30, 2024. (Fox News/Pool)
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recovered the black box from the Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed midair with an American Airlines passenger plane near Washington D.C. on Wednesday night.
During a press conference Friday night, NTSB member J. Todd Inman confirmed that the box, which is located in the cockpit, is intact.
There is no exterior damage, “indicating it is not compromised,” Inman said.
Authorities also provided more details about the two black boxes recovered Thursday from the passenger plane, noting they have a “high level of confidence” information will be retrievable.
The flag data recorder was in “good condition” and crews are working on a download in the “near future,” Inman said.
The voice recorder was opened and water intrusion was identified, but Inman said the NTSB “deal[s] with this all the time.”
It was soaked in ionized water, then put in a vacuum oven to remove moisture. Crews are checking electric connections to attempt a download, and have “a high level of confidence.”
Multiple air safety lapses contributed to deadly DC crash
A deadly midair collision near Reagan National Airport Wednesday night revealed a number of safety lapses officials are now scrambling to address.
The Black Hawk helicopter, carrying three soldiers, was allegedly flying too high and on the wrong path, when it crashed into an American Airlines plane carrying 60 passengers and four crew members.
Air traffic controllers were allegedly understaffed and are now accused of not being “proactive enough” in preventing the crash by directing the plane and helicopter to fly away from each other. Instead, the controller requested the helicopter avoid the plane.
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order calling for an immediate assessment of aviation safety.
FAA to restrict helicopter traffic around DCA airspace following deadly crash
A person walks by the deaptures board at Reagan National Airport, Friday, January 31, 2025. Flights have resumed since the tragic crash on Wednesday night were an American Airlines jet collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. (Leigh Green for Fox News Digital)
The Federal Aviation Administration will restrict helicopter traffic around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport airport, effective Friday.
The decision was made with the support of President Donald Trump and in consultation with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, according to a post on X from Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy.
“Today’s decision will immediately help secure the airspace near Reagan Airport, ensuring the safety of airplane and helicopter traffic,” Duffy wrote.
The change is part of the DOT’s ongoing commitment to safeguarding airspace and upholding the highest standards of air travel safety, according to the post.
“We will continue to support [President Trump]’s directive to achieve uncompromised aviation safety,” according to Duffy. “The American people deserve full confidence in our aviation system and today’s action is a significant step towards restoring that trust.”
The restricted area includes:
– Memorial Bridge to South Capitol Street Bridge, excluding the Tidal Basin
Fog settled above Washington D.C. as crews continue recovery efforts amid cold conditions in the Potomac River on Friday.
“In my view, it may slow it down, slightly, but we are all the units out here,” Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly said Friday about the weather conditions.
“The people working work year-round in all conditions . We’re going to be careful,” he added. “We’re going to make sure we don’t hurt anybody else, but the weather we’ve seen so far is weather we can work in. And if that were to change, that would affect it. But we haven’t seen that.”
A cold front is expected to move through Friday evening with possible rain, which could see temperatures in the Potomac River dip. Current water temperatures are hovering above freezing.
Crews will have to remove the fuselage from the water in order to recover the rest of the remains, authorities said Friday.
“I believe for us to recover the rest of the remains that we are going to need to get the fuselage out of the water,” Fire and EMS Chief John A. Donnelly told reporters. “A lot of our operations, not all of them, but a lot of our operations today are focused on the helicopter.”
So far, authorities have recovered 41 sets of remains and have identified 28 of those victims, officials said.
“Going forward with our recovery operations, search teams will continue to work the site, will do side to side sonar scanning, searching the shoreline and aerial aberrations — our dive teams are working in targeted areas,” Donnelly said.
Family of third soldier killed requesting Army not release name
The family of the third solider killed in Wednesday’s deadly midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is requesting their identity not be publicly released, the Army said Friday.
The Army has named the other soldiers killed in the collision. They were identified as Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland, and Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia.
Eaves’ remains have not been recovered. He served in the Navy from August 2007 to September 2017 before transitioning to a Black Hawk pilot for the Army in September 2017.
O’Hara began serving as Black Hawk helicopter mechanic in July 2014.
American Airlines announces retirement of flight number 5342
An American Airlines airplane lands near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in the aftermath of the collision of American Eagle flight 5342 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that crashed into the Potomac River, outside Washington, D.C., Friday. (Reuters/Jeenah Moon)
The flight number of the flight involved in the deadly collision with a military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday will be retired, American Airlines announced today.
“Service between Wichita, Kansas (ICT) and Washington, D.C. (DCA) is currently scheduled to operate tonight as AA5677,” the airline told Fox News Digital in a statement. “Flight AA5342 will not be used for any future American Airlines flights.”
Airlines typically retire a flight’s number following serious incidents.
Connecticut youth soccer coach who died in crash had a profound impact on children’s lives
A Connecticut youth soccer coach who is presumed dead following the Washington, D.C., plane crash is being hailed for enriching the lives of children in his community.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said Casey Crafton of Salem was a “a dedicated father, husband, and community member.”
“Coach Casey was a valued volunteer with Montville Youth Soccer who helped to enrich the lives of all those that he came in contact with,” the Montville Youth Soccer Club said in a post on Facebook. “Our deepest condolences go out to his family during this tragic time.”
Crafton leaves behind his wife Rachel and three sons, Greyson, Easton and Knox, according to the Norwich Bulletin newspaper.
Footage taken from a dashcam captured the moment the American Airlines passenger jet collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport on Wednesday night.
The video was recorded from Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C.
During the video, a fireball could be seen lighting up the night sky after the two aircraft collided.
All 67 onboard both aircraft are presumed dead and bodies are still being recovered Friday from the Potomac River.
A source who captured the video, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Storyful they hope it “helps with the investigation” and that they are “traumatized” after witnessing the tragic event.
Ohio college student presumed dead following DC plane crash
Cedarville University announced the death of 20-year-old Grace Maxwell. (Cedarville University)
Cedarville University student Grace Maxwell has been identified as one of the 60 passengers onboard the American Airlines plane that collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport earlier this week.
The university located outside of Columbus, Ohio, told 10TV WBNS that Maxwell was a junior majoring in mechanical engineering.
“Grace was a quiet person with a keen interest in helping others through engineering,” an advisor at the school, Tim Norman, told the station.
Cedarville University President Thomas White said Friday that “We grieve, and we’re sad, and we don’t know why a young, bright, shining star was taken from us way too soon,” according to the Dayton Daily News.
“But we know there’s a God that will make all things new. So we grieve, but not as ones without hope,” he added.
The newspaper reported that Maxwell was traveling back to the school after attending her grandfather’s funeral in Wichita, Kan.
‘Ice skating sisters’ among victims of DC plane crash
Everly and Alydia Livingston were killed in a plane crash between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday, Jan. 29. (Instagram/@ice_skating_sisters)
Everly and Alydia Livingston, figure skaters who were known as the “ice skating sisters” on social media, have been identified as being among the 67 presumed dead in the midair collision near Reagan National Airport.
Videos and photos show the two sisters skating together and doing their own routines at various competitions.
Donna Livingston and Peter Livingston, their parents, died in the Wednesday crash as well.
“I knew Donna in college. She was a wonderful, positive, and sweet person,” the Livingstons’ friend, Scott Molony, wrote in a Facebook post. “I watched her life and family grow and evolve through social media, including the two beautiful, talented daughters she shared with her husband. They were clearly proud, loving, supportive parents, devoted to their daughters’ love of ice skating.”
Fox News’ Stepheny Price, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Alexandra Koch and Audrey Conklin contributed to this report.
White House says Trump ‘believes that it is still indeed safe’ to fly on commercial planes
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing at the White House, on Friday, Jan. 31, in Washington. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday that President Donald Trump “believes that it is still indeed safe and Americans should feel safe travelling our skies.”
“We certainly have seen the deterioration of federal hiring standards at the FAA and the president wants to increase those standards,” she added. “He wants pilots in this country who have the great responsibility of flying American citizens by the tens of millions every single day to be chosen for that position based on their merit and their skills, so the administration will continue to prioritize this.”
White House says it is continuing to mourn victims ‘during this unimaginable time’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday that “Everyone in this White House continues to mourn the victims and keep their friends and families in our thoughts and prayers during this unimaginable time.
“The president was briefed on Wednesday evening following the crash, again on Thursday morning, and he has continued to receive updates as recovery efforts continue on the ground,” she continued. “The president, as you know, took time to address the nation yesterday afternoon to deliver accountability. President Trump swiftly signed a memorandum directing an immediate assessment of the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure the federal government is maintaining the highest personnel and policy aviation safety standards.”
“The memorandum directs the Secretary of Transportation and the FAA administrator to immediately review all hiring decisions and changes to safety protocols made during the prior four years, and to take all necessary corrective actions to achieve uncompromised aviation safety,” according to Leavitt.
“The review will include a comprehensive assessment and reversal of any deterioration in hiring standards in aviation safety standards and protocols during the previous administration,” she also said.
Local resident describes floating debris he found in the Potomac River following crash
Law enforcement conducts a search on Thursday, Jan. 30 near Reagan National Airport following the airplane crash. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
A riverkeeper who routinely patrols the Potomac River reportedly found multiple items belonging to the American Airlines plane after it crashed Wednesday night, including pages from a flight manual, a woman’s sweater and what appeared to be the cushion from a pilot’s seat.
Dean Naujoks of the environmental group Potomac Riverkeeper told the Associated Press that he discovered the items near the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge – about two miles away from the crash site – and that they have been handed over to the FBI. He reportedly got permission to take his boat to the scene and found the items in shallow coves.
“Everything is covered in jet fuel,” Naujoks said. “I’m thinking of the people these things belonged to and it’s a punch to the gut. It’s just a sad day on the river.”
Naujoks also said he recovered a piece of the interior wall from the passenger cabin that had surrounded a window.
U.S. military helicopter crashes like the one that took down a commercial American Airlines flight over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night are very rare, but there has been an uptick in these incidents in recent years, according to military statistics and an aviation expert.
A total of 64 people, including passengers and flight crew members, were aboard AA Flight 5342 from Wichita to Reagan National Airport (DCA). Three soldiers were conducting a training operation on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia.
“It’s concerning, certainly, the number of incidents that there have been,” Timothy Loranger, an aviation attorney at Wisner Baum and a Marine Corps veteran, told Fox News Digital. “But if you compare it to the thousands and thousands of hours of flights that occur without any incident … that’s all very good.”
The collision has sparked questions about how such a devastating accident could happen in one of the most tightly controlled airspaces in the country and the world. The last significant fatal commercial crash happened in 2009, when a Continental Airlines flight crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people.
“Is there something that we can point to? Training? Is the budget of the military sufficient to make sure that pilots and the crew have enough training and experience in order to fly those aircraft?” Loranger said. “Those are the kinds of questions that have to be asked. If it’s a problem with the aircraft itself, a mechanical issue, what is that? Is it a design issue? Is it a manufacturing issue? Is it a maintenance issue?”
Military helicopter crashes, while uncommon, have been occurring more frequently over the last year, according to Army data.
More details emerge about victims in DC plane crash
Photos of victims following the collision between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter (Getty Images)
Family and friends of those who lost their lives in the deadly American Airlines and Army helicopter collision are sharing tributes online as they wait for more answers about how this tragedy happened.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves confirmed on X Thursday night one of the Army pilots who died in the wreck was Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves, a Brooksville native.
Tim Lilley identified his son, 28-year-old Sam Lilley, as first officer on American Airlines flight 5342.
A flight attendant on board the flight has been identified as Ian Epstein.
Fox News Digital has learned the identity of another victim on board flight 5342, a mother of two young children, Wendy Shaffer.
“I’m still waiting to wake up from this nightmare, but I fear this is the truth. Wendy was not just beautiful on the outside, but was a truly amazing woman through and through,” Wendy’s husband, Nate Shaffer, shared in a statement with Fox News Digital.
“We need to make sure that if these airports are struggling with air traffic controllers, they bring it to our attention, and we can try to encourage more younger people to get into that field,” Nehls said.
“I have to say when you look at our aviation record, our safety record over the past 15 years — in 2009 obviously we had the Colgan Air crash that killed 47 people – but we haven’t had a major incident in the United States in the past 15 years,” he added, noting that there are 45,000 flights daily in the U.S.
“Overall, I believe our record, our safety record is the gold standard. But when we have an issue like this, it needs to be addressed and I believe the NTSB will conduct a very thorough investigation and they will come up with some recommendations to make sure that we can mitigate risk and something like this never takes place again,” Nehls also said.
The Federal Aviation Administration reportedly is restricting helicopter flights near Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Va., following the deadly midair collision earlier this week.
An FAA official told Reuters that the agency is prohibiting most helicopters from parts of two routes near the airport, only allowing first responders into the area.
The routes are believed to be the same ones the Army Black Hawk helicopter was traveling along Wednesday night when it collided with the American Airlines passenger jet.
The FAA also said to lawmakers that the restrictions will remain in place indefinitely as it conducts an investigation, according to Reuters.
“Our union fully supports this action by the FAA,” the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said. “Operations should change, at the very least until we learn more about what led to the deadliest U.S. aviation accident in 24 years. 67 souls were lost not even 48 hours ago — we should not operate as if nothing happened.”
Rain, blustery winds in DC to challenge recovery efforts after deadly midair collision
Emergency vehicles and recovery operations are seen near the mouth of the Anacostia River at the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, on Friday, Jan. 31. (AP/Carolyn Kaster)
Rain, fog and gusty winds in the Washington, D.C. area Friday could complicate efforts to recover victims and debris from the Potomac River following the deadly midair collision that claimed 67 lives, according to FOX Weather.
The FOX Forecast Center is saying light rain or drizzle is expected through this morning before steadier rains move in this afternoon.
Blustery conditions then will persist through the evening, with wind gusts up to 30 miles per hour.
High temperatures will reach the low to mid 50s before dropping to the 30s by tomorrow night.
What to know about the mistakes made leading up to the fatal collision
Plane wreckage is seen Thursday in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport. (Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles, U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
Reviews of the moments leading up to Wednesday’s fatal midair crash involving an Army helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet have revealed several failures and mistakes.
In normal operating conditions, air traffic control for helicopters and planes at Reagan National Airport is handled by two operators. However, on Wednesday, the duties were combined, leaving just one person to handle both duties, The New York Times reported.
The outlet, citing a source who was not authorized to speak publicly, noted that there is usually only one air traffic controller after 9:30 PM, but a supervisor let one leave early. The midair collision that left 67 dead occurred just before 9:00 PM local time.
However, a person familiar with the matter explained to Fox News Digital that the positions get combined regularly if air controllers have to step away from the console for breaks, or if they are involved in a shift change. Controllers may also have to step away when air traffic is slow, the person explained, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.
Multiple reports also indicate that the Black Hawk helicopter may have been flying higher than it was supposed to, putting it outside its approved flight path. The Times reported that the Black Hawk deviated from the approved low-altitude flight path that would have let it avoid the passenger airliner. A senior Army official told the outlet that the Black Hawk pilots had flown the route before and were aware of the altitude restrictions.
Black Hawk was training to evacuate government VIPs in emergency, Hegseth says
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth revealed to Fox News on Friday more details about the training flight that the Army Black Hawk helicopter was taking earlier this week when it collided with an American Airlines passenger jet.
“Without getting anything into anything that’s classified, there are many things that happen in and around the Capitol that ensure in a contingency, in an emergency, our government is able to continue to operate,” Hegseth said. “And what happened in this particular instance was one of those types of flights.
“I mentioned it at the press conference yesterday, a continuity of government. There are other aspects to what is done there and you need to train as you fight. You need to rehearse in ways that would reflect a real-world scenario,” Hegseth added.
More than 40 bodies recovered from Potomac River, officials say
In this image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, wreckage is seen in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, on Thursday, Jan. 30. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Bacon, U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
More than 40 bodies have now been recovered from the Potomac River following this week’s midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport.
DC Fire and EMS told Fox News that 41 bodies in total have been retrieved from the crash site.
Officials said flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived Wednesday from Wichita, Kansas, carrying, among others, a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents and coaches, and four union steamfitters from the Washington area.
A top Army aviation official said the crew of the helicopter, a Black Hawk, was “very experienced” and familiar with the congested flying that occurs daily around the city.
“Both pilots had flown this specific route before, at night. This wasn’t something new to either one of them,” Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for Army aviation, told the AP.
Fox News’ Ashley Cozzolino and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Former FAA official reacts to reports about ‘not normal’ staffing levels at Reagan National Airport
Former Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Scott Brenner told “America’s Newsroom” Friday that he believes the air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport had the “adequate resources there to do the job” when the midair collision happened earlier this week.
Brenner spoke following a report citing the FAA saying that the number of staff members working at the air control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, was “not normal for the time of day and volume of traffic.” The Associated Press obtained a report which showed one air traffic controller was working two positions at the time of the crash.
“Controller staffing is a problem. Congress, FAA have been working on this for years. But controllers are bright folks, if they are getting into a situation where they are getting overwhelmed, they will start to slow traffic,” Brenner said.
“From my understanding, you had in the tower at the time of the crash, you had three controllers, you had a supervisor and you had a supervisor in training. They had adequate resources there to do the job,” he continued. “The decision by the supervisor to split the duties of one of the controllers – because normally you have one controller just focused on helicopters and they usually cut that off around 9:30 at night because traffic starts to die down. But everything that I have seen so far and heard, the controllers did what they are supposed to do.”
Where the NTSB investigation is heading this morning
A timeline of events leading up to Wednesday’s fatal midair collision near Reagan National Airport in the Washington, D.C. area. (Fox News)
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told FOX Business on Friday that “the most important thing right now is to obtain and preserve any perishable evidence so that whenever we come off scene, we can start the analyzation of it.
“Today will be yet another day of the teams going out there. Yesterday, we had our organizational meetings. They’re doing another one this morning. They’re out in the field. They’re collecting data. They’ve started interviews,” he said. “We have hundreds of people in this investigation.”
“Everything that’s there should be good for 30 days, but we want to make sure we get everything preserved immediately,” Inman also said.
A total of 67 people are presumed dead following the midair collision Wednesday night between the American Airlines passenger jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport.
For more information on this heartbreaking event in the Potomac River, you can refer to the past live updates from Fox News Digital from Wednesday and Thursday.
FOX Business’ Grady Trimble contributed to this report.
NTSB member says ‘we know’ where Black Hawk helicopter’s black boxes are
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman speaks during a press conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thursday, Jan. 30, in Arlington, Va. (AP/Stephanie Scarbrough)
National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told FOX Business on Friday that the agency knows where the black boxes are from the Army Black Hawk helicopter involved in the deadly midair collision.
“We know where they’re at right now. We’ve got to get the rest of the victims out,” he said, noting that the boxes haven’t been removed yet as officials are working to retrieve bodies from the Potomac River.
Inman added that families of victims that are arriving in Washington, D.C. are “shellshocked.”
“We have a duty to try to provide as much information to them as long as they need it. Right now, of course, their biggest concern is their family members and the identification of those bodies,” Inman said. “The medical examiner from D.C. was there last night with this. He outlined the process. We believe notifications may start in the next day or so. And so they’ll start working on taking their family members home.”
FOX Business’ Grady Trimble contributed to this report.
Trump asserts Black Hawk was ‘flying too high, by a lot’
President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on Thursday following the deadly midair collision. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Donald Trump said Friday that the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with the American Airlines passenger jet near Reagan National Airport “was flying too high, by a lot.”
“It was far above the 200-foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
NTSB member Todd Inman, when asked by FOX Business this morning about whether the helicopter’s altitude played a role in the crash, said “Right now, we’ve not ruled anything in or out.”
“But I would be very careful to anyone who’s listening to this to rely upon off the shelf software, speculation they’re seeing online. Our job is to get the absolute facts as we get these [black] boxes in and get them analyzed and we look at more granular data, will be able to give a much better picture on that,” he said.
FOX Business’ Grady Trimble contributed to this report.
Military helicopter flights forced at least two planes to abort landings at Reagan National Airport in the week before a deadly collision presumably killed 67 people on Wednesday, according to a report.
On Tuesday night, just one day before the collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, a different plane alerted the air traffic control tower that it had to abort its landing to avoid collision with a helicopter, the Washington Post reported.
Yet another plane arriving at DCA from Charlotte scrubbed its landing on Jan. 23, again because of a helicopter.
“They had to circle back around because there was a helicopter in the flight path,” said RIchard Hart, a passenger on the Jan. 23 flight who spoke to the Washington Post. “At the time I found it odd. … Now I find it disturbingly tragic.”
The two close calls came within a week of Wednesday’s horrifying collision, in which an inbound commercial flight from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River. A total of 64 people, including four crew members, were aboard passenger American Airlines Flight 5342, and three soldiers were on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. All are presumed dead.
Howard University professor among victims in midair collision
Kiah Duggins was known for her bright smile and zest for life. (Howard University)
A Howard University professor and former Miss Kansas contestant known for her bright smile and zest for life was among the victims in Wednesday’s midair collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines plane near Reagan National Airport.
Kiah Duggins, 30, was named as a victim in the disaster by Howard University President Ben Vinson III, who called for privacy and respect for her family, students, and colleagues during this difficult time.
In a statement, the university said Duggins was set to begin a new chapter as a professor at Howard University School of Law this fall.
“As a civil rights lawyer, she dedicated her career to fighting against unconstitutional policing and unjust money bail practices in Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C.,” the statement reads. “Plans to honor her legacy will be shared in coming days.”
Duggins was also a civil rights attorney with the non-profit Civil Rights Corps, based in Washington D.C.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told “FOX & Friends” on Friday that “the environment around which we choose pilots or air traffic controllers, as the president pointed out correctly yesterday, better be the highest possible standard.”
“I don’t care what background they come from, what their race is, what their gender is, if they are rich or if they are poor, I just need them to be good at their job because I need my flight to land safely,” Hegseth said.
“The same thing applies to the Defense Department, to our military. I don’t care about your background, your gender or your skin color, I want the best,” he added.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told “FOX & Friends” on Friday that the black boxes onboard the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with the American Airlines passenger jet near Reagan National Airport have not yet been recovered.
“In this particular case, they were qualifying on a night flight which included night vision goggles – now we don’t know is whether the goggles were engaged or up,” he said.
“You have a lot of ambient light, a lot of things happening around Reagan [airport], there could be depth perception problems – again that is speculation, our investigation will tell us more,” Hegseth added.
“We are looking at altitude… someone was at the wrong altitude. The investigation will help us understand that – was the Black Hawk too high? Was it on course? Right now we don’t quite know,” Hegseth also said.
NTSB member says it will take ‘several days’ to extract information from black boxes
Wreckage is seen in the Potomac River near Reagan National Airport on Thursday. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Taylor Bacon, U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
NTSB member Todd Inman told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ on Friday that “it will take several days” to extract data from the black boxes of the American Airlines passenger jet involved in Wednesday’s deadly midair collision.
“The data recorder itself has thousands of data points and they all have to be synchronized against a lot of other things that happened in the plane,” he said. “The voice recorders actually have to be what is called ‘auditioned’ among a number of people so that there is complete agreement to how the transcript will come out.”
“We also look for ancillary noises, maybe a boom or thud or crack or something in the cockpit – those things are going on concurrently along with the fact that we have several hundred people in the field looking at every other aspect of this investigation,” Inman also said.
All 67 people onboard the American Airlines passenger jet and the Army Black Hawk helicopter are presumed dead following Wednesday’s collision.
Inman said a preliminary NTSB report is expected to be out in 30 days, but it will take “a year if not more for us to come to a final probable cause.”
Former Black Hawk pilot Rep. Tom Barrett, R-Mich., told ‘Fox & Friends First’ on Friday that “one thing I am interested in looking at is should we outfit our military aircraft with the collision avoidance system that the civilian airliners have.”
“Those systems only work if the two aircraft can talk to one another through their transponders. If one has it and one doesn’t, oftentimes that won’t alert the other pilot that there could be a midair collision,” he said.
Barrett spoke as reports are emerging that the Black Hawk helicopter involved in Wednesday’s crash was possibly flying higher than approved and outside of its flight path when it collided with the American Airlines passenger jet.
The aircraft was supposed to be flying lower and in a different location while in the airspace around Reagan National Airport, the New York Times reported, citing four people briefed on the matter.
“Would it have prevented this accident? That is a question that remains open right now, but these are all things that we need to gather more facts around,” Barrett added.
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
A Kansas pastor who helped families as they arrived at the airport in Wichita, Kan., on Wednesday night searching for news about their loved ones told ‘Fox & Friends First’ Friday that everybody there was in “stunned silence.”
“When we all started watching the news, we were all just stunned,” Chapel Hill United Methodist Church Rev. Ben Staley said. “As I was watching the news I realized that this is Wichita, this is us. These are our neighbors.”
Staley, who said he was “drawn by their need of hope,” described how he prayed with a father whose daughter was onboard the American Airlines plane that crashed near Washington, D.C.
“You could imagine, everybody there at the airport just waited in stunned silence,” he added.
American Airlines flights from Wichita to DCA to resume Friday
The control tower at Reagan National Airport is seen Thursday following the nearby crash. (Getty Images)
American Airline flights from Wichita to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. are scheduled to resume Friday, two days after a deadly midair collision near the airport.
Fox News’ Mark Meredith reports there have been dozens of cancellations but with minimal delays.
Weather forecasts in the area were showing a 100% chance of rain with wind gusts as high as 25 mph.
Meanwhile, there were reports of debris floating to areas along the Potomac River, the site of Wednesday evening’s deadly collision. Local governments have been urging residents not to touch or remove any of the found items.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says first day on job was ‘not what I expected’
Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy speaks Thursday during a news conference at the White House. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said late Thursday that Wednesday’s deadly midair collision was “not what I expected” on his first day on the job.
“This is not what I expected my first day on the job to be, but I do believe that God puts us exactly where we’re supposed to be,” Duffy said, pledging to the families of the victims “get to the bottom of what happened and be 100% transparent about the results of the investigation.”
Duffy, who is expected to visit the FAA command center and recovery hangar today, promised to “fix” the agency.
I will continue to keep the families and the public up-to-date with what we are doing in this situation and every other situation that falls under [the Department of Transportation],” Duffy said.
NTSB investigators evaluate the recorders at agency labs. (NTSB)
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recovered critical evidence that could piece together the final moments before Wednesday’s deadly midair collision.
In a statement to Fox News, the agency said the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from American Airlines flight 5342 has been found by NTSB investigators.
“The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation,” an NTSB spokesperson said.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
With the election of Donald Trump, the federal government and both local and educational authorities are on a collision course over immigration policies. Many states and cities have reaffirmed that they will oppose any deportation efforts, including another recent chest-pounding interview by Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. It is likely that the federal government will squeeze federal funding for sanctuary states and cities, though such efforts can trigger “commandeering” and other legal challenges. Universities may be in a more precarious position, but some like the Los Rios Community College District in California are doubling down on plans to oppose any federal enforcement efforts.
Various university and college presidents have reaffirmed their support for undocumented students and staff, including most recently Fordham University President Tania Tetlow. However, the Los Rios Community College District seems to have laid out a more concrete plan to oppose federal enforcement, a plan that was referenced in a January 28 email. The district covers American River College, Cosumnes River College, Folsom Lake College, and Sacramento City College.
The email states that “[t]here have been reports all over the country of increased immigration raids in association with Executive Orders tied to immigration enforcement.” It seeks to address the “[f]ear … widespread throughout the undocumented and ally communities about their safety and the safety of their families and loved ones.”
Just after Trump’s election, Los Rios published a “Compact in Support of Undocumented and DACA Students and Employees,” including the possible concealment of immigration status.
Here are the eight commitments:
Los Rios will do everything in its power to fight for the rights of our immigrant and undocumented students and employees and will always do everything possible to uphold the values of our institutions.
Los Rios stands with state and local leaders who have pledged to do everything possible to defend the rights and protections of immigrant and undocumented Californians.
Los Rios commits to advocating for a permanent legislative solution to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and a pathway to citizenship for our immigrant communities.
Los Rios will immediately provide additional resources to our Undocumented Resource Centers.
The Los Rios Police reaffirms its commitment to not participate in immigration-related activities, including arresting and/or detaining students, consistent with organizational values and state law.
Los Rios will protect students’ rights and confidentiality and will not share the immigration status of students or employees.
Los Rios, its colleges, and partners will do a full review of internal policies and regulations to ensure that we are doing everything possible to protect the rights of students and employees.
The Los Rios Colleges Foundation will create Dream Center Funds with resources for each college, administered by the Undocumented Resource Center on each campus. The Foundation will encourage other community members, employees, and private and corporate funders to give support to undocumented students to help remove critical barriers to their success, such as paying for DACA renewal fees, legal fees, purchasing laptops, and additional resources.
Number 6 is particularly interesting in promising an active role to conceal or withhold immigration status information.
We have been down this road before. Schools previously fought this battle over efforts to bar military recruiters. While I have been a vocal supporter of gay rights on many fronts, I was one of those who opposed the litigation that my law school joined. At the time, I stated that it was not only a clear loser on the law but also represented a type of hypocrisy: We insist that we cannot allow discrimination, but if money is at stake, we will allow it.
In Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc., 547 U.S. 47 (2006), the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the federal government, under the Solomon Amendment, could constitutionally withhold funding from universities if they barred military recruiters from interviewing students. The Solomon Amendment denied federal funding to an institution of higher education that “has a policy or practice … that either prohibits, or in effect prevents” the military “from gaining access to campuses, or access to students … on campuses, for purposes of military recruiting in a manner that is at least equal in quality and scope to the access to campuses and to students that is provided to any other employer.” 10 U. S. C. A. §983(b) (Supp. 2005).
It is easier to limit funds for universities, but it can still raise constitutional problems from free speech to associational rights.
In Rumsfeld v. FAIR, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that such laws could run afoul of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine “if Congress could not directly require universities to provide military recruiters equal access to their students.” He then added:
“This case does not require us to determine when a condition placed on university funding goes beyond the ‘reasonable’ choice offered in Grove City and becomes an unconstitutional condition. It is clear that a funding condition cannot be unconstitutional if it could be constitutionally imposed directly. See Speiser v. Randall, 357 U. S. 513, 526 (1958). Because the First Amendment would not prevent Congress from directly imposing the Solomon Amendment’s access requirement, the statute does not place an unconstitutional condition on the receipt of federal funds.
The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything. Law schools remain free under the statute to express whatever views they may have on the military’s congressionally mandated employment policy, all the while retaining eligibility for federal funds. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 25 (Solicitor General acknowledging that law schools “could put signs on the bulletin board next to the door, they could engage in speech, they could help organize student protests”). As a general matter, the Solomon Amendment regulates conduct, not speech. It affects what law schools must do—afford equal access to military recruiters—not what they may or may not say.”
The coming challenges could raise the question left open in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. However, the question is whether universities, particularly state institutions, want to go down this road of confrontation rather than cooperation.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently highlighted significant issues with improper payments made by federal agencies, with billions of dollars mishandled in the latest fiscal year. These payments, according to the watchdog, are those that “should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount.” This includes duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients, and money spent on goods or services not received.
As of January 23, the GAO has reported that since fiscal year 2003, executive branch agencies have disclosed improper payments totaling approximately $2.8 trillion. For fiscal year 2024 alone, these payments amounted to $161.5 billion. This sum could theoretically purchase over 380,000 homes across the U.S., based on median home sales price data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
While the 2024 figure is substantial, it is notably lower than the $236 billion reported in fiscal year 2023. Since 2019, annual improper payments have consistently exceeded $150 billion. Under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA), agencies are required to identify risks associated with improper payments, take corrective measures, and report these payments within their programs.
The GAO’s report revealed non-compliance with PIIA criteria among 10 agencies under the Chief Financial Officers Act for fiscal year 2022. These include the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Small Business Administration.
Of these, nine agencies were found non-compliant for one or more programs or activities for two consecutive years—2021 and 2022. The Department of Homeland Security was the only exception. For agencies failing to comply for two years in a row, they must submit proposals to become compliant with the PIIA.
These compliance proposals are to be sent to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is expected to provide guidance as part of the fiscal year 2026 President’s Budget development. GAO has recommended that the director of OMB ensure agencies not in compliance with PIIA clearly state in their financial statements their plans to achieve compliance.
Before the finalization of the GAO report, a draft was reviewed by OMB, which agreed with the recommendations but did not provide any additional comments. The attention to financial accountability comes amid broader governmental efforts to enhance efficiency and productivity.
In line with these goals, President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order launching the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative. This effort aims to modernize federal technology and software, enhancing governmental efficiency. The U.S. Digital Service has been rebranded as the U.S. DOGE Service (USDS).
The executive order includes the establishment of a temporary U.S. DOGE Service Organization to spearhead the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda. This organization is tasked with coordinating with the USDS and advising agency heads on implementing the DOGE agenda.
Despite its intentions, the DOGE initiative has faced resistance, with four lawsuits filed against it on January 20 in Washington. Plaintiffs include the American Public Health Association, the American Federation of Teachers, Minority Veterans of America, and the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The Center for Biological Diversity, the National Security Counselors, and consumer watchdog group Public Citizen have also filed suits. Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed concerns that DOGE could undermine federal protections for the environment and wildlife.
Amid the controversy, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), a founding member of the DOGE Caucus, introduced a bill to promote governmental efficiency. He emphasized the need to reduce waste and prioritize streamlined regulations, saying, “The American people gave Washington a mandate in November—waste less, save more.”
The senator’s initiative aims to address the public’s demand for reduced government waste, emphasizing the importance of the DOGE mission. Lankford’s proposed legislation is seen as a commitment to fulfilling this voter mandate and ensuring taxpayer dollars are used judiciously.
This push for efficiency aligns with broader calls for accountability in government spending, especially in light of the staggering figures reported by the GAO. It underscores a commitment to ensuring that financial resources are managed responsibly and effectively.
The ongoing challenges and initiatives reflect a broader conversation about governance and accountability, with a clear focus on reducing inefficiencies and promoting transparency. As these efforts unfold, the commitment to improving government operations remains a priority.
In the face of opposition, the drive to modernize and enhance governmental functions continues to be a central theme. The DOGE initiative and related legislative efforts highlight a proactive approach to addressing long-standing inefficiencies within federal operations.
The ongoing dialogue around these issues illustrates a dedication to refining government processes, aiming for a future where taxpayer funds are allocated with precision and care. As the conversation progresses, the focus remains on achieving tangible improvements in governmental efficiency.
•Kash Patel Will End All Targeting of Pro-Life Americans •Senate Committee Approves Pro-Life Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador • Pro-Life Leader: I’m Encouraged by Robert F. Kennedy’s Hearing •David Daleiden Celebrates Legal Victory •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The new Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is on stage and fired. Gringe is gone, and the intellectual adults are back in the room dishing out the hard cold truth, destroying the left’s propaganda media to their face.
MUST SEE: Karoline Leavitt DESTROYS Clueless Leftist Journalist who Doesn’t Know What a Criminal is, Shuts Down Nasty Reporters Asking The Same Questions Over and Over
By Jordan Conradson – The Gateway Pundit – Jan 28, 2025
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made her career debut in the White House press room Tuesday, and she killed it. At one point during the briefing, Leavitt shut down two different reporters who pressed her back-to-back on the Trump Administration’s deportation of illegal aliens who had not been convicted of a crime inside of our borders despite crossing the border illegally. It was reminiscent of Kayleigh McEnany–maybe even better. As the Gateway Pundit reported, several conservative news outlets were represented in the room today, including The Gateway Pundit, One America News Network, Real America’s Voice, and Breitbart. Leavitt announced in her opening statement that “the Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media that’s in this room.”… 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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NEW YORK, NY – AUGUST 29: American business magnate and TV personality Donald Trump visits “FOX and Friends” at FOX Studios on August 29, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Over the weekend, a tragic incident unfolded in Indiana where a J6 protester, previously pardoned by President Trump, was fatally shot by a police officer. FOX 32 Chicago reported at 4:15 p.m. local time on Sunday that 42-year-old Matthew W. Huttle from Hobart, Indiana, was stopped by a deputy sheriff from Jasper County during a traffic stop near the Pulaski County line. Authorities alleged that the officer attempted to make an arrest, but Huttle resisted the process. This resistance led to a confrontation, resulting in the deputy discharging his firearm and fatally injuring Huttle.
The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office issued a statement explaining the event: “An altercation took place between the suspect and the officer, which resulted in the officer firing his weapon and fatally wounding the suspect.” This tragic event involves immense grief for the family and friends of Huttle, and underlines the crucial need for transparency and accountability within law enforcement agencies.
Huttle’s involvement in the January 6 protests led to his persecution by what many see as a biased judicial process, orchestrated under the Biden administration. Labeling these protesters as political prisoners, Huttle was detained in Boise, Idaho, on November 28, 2022, for his participation in the protest. His actions on that day included recording his entry into the Capitol’s Senate Wing and moving through several hallways, which led to federal authorities charging him with several misdemeanor offenses.
The unfolding narrative, as reported by the Northwest Indiana Times, mentioned Huttle was sentenced to half a year in federal prison. However, he was released on July 17. Just last week, Huttle was among the J6 protesters granted a pardon by President Trump, underscoring the commitment of Trump to stand against what many believe to be a corrupt and politically motivated judiciary.
Jasper County Sheriff Patrick Williamson addressed the unfortunate incident by requesting a thorough investigation from the Indiana State Police to ensure full transparency. The officer involved has been placed on paid administrative leave, which aligns with their established protocol in such circumstances. “Our condolences go out to the family of the deceased as any loss of life is traumatic to those that were close to Mr. Huttle,” he stated, promising to release the officer’s identity pending approval from the State Police Detectives.
Adding to the complexities of the situation, Richard “Bigo” Barnett, another J6 protester from Arkansas who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for reportedly minor offenses, expressed his concerns and suspicions about the incident.
I want to know every damn detail. Right now I would be pretty touchy if someone tried to arrest me and put me through hell again and they better have a valid reason. I live in a right to carry state. Indiana is also a right to carry state. 2A https://t.co/BZbpYmbHYH
Barnett stated: “I want to know every d*mn detail,” highlighting the fear and anxiety among J6 protesters about being targeted again. Barnett emphasized the importance of justified law enforcement interactions, noting his own states and Indiana’s right to carry laws, advocating for Second Amendment rights and questioning the motives behind such arrests.
An immigrant from El Salvador, seven months pregnant, she said, stands next to a U.S. Border Patrol truck after turning herself into border agents on Dec. 7, 2015, near Rio Grande City, Texas. (John Moore via Getty Images)
That order prohibits federal agencies from issuing or accepting citizenship documents for children born in the U.S. when neither parent is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of the child’s birth.
Critics paint it as flagrantly unconstitutional, including a misinformed federal judge in Seattle who issued a temporary injunction against it last week. But the new policy fits squarely within the text and original meaning of the 14th Amendment.
For the first century following the 14th Amendment’s ratification, few legal scholars would have batted an eye at a directive like Trump’s. If anything, they’d have been more confused as to why the federal government started issuing passports to the U.S.-born children of illegal aliens, tourists, and “temporary sojourners” in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, the law doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens. It says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” are citizens. That second, critical, conditional phrase is conveniently ignored or misinterpreted by advocates of “universal” birthright citizenship.
This was intended to constitutionalize the protections of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power” would be considered citizens.
The change in language didn’t reflect a desire on Congress’ part to abrogate the statutory definition or adopt universal birthright citizenship. In fact, the Civil Rights Act remained valid law for another 70 years, with courts and legal scholars alike assuming that it was perfectly consistent with the citizenship clause.
That’s because the sponsors of the 14th Amendment made it clear that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. means owing your political allegiance to the U.S., and not to another country. Children born to aliens are citizens of their parents’ native land, and thus owe their allegiance to, and are subject to the jurisdiction of, that native land.
Legislative history shows that Congress intended the 14th Amendment to eliminate permanent race-based barriers to citizenship—not to bestow citizenship on everyone born within the geographical confines of the United States. Congress didn’t intend birthright citizenship to apply to the U.S.-born children of those who owed only a limited allegiance to the United States.
Even modern proponents of “universal birthright citizenship” admit that the children born on U.S. soil to diplomats or tribally affiliated Native Americans don’t obtain birthright citizenship. In fact, they and their children were only made citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924—legislation that wouldn’t have been necessary if the 14th Amendment adopted common law rules of universal birthright citizenship.
While critics of Trump’s order claim that universal birthright citizenship is “the settled law of the land,” the Supreme Court has never definitively addressed this issue. The first time the nation’s highest court opined on the meaning of the citizenship clause—in the famous Slaughter-House cases of 1872—it stated that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” excluded “children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” The court confirmed this understanding in 1884 in Elk v. Wilkins, denying birthright citizenship to an American Indian because he “owed immediate allegiance to” his tribe and not the United States.
Most legal arguments for universal birthright citizenship ignore these early cases and point to the 1898 decision U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark. However, that decision simply held that U.S.-born children of lawful permanent residents are U.S. citizens.
Further, that decision concerned the constitutionality of acts that created a class of lawful permanent residents who, just like black people under Dred Scott, were perpetually excluded from citizenship based solely on their race—exactly the situation the 14th Amendment was designed to prevent.
Our nation’s current immigration and nationality laws no longer create this type of permanent race-based barrier to citizenship. Today, the federal statute defining citizenship (8 U.S.C. § 1401) simply repeats the language of the 14th Amendment, including the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” That language retains the same meaning today as it had when it was drafted and ratified. It doesn’t evolve to mean something else just because previous administrations erroneously interpreted it more expansively.
As a result, the president has the authority to direct federal agencies to act in accordance with the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, and to issue government documents and benefits only to those individuals who are truly subject to United States jurisdiction.
Far from being an attempt to rewrite the Constitution or “end birthright citizenship,”Trump’s order is a much-needed and long-overdue course correction, reversing a decades-long policy that was never constitutionally mandated in the first place.
New fires have broken out in the San Diego area of California, and these blazes feel symbolic of what’s happening to the Democratic Party.
We already witnessed the aftermath of fires in Los Angeles, which exposed the core nature of Leftism: incompetence. And what does incompetence cost? California homeowners are still on the hook for their mortgages, trapped in a cruel twist of irony—many of them uninsured due to, yes, the incompetence of California’s leaders.
Before outrage takes hold, consider this: they still own the land. Typically, the land is the most valuable part of a property, at least monetarily speaking. But no amount of land value can replace the memories those people lost in the flames. Who needs memories, though, when you can bask in the glow of virtue-signaling? And speaking of glowing embers of mismanagement, let’s turn to the issue of illegal immigration.
The landscape of illegal immigration has shifted dramatically, and the message from President Trump is unmistakable: America’s borders are no longer open for exploitation.
This shift carries lessons not only for those attempting to break U.S. immigration laws but also for the Leftists who have spent years undermining border security. Having cheated Trump out of his rightful second term, Democrats now face the consequences: a Trump unrestrained, with a clear mandate and the wind at his back.
Democrats pushed too far, allowing an invasion that has devastated communities across the country. Even stalwart Democrats like New York City Mayor Eric Adams have been forced to confront the consequences. Adams’ admission—that he was told to “be a good Democrat” and allow illegals to overrun New York—reveals the cynicism of the Left’s policies. His pushback nearly cost him his political career in what appeared to be a coordinated coup. Meanwhile, Trump stands ready to act decisively, knowing that the American people, fed up with the chaos, are now firmly behind him.
Trump’s Plan: Swift and Purposeful Action
When it comes to illegal immigration, Trump doesn’t make threats—he makes plans. His administration has already taken decisive steps to tackle the crisis head-on:
Military Deployment to the Border: Skeptics once mocked Trump for suggesting the military would be involved in border security. Now, 10,000 troops, including 500 Marines, are being deployed to reinforce the southern border. This is no symbolic gesture; it’s a national emergency, and Trump has declared it as such. As one official put it, “Don’t be surprised if you see Marines being dropped off by helicopters.”
Deportation on Demand: The policy is simple: “Deported Same Day.” The Biden administration spent billions facilitating illegal immigration. In stark contrast, Trump is redirecting those resources to expedite deportations. U.S. Transportation Command is preparing military aircraft to assist in migrant deportation flights, underscoring the seriousness of the effort.
Investigating Obstruction: The Trump Justice Department is launching investigations into state and local officials obstructing deportations and preparing to challenge sanctuary laws in court. For Trump, lawlessness—whether at the border or in sanctuary cities—is not an option. Any official standing in the way of lawful deportation orders will face scrutiny and accountability.
Rebranding Border Policy: Under Trump’s leadership, illegal entry has been rebranded. Those who attempt to cross the border illegally can expect to be sent home immediately. Trump Airlines, as the joke goes, is now offering one-way tickets back to reality.
Exposing Leftist Hypocrisy
One of the most startling revelations in Trump’s crackdown is the Biden administration’s use of taxpayer dollars to fly illegals into the country. This brazen misuse of resources has been exposed and halted. Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has fired its entire advisory committee, citing the need to refocus on protecting American interests.
Lessons for the Left
The humanitarian argument for open borders has worn thin. While some illegals genuinely seek to escape poverty and violence, the same issues plague America’s minority communities, particularly Black neighborhoods. As Trump understands, we don’t need to go to other countries looking for problems to solve when we have enough of our own.
The Left’s policies have disproportionately harmed the very people they claim to champion. Minority communities have borne the brunt of unchecked illegal immigration, facing increased competition for jobs, strained public services, and rising crime. The message is clear: America’s resources must first be directed to solving its own problems.
The Bigger Picture
Trump’s return to power represents more than just a change in immigration policy; it’s a reckoning. The Democrats’ attempt to undermine Trump has backfired spectacularly, leaving them exposed as architects of chaos. Trump’s decisive actions on immigration signal a return to order, accountability, and national sovereignty.
For those willing to break U.S. laws to enter the country, the lesson is simple: America will no longer tolerate lawlessness. For the Left, the lesson cuts deeper. By pushing their radical agenda to the breaking point, they’ve unleashed the Wrath of Trump—a leader determined to restore America’s greatness by any means necessary.
The student union of Leeds University has suspended a third-year philosophy and theology student, Connie Shaw, for what were declared “gender critical” views. Shaw’s transgression was to discuss her concerns over transgender ideology. We have previously seen student governments or bodies engage in such anti-free speech activities. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the school administration to maintain free-speech protections on campuses.
Shaw wrote an article, “Gender Madness at the University of Leeds,” questioning the university’s “gender expression fund.” She also interviewed Irish comedian Graham Linehan, an outspoken critic of transgender policies.
She promptly received a “notice of suspension” after she allegedly brought the radio station into “disrepute” because of her “social media activity,” according to The Telegraph.
We have previously discussed how free speech is in a free fall in the United Kingdom. This latest case seems to build on prior moves against “toxic ideologies.”
While most of us find Brock’s views repellent and hateful, they were confined to his head and his room. Yet, Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement: “I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”
Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:
“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…”
Even though Lodder agreed that the defendant was older, had limited mobility, and “there was no evidence of disseminating to others,” he still sent him to prison for holding extremist views.
After the sentencing Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, Head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East (CTPSE), warned others that he was going to prison because he “showed a clear right-wing ideology with the evidence seized from his possessions during the investigation….We are committed to tackling all forms of toxic ideology which has the potential to threaten public safety and security.”
“Toxic ideology” also appears to be the target of Ireland’s proposed Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) law. It covers the possession of material deemed hateful. The law is a free speech nightmare. The law makes it a crime to possess “harmful material” as well as “condoning, denying or grossly trivialising genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.” The law expressly states the intent to combat “forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.”
Clearly, Shaw did not confine her views to herself. She wanted to engage and challenge others. She wanted to test her ideas against those who believe strongly in transgender values. Instead of an exchange of differing viewpoints, she received a suspension from further expression by the student group.
The fact that students took the action in Leeds should not change the significance for the free speech community. Universities often allow students to carry out anti-free speech agendas in the name of student self-governance. However, students come to our institutions to learn in an environment of free speech and self-exploration. Administrators cannot simply shrug and walk away as students seek to silence dissenting or opposing viewpoints.
The British government has created a culture of speech criminalization and censorship. This culture infects every aspect of life, from government to the media to academia. It even distorts the view of a group of students engaged in journalism who seek to punish the expression of opposing views. Rather than view this as a great opportunity for a passionate debate, the students prefer to silence or suspend one side in a growing debate around the world. In the ultimate doublespeak, they are enforcing a strict rule of intolerance in the name of tolerance.
I understand that the students have strong views opposing those of Shaw. Those are counter views that should be given the same opportunity of expression. Let’s have the debate rather than focusing on how to silence one side.
Democrats and other Leftists should be ashamed of how they treated Melania Trump during President Trump’s first term. If anyone else besides The Donald has a reason to be vindictive, it’s Melania.
Despite her impeccable credentials and undeniable accomplishments, she was repeatedly overlooked and disrespected by the media establishment. Only a few years earlier, the world pretended to celebrate Michelle Obama. They marveled at the fact that she breathed.
Michelle Obama wore some of the most atrocious fashions, yet Leftists acted as if she were the star of New York Fashion Week. From her sleeveless dresses to her infamous floral boots, the media fawned over her with an almost embarrassing eagerness to elevate her as a fashion icon. I remember when she exited an airplane during a vacation with her daughters, and she wore clothes that made her look like she just changed the oil in the family car. The media gushed. In reality, Michelle Obama was far less glamorous.
Next came Jill Biden: the woman who insisted on being called “Dr. Jill.” This honorary title was given for a Doctor of Education degree that could have been earned by an eighth-grade honor student. Despite this lack of true academic rigor, Jill Biden demanded deference. As for her fashion sense, she hardly set any trends. By the end of Joe Biden’s term, the press had dropped the “doctor” title entirely and chided her for playing president while Joe Biden was incapacitated.
Melania Trump: The Overlooked Icon
In stark contrast, Melania Trump, a former international supermodel with a resume that most women would envy, was treated like an afterthought. It is worth noting that Melania speaks five languages fluently, a testament to her intelligence and adaptability. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen and established herself as a successful entrepreneur long before her husband entered the political arena.
Yet during her time in the White House, Melania was conspicuously absent from magazine covers. Michelle Obama graced the cover of Vogue three times, and Jill Biden appeared on the cover of Vogue in 2021. Melania? Not once during Trump’s presidency. Her only Vogue cover came in 2005 after her marriage to Donald Trump, where she was portrayed in her wedding gown. This glaring omission speaks volumes about the media’s bias. (Newsweek)
Media’s Political Bias
The disparity in coverage is not limited to magazine covers, however. Media outlets gushed over Michelle Obama’s Garden initiatives and praised Jill Biden’s classroom visits. Meanwhile, Melania’s impactful “Be Best” initiative, which focused on combating cyberbullying and opioid abuse, was mocked and dismissed. Leftists barely concealed their disdain, overlooking the real substance of her advocacy.
Anna Wintour, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, has been criticized for her overt favoritism. An article in The New York Post challenged Wintour to feature Republican figures like Usha Vance, exposing a pattern of ideological bias in the magazine’s coverage. (NY Post)
Melania’s Fashion and Style
Melania’s fashion choices were nothing short of iconic. Her ensembles reflected sophistication and elegance, rivaling those of Jacqueline Kennedy. Her outfit at President Trump’s second inauguration was a prime example. Wearing a tailored coat and a wide-brimmed hat, she exuded confidence and strength. It was reminiscent of Guy Fawkes, with a touch of Doc Holliday’s bravado. Her presence declared, “I’m your Huckleberry” to the Leftists who had spited her.
Even MSNBC had to acknowledge her aura, stating: “It’s really clear that she has a confidence that we didn’t necessarily see the first time around. She understands not only what’s at stake for this administration, but what’s at stake for her.”
A New Chapter for Melania Trump
As the world anticipates President Trump’s return to the White House, Melania is poised to take on an even more prominent role. This second term offers her an opportunity to cement her legacy, not just as a First Lady but as a cultural icon and advocate for meaningful causes. She now understands the stakes and the opportunities, and she is ready to rise to the occasion.
She is a brilliant woman whose husband commands the world stage. Imagine how powerful she can be, having been the right hand of the “person” who defeated the biggest political establishment on the planet. And let’s not forget that she provided half the DNA for a young man who is a genius and child prodigy. Barron Trump’s intellectual potential is yet another testament to her influence and upbringing.
Melania’s potential to bolster the Trump legacy is immense. She could leverage her platform to expand the “Be Best” initiative, perhaps focusing on education reform or global women’s empowerment. As someone who has navigated the complexities of international politics and American media, she could inspire a new generation of women to embrace grace, strength, and independence.
The possibilities are endless: writing a memoir that details her journey from Slovenia to the White House, creating a global foundation to support underserved communities, or even curating a fashion line that reflects her impeccable taste. Melania Trump’s story is far from over, and the world is watching to see how she will continue to shine in her own right.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Deep State is feeling the heat from the Mother Of All Presidencies (MOAP). Trump is resending the security clearances of many for lying about the Hunter Laptop and the Russia collusion hoax and is weeding out others who have leftist political motives.
Deep Stater John Brennan Upset About Losing His Security Clearance, Claims He Only Used it to Advise Government (VIDEO)
By Mike Lachance – The Gateway Pundit – Jan 23, 2025
Former CIA chief John Brennan is among the many ‘spies who lied’ that had their security clearances revoked by Trump this week. Brennan ran to MSNBC to complain, because what else is he going to do? He used his appearance in an attempt to rewrite history, claiming that his security clearance was only ever used to advise the government on certain affairs. He also completely misrepresents the famous letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop. “The only reason why I still had a security clearance, as I have for the past number of years since I left government service, was for the benefit of the government, so that if the CIA or another government agency wanted to call me in to discuss the classified matter, they could do that,” Brennan said. 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.
•Here’s 9 Pro-Life Actions President Trump Took During His First Week •California Drops Prosecution Against Sandra Merritt • Planned Parenthood Condemns Trump Pardons of Pro-Life Americans •NBC Refuses to Cover March for Life Despite 100,000 Participants •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
EXCLUSIVE: The Justice Department is firing more than a dozen key officials who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team prosecuting President Donald Trump, after Acting Attorney General James McHenry said they could not be trusted in “faithfully implementing the president’s agenda,” Fox News Digital has learned.
McHenry has transmitted a letter to each official notifying them of their termination, a Justice Department official exclusively told Fox News Digital.
It is unclear how many officials received that letter. The names of the individuals were not immediately released.
Donald Trump and Jack Smith (Getty Images)
“Today, Acting Attorney General James McHenry terminated the employment of a number of DOJ officials who played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump,” a DOJ official told Fox News Digital. “In light of their actions, the Acting Attorney General does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.”
This action “is consistent with the mission of ending the weaponization of government,” the official told Fox News Digital.
The move comes after the Justice Department reassigned more than a dozen officials in the first week of the Trump administration to a Sanctuary City task force and other measures.
It also comes after Trump vowed to end the weaponization of the federal government.
Former Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith, a former Justice Department official, as special counsel in November 2022. Smith, a former assistant U.S. attorney and chief to the DOJ’s public integrity section, led the investigation into Trump’s retention of classified documents after leaving the White House and whether the former president obstructed the federal government’s investigation into the matter.
Smith was also tasked with overseeing the investigation into whether Trump or other officials and entities interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
Smith charged Trump in both cases, but Trump pleaded not guilty.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan created the subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during the previous Congress. (Andrew Harnik/The Associated Press)
The classified records case was dismissed in July 2024 by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.
Smith charged Trump in the U.S. District Court for Washington D.C. in his 2020 election case, but after Trump was elected president, Smith sought to dismiss the case. Judge Tanya Chutkan granted that request.
Both cases were dismissed.
Brooke Singman is a political correspondent and reporter for Fox News Digital, Fox News Channel and FOX Business.
Below is my column in The Hill on the furious response of some judges in Washington over the Trump pardons. One judge, however, may have ventured too far in effectively banishing commuted defendants from Washington, D.C. without his prior approval.
Here is the column:
Even though President Trump had made it a campaign pledge to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the roughly 1,500 pardons Trump issued on his first day produced familiar reactions from politicians and pundits.
In Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner pledged to pursue those pardoned or commuted with new charges on the state level — eclipsing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in repackaging federal crimes as state offenses. Others cited the pardons as evidence of an even greater plot or purpose. On MSNBC, former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund head Sherrilyn Ifill declared that the pardons were all part of a plan to build an army of “brownshirts.”
Not to be outdone, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) warned that Trump was issuing pardons to create a “reserve army of political foot soldiers to act on behalf of MAGA and Donald Trump.”
Such hyperbole, particularly the Nazi references, is now commonplace. Indeed, the left jumped the shark on the Nazi-mania and death-of-democracy mantra months ago. This week, however, some of the most strident comments seem to be coming from the federal bench itself. Indeed, some judges used dismissal hearings to launch into what seemed at points like cable-ready commentary. Take District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who had previously presided over Trump’s election interference case.
Chutkan had been criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time and, when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go. She then pursued Trump with a vigor second only to Special Counsel Jack Smith.
In the latest hearing, Chutkan again decided to use the bench to amplify her own views of the pardons and Jan. 6. She proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
In fairness, judges often express the gravity of offenses at sentencing, and most of us certainly share the strong revulsion over what occurred on Jan. 6. However, these cases are being dismissed after an election whose winner explicitly pledged to close the prosecutions through executive clemency.
The defendant in her courtroom was there to have a required dismissal entered in his case, not to hear Judge Chutkan speaking truth to power. In this case, she is the power. It is the power to rule dispassionately on the specific case before her. It is not the power to hold court on the merits of presidential decisions.
Down the hall, Chutkan’s colleague Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, lashed out at Trump’s actions, writing,“[T]his Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”
Yet, all of that paled in comparison to what their colleague U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, also an Obama appointee, did with his Jan. 6 cases. He ordered J6 defendants to seek prior approval before going to Capitol Hill or even coming within any of the 69 square miles of the nation’s Capital. Thus, Mehta practically banished Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and seven other defendants. It does not appear that the Trump Justice Department requested such restrictions, but Mehta was able to impose them because those defendants had received commutations rather than pardons. A commutation does not require the dismissal of a case, and courts are generally allowed to set conditions for released defendants.
However, these are new conditions imposed after presidential commutations. More importantly, they could affect the exercise of First Amendment rights from free speech to free association to the right to petition the government. For example, Rhodes and others would have to disclose intended meetings with members of Congress or participation in political events. Rhodes previously asked to speak to the House committee that investigated the riot, but the Democrat-controlled committee refused to allow it. (A Yale law graduate, Rhodes insisted that the hearing be conducted in public, the very condition Hunter Biden made with the support of some of these same members.)
What if Rhodes now wants to meet privately with members to supply his testimony? He would need Mehta to approve it and potentially make such plans public.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss the J6 cases and serious concerns over what a top Justice Department official called the “shock and awe” campaign to make an example of the defendants by throwing the book at them.
Nevertheless, even though I opposed the seditious conspiracy charges on legal grounds, I did not support the pardoning of violent offenders who attacked police officers.
The court system plays a key role in either tamping down or fueling rage in society. The book details how “rage rhetoric” often became state rage during periods of crackdowns on free speech. Over the last two centuries, some judges used their courtrooms to lash out at political opponents, anarchists, unionists or communists.
I was particularly concerned in these cases with sentences that seemed visceral, even gratuitous, in denying free speech rights. In Washington, judges-imposed limits on what political views defendants could read or share. For example, Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who had previously called Trump a “charlatan,” had before him a typical Jan. 6 case — that of Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas. Goodwyn pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. It is a minor offense that generated little jail time.
However, Walton faulted Goodwyn for appearing on Fox News and spreading “disinformation,” and so he ordered the government to monitor what he was viewing and discussing. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked Walton for that surveillance order, but he doubled down. On remand, the Biden Justice Department insisted that Goodwyn was unrepentant and still viewing “extremist media.”
Walton, therefore, determined that the risk was too great in Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”
Now, his colleague is similarly ordering that those freed under Trump’s commutations will disclose and seek approval to go to the Capitol to speak with members or other citizens.
Many of us have long viewed the Jan. 6 riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. Few people want to defend Rhodes or either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. However, the First Amendment was not written to protect popular speech or popular individuals.
The Mehta order should not push President Trump toward converting these commutations into pardons. It should also not prevent us from questioning the court’s authority to regulate the exercise of First Amendment rights.
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to review a potentially blockbuster religion clause case in Oklahoma Charter School Board v. Drummond. However, there is a catch. While the lawyers representing St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School may need every vote they can get in this heavily contested area; they may have to prevail without Justice Amy Coney Barrett who recused herself for an unstated reason.
The case could bring clarity to an area long mired in 5-4 decisions. The question presented is “whether a state violates the First Amendment’s free exercise clause by excluding privately run religious schools from the state’s charter-school program solely because the schools are religious.”
The basis for the recusal is a mystery. Barrett was on the faculty at Notre Dame University and has close ties to the institution. Notre Dame Law Professor Nicole Garnett has been involved in the case and the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic is on the brief for St. Isidore.
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School is a Roman Catholic institution focused on digital learning.
The lower court ruled that such funding of a religious school is unconstitutional. Before the Oklahoma Supreme Court, Oklahoma Attorney General, Gentner Drummond, prevailed in arguing that the charter school board violated state law, the Oklahoma Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution. He insisted that the board should not have chartered the school because “St. Isidore’s educational philosophy is to establish and operate the school as a Catholic school.” He also opposed review by the Supreme Court, warning that the school intends to “serve the evangelizing mission of the church.”
The case could produce one of the most consequential decisions on the separation of Church and State in decades. Given her past interest and writing in the area, it would be ironic for Barrett to miss this ruling.
It is reminiscent of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s recusal in the Harvard affirmative action case due to her close ties to that institution. However, for Jackson, it was immaterial since she was allowed to vote in the sister case involving the University of North Carolina.
Every modern president seems to promise transparency during their campaigns, but few ever seem to get around to it. Once in power, the value of being opaque becomes evident. We will have to wait to see if President Donald Trump will fulfill his pledges, but so far this is proving the cellophane administration. Putting aside his constant press gaggles and conferences, the Administration has ordered wholesale disclosures of long-withheld files from everything from the JFK investigation to, most recently, the CIA COVID origins report. That report is particularly stinging for both the Biden Administration and its media allies, which treated the lab theory as a fringe, conspiratorial, or even racist theory.
Newly-confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe released the report, which details how it views the lab theory as the most likely explanation for the virus. Expressing “low confidence,” the agency did not reject the theory over the natural origins theory, which was treated as sacrosanct by the media and favored by figures like Anthony Fauci. (Other recent reports have contradicted the equally orthodox view on the closing of schools, showing no material benefit in terms of slowing the transmission of COVID).
The BBC reported that “the CIA on Saturday offered a new assessment on the origin of the Covid outbreak, saying the coronavirus is ‘more likely’ to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals. But the intelligence agency cautioned it had ‘low confidence’ in this determination.”
The low confidence finding shows that the agency found the evidence fragmented and fluid. However, the point is that the natural origins theory and the lab theory were both viable theories. Neither was disproven or rejected. Other agencies like the FBI seemed to have a higher confidence in the lab theory over the natural origins’ theory.
Even a low-confidence finding shows the height of hypocrisy in Washington where politicians and pundits savaged any scientist who even suggested the possibility that the virus was man-made and likely originated in the Wuhan lab near the site of the outbreak.
This follows a recent disclosure in the Wall Street Journal of a report on how the Biden administration may have suppressed dissenting views supporting the lab theory on the origin of the COVID-19 virus. Not only were the FBI and its top experts excluded from a critical briefing of President Biden, but government scientists were reportedly warned that they were “off the reservation” in supporting the lab theory.
As previously discussed, many journalists used the rejection of the lab theory to paint Trump as a bigot. By the time Biden became president, not only were certain government officials heavily invested in the zoonotic or natural origin theory, but so were many in the media.
Reporters used opposition to the lab theory as another opportunity to pound their chests and signal their virtue.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace mocked Trump and others for spreading one of his favorite “conspiracy theories.” MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt insisted that “we know it’s been debunked that this virus was manmade or modified.”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid also called the lab leak theory “debunked bunkum,” while CNN reporter Drew Griffin criticized spreading the “widely debunked” theory. CNN host Fareed Zakaria told viewers that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” in the lab leak.
NBC News’s Janis Mackey Frayer described it as the “heart of conspiracy theories.”
The Washington Post was particularly dogmatic. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) raised the theory, he was chastised for “repeat[ing] a fringe theory suggesting that the ongoing spread of a coronavirus is connected to research in the disease-ravaged epicenter of Wuhan, China.”
Likewise, after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) mentioned the lab theory, Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler mocked him: “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
As these efforts failed and more information emerged supporting the lab theory, many media figures just looked at their shoes and shrugged. Others became more ardent. In 2021, New York Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was still calling on reporters not to mention the “racist” lab theory.
In Kessler’s case, he wrote that the lab theory was “suddenly credible” as if it had sprung from the head of Zeus rather than having been supported for years by scientists, many of whom had been canceled and banned.
As these figures were attacking reports, Biden officials were sitting on these reports. Figures like Fauci did nothing to support those academics being canceled or censored for raising the theory.
The very figures claiming to battle “disinformation” were suppressing opposing views that have now been vindicated as credible. It was not only the lab theory. In my recent book, I discuss how signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration were fired or disciplined by their schools or associations for questioning COVID-19 policies.
The suppression of the lab theory proves the ultimate fallacy of censorship. Throughout history, censorship has never succeeded. It has never stopped a single idea or a movement. It has a perfect failure rate. Ideas, like water, have a way of finding their way out in time.
Yet, as the last few years have shown, it does succeed in imposing costs on those with dissenting views. For years, figures like Bhattacharya (who was recently awarded the prestigious Intellectual Freedom Award by the American Academy of Sciences and Letters) were hounded and marginalized.
Others opposed Bhattacharya’s right to offer his scientific views, even under oath. For example, in one hearing, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) expressed disgust that Bhattacharya was even allowed to testify as “a purveyor of COVID-19 misinformation.”
One of the saddest aspects of this story is that many of these figures in government, academia and the media were not necessarily trying to shield China. Some were motivated by their investment in the narrative while others were drawn by the political and personal benefits that came from joining the mob against a minority of scientists.
The CIA report obviously does not resolve this debate, but it shows that there is a legitimate debate despite the overwhelming message of the media and the attacks on scientists. Of course, the same media and political figures responsible for this culture of intimidation have simply moved on. The value of an alliance with the media is that such embarrassing contradictions are not reported. At most, these figures shrug and turn to the next subject for groupthink and mob action.
NB: This column was changed shortly after publication to add the link to the meaning of “low confidence” in the CIA report and to repeat that the issue is not which theory is correct, but that neither theory was found dispositive or invalid. Other media links were added as background.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – A group of thugs sent by Democrat Rep. Leigh Finke today attempted to obstruct House Republicans from conducting a scheduled Public Safety hearing,” Rep. Walter Hudson said.
‘Group of thugs’: Left-wing protesters attempt to shut down House committee meeting
Protesters crashed a Minnesota House committee meeting on Tuesday, following a demonstration they held outside protesting what they called a “power grab” by Minnesota Republicans.
“Quite enough of that bullshit, we’re done with this,” a protester, identified as Amber Muhm with the Aliveness Project, stood up and yelled into a bullhorn during a House Public Safety Committee meeting. The protesters were gaveled down and called out of order. “No, this is an illegitimate committee,” Muhm said. “You don’t have a quorum in the House. You know this is bullshit.” House staff then cut the audio of the stream and the rest of the tirade was not able to be heard from the official video feed. The rant went on for over 20 minutes. READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democrats were the party of slavery and today are the party of a new type of labor oppression toward illegal immigrants, but not to pick our cotton but to pick our fruit and clean our toilets for subpar wages.
Archbishop Vigano Exposes Globalist Elite’s Hypocrisy: How Religious and Civil Leaders Profit from Illegal Immigration and the LGBTQ+ Agenda
When the servants of the globalist elite placed at the top of the institutions – both civil and religious – talk about welcoming illegal immigrants, they do not tell you that they make huge profits from the management of immigrants. When they talk about the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, they do not tell you that they have a conflict of interest since they themselves are involved. When they talk about going green, they do not tell you about their non-disinterested investments in the alternative energy sector. This betrayal of their institutional role is what unites them: they earn money and increase their social power to the extent that they support the globalist agenda. 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.
Senators are looking for excuses over reasons to refuse President Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard — a combat veteran who previously served as a Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii and now faces character assassination.
Gabbard, who is meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday afternoon, committed two crimes that now threaten to derail her confirmation: leaving the Democrat party and campaigning against the interventionist impulses of the deep state war machine.
After Democrats fought to delay her way forward, Semafor reported Wednesday that Gabbard’s nomination was “on shaky ground” within the GOP. According to the outlet, Republicans are “particularly hesitant” about previous statements from Gabbard “that some have read as too warm toward Vladimir Putin and former Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad.” The piece goes on to note that Gabbard met with Assad in 2017 and highlights her criticism of “some intelligence-gathering tools” — such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) used to execute the Russia hoax.
One anonymous GOP Senator told Semafor that “[t]here are very serious concerns by enough members to put her nomination in jeopardy.” Another anonymous GOP senator told the outlet that Gabbard still “has a lot of questions to answer.”
Apparently, both senators have some research to do. If meeting with Assad is disqualifying, then why did the Senate confirm 94 to 3 to confirm Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013? Kerry met with the Syrian president while serving as a senator from Massachusetts in 2006. Were either of the anonymous senators who are now apparently critical of Gabbard’s meeting in office 12 years ago? Did they vote to confirm Kerry as the nation’s chief diplomat? If they were previously in the House, did either complain when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Assad over President George W. Bush’s objections a year later?
Or is Gabbard’s meeting now suddenly a problem because, under President Trump, engaging with overseas adversaries is an effective strategy to keep the peace, and neocons in Congress are allergic to world peace?
Lest lawmakers truly believe Gabbard is a champion for the since-dismantled Assad regime, any honest examination of her past comments suggests otherwise. In 2019, Gabbard was asked in an NBC interview whether she believed the ex-Syrian dictator was a “good person.”
“No, I don’t,” she said.
But the story in Politico on Gabbard’s comments at the time focused on her refusal to explicitly condemn Assad as a “U.S. adversary.”
“My point is that whether it is Syria or any of these other countries, we need to look at how their interests are counter to or aligned with ours,” she said.
How radical that a member of Congress might offer a sobering analysis of the realities in the Middle East. When Assad’s regime finally did fall in December, the rebel coalition to take over was essentially run by ISIS and al-Qaida, two groups whose interests generally run counter to the nation they repeatedly want to bomb. Acknowledging there are no good guys in a fight doesn’t make someone an ally to one or the other.
Gabbard predicted what would ultimately happen in Syria during an interview with CNN nearly a decade ago. She noted how the Syrians she met with during her 2017 visit acknowledged that “[t]here [were] no moderate rebels” attempting to overthrow Assad.
“The Syrian people recognize, and they know that if President Assad is overthrown, then Al-Qaida or a group like Al-Qaida … will take charge of all of Syria,” she said.
If anything, Americans should feel safer with a director of national intelligence who can accurately foresee what might happen in global affairs.
Semafor cited “two people close to the White House” reportedly “still behind” Gabbard. According to the outlet, one of these sources said the “concerns” about Gabbard are “not people trying to put a knife in Tulsi,” but that “there’s a problem, and nobody can figure it out.”
What these anonymous senators and other opposition are obviously trying to figure out is how to sink Gabbard’s nomination before her scheduled hearing on Jan. 30.
Gabbard, a nearly two-decade veteran, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, and a long-time critic of America’s forever wars is no rookie competing against deep state smear campaigns. Last year, the former Democrat congresswoman was the subject of surveillance under a counterterrorism program within the U.S. Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS). Gabbard came under surveillance just “one day after she criticized the Biden Administration” on Fox News, according to a letter from the whistleblower watchdog group Empower Oversight.
Now the victim of deep state abuses may be given the keys to oversee the deep state in what would be the worst nightmare for Gabbard’s neocon opponents.
Tristan Justice is a national correspondent for The Federalist and the co-author of “Fat and Unhappy: How ‘Body Positivity’ Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself).” He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here. Buy “Fat and Unhappy” here.
Democrat Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono was the only lawmaker on the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee to oppose the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, former GOP congressman from Georgia Doug Collins.
Amid the slew of confirmation hearings that have taken place, Hirono has been unafraid to poke and prod about nominees’ sex lives, and at one point she accused Trump’s defense secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, of being willing to shoot at lawful protesters.
“Would you carry out such an order [to shoot protesters] from President Trump?” Hirono asked Hegseth during his hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee, citing reports that the president asked former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the leg during the 2020 riots in Washington, D.C., that ensued after the death of George Floyd.
Sen. Mazie Hirono and defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth (Getty Images)
Hegseth tried to offer a response to Hirono’s question, but the senator would not let him get a word in and instead answered the question for him, “You will shoot protesters in the leg,” she asserted to Hegseth. “Moving on.”
Hirono also has been unafraid to ask each of Trump’s nominees she questioned throughout their confirmation hearings, including Collins, about unfounded allegations of sexual assault.
“As part of my responsibilities to ensure the fitness of nominees before any of the committees, I ask the following two questions,” Hirono posited during the hearing for Trump’s interior secretary nominee, Doug Burgum. “First is, since you became a legal adult have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature? Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?”
Sen. Mazie Hirono and interior secretary nominee former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (Getty Images)
For Trump’s attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, Hirono asked the same questions about unfounded sexual allegations. She similarly answered her own questions as she did with Hegseth. Bondi, however, clapped back with criticism of her own during the senator’s questioning, noting that Hirono refused to meet with her privately to discuss her concerns ahead of the public hearing.
Trump AG pick Pam Bondi, right, went back and forth with Sen. Mazie Hirono in her confirmation hearing. (Getty Images)
“Sen. Hirono, I wish you had met with me. Had you met with me, we could have discussed many things and gotten to the meat [of your questions],” Bondi told Hirono as she was lobbing questions at the nominee. “You were the only one who refused to meet with me.”
The U.S. Senate narrowly voted on Thursday to advance the nomination of Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host and military veteran, to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, clearing the way for a vote on his confirmation later this week.
The tally was 51-49 in the 100-member Senate on a procedural measure to end debate.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the latest attack on Elon Musk from the left. There is a mania on the left in calling people with opposing views “Nazis” and referencing the Third Reich. The left has jumped the Nazi shark in this rhetoric as the public tunes out these increasingly hysterical voices.
Here is the column:
One of the least successful efforts of the left and many in the media this election was to paint Republican voters as “Nazis” hellbent on destroying democracy. While once verboten as a political comparison, liberal politicians and pundits have developed something of a Nazi fetish, where every statement and gesture is declared a return of the Third Reich. It seems like each news event presents a Rorschach test where every inkblot looks like a Nazi.
That mania reached absurd, even comedic, levels with the attack on Elon Musk over an awkward gesture during the inauguration celebration. An exuberant Musk told the crowd, “My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” As he gave those words, he placed his right hand on his chest and stretched his arm outward, his palm facing the floor. He then repeated the gesture before putting his hand on his chest again. It was all done in a matter of seconds, but it was enough for the usual mob to erupt in faux outrage.
Pundits insisted that Musk had chosen the moment to come out as a Nazi on national television. The Washington Post breathlessly reported this week how the “Nazi-style salute” had “invigorated fans on the far right.” The usual liberal professors were rolled out to offer a patina of authority to the ridiculous claim.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University, declared, “Historian of fascism here. It was a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one too.”
Mike Stuchbery went on X (the company owned by the man he now suggests is a Nazi reenactor) to declare, “I studied the Nazis at university, taught the history of Nazi Germany on two continents and wrote for major newspapers about Nazi Germany. I am internet famous for fact-checking chuds [gross people] on the history, ideology and policy of Nazi Germany. That was a Nazi salute.”
Well, that settles it.
As the outrage continued, any doubt or dissent was denounced as evidence that you are obviously a Nazi as well. That became a bit embarrassing when the leading Jewish organization, the Anti-Defamation League, stated the obvious: This was not a Nazi salute but rather an “awkward gesture.”
The core principle of liberal mob tactics is that there can be no divergence, even by a group like the ADL. The way to deal with opposing ideas or writings is by making someone persona non grata. If you do not cancel others, you will be canceled.
So, the ADL was effectively declared soft on Nazis by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY): “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity. People can officially stop listening to you as any sort of reputable source of information now. You work for them. Thank you for making that crystal clear to all.”
We’ve reached a level of absurdity where Jewish advocates are treated like they are virtual Nazi sympathizers.
This is not the first time the Democrats have labeled Trump and his supporters “Nazis.”
It started years ago as Democrats repeated analogies of Trump to Hitler and his followers to brownshirted neo-Nazis. Defeating Trump has been compared to stopping Hitler in 1933, and media personalities like Rachel Maddow went on the air with a hysterical claim that “death squads” were authorized by the Supreme Court.
When Trump held a massive rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden before the election, the media were apoplectic and immediately declared it … you guessed it … akin to a Nazi rally. From the Washington Post to the New York Times, the media formed an affinity group meeting to fret over “echoes of 1939.” In case anyone missed the message, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz emphasized “a direct parallel” with the Nazis.
Over at the Nation, David Zirin treated Madison Square Garden (known for everything from cage fights to dog shows) as an almost Vatican-like space: “With his fascist New York City rally, Donald Trump has befouled what many believe to be a sacred space: Madison Square Garden.”
So Trump is a Nazi. Musk is a Nazi. Half the country are Nazis. The problem is that, if you say everyone is a Nazi, then no one is a Nazi. It loses its meaning.
That includes Ocasio-Cortez, who appears to have joined the ranks of the Reich after critics posted her making a Musk-like gesture during a speech.
There was no torrent of media fretting about how the gesture reflected the extremism of AOC’s questioning need for a Supreme Court, seeking to bar Trump and dozens of Republicans from ballots, or supporting censorship. AOC is a certified Nazi hunter, a license that seems only to be available to figures on the left.
Of course, labeling political opponents as diabolically evil fanatics and seeking to bar candidates from ballots sounds a lot like … well … it sounds familiar.
There is an alternative. We can put the rage rhetoric aside and have honest debates over differences on politics and laws. In other words, we can fight over policy … and leave the Nazis out of it.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – There is a huge reason the Deep State and the Military Industrial Complex don’t want Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence: She doesn’t want to play their multi-foreign war game. George Washington warned many years ago to beware of foreign entanglements.
Just as Trump Warned: Senate Democrats Secretly Move to Sabotage and Delay Tulsi Gabbard Confirmation
Senate Democrats are quietly working to delay Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing next week. President Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. “I am pleased to announce that former Congresswoman, Lieutenant Colonel Tulsi Gabbard, will serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI). For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans. As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties – She is now a proud Republican! I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit… 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.
•Senate Democrats Block Bill to Stop Infanticide •Pro-Life Groups Ask Trump to Pardon 21 Pro-Life Americans • Josh Hawley Urges Trump to Pardon Imprisoned Pro-Lifers •Trump Issues Order That Confirms Life Begins at Conception •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
•Trump Must Pardon 21 Pro-Life Americans Biden Put in Prison •Bevelyn Williams’ Husband Says She Has Not Been Pardoned • Chip Roy Files Bill to Repeal FACE Law •Pete Hegseth Wants to End Military-Funded Abortion •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
A.F. Branco Cartoon – It seems Biden has pardoned almost every criminal in Washington, DC, but missed one of the biggest of all, Hillary. She must be feeling left out and hung out to dry. Will she ever answer for her crimes? Benghazi, 30,000 missing emails, and the Russia collusion hoax come to mind.
LOATHSOME: Biden Regime Reportedly Considering Preemptive Pardons for Several of Trump’s Enemies Including Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, and Anthony Fauci
By Cullen Linebarge – The Gateway Pundit – Dec 4, 2024
The lawless Biden regime is not satisfied with the White House occupant’s pardon of his ne’er do well son Hunter and is looking to give even more of the political class’s worst characters a complete pass on their crimes. Politico on Wednesday dropped an explosive report that Biden’s handlers are strongly considering issuing preemptive several current and former government officials who they believe will be in the incoming Trump administration’s crosshairs. The outlet notes that the Regime has become even more panicked since Trump announced he was picking MAGA hero Kash Patel to drain the Deep State swamp and ensure those who persecuted Trump do not escape punishment. 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.
Amid newly inaugurated President Donald Trump’s pardon of nearly 1,500 January 6 protesters, anti-abortion groups are calling on the president to pardon a 76-year-old grandmother and 20 others who were imprisoned and prosecuted for pro-life protests under the Biden Department of Justice.
One group, the Thomas More Society, a law firm specializing in pro-life cases, filed a petition to the new president in which it laid out the legal grounds for him to issue pardons and pointed out how President Joe Biden abused the justice system to target these pro-life activists.
Steve Crampton, a senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, told Fox News Digital that it is “absolutely vital” these activists be pardoned to restore equality under the law.
“We hope by President Trump’s actions here that he will restore some sanity and rule of law to the approach of the Department of Justice and the FBI, but also help move this culture back toward a culture of life rather than one of death,” said Crampton. “This small act on his part would, in fact, serve to kind of ignite a momentous movement toward restoring a respect for life in this nation that’s so desperately needed.”
President Trump signs pardons for Jan. 6 defendants in the Oval Office at the White House on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
Trump indicated several times during his campaign that he is open to issuing pardons for some of these pro-lifers who were prosecuted under a federal law called the Freedom of Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The activists were convicted of FACE Act violations for participating in various “sit-in” protests inside abortion clinics in Washington, D.C., Nashville, Detroit, Long Island and Manhattan.
According to the Thomas More Society, Biden’s Department of Justice used the FACE Act to increase sentences for crimes that would otherwise have been simple trespassing charges. The group says Biden sought to make examples of these pro-lifers, prosecuting them to the fullest extent of the law, despite their sit-in protests inside abortion clinics being entirely peaceful and with no threat of violence or intimidation.
Now that Trump is back in the White House, the Thomas More Society believes he can restore justice for these 21 activists and, in so doing, help restore confidence and trust in the justice system among the American people.
“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen a president honor his campaign promises the way this president has,” said Crampton. “So, we’re very hopeful that he will do so again in this case. And for these people who are really just salt of the earth, the best kind of folks that ought to be in their communities doing good rather than behind bars.”
Lauren Handy, director of activism for Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, in Washington, D.C. on April 2, 2022. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Of the 21 activists prosecuted under the Biden administration’s use of the FACE Act, nine are currently in prison. Several of those in prison are elderly, with three, Jean Marshall, Paullette Harlow and Joan Andrews Bell, in their 70s. The eldest is Bell, who, at 76, has seven adult children and seven grandchildren. She was sentenced to over two years in prison. One activist, Heather Idoni, 59, who was sentenced to two years, has undergone serious health difficulties and suffered a minor stroke while in prison.
The longest prison sentence went to 31-year-old Lauren Handy, who is currently serving a nearly five-year sentence for her role in organizing a 2020 sit-in protest at the Washington, D.C., Surgi-Clinic run by Dr. Cesare Santangelo.
Also facing prison time is 89-year-old Eva Edl, a survivor of a communist concentration camp, who has been active in the pro-life movement for decades.
Anti-abortion demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court building, on the day justices heard arguments in the Mississippi abortion rights case, in Washington, Dec. 1, 2021. (Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
“Down is up and up is down in this case,” said Crampton. “These people are folks who, some of them, have adopted several special-needs children from places like Ukraine. Some are missionaries to China and Ukraine and the worst places on the planet, going out of their way to do good to people that are in desperate need. These are folks that ought to be receiving those citizenship medals that President Biden is handing out to the likes of George Soros, who is trying to destroy our nation.”
“We must restore the rule of law,” he went on. “The questioning of Mr. Trump’s Cabinet appointees this past week, ironically enough, from the left, points again and again, back to the need not to single out political opponents for prosecution and so forth.”
“We have recently undertaken a disrespect for the rule of law that has undermined any respect for authority in general, let alone the law in particular,” he said. “So, I really think that this also is a small step back to restoring that absolutely essential respect for the rule of law that we must have if America is to survive.”
Peter Pinedo is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
Below is my column in the New York Post on the pardoning of the January 6th defendants by President Donald Trump. The scope of the pardon appears broader than some had hoped. What is clear is that any such relief should not extend to violent actors, particularly those who attacked police officers. However, the Justice Department itself may have made the strongest case for presidential pardons.
Here is the column:
On January 20, 2025, the “shock and awe” campaign of the Justice Department came to an end as President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 January 6th defendants.
Four years ago, the Justice Department set out to send a chilling message to the nation. In an interview with CBS News a year later, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin indicated that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of defendants. Sherwin explained that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”
The awe is gone but the shock remains at the Justice Department. If Sherwin and his colleagues hoped to “Trump proof” the nation, they failed in spectacular fashion. While there was ample basis for criminal charges, the excessive treatment of some of the January 6th defendants undermined the credibility of their prosecutions for many.
That is no easy feat.
Most of us denounced the January 6th riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. Those who engaged in the rioting, and most importantly the violence, needed to be punished. However, what followed left many increasingly uneasy. The Justice Department rounded up hundreds and, even though most were charged with relatively minor crimes of unlawful entry or trespass, the Justice Department opposed the release of many from jail and sought absurdly long sentences in some cases. It also sought restrictions on defendants that raised troubling first amendment concerns.
In my recent book, “Indispensable Right,” I discuss these cases and their troubling elements.
A good example is the handling of the most well-known case of the so-called QAnon Shaman. Bare-chested, wearing an animal headdress, horns, and red-white-and-blue face paint, Jake Angeli Chansley became the iconic image of the riot.
Seeking to make examples of these defendants, the Justice Department took special measures in hammering Chansley. He was held in solitary confinement and denied bail.
Chansley was treated more harshly because of his visibility. It was his costume, not his conduct, that seemed to drive the sentencing. In the hearing, Judge Royce Lamberth noted, “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he? For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”
Lamberth hit Chansley with a heavy 41-month sentence for “obstructing a federal proceeding.”
However, long withheld footage, showed recently that Chansley (like hundreds of people that day) simply walked into the Capitol past police officers and was then escorted by officers through the Capitol. At one point, two officers not only appear to guide him to the floor but actually try to open locked doors for him. Chansley is shown walking unimpeded through a large number of armed officers with his four-foot flag-draped spear and horned Viking helmet on his way to the Senate floor.
Does that make Chansley’s actions acceptable, let alone commendable? Of course not. He deserved to be arrested and punished. However, what many saw was a troubled individual being made an example for others.
In my book, I discuss how, in history, “rage rhetoric” was allowed to become “state rage.” This is one such case.
Trump ran on the promise to pardon these defendants and secured not just the White House but the popular vote. It was not just the public that rejected the narrative of January 6th as an “insurrection.”
In the recent Supreme Court decision in Fischer v. U.S. to reject hundreds of charges in January 6th cases for the obstruction of legal proceedings, the Court left most cases as simply a mass trespass and unlawful entry.
The shock may be gone for these defendants, but it may only be beginning for the Justice Department and the FBI.
When the campaign of Hillary Clinton secretly funded the infamous Steele Dossier to launch the Russian conspiracy investigation, it was the Justice Department that was not just the willing but eager partner.
The “insurance policy” described by former FBI official Peter Strzok was redeemed in investigations that derailed much of Trump’s first term.
Later, it was the Justice Department again that pursued a no-holds-barred effort to convict Trump before the election.
The Justice Department is the hardest of silos in Washington to reform. Unlike most departments, it is largely homogenous, with thousands of lawyers who share professional and cultural ties. It is a department composed of people who are by their very definition, litigious.
Trump insisted on selecting an Attorney General, nominee Pam Bondi, who has no past ties or identification with the department. For the Justice Department, it must feel like the Visigoths arriving at the gates of Rome . . . only to be let in by the citizens.
According to polling, the public ultimately found the “barbarians” less threatening than those who have insisted that Rome would fall. That must certainly be shocking for many in Washington, but the record of the Justice Department showed how the awe can become awful when officials feel the license of state rage.
Below is my column on the Biden family pardons in Fox.com. President Joe Biden merely confirmed the worst expectations of his critics. The true condemnation rests with those in the media who enabled the Biden influence-peddling operation.
Here is the column:
At 11:45 am, the media felt the final sting of the Biden scandal. It was delivered by President Joe Biden, who shattered any pretense of principle in pardoning family members allegedly implicated in the influence-peddling corruption scandal.
According to an old fable, a scorpion convinced a leery frog to carry him across a river, noting that he could not sting him since they would both drown. Halfway across, the scorpion struck and the frog asked why he would doom them both. The scorpion replied “I am sorry, but I couldn’t resist the urge. It’s in my nature.”
For those of us who have written about the corruption of the Biden family for decades, the pardons were crushingly predictable. The President simply couldn’t resist the urge. In a city where corruption is a cottage industry, the Bidens have long been in a league of their own, from nepotism to influence peddling to illicit lobbying. In the influence-peddling scandal, millions were generated from foreign sources in virtual plain view.
There were the luxury hotel rooms, a diamond, a sports car, and massive payments called “loans. In the summer of 2019, one Chinese businessman wired Hunter Biden $250,000 using Joe Biden’s Delaware home as the beneficiary address.”
The sense of absolute impunity came out in shake-down communications. For example, there was the WhatsApp message to a Chinese businessman openly threatening the displeasure of Joe Biden if money was not forked over without delay. In the message, Hunter warned:
“I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the Chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
That sense of impunity was due to mainstream media forming a protective shell around the family. The media refused to pursue the scandal despite the Hunter Biden laptop and clear evidence of influence peddling.
In 2020, CBS News’s Lesley Stahl literally laughed mockingly at then-President Donald Trump when he raised the Hunter Biden laptop and what it revealed about the Bidens. (Yet Stahl still recently expressed confusion and alarm that people were abandoning legacy media for new media.)
Reporters assured citizens that the laptop was presumptive “Russian disinformation.” Even after the media belatedly acknowledged that it was authentic, MSNBC and Washington Post analysts were still making the claim last year.
After Republicans in the House detailed millions in payments, the media shifted to claiming that there was no real scandal unless it was shown that Joe Biden actually received money directly. It was a ridiculous claim since courts have long treated money going to family members as the same as going directly to a principal as criminal conduct.
The media continued to protect Biden, as evidence showed that Biden had repeatedly lied about not meeting with Hunter’s clients or not having knowledge of his foreign dealings.
As the media narrative continued to collapse, it latched on the promise of Biden that he would never pardon his son – proof that the President was willing to let the criminal justice system run its course. Biden then was shown to be lying about the pardon promise. After he was forced out of the election, Biden signed a pardon for any crimes over a decade committed by his son.
The media gave muttered “harrumphs” and moved on. Many said that it was understandable for a father of a son who struggled with drugs.
Now, in the final minutes of his presidency, Biden pardoned his other allegedly implicated family members, including James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden. James Biden was previously referred for criminal charges for lying under oath to Congress as part of its investigation into the corruption scandal.
The pardons were clearly timed to avoid media scrutiny and questions. While he described the act as one of “conscience,” it was an almost mocking act of corruption.
In a strange way, it passed in Bidenworld as an honest moment. There were no claims of supporting an addicted son or dealing with a pending case. It was done in the final minutes because it was raw and obvious. There is no pretense or apology. Just good old-fashioned corruption Biden-style.
It was as honest a moment as when Biden told a friend that “no one f**ks with a Biden.” There was nothing revealing in this about Biden. He could shrug and say, “It’s in my nature.” The sting instead fell on the media, which trusted Biden not to demean it further with such an unethical and disgraceful final act.
The funny thing is that Biden made it across the river. He boarded his final flight with his family (and himself) protected by the misuse of his presidential authority. However, if he looked out the window, he could see his media allies slipping stunned beneath the waters.
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster, June 18, 2024).
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden is out, which is the end of an error. Trump will usher in new America First policies to correct the destructive policies of the last four years.
Trump’s Official Email as President Releases ‘America First’ Agenda: A Comprehensive List of Priorities for the Nation
By Jim Hoft – The Gateway Pundit – Jan 20, 2025
Following President Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, the White House Press Secretary today released President Donald Trump’s comprehensive ‘America First’ agenda. The plan encompasses a series of executive orders and policy initiatives aimed at reshaping domestic and foreign policies to prioritize American interests. These plans could potentially be enacted today through Trump’s executive orders. The email reads… READ MORE
A.F. Branco Cartoon—In Trump’s first term, he needed a bigger shovel to bring America back to greatness, and now he has one. It’s time to root out government corruption, burdensome regulations, and taxes.
President Trump Humiliates Democrats With Blistering Opening Lines of Inauguration Speech—Destroys Crooked Joe Biden and His Dirty Shadow Regime [VIDEO]
By Patty McMurry – The Gateway Pundit – Jan 20, 2025
President Trump knocked it out of the ballpark with his second inaugural speech in front of millions, while America’s most talented individuals were seated next behind him, ready to assume their top roles in his soon-to-be transformational administration. Our newly-inaugurated 47th President of the United States didn’t hold back in his powerful speech, as he outlined his “Golden Age of America” plan to bring prosperity and strength back to America while dismantling the woke nightmare caused by a very dark four years in American history led by a shadow government. 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.
•Trump Withdraws America From Pro-Abortion Who •Trump Will Pardon Pro-Life Advocate Bevelyn Williams • Trump Disables Biden Web Site That Promoted Abortion •Senate Unanimously Approves Rubio as Secretary of State •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
Comments orquestions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2025 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For info on advertising or reprinting news fromLifeNews.com, emailus.
•Biden Broke Federal Law by Funding Abortions in Africa •Joe Biden Pretends to Add 28th Amendment to Constitution • Abortion Pill Sales Spike 966% •15,000 People Died in Canada Because They Were Waiting for Health Care •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
Comments orquestions? Email us at news@lifenews.com. Copyright 2003-2025 LifeNews.com. All rights reserved. For info on advertising or reprinting news fromLifeNews.com, email us.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Known liar Schiff, also censured in Congress for lying about Trump in the Russia collusion hoax impeachment hearings, is at it again with his pointed attack on Pam Bondi during the confirmation hearings.
OUCH: Pam Bondi Blows Up Loathsome Senator Adam Schiff with a Pair of Devastating Responses When He Brings Up J6 and Liz Cheney (VIDEO)
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered a one-two punch during a recent televised confirmation hearing, dismantling Schiff’s narrative on January 6 and his incessant praise for former Representative Liz Cheney. As TGP’s Jordan Conradson reported, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is facing questions from Senators this morning during a confirmation hearing for the U.S. Attorney General. Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General, was nominated after Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name as Trump’s pick for AG. As Conradson also noted, Trump Department of Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s first confirmation hearing was held yesterday, and he passed the test with flying colors. Now, Bondi is shining as well. 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.
•Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Will Implement Trump’s Pro-Life Policies •Born-Alive Bill Introduced in Senate for Babies Who Survive Abortions • Josh Hawley: Trump Should Overturn Biden’s Abortion Agenda •Catholic Doctors File Lawsuit Against Biden Abortion Mandate •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
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You need a quantum computer to keep up with all the lies Democrats tell. The people whose pictures are next to the dictionary definition of “misinformation” continue claiming they want to prevent it. The irony could power a small city.
Before I explain Democrats’ new strategy, let’s revisit just a few of their lies.
They’ve lied about COVID, vaccines, the 2020 election, January 6th, the border, Biden’s health, Kamala Harris’ popularity, and more. At this point, it’s easier to compile a list of what they haven’t lied about—although that might be a very short article.
Take Biden’s health, for instance. According to the Left, Biden is a spry 81-year-old whose physical fitness rivals an Olympic decathlete. Forget the times he’s needed directions to exit a stage or appeared to shake hands with invisible people. These are just “Right-wing conspiracy theories,” they assure us. Pay no attention to the fact that his press secretary has to fend off questions about cognitive tests as if she were playing dodgeball at a middle school gym.
But the lies don’t stop there. Polls, the Holy Grail of Democrat propaganda, are another playground for their creativity.
They’d have us believe that Kamala Harris is an inspirational leader—a cross between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Beyoncé. Never mind her poll numbers, which are less popular than cold soup on a winter night. It’s not that people dislike her; it’s that they “don’t understand her brilliance,” we’re told. Apparently, Harris’ true genius is just too avant-garde for the unwashed masses.
When it comes to controlling the narrative, Democrats run their misinformation machine with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. They use their iron grip on media and social platforms to determine what’s permissible to discuss. Don’t believe Hunter Biden’s laptop is real? Good. Because until recently, they didn’t want you to. Now that they’ve quietly admitted its authenticity, it’s suddenly not a story. The Left’s motto? “When caught lying, either double down or move on.”
COVID might be their magnum opus of deception. Remember “two weeks to flatten the curve”? That turned into two years of lockdowns, masks, vaccine mandates, and lives disrupted—all built on shifting narratives. When questioned about the science behind their mandates, they responded with a collective shrug and a mantra: “Trust the experts.” But their experts were often caught contradicting themselves. Masks worked until they didn’t. Vaccines prevented transmission until they didn’t. Yet, questioning any of this earned you a label: “misinformation spreader.”
And then there’s the border. According to Democrats, it’s “secure.” To anyone with eyes, it’s a humanitarian disaster. Footage of people streaming across the border like concertgoers at a music festival? That’s just Right-wing fearmongering, they insist. Meanwhile, cities like New York and Chicago are collapsing under the weight of their sanctuary policies, but don’t expect an admission of failure. For the Left, reality is just another obstacle to overcome with spin.
Speaking of spin, the 2020 election was a masterclass in narrative control.
Question the results? You’re a “threat to democracy.” Ignore the irregularities, the last-minute rule changes, and the statistical anomalies—all “perfectly normal,” they assured us. Then came January 6th, which they’ve weaponized to such an extent that it’s become the Left’s 9/11. To hear them tell it, the Capitol breach was an existential threat to the republic, second only to people questioning vaccine efficacy.
But perhaps the most brazen lie is their insistence that they’re the party of “truth.” They’ve launched a new version of Obama’s infamous “Attack Watch” website, this time with a straight face. It’s a digital tattletale system designed to flag dissent and offer counter-narratives, which are really just rebranded talking points. Back in 2011, Attack Watch was mocked out of existence, but Democrats are banking on the fact that people have short memories.
“Big Disinfo” is their answer. A website dedicated to trying to debunk the truth.
And if you’re wondering where all that extra money went that the Biden team gave to the NGOs to spend as quickly as possible, you guessed it. Big Disinfo promises to defend democracy the lies with fact-checking operations promised to patrol the boundaries of reality.
Their desperation to control the truth is a sign of how tenuous their grip on it has become. They’re the snake oil salesmen of politics, peddling elixirs that don’t work and hoping no one notices. But here’s the catch: the American people are noticing. Polls show increasing skepticism of the media, distrust of institutions, and disapproval of the Biden administration’s policies. The harder the Left tries to sell their version of reality; the more people question the product.
Democrats are trapped in a web of their own making.
Their lies have become so convoluted that even they can’t keep them straight. Like a bad sitcom with too many plot twists, the audience is tuning out. And while they’ll undoubtedly try to spin this as another “Right-wing conspiracy,” the truth is catching up with them. Slowly, but inevitably.
As we head into 2025, expect the Left’s misinformation machine to go into overdrive. The lies will get bigger, the narratives more absurd, and the denials more emphatic. But remember: desperation smells a lot like a Democrat trying to convince you they’re telling the truth. And the stench is getting harder to ignore.
Add climate change to the list of overhyped catastrophes that are finally biting the dust in 2025.
For nearly three decades, Leftists have spun weather phenomena into a doomsday narrative—a lucrative grift disguised as concern for the planet. And who can forget Y2K’s poster boy for failed predictions, Al Gore? The man who swapped a marriage for a mansion and financed his newfound bachelor lifestyle on taxpayer dollars under the pretense of saving the Earth.
It’s bad enough we’re forced to buy bottled water because of the toxins in the water supply we’re already taxed for. But paying for air? That was my personal line in the sand. From the alleged melting of the polar ice caps to predictions that New York would be underwater by now, the climate change narrative has produced as much hot air as the “science” it’s built upon.
Decade after decade, we’ve been bombarded with predictions as credible as the Heaven’s Gate cult’s belief in salvation by alien spacecraft. At least those poor souls had the decency to only ruin their own lives. Climate alarmists, on the other hand, have turned fleecing the public into an art form.
Take the Heaven’s Gate incident as an example of misplaced faith gone too far.
In 1997, 39 people tragically took their own lives, believing their bodies were mere “containers” to be abandoned for a spaceship trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. While tragic, their actions didn’t involve imposing a global carbon tax. Climate crusaders, however, demand nothing less than a financial and behavioral overhaul of our entire way of life, all based on shaky science and apocalyptic forecasts that never come true.
As it turns out, 2025 is shaping up to be the year of the “climate deniers”—also known as people who simply trust the science of meteorology over the politics of fearmongering. Americans are waking up to the con, and even CNN’s Harry Enten has inadvertently highlighted this shift. As he pointed out, while Google searches for “wildfires” have skyrocketed by 2,400%, searches for “climate change” have actually dropped by 9%.
Americans aren't making the connection between the wildfires & climate change some would hope. While Google searches for wildfires are up 2,400%, searches for climate change are down 9%.
Indeed, the % of Americans worried a lot about climate change hasn't budged in 3 decades. pic.twitter.com/ZcooOqpcI0
“So, despite all these extreme weather events, Americans are really no more worried about climate change than they were, what is that, now nearly 35 years ago,” Enten noted. “I mean there’s just no real trend line here.”
The disconnect is clear. People are interested in learning about wildfires and other natural disasters, but they’re not buying the narrative that these events are tied to man-made climate change.
The recent California wildfires underscore this skepticism. Despite relentless Democratic hyperbole and their insistence that the sky is falling, the public took note of the inconvenient truth: many of these fires were manmade—and not in the way climate alarmists would like you to believe.
Take the Maui wildfire disaster as a prime example. Initial cries of “climate change” were quickly drowned out by reports of human negligence and bureaucratic incompetence. From poorly maintained power lines to a stunning lack of preparedness, it became clear that these tragedies had less to do with carbon emissions and more to do with systemic mismanagement. In other words, it wasn’t your SUV’s fault.
This decline in climate change fervor is more than anecdotal. It’s part of a larger trend: the return to common sense. Americans are no longer swayed by Greta Thunberg’s doomsday theatrics or John Kerry’s jet-setting lectures on reducing carbon footprints. They’re realizing that the Earth’s climate has always been in flux, long before humans entered the equation.
Critics like Bjørn Lomborg, author of “False Alarm,” have been vocal about the economic and scientific shortcomings of the climate change narrative. Lomborg argues that the costs of aggressive climate policies far outweigh their benefits, particularly for developing nations that can’t afford to sacrifice economic growth for hypothetical gains in global temperature regulation. And he’s not alone. Scientists like Judith Curry, once a darling of the climate establishment, have since turned whistleblowers, exposing the groupthink and funding biases that plague climate research.
The financial motivations behind climate alarmism are hard to ignore.
Al Gore’s net worth skyrocketed after he left the vice presidency, thanks in no small part to his climate ventures. Meanwhile, organizations like the United Nations continue to push for trillions in climate reparations, conveniently ignoring the rampant corruption and inefficiency that characterize many of their initiatives.
Even Hollywood—typically a reliable cheerleader for leftist causes—is losing its grip on the climate narrative. Recent box office flops with overtly environmentalist themes suggest that audiences are tired of being lectured. People want escapism, not guilt trips.
And then there’s the generational factor. Millennials and Gen Z, often portrayed as the foot soldiers of climate activism, are showing signs of disillusionment. Saddled with student debt and skyrocketing living costs, many are questioning the practicality of policies that prioritize abstract environmental goals over immediate economic realities.
In the end, the death of the climate change narrative isn’t just about science. It’s about trust. Decades of failed predictions, exaggerated claims, and financial exploitation have eroded the credibility of climate alarmists. The public is no longer willing to sacrifice their livelihoods for a cause that increasingly resembles a scam.
As 2025 unfolds, expect to see more pushback against the climate industrial complex. The hysteria that once drove policy decisions is giving way to rational debate and evidence-based approaches. And while the Al Gores and Greta Thunbergs of the world may cling to their talking points, the rest of us can breathe a little easier—both figuratively and literally. The air, after all, is still free.
In following the defamation trial against CNN by veteran Zachary Young, we have previously (here, here, and here) marveled at how bad things were going for the network. It appears that they are getting even worse. This has been a brutal week as CNN figures, including host Jake Tapper, took the stand. If “this is CNN,” the judge (and possibly the jury) are not liking what they are seeing. The report at the heart of the case aired on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Nov. 11, 2021, and was shared on social media and (a different version on) CNN’s website. In the segment, Tapper told his audience ominously how CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt discovered that “Afghans trying to get out of the country face a black market full of promises, demands of exorbitant fees, and no guarantee of safety or success.” Marquardt piled on in the segment, claiming that “desperate Afghans are being exploited” and need to pay “exorbitant, often impossible amounts” to flee the country. He then named Young and his company as an example of that startling claim. The evidence included messages from Marquardt that he wanted to “nail this Zachary Young mf**ker” and thought the story would be Young’s “funeral.” After promising to “nail” Young, CNN editor Matthew Philips responded: “gonna hold you to that cowboy!” Likewise, CNN senior editor Fuzz Hogan described Young as “a shit.” As is often done by media, CNN allegedly gave Young only two hours to respond before the story ran. It is a typical ploy of the press to claim that they waited for a response while giving the target the smallest possible window. In this case, Young was able to respond in the short time and Marquardt messaged a colleague, “f**king Young just texted.” In the last week, Tapper was seen on video by the jury and was mocked for claiming under oath that he “doesn’t pay attention to ratings,” a claim that could make him unique as a network host. While Tapper can argue that he was referencing the following of daily numbers, critics hammered him by showing repeated clips where he discussed ratings. However, the most damaging testimony may have come from top producers who told the jurors that they opposed the modest apology given to Young on air. Since Young seemed to do well before the jury, the testimony of senior editor Fuzz Hogan, CNN correspondent Alex Marquardt, CNN producer Michael Conte, CNN’s executive vice president of editorial Virginia Moseley, and CNN supervising producer Michael Callahan undermined any effort to portray the network as seeking to amend a wrong or reduce damage to Young.
Arguably, the worst moment came with an argument by CNN’s lead attorney, David Axelrod. Axelrod introduced a document that he claimed was a smoking gun and showed that Young was a liar. Pointing dramatically at Young and waiving the document in the air, Axelrod declared that he had the proof:
“Plaintiff’s entire case, sitting right there, is that after the publications, he couldn’t get any work…Mr. Young knew, when he filed this lawsuit that he had entered into a new consulting agreement with a government contractor one month after CNN’s publication. This entire lawsuit was a fraud on this court. It was a fraud on CNN. This man knew it. I don’t know what they know. But when this came up in discovery, CNN’s counsel asked Mr. Young about the Helios connection, and he completely lied in his deposition. Over and over again, he made up some incredible ruse that Helios just had his security clearance because it was a company that held security clearances. It makes no sense. He knew at that time that he had a consulting agreement with Helios Global and he didn’t disclose it. It was an outright lie.”
However, it turned out that the document merely was Young’s application to maintain his security clearance.
Young’s attorney, Vel Freedman, later laid waste to CNN. He told the court that Young had lost his security clearance back in 2022 and that he hadn’t been aware of that until he double-checked after his testimony in the case. Freedman asked for the right to present a witness who would testify on the issue and Axelrod objected. Judge Henry had had enough and blew up at CNN. He read back Axelrod’s comments and said “You called him a liar multiple times there.” He told Axelrod that he owed an apology to the plaintiff. After telling CNN that “this isn’t Kindergarten,” he added “Right now, your credibility with me, Mr. Axelrod, is about none.”
That is never a good thing to hear from a judge.
Axelrod apologized but the damage is clearly considerable.
The most chilling aspect from a litigation perspective? Axelrod replaced the earlier lead counsel who also imploded in court over ill-considered arguments.
None of this bodes well for the network. Alienating the judge is obviously never good, but it also could have a material impact if there is an award that CNN wants reduced by a order of remittitur. In addition, having top producers expressing a lack of regret and even opposition to the on-air apology could push such damages higher for a jury. Both sides are arguing that “this is CNN,” but these moments are building a more negative view of what that is.
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President Donald Trump’s pick for Secretary of State Sen. Marco Rubio doubled down on his commitment to the America First foreign policy agenda during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, despite a corporate media effort to cause a rift between him and the incoming president.
Politico published a piece one day before the hearing attempting to kiss Rubio’s role as Secretary of State goodbye before it even begins. In the gossip column masquerading as an article, Politico’s Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Nahal Toosi uses the alleged analysis of a dozen unnamed “current and former U.S. and foreign officials” to claim that Rubio won’t last as Trump’s Secretary of State because “the odds are high that the two will differ on policy.” Toosi also invokes Trump and Rubio’s history as presidential primary rivals in 2016 as a potential problem for the pair’s ability to strategize effectively.
The only way Rubio will survive leading the State Department, the author insists, “may be to take the punches from his internal rivals, suffer through whatever insults Trump lobs at him, stick to the lanes that are open, and simply let the State Department fade into irrelevance.”
While it’s true that Rubio and Trump ran against each other and that the former used to take more of an interventionist and neocon approach to foreign policy than he does now, a lot has changed politically and globally in the last decade. The ongoing transformation of the Republican party from an arm of the establishment to a party of and for the people, paired with the rapid rise of China’s hegemony, has pushed Trump and Rubio’s visions for the globe much closer together than they were nearly 10 years ago. Both care deeply about projecting U.S. strength to the world while keeping American tax dollars from funding endless wars.
Rubio spokesman Dan Holler told Politico that Rubio is far more focused on executing Trump’s “ambitious foreign policy agenda that will put Americans first and correct the failures of the past four years” than devoting time to corporate media’s “silly games or gossip.” Rubio confirmed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that his new job will center on putting America first.
“Under President Trump, the top priority of the United States Department of State will be the United States,” Rubio said in his opening statement. “The direction he has given for the conduct of our foreign policy is clear. Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, every policy we pursue, must be justified by the answer to one of three questions: Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Or does it make America more prosperous?”
MARCO RUBIO: Under President Trump, the top priority of the United States Department of State will be the United States. The direction he has given for the conduct of our foreign policy is clear. Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, every policy we pursue, must be… pic.twitter.com/fPayLozf88
On Rubio’s agenda is executing Trump’s vision to curb China’s global influence, end the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas wars, and address the vast problems exacerbating the U.S. border invasion.
“In our very own hemisphere, narcoterrorists and dictators, and despots take advantage of open borders to drive mass migration, to traffic in women and children, and to flood our communities with deadly fentanyl and violent criminals,” Rubio said.
The biggest foreign threat facing the U.S. today, he told senators, is the Communist Party of China, “the most potent and dangerous, near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.”
“We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order, and they took advantage of all of its benefits. And they ignored all of its obligations and responsibilities. Instead, they have repressed, and lied, and cheated, and hacked, and stolen their way into global superpower status. And they have done so at our expense and at the expense of the people of their own country,” Rubio said.
RUBIO: "We welcomed the Chinese Communist Party into the global order and they took advantage of all of its benefits…
Instead they have repressed, and lied, and cheated, and hacked, and stolen their way into global superpower status." pic.twitter.com/TvGkoUvJuW
When it comes to Eastern Europe, Rubio says he echoes Trump’s desire for “people to stop dying” and for the U.S. to stop funding a conflict with no end in sight — especially when its own border is compromised.
“I think it should be the official position of the United States that this war should be brought to an end,” Rubio said. “My differences with the Biden administration throughout this process, is that they never clearly delineated what the end goal of the conflict was — what exactly were we funding? What exactly were we putting money towards? On many occasions, it sounded like however much it takes, for however long it takes — that is not a realistic or prudent position.”
Marco Rubio's answer on Ukraine is pitch perfect. First, he makes clear that America's border security MUST come first, before any funding goes to far-off battlefields. Second, he affirms President Trump's demand that the "killing must stop" and calls for an end to the war and an… pic.twitter.com/WjxhDN8uBh
Rubio’s public commitment to following through on Trump’s promises to secure the homeland and restabilize the globe suggests that, if he is confirmed, productivity is the priority, not pretend personal strife.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday at her confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Attorney General-designate Pam Bondi vowed Wednesday that her focus, if confirmed, would be on restoring integrity to a politicized Justice Department and to “make America safe again,” as she fended off criticism from Democratic senators.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. While Republicans on the panel talked about the weaponization of the Justice Department that has occurred in recent years, Democrats warned that Trump might seek to prosecute opponents.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that Bondi must be willing to say “no” to Trump if the president-to-be were to order her to target political opponents.
“You have to be able to say that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. You dodged that question. You have to be able to say the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who committed violence shouldn’t be pardoned,” Blumenthal said. “You have to be able to say that a nominee to be FBI director who says he has an enemies list … shouldn’t be FBI director.”
Bondi responded that she didn’t “have” to say anything.
“I need to clarify something that you said, that I have to sit up here and say these things,” Bondi told Blumenthal. “No, I don’t. I sit up here and speak the truth. I’m not going to sit up here and say anything that I need to say to get confirmed by this body. I don’t have to say anything. I will answer the questions to the best of my ability and honestly.”
She also challenged the characterization of several Democratic senators that Trump’s nominee to be FBI director, Kash Patel, had an “enemies list.”
During the hearing, Bondi told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., “There will never be an enemies list in the Department of Justice.”
Whitehouse asked whether Justice Department prosecutors—presumably referring to those who investigated Trump—will be prosecuted during the incoming Trump administration.
“Will everyone be held to an equal, fair system of justice? Absolutely. And no one is above the law,” Bondi said, adding, “You find the facts of the case, apply the law in good faith, and treat everyone fairly.”
Whitehouse responded, “It would not be appropriate for a prosecutor to start with a name and look for a crime. It’s a prosecutor’s job to look for a crime and start with a name. Would you agree?”
“Senator, I think that is the whole problem of the weaponization we have seen the last four years and what has happened to Donald Trump. They targeted Donald Trump. They went after him. Back in 2016, they targeted his campaign.”
In another exchange, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said, “I’m asking you, sitting here today, whether you are aware of any predicate to investigate Liz Cheney?”
Bondi replied, “Senator, no one has asked me to investigate Liz Cheney,” a Republican former member of Congress from Wyoming.
Schiff, who as a House member participated on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol uprising alongside Cheney, shot back, “But the president has called for it.”
“You are so worried about Liz Cheney, senator,” Bondi replied. “Do you know what we should worry about? The crime rate in California right now is through the roof. Your robberies are 87% higher than the national average. That’s what I want to be focused on, Senator, as attorney general.”
Despite some of the drama, toward the end of the hearing, Schiff’s fellow California Democrat, Sen. Alex Padilla, suggested it was clear that Bondi would be confirmed for the job by the full Senate.
“I know how to count and know how to read tea leaves,” Padilla said. “It seems to me you are very likely to be confirmed. … And I look forward to working with you.”
Bondi, the Florida state attorney general from 2011 to 2019, was Trump’s second choice for attorney general, after it became clear that then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., lacked support in the Senate. Before her election to state office, Bondi was a state prosecutor in Hillsborough County, Florida. Bondi has been an ally of Trump, and was on his legal team for the first Senate impeachment trial as a lawyer for the White House counsel.
Early in the hearing, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, talked about “the rot infecting” the Justice Department, which he described as “catastrophic.” Grassley noted that current Attorney General Merrick Garland did not respond to the Iowa senator’s letters of oversight inquiry.
“In short, Ms. Bondi is highly qualified, and of course as we all know, a change is desperately needed,” Grassley said. “The Justice Department is infected with political decision making, while its leaders refuse to acknowledge that reality.”
Bondi told Grassley that transparency to Congress will be key to reforms. Unlike Garland, Bondi said she would respond to congressional oversight of the Justice Department, including Grassley’s letters.
“Senator, either I or my top staff will personally review the letters and do everything we can to respond to you,” the nominee said.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., raised the issue of attacks on religious freedom under the Biden-Harris administration’s Justice Department; specifically, an FBI field office seeking to investigate traditional Catholic churches.
“This memo that calls for repeatedly targeting Catholic parishes repeatedly refers to an expert source as a group called the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Hawley noted. “The Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history as an anti-religious group that has repeatedly gone after conservative and religious organizations calling them ‘hate groups,’ called ‘terrorist groups.’ … Will you put a stop to the use of the SPLC as an official source for any Department of Justice memorandum or finding?”
Bondi replied, “That will be one of the first things we look at, Senator, and report back to you and the committee.”
Also during the hearing, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., praised Bondi for the goal of restoring credibility to the Justice Department, but said the department shouldn’t launch its own lawfare.
“There will be those who say, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, but it does make it even,’” Kennedy said. “Resist that temptation. Help us restore legitimacy to the Department of Justice.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, similarly noted it’s ironic that Democrats on the committee seemed worried about a weaponized Justice Department.
“I don’t want a Republican Department of Justice. I don’t want a Democratic Department of Justice. I want a Department of Justice that enforces the damned law,” Cruz said.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., brough up the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances, or FACE Act, law that the Justice Department regularly uses to prosecute pro-life protesters at abortion clinics.
“Will you commit to continuing to enforce the FACE Act to address violence and threats against those providing reproductive health care?” Klobuchar asked.
Bondi responded that the law also protects pregnancy centers that don’t focus on abortion.
“Senator, the FACE Act not only protects abortion clinics, but it protects pregnancy centers and people going for counseling,” Bondi said. “The law should be applied evenhandedly.”
Several Democrats noted that Bondi also worked for Trump during the post-2020 election litigation.
“Joe Biden is the president of the United States,” Bondi answered on several occasions.
In response to a question from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, the committee’s ranking member, Bondi said: “Do I accept the results? Of course,” adding: “No one from either side of the aisle should want any issue with election integrity.”
Bondi added: “We should all want our elections to be free and fair.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., asked if she becomes attorney general, whose lawyer would she be?
“My oath would be to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. My client would be the people of America. I would advise the president,” Bondi replied.
Coons followed with an unusual question: “Is President Trump eligible to run for another term in 2028?”
Bondi replied, “No, Senator, not unless they change the Constitution.”
Coons followed by asking what would happen if Trump asked her not to investigate a criminal defendant, or to do something illegal.
“If I thought that would happen, I would not be sitting here today,” Bondi said. “Every case will be prosecuted, and the law will be applied in good faith. … Politics has played a role for years and years and years, and it has to stop.”
Martin Speake, a British jazz “composer, saxophonist, academic and educator” is preparing a lawsuit against Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance over a cancel campaign that targeted him after he criticized the school’s “BLM/anti-racist policies and initiatives” and denied that there was “systemic racial inequality in the UK jazz scene.” His case is strikingly similar to other targeted professors discussed in my recent book on free speech.
The controversy began when Speake was asked to give feedback on the policies. As he later explained, he was immediately set upon by critics calling him a racist. He stressed his bona fides:
Sometime later I forwarded this email to a student with whom I had had a stimulating conversation on the topic earlier that day. This student showed the email to some peers, but didn’t forward it to anyone. Nevertheless, as some students heard about it, the email began to attract some discontent and speculation within the student body. TL [Trinity Laban] then halted my teaching and pressured me to consent to the circulation of my email to the entire jazz department.
Speake said that Trinity Laban “threatened” him with “disciplinary action,” and he was subjected to the all-too-familiar cancel campaign, including a boycott of his classes.
Students complained that his view of the jazz community had “affected their mental health” and a Change.org petition created by “Distressed Student” complained of being “deeply affected” by Speake’s view and how it “perpetuated harmful and defamatory narratives about black musicians in the jazz industry.”
Most disturbing may have been the knee-jerk reaction of the London Jazz Orchestra. Speake was the lead alto saxophonist for 15 years, but he was requested to take a leave of absence. So, the London Jazz Orchestra forced a musician to take leave after he exercised his free speech rights. He would not have faced such action if he had supported the policies. He had voiced a dissenting note on such policies, and the Orchestra tossed a fellow artist to the curb.
So, Speake is now persona non grata because, by offering his view of these policies, he allegedly showed a “lack of sensitivity” and “created an uncomfortable and distressing learning environment.”
Speake later announced that “with a very heavy heart I had no choice but to resign from my post with [Trinity Laban] in November 2024 as my working environment had become unbearable.” He has filed a complaint against Trinity Laban.
George Gershwin once said that “life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.” However, Trinity Laban and the London Jazz Orchestra would add that musicians should not take such freedom beyond their music. Improvisation in speech is likely to get you canceled. When it comes to free speech, the jazz community is perfectly Gregorian.
This week, North Dakota State University is under fire for its statement of diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, including from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The university issued a “statement of inclusivity” that included a pledge to combat “violence in language or in action.” The notion of “violent speech” is a touchstone for the anti-free speech community, which treats the expression of viewpoints as akin to physical attacks on students.
While this is merely a university statement, the inclusion of combatting violent speech as a priority was concerning for many. As I have previously written in columns and my recent book on free speech, violent speech has long been a rallying cry in higher education.
The redefinition of opposing views as “violence” is a favorite excuse for violent groups like Antifa, which continue to physically assault speakers with pro-life and other disfavored views. As explained by Rutgers Professor Mark Bray in his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” the group believes that “‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”
As one Antifa member explained, free speech is a “nonargument…you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.” When people criticized Antifa for its violent philosophy, MSNBC’s Joy Reid responded to the critics that “you might be the fascist.”
The Pride Office website at the University of Colorado (Boulder) declared that misgendering people can be considered an “act of violence.”
University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers declared that some of those boycotting the store Target over its line of Pride Month clothing were engaging in “literal terrorism.” (He insists that he was referring to those confronting Target employees.)
The diversity, equity, and inclusion statement at North Dakota State University maintains that the College of Business aims to help students “feel safe” and provide “space to be their own person.” However, the question is how treating speech as violence provides a safe space for free speech on campus.
Blurring the line between speech and violence can lead to censorship and viewpoint intolerance at a university. Speech directed at individuals to threaten them is actionable and potentially criminal. However, sweeping claims that speech is violence are the mantra being used in higher education to rationalize speech codes and censorship. Free speech requires bright lines of protection to avoid the chilling effect of arbitrary or capricious enforcement.
North Dakota State University would be wise to revise its policy statement.
A.F. Branco Cartoon – Democrat voters, seeing firsthand the disaster their Democrat leaders’ policies have brought to their neighborhood, will most likely continue to vote for them.
Powerful: Actress Justine Bateman Unloads on California’s ‘Useless’ Leaders Who Should “Resign Out of Shame” (Video)
By Margaret Flavin – The Gateway Pundit – Jan 11, 2025
Gen Xer’s grew up on the iconic show Family Ties. Actress Justine Bateman played the slightly ditzy but surprisingly deep sister Mallory opposite Michael J. Fox’s briefcase-carrying tie-wearing Republican brother Alex. While Bateman’s acting career has continued over the years, she has also expanded her creative repertoire to include directing, producing, and writing. Bateman’s X account has become a must-follow for her straightforward take on the current political landscape. On Friday, a justifiably angry Bateman joined Jesse Watters and unloaded on California’s useless leaders and their abject failure to protect their citizens. 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.
•Planned Parenthood Broke Federal Law by Supporting Kamala •America Faces Population Crisis: Deaths Will Outpace Births in 8 Years • Canadian Family Flees to America After Doctors Threaten to Harvest Son’s Organs •Virginia Democrats Pass Amendment for Abortions Up to Birth •Scroll Down for More Pro-Life News
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During his Tuesday Senate confirmation hearing, Pete Hegseth provided his best case yet on why he’s the perfect man to be President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary.
Speaking before the Armed Services Committee, the Army veteran noted how the “the primary charge” given to him by Trump was to “bring the warrior culture back to the Department of Defense.” He subsequently detailed how he intends to make the Pentagon into an agency “laser focused on warfighting, lethality, meritocracy, standards, and readiness.”
“The Defense Department under Donald Trump will achieve Peace Through Strength. And in pursuing these America First national security goals, we will remain patriotically a-political and stridently Constitutional,” Hegseth said. “Unlike the current administration, politics should play no part in military matters. We are not Republicans or Democrats — we are American warriors. Our standards will be high, and they will be equal (not equitable, that is a very different word).”
Since coming to power nearly four years ago, the Biden-Harris Pentagon has made implementing neo-Marxist ideologies such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) a top priority. These policies have undermined military readiness and contributed to the service’s ongoing recruiting crisis.
Hegseth stressed that the Defense Department must “make sure every warrior is fully qualified on their assigned weapon system, every pilot is fully qualified and current on the aircraft they are flying, and every general or flag officer is selected for leadership based purely on performance, readiness, and merit.” He further noted how, “Leaders — at all levels — will be held accountable,” and that “warfighting and lethality — and the readiness of the troops and their families — will be our only focus.”
“That has been my focus ever since I first put on the uniform as a young Army ROTC cadet at Princeton University in 2001,” Hegseth said. “I joined the military because I love my country and felt an obligation to defend it. I served with incredible Americans in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and in the streets of Washington, DC — many of which are here today. This includes enlisted soldiers I helped become American citizens, and Muslim allies I helped immigrate from Iraq and Afghanistan. And when I took off the uniform, my mission never stopped.”
The former Fox News host described the three-prong approach he and Trump will take to restore lethality and efficiency to the military. Specifically, he noted that the incoming administration will focus on bringing back the military’s “warrior ethos,” rebuilding the service’s broken infrastructure, and reestablishing “deterrence” to create peace on the world stage.
Hegseth also responded to Democrat allegations that he’s not “qualified” to serve as defense secretary. The Army veteran acknowledged that he doesn’t “have a similar biography to defense secretaries of the last 30 years,” but noted, “we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly ‘the right credentials’ — whether they are retired generals, academics, or defense contractor executives — and where has it gotten us?”
President-elect Trump “believes, and I humbly agree, that it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm. A change agent. Someone with no vested interest in certain companies or specific programs or approved narratives,” Hegseth said.
The Army veteran reaffirmed that his “only special interest is [America’s] warfighter[s], [d]eterring wars, and if called upon, winning wars — by ensuring our warriors never enter a fair fight.” He further emphasized the importance of the military letting its troops “win” and then “bring[ing] them home.”
“Like many of my generation, I’ve been there. I’ve led troops in combat, been on patrol for days, pulled a trigger downrange, heard bullets whiz by, flex-cuffed insurgents, called in close air support, led medevacs, dodged IEDs, pulled out dead bodies, and knelt before a battlefield cross,” Hegseth said. “[T]his is not academic for me; this is my life. I led then, and I will lead now.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
Two House Democrats have voted alongside Republican lawmakers to ban athletes born male from participating on girls’ school sports teams. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, led by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., would amend federal law to specify that student athletes must participate in school sports teams that coincide with their gender at birth.
Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Vicente Gonzales, D-Texas, were the lone Democrats to vote for the bill when it passed 218 to 206. Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., voted “present.”
All three won re-election on razor-thin margins in districts that have trended redder over the years.
Senate Republicans have already signaled they are aiming to take up the bill soon.
Republicans have been pushing to restrict transgender sports participation, particularly for girls’ teams. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The change would apply to all federally funded schools from kindergarten through high school, as well as colleges and universities that receive federal dollars.
It comes after several Democrats spoke out against their own party’s laser focus on inclusivity and progressivism, arguing that the far-left did not leave any room for dissent on issues like transgender youth. Notably, however, some Democrats who raised such issues – like Reps. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Seth Moulton, D-Mass. – voted against the bill.
Republicans have championed the bill as a bid to protect women and girls from unfair athletic standards.
Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube first introduced the bill in the 118th Congress. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., challenged Democrats on the bill during his weekly press conference on Tuesday.
“Everyone’s talking about their children today. I’ve got two sons and two daughters, and we see the difference. Of course everyone does. And it’s kind of silly to deny it,” Johnson said. “The American people sent a clear message in November. They want us to return to common sense, and we’re going to see if Democrats have heard that message.”
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., said during debate on the bill,“Why are we even having to discuss this? It’s amazing to me that the idea that we would have XY chromosome males competing and taking the place of women and girls in sports is just mind-blowing.Where are we in society that we’re doing this? Where are the feminists? Where are the people who fought so hard to get rights for women?” LaMalfa asked.
But the majority of Democrats were vehemently opposed to the bill, with Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., and others dubbing it “The GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act.”1
Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., argued, “This bill sets an unfair playing field that any parent can raise a concern that a transgender girl is playing on a girls’ team,” while noting such cases were rare.
“These decisions should be left to parents, coaches, teachers, and families – not D.C. politicians. In addition, this bill could open the door to young girls experiencing intrusive questioning, or worse. I will not rubber stamp bad policy. Republicans should stop focusing on culture wars and start getting to work on lowering costs, investing in public education, and increasing access to affordable health care,” freshman Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Va., said after the bill passed.
The bill previously passed the House in 2023 in a 219 to 203 vote, but it was never taken up in the formerly Democratic-controlled Senate.
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
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 (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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