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This Week In Lawfare Land: Prosecutor Misconduct Jeopardizes Another Case


BY: STEVE ROBERTS AND OLIVER ROBERTS | MAY 10, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/10/this-week-in-lawfare-land-prosecutor-misconduct-jeopardizes-another-case/

Trump points while walking to limo

Author Steve Roberts and Oliver Roberts profile

STEVE ROBERTS AND OLIVER ROBERTS

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As the lawfare crusade continues, former President Donald Trump is racking up significant victories in court. Down in Florida, President Trump secured an indefinite delay in his criminal case involving alleged mishandling of classified documents. This delay was ordered following revelations that Special Counsel Jack Smith and prosecutors mishandled and misrepresented evidence, which is uniquely ironic given the subject matter of the underlying case. 

In Georgia, where another criminal case is pending, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear President Trump’s attempt to remove Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals is set to consider and decide this issue in the coming weeks.

It is becoming increasingly likely that the ongoing Manhattan criminal case is the only trial that President Trump will face before the November election. 

Here’s the latest information you need to know about each case.

Read our previous installments here.

Manhattan, New York: Prosecution by DA Alvin Bragg for NDA Payment

How we got here: In this New York state criminal case, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — who The New York Times acknowledged had “campaigned as the best candidate to go after the former president” — charged former President Donald Trump in April 2023 with 34 felony charges for alleged falsification of business records. 

Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen paid pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election as part of a nondisclosure agreement in which she agreed not to publicize her claims that she had an affair with Trump (who denies the allegations). Nondisclosure agreements are not illegal, but Bragg claims Trump concealed the payment to help his 2016 election chances and in doing so was concealing a “crime.” 

The trial began on April 15, and jury selection was completed on April 19. Judge Merchan, a donor to Biden’s campaign and an anti-Trump cause in 2020, has issued a gag order on President Trump generally prohibiting him from publicly speaking on possible jurors, witnesses, and other personnel in this case.

Latest developments: This week, the jury heard testimony from porn performer Stormy Daniels, also known as Stephanie Clifford. Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal are central to this case because prosecutors allege that former President Trump paid them off and then falsified business records, to prevent negative media stories during his 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels alleges that she had a sexual encounter with President Trump in 2006, but President Trump denies the affair.

On May 8, President Trump’s attorneys cross-examined and discredited Stormy Daniels, highlighting her history of being a pornographer, her strip club tour, and her history of profiting off allegations against Trump. That same day, Judge Merchan denied a second attempt by President Trump to dismiss this case for a mistrial. President Trump’s attorneys argued that Stormy Daniels’s testimony was unfairly prejudicial against Trump due to its inconsistencies and unnecessary detail, which could improperly influence the jury. 

The jury is soon expected to hear from President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen, who is the prosecutor’s star witness. Another key witness, Karen McDougal, is not expected to testify.  

Judge Merchan handed the prosecution another win by ruling that former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith, an expert on campaign finance-related issues, is limited as to what he can say in his testimony in the case. One of the defenses raised by the president’s legal team is that even if such payments were made, they were not necessarily to influence an election but rather to protect Donald Trump’s name, his brand, and his family. Chairman Smith was expected to testify in support of this theory, as he has long asserted that “almost anything a candidate does can be interpreted as intended to ‘influence an election’” but “not every expense that might benefit a candidate is an obligation that exists solely because the person is a candidate.” But after Judge Merchan’s ruling, Smith can now only testify as to the “general background as to what the Federal [Election] Commission is, background as to who makes up the FEC, what the FEC’s function is, what laws, if any, the FEC is responsible for enforcing, and general definitions and terms that relate directly to this case, such as for example ‘campaign contribution.’”

Fulton County, Georgia: Prosecution by DA Fani Willis for Questioning Election Results

How we got here: The Georgia state criminal case is helmed by District Attorney Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors — which until recently included Nathan Wade, with whom Willis had an improper romantic relationship. Willis charged Trump in August 2023 with 13 felony counts, including racketeering charges, related to his alleged attempt to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump is joined by 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Sidney Powell, and others. Some of President Trump’s co-defendants have reached plea deals; others have petitioned to have the case removed to federal court, each attempt of which has been denied. A trial date has not yet been set, though prosecutors have asked for a trial to begin on Aug. 5, just a few short weeks after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 

Latest developments: On May 8, the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to hear former President Trump’s attempt to disqualify Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis from the pending criminal case in Georgia. Trial court judge Scott McAfee previously denied President Trump’s attempt to remove Willis from the case, but the Georgia Court of Appeals will now determine whether that denial was permissible

Southern District of Florida: Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Handling of Classified Documents

How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors with Biden’s Justice Department charged former President Trump in June 2023 with 40 federal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence. The trial was set to begin on May 20, 2024, but this date has now been postponed indefinitely. Additionally, venue matters: The trial is currently set to take place in Fort Pierce, Florida, in a locality that heavily backed President Trump in the 2020 election. If that remains unchanged, the demographics of the jury pool may result in a pro-Trump courtroom.  

Latest developments: On May 7, Judge Aileen Cannon postponed the trial date indefinitely in this case. In an order, Judge Cannon stated “that finalization of a trial date at this juncture … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court.” This delay comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith and other prosecutors admitted to tampering with evidence, stating “there are some boxes [of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago] where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” Prosecutors previously represented to the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” Judge Cannon also recently unredacted documents showing the Biden administration’s involvement in this case. 

As a result of this indefinite delay, it is unlikely that a trial will occur before the November election. 

Washington, D.C.:  Prosecution by Biden DOJ for Jan. 6 Speech

How we got here: In this federal criminal case, special counsel Jack Smith and federal prosecutors charged former President Trump in August 2023 with four counts of conspiracy and obstruction related to his actions on Jan. 6, 2021. President Trump’s lawyers have argued that immunity extends to actions taken by a president while acting in his official capacity and that, in any event, the First Amendment protects his right to raise legitimate questions about a questionable election process.

Latest developments: This case is currently stalled while awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on former President Trump’s immunity claim.

New York: Lawsuit by A.G. Letitia James for Inflating Net Worth

How we got here: In this New York civil fraud case, Democrat Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned on going after Trump — sued former President Trump in September 2022 under a civil fraud statute alleging that he misled banks, insurers, and others about his net worth to obtain loans, although the loans have been paid back and none of the parties involved claimed to have been injured by the deals. 

Following a no-jury trial, Judge Arthur Engoron — whom Trump’s lawyers have accused of “astonishing departures from ordinary standards of impartiality” — issued a decision on Feb. 16, 2024 ordering Trump to pay a $454 million penalty. Trump has appealed this decision and posted a required $175 million appeal bond. The appeals court plans to hold hearings on the merits of the full case in September 2024. 

Latest developments: This case mostly remains on hold.


Steve Roberts is a partner and Oliver Roberts is an associate with Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinksy & Josefiak PLLC. They can be reached at sroberts@holtzmanvogel.com and oroberts@holtzmanvogel.com.

Josh Hammer Op-ed: The Making of an American Banana Republic


By: Josh Hammer @josh_hammer / May 10, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/10/making-american-banana-republic/

Donald Trump in the suit with his fist in the air surrounded by lawyers and court police
Donald Trump’s legal battles are being prosecuted by his political opposition and sabotaging his presidential campaign, raising concerns about the precedent being set in American politics. Pictured: Trump walks to the courtroom following a break in his alleged “hush money” trial at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City on May 9. (Photo: ANGELA WEISS, POOL, AFP/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY Josh Hammer@josh_hammer

Josh Hammer, a syndicated columnist, is senior editor-at-large at Newsweek and a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation. He also is counsel and policy adviser for the Internet Accountability Project and contributing editor for Anchoring Truths.

It is a presidential election year, and a leading candidate for president of the United States, who also happens to be a former president of the United States, is currently a criminal defendant chained to a dingy courtroom four days of the week—time that he should be spending interacting with voters out on the campaign trail. That’s terrible. But it’s only the beginning.

The daughter of the presiding judge is a professional political operative for the presidential candidate’s opposition party, and the candidate himself is subject to an over-inclusive and unconstitutional gag order.

The George Soros-funded district attorney, who campaigned on a platform of prosecuting that candidate, only pressed charges after his own left-wing predecessor opted not to do so due to the frivolous nature of the charges. One of the Soros-funded district attorney’s subordinates curiously joined his team—just in time to prosecute the candidate—from a high-ranking perch in the Department of Justice that is headed by the candidate’s chief political rival.

And this week, the candidate was subjected to tawdry and salacious testimony from a discredited former porn star, who spoke openly in court about how she “blacked out” during their alleged 2006 sexual encounter. Due to the sprawling gag order, the candidate was not—and is not—legally permitted to defend his honor and contest her lurid, legally irrelevant claims.

Welcome to our American banana republic.

America has many real, glaring problems on its hands. Inflation remains stubborn, and Americans widely report feeling pessimistic about the economy, despite nominal low unemployment metrics. Our wide-open southern border is disastrous, leading to artificially suppressed working-class wages and the most rampant illegal alien crime in the nation’s history. Violent and property crime rates remain too high, especially in large urban corridors. Energy prices should be considerably lower, and they would be if our moronic leaders allowed producers to tap into America’s great natural wellspring of hydrocarbons.

Around the world, hostile regimes act against our interests in unrestrained and revanchist fashion. At home, childlessness, godlessness, anxiety, and depression are all rising, symptomatic of a broader civilizational rot and a society that has lost confidence in what it claims to stand for.

Amidst all this, it would be ideal to have a normal, competitive presidential race in which the flailing incumbent is directly confronted, and his record is challenged for all to see. But Americans are now being deprived of anything remotely resembling a normal presidential race. Donald Trump is physically chained down to Judge Juan Merchan’s New York courtroom, unable to get out on the campaign trail and deliver his signature rallies to adoring fans across the heartland. 

These often-forgotten Americans are, in a quite literal sense, denied the opportunity to hear the full argument against the Biden Regime due to these insidious workings of the Democrat-lawfare complex.

Instead of permitting the Regime’s challenger, Trump, to campaign for votes in Wisconsin, he is forced to silently endure the unhinged courtroom musings of a literal porn star and a convicted felon (Michael Cohen)—all in furtherance of a case that suffers from insuperable statute of limitations problems in addition to the structural absurdity of a local district attorney (the Soros-funded Alvin Bragg) prosecuting and attempting to prove a federal crime (a campaign finance violation).

Oh, and if Trump doesn’t shut up and keep quiet, Merchan might throw him in jail—as he has repeatedly threatened to do, if Trump keeps violating his unconstitutional gag order.

What a sick, cruel joke it all is.

Democrats seem not to have given any thought to what happens if they lose. If Trump wins, do Democrats seriously not expect him to respond in kind? Now that the Rubicon has been crossed and we have entered a world in which politicians attempt to not merely defeat their opposition at the ballot box but also prosecute and incarcerate them, there is no going back.

Just as Senate Democrats’ November 2013 invocation of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster for lower-court nominees directly led to Republicans doing the same for Supreme Court nominees just a few years later, so, too, is it impossible to know what may ultimately come from the lawfare precedent Democrats are setting today.

The new rules have been established. Many of us didn’t want these rules, but here we are anyway. So, game on.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

Victor Davis Hanson Op-ed: Try a Little Honesty About Israel


By: Victor Davis Hanson @VDHanson / May 10, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/10/try-a-little-honesty-about-israel/

Anti-Israel protesters routinely spout untruths about Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and its aftermath. Here are 10 of the most common. Pictured: An Israeli soldier prays Tuesday next to an army vehicle near Israel’s border with the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel Defense Forces seek to root out Hamas terrorists. (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY Victor Davis Hanson@VDHanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

Scan news accounts of anti-Israel campus and street protesters. Read their demands and manifestos. Collate the confusion from the Biden administration after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorism in Israel.

Here are 10 of their most common untruths about Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war that followed.

‘Progressive Hamas’

Gay and transgender student protesters in America would be in mortal danger in Gaza under a fascistic Hamas, a terrorist organization that has banned homosexual acts and lifestyles. Anyone protesting publicly against Hamas or its allies would be arrested and severely punished.

Women are segregated in most Hamas-run educational institutions. Under the Hamas charter, women are valued mostly as child-bearers. By design, there are almost no women in high positions in business or in government under Hamas.

‘Colonists and settlers’

Students scream that Israelis are “settlers” and “colonists” and sometimes yell at Jewish students to “go back to Poland.”

But the Jewish presence in present-day Israel is deeply rooted in ancient tradition. Dating back at least three millennia, the concept of “Israel” as a distinct Jewish state, situated roughly in its current location, is ingrained in history.

By contrast, the much later Arab invasions of the Byzantine-controlled Levant and their arrival in Palestine occurred about 1,800 years after the establishment of a Jewish Israel.

‘Two-state solution’

When student protesters scream “From the river to the sea,” that is not advocacy for a two-state solution.

It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on Oct. 7.

‘Occupied Gaza’

The Gaza Strip, adjacent Israel, was autonomous. The Israeli border is closed, but so is the Egyptian border. There have not been any Jews in Gaza for nearly two decades.

So on Oct. 7, Gaza was not occupied by Israel. It was under the control of Hamas, designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization.

After being elected to power in 2006, Hamas canceled all subsequent elections and ruled as a dictatorship. Gaza forbids Jews from entering Gaza and has driven out most Christians.

Israel hosts 2 million Arabs, both as Israeli citizens and residents.

‘Netanyahu is the problem’

The U.S. and Europe claim that the conservative government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is alone behind Israel’s tough response in Gaza to the Oct. 7 attacks. Thus, both the E.U. and the U.S. are doing their best to undermine or even overthrow the elected Netanyahu administration.

Yet, most Israelis support Netanyahu’s coalition government’s agenda of destroying Hamas in Gaza.

There is no evidence that any other alternative Israeli government would do anything differently from the present policies toward Hamas.

‘Targeting civilians’

After murdering nearly 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, Hamas scurried back to Gaza and hid in tunnels and bases beneath hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Its preplanned strategy was to survive by ensuring Gaza civilians would be killed. Hamas has indiscriminately launched more than 7,000 rockets at Israel, all designed to kill Jewish civilians.

Outside assessors have concluded that Israel has not inadvertently killed a greater ratio of civilians to terrorists compared to most other urban fighting conflicts elsewhere, and perhaps even fewer than American engagements in Mosul and Fallujah.

‘Protesters are pro-Palestine’

Increasingly, protesters make no distinction between supporting “Palestine” and Hamas.

Their chants often echo the original Hamas eliminationist charter and recent genocidal ravings of its leadership.

Some protesters wear Hamas logos and wave the terrorist organization’s flag. Many cheered the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7.

‘Anti-Israel is not antisemitic’

When protesters scream to Jewish students to “go back to Poland” or call for the “Final Solution,” or assault them or bar them from campus facilities, they do not ask the Jewish students whether they are pro-Israel.

For protesters, anyone identifiable as Jewish becomes a target of their antisemitic invective and violence.

‘Genocide’

Israel has not tried to wipe out the Palestinian people in the fashion of Hamas’ one-state solution plan for Jews.

Before Oct. 7, some 20,000 Gazans a day requested to work in Israel—on the correct expectation of much higher wages and humane treatment.

If Hamas had come out of its tunnels, separated from its impressed civilian shields, released its surviving Israeli hostages, and either openly fought the Israel Defense Forces or surrendered the organizers of the Oct. 7 massacre, no Gaza civilians would have died.

According to Hamas’ questionable “genocide” figures, roughly 4% of the Gazan population died during the Israeli military response to Oct. 7. At least a third to almost half of those deaths, according to various international observers, were Hamas terrorists.

‘Disproportionate response’

Iran tried to send 320 missiles and rockets into Israel. Israel replied with three.

Hamas launched 7,000 rockets into Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis before the Israel Defense Forces responded in Gaza, often dropping leaflets and sending texts to forewarn citizens.

Israel has been disproportionate only in the effectiveness of its response. Hamas and its Iranian benefactor intended disproportionately to hurt Israel, but utterly failed.

So, Israel proved to be competent and Hamas incompetent in their similar efforts to use disproportionate force.

(C) 2024 Tribune Content Agency LLC

“I Gave Up Shame Years Ago”: Clinton Denounces Trump for Doing What She Did in 2016


By: Jonathan Turley | May 10, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/category/bizarre/

I gave up shame years ago.” Those words from actor John Lithgow appear to have been taken to heart by Hillary Clinton who has severed any sense of self-awareness or shame in her public comments. Lithgow, who played Bill Clinton in Broadway production of Hillary and Clinton, appears to have inspired the subject of his play. In a recent interview, Hillary Clinton heralded the prosecution of former president Donald Trump in Manhattan as “election interference” by keeping “relevant information” from voters before an election. For those of us who criticized Clinton for the funding of the infamous Steele dossier, it was a perfectly otherworldly moment.

In the interview, Clinton went after the Supreme Court for delaying a trial of Trump despite the push by Special Counsel Jack Smith for a verdict before the election. She then left many in disbelief with the following statement:

“And the one going on now currently in New York is really about election interference. It is about trying to prevent the people of our country from having relevant information that may have influenced how they could have voted in 2016 or whether they would have voted.”

In the same election, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that lied about funding the Steele dossier and then hiding the funding as a legal expense through then Clinton General Counsel Marc Elias.

The Clinton campaign staff has never been known for transparency. Buried in the detailed account is a  footnote stating that Elias “declined to be voluntarily interviewed by the Office.” Likewise, John Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.

Elias, his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign were later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim.

It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense.

New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.”

Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort.

Elias is now ironically advising Democratic campaigns on election ethics and running a group to “defend democracy.” He is still counsel to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) headed by Rep. Suzan Kay DelBene, D-Wash. Elias was later severed by the Democratic National Committee from further representation and has been previously sanctioned in federal court in other litigation.

Notably, the Federal Election Commission sanctioned the Clinton campaign for hiding the funding as a legal expense. The Clinton campaign litigated the issue and insisted that the term is broadly used to cover a wide array of payments through counsel. That is precisely what the Trump team is arguing in the Manhattan case.

Lying to the media and hiding the funding was a conscious effort to hide “relevant information that may have influenced” voters. With the help of the media, these false stories were spread throughout the country and later were used to start the Russian collusion investigation.

Famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that “the only shame is to have none.” Hillary has finally achieved that ignoble status. She appears now to have lost even the capacity for shame.

CNN Flips Out Over GOP Rep. Scott Perry Highlighting Democrats’ KKK History


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 09, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/09/cnn-flips-out-over-gop-rep-scott-perry-highlighting-democrats-kkk-history/

Scott Perry

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This week CNN published information from what it says is a secret recording to frame Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry as — what else? — a racist conspiracy theorist. On Wednesday, the network published quotes from what it says was an audio recording of a closed-door meeting on antisemitism wherein Perry notes the Ku Klux Klan was “the military wing of the Democratic Party.”

“The KKK in modern times, a lot of young people think somehow it’s a right-wing organization when it is the military wing of the Democratic Party. Decidedly, unabashedly, racist and antisemitic,” Perry said.

“The KKK is not affiliated in any way with the modern Democratic Party,” CNN added in its “news” article. Perhaps CNN was so eager to absolve the Democrat Party of any relationship to the KKK, which was founded by Democrats, that the network refused to even consider the legitimacy of Perry’s comments.

The hit, based on a supposedly off-the-record meeting between staff and lawmakers, generated hostile coverage against the Republican lawmaker from the New Republic, the Daily Beast, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

If the racist agitators from the 2017 Charlottesville protests had set up antisemitic encampments on college campuses across the country after months of preparations paid for by dark money groups on the far right, the corporate press would be publishing an avalanche of screeds indicting the Republican Party as an infiltrated vehicle of the KKK. While the media will often point to former Klan leader David Duke’s support for Donald Trump as evidence of supposed GOP racism, Richard Spencer, who organized the Charlottesville race riots, endorsed President Joe Biden in 2020.

The Democratic Party includes an increasing number of supporters of antisemitism, which the Klan also promoted more than 150 years ago. The antisemitic protests that broke out after the Oct. 7 Israeli massacre by Palestinian terrorists have featured swastika symbols, which the KKK also embraced. The pro-Palestinian demonstrators are acting like the KKK while using some of the same symbols to terrorize Jewish students and shut down college campuses.

In 2020, USA Today (an official Facebook fact-checker), sought to absolve the Democratic Party of its long history with the KKK in an article titled, “Fact check: Democratic Party did not found the KKK, did not start the Civil War.”

“The KKK was founded by Democrats, but not the party,” USA Today concluded. “We rate the claim that the Democratic Party started the Civil War to preserve slavery and founded the KKK as FALSE because it is not supported by our research.”

Jarrett Stepman, author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” found the fact-check amusing.

“They came up with all these various caveats – ‘Well, you know, it wasn’t all Democrats; it was only most Democrats in the South,’” Stepman told The Federalist. “I’m thinking, if this was literally any other institution, if this was the name of a street, or if this was a statue, it would have been immediately canceled. It might have even been ripe for being torn down by a mob.”

The House Oversight hearing about Washington D.C.’s response to the current antisemitic demonstrations was canceled Wednesday morning after police cleared a protester encampment at George Washington University. More than 30 people were arrested, according to the Associated Press. More than 2,800 demonstrators have been arrested on college campuses nationwide.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Democrats Attack Judge for Delaying Trump Florida Trial


By: Jonathan Turley | May 9, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/09/democrats-attack-judge-for-delaying-trump-florida-trial/

While pundits, politicians and the press have long expressed outrage over attacks on judges by former President Donald Trump, many are now attacking any judge who delays any trial of Trump before the election. Democrats have accused Judge Aileen Cannon of being politically compromised, if not conspiratorial, in her delay of the Florida trial over the mishandling of classified documents. Yet, there is ample reason for the delay that many of us anticipated in this type of case when it was filed.

For months, many of us have said that we doubt that this type of trial could be held on the rapid schedule demanded by Special Counsel Jake Smith. Smith has repeatedly sought to curtail trial review and even appellate rights of Trump to advance his schedule.

His office has made convicting Trump before the election the overriding objective of its motion — a sharp departure from past Justice Department efforts to avoid trials to influence elections.

As a criminal defense counsel, I have handled classified material cases, and they are notoriously slow. Smith could have prosecuted this case in the shorter time frame if he simply charged obstruction. That would have also eliminated the glaring contrast with the handling of the Biden investigation into the current president’s retention and mishandling of classified material.

Smith decided to charge an array of document charges related to classified material. The defense must have access, review, and can appeal issues related to the classified procedures. Yet, Smith wanted both the array of document charges and a fast track to trial. The Supreme Court has agreed with Cannon that Smith’s desire to secure a conviction before the election is not the overriding consideration.

Judge Cannon is faced with recent admissions that the government mixed up files in the boxes and staged the famous photos of documents strewn over a floor with classified jackets. Most importantly, disputes over the relevant documents continues as expected in the case. Nevertheless, leading democrats are denouncing Cannon as a partisan hack.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on federal courts and oversight, accused Cannon of “deliberately slow-walking the case.” Ignoring the fact that similar cases have taken much longer to go to trial, Whitehouse simply declared “it is hard for me not to reach the conclusion that this [judge] is deliberately slow-walking the case to put it into a position where should [Trump] be elected, he can order that the investigation and prosecution be terminated.”

His colleague Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) insisted that Cannon was “managing this case in a way that is making it highly unlikely that it will be resolved in a timely fashion.”

Coons added “Justice deferred is often justice denied.” It is a bizarre statement. Classified documents cases routinely take longer to go to trial. The alternative is to cut off the ability of the defense to fully review the documents and review objections for resolution before trial. Yet, because the defendant is Trump and these Democrats want the trial to influence the election, such defense protections are now evidence of judicial bias. They, of course, ignore that Cannon has ruled repeatedly against major Trump motions in the case.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Cannon’s “at it again, doing everything she can to delay.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), offered the most telling line. He said, “I question whether this judge understands the magnitude or the legal import of this trial.”

Indeed, it is the timing as much as the charges that makes this so important to the Justice Department and the Democrats. Smith has crafted this case to impact the election and the failure of the court to support that effort is apparently grounds for recusal.

Blumenthal called for such a motion before the window is lost before the election: “It’s a classic dilemma for justice that a particular judicial officer may be conducting a trial that could be better done by somebody else.”

Despite the statement of his colleague Coons, this is a case where justice delayed is justice.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Vanishing Woman

A.F. BRANCO | on May 9, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-vanishing-woman/

Title 9
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden’s Title IX (9) is destroying women’s sports. Many women are at risk of bodily injury and loss of scholarships across the nation due to biological males pretending to be women invading their sports.

Oklahoma Challenges Joe Biden’s Title IX Revisions: “One of the Most Radical and Illegal Moves We’ve Ever Seen from the Federal Government”

By Jim Hoft – April 27, 2024

Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters condemned President Joe Biden’s recent rewrite of Title IX, labeling it as “radical and illegal” and a direct assault on the rights of states, families, and specifically young women and girls.
The Biden regime proudly announced that women will be forced to allow men in their locker rooms and bathrooms with a new 1577-page Title IX ruling.
Women will be forced to compete against men and women will be forced to accept men on their sports teams.

And, as May Mailman, Director of Independent Women’s Law Center, notes, Title IX is not a college law.  This will impact girls as young as those in the Headstart program, geared to children from three to five-years old, those in daycare, and those in Kindergarten through 12th grade. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

Speaker Johnson: Bill Ensures Only US Citizens Vote


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Wednesday, 08 May 2024 02:58 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/mike-johnson-voting-legislation/2024/05/08/id/1163961/

House Speaker Mike Johnson, accompanied by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Wednesday introduced legislation that they said will ensure that only U.S. citizens are voting in U.S. elections by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“Some have noted that it’s already a crime for noncitizens to vote in a federal election, and that is true,” Johnson said during an event at the Capitol announcing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. However, he said, there is “no mechanism to ensure” that only citizens are registering or voting.”

“It is true that [President Joe] Biden has welcomed millions and millions of illegal aliens, including sophisticated criminal syndicates and agents of adversarial governments, into our borders and even on humanitarian parole,” Johnson, R-La., said. “It is true that a growing number of localities are blurring the lines for noncitizens by allowing them to vote in municipal elections [and] it is true that Democrats have expressed a desire to turn non-citizens into voters.”

Johnson said that in his travels to cities nationwide, the first or second question he’s asked in every forum is about election security. 

“Americans are deeply concerned about this and it doesn’t matter where you live or whether you’re in a blue state or a red state,” Johnson said. “Due to the wide-open border that the Biden administration has refused to close — in fact that they engineered to open — we now have so many noncitizens in the country that if only one out of 100 of those voted, they would cast hundreds of thousands of votes.”

Johnson called that a “dangerously high number” that could change the outcome of the nation’s elections. 

Johnson added that nearly 16 million immigrants have entered the country since Biden entered office, including on humanitarian parole, “and that means the millions that had been paroled can simply go to their local welfare office or the DMV and register to vote there.”

The speaker also pointed out that there has been a growing number of people in the United States on student visas who have staged protests at the nation’s colleges, threatening law-abiding students. 

“If they’re willing to take over buildings and physically terrorize their fellow students, why would they not be willing to lie on a voter registration form?” Johnson said. 

The speaker was accompanied by several advocates for the legislation, including Cleta Mitchell (FAIR Elections Fund and Election Integrity Network), Jenny Beth Martin (Tea Party Patriots Action), Stephen Miller (America First Legal), Ken Cuccinelli (Election Transparency Initiative), Rosemary Jenks (Immigration Accountability Project), Andy Roth (State Freedom Caucus  Network), and Hogan Gidley (America First Policy Institute).

Sandy Fitzgerald 

Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics. 

Dennis Prager Op-ed: Sick Jews


Dennis Prager @DennisPrager / May 08, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/08/sick-jews/

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace and others gather at Rockefeller Center to protest a visit by President Joe Biden on Feb. 26, 2024, in New York City. (Photo: David Delgado/Getty Images)
Information about the author.

I doubt that there is any national or religious group that produces the percentage of people who aid those who wish to hurt, let alone kill, that group as do Jews. empty alt attribute

When one observes Jews who defend those whose raison d’etre is the annihilation of the one Jewish country on Earth, you have to ask: Why are there no others like them? Were there blacks who defended slavery? Were there Armenians who defended the Turkish mass murder of fellow Armenians during World War I?

It is true that every nation has produced people who work against their nation—particularly during time of war. Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian leader who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of Norway, is perhaps the best known: The very name “Quisling” is widely used as a synonym for traitor. But even Quisling identified more with fellow Norwegians than Israel-hating Jews identify with fellow Jews.

It turns out that the Jews who side with those who wish to eradicate the one Jewish state and slaughter as many Jews as possible are truly unique.

It is this uniqueness that makes these Jews difficult to explain. Nevertheless, it is important to at least attempt to do so.

Here are two explanations.

1. Psychological Explanations

As a result of the Holocaust, virtually every Jew—whether or not they had family members who were murdered by the Nazis and their non-German collaborators—suffers from a form of PTSD. Few non-Jews know this, and even fewer can identify with this condition. So, let me explain.

Between 1941 and 1945, one of the most civilized nations in the world—the nation that gave the world the greatest music ever written; the greatest single national source of great scientists; the nation that produced Protestant Christianity, the mother of modern liberal democracies, the primary source (along with the Hebrew Bible) of the American experiment in freedom and of the anti-slavery movement—murdered two out of every three Jews in Europe.

Jewish women, babies, and elderly Jews were slated for death just as much as were young men. Jews were not merely persecuted or enslaved; they were targeted for death in the largest and most systematic genocide in recorded history.

And with very few exceptions, the world’s nations did nothing to help the Jews of Europe. Even those who managed to flee were, in too many cases, denied safe harbor in other countries, a fact that continues to underlie the need for one Jewish state in the world.

Inevitably, this has had a profound impact on the Jewish psyche. Virtually every Jew since 1945 has, consciously or subconsciously, feared another Holocaust. In fact, long before the Holocaust, at the Passover Seder Jews recited (and still do): “In every generation they arise to annihilate us.” Note that the words are not “to persecute us” or “to enslave us” but “to annihilate us.” Jew-hatred has always been unique in that it is an annihilationist hatred.

Given this reality, some Jews have always sought to assimilate wherever and whenever possible. Some changed their names, some baptized their children (as Karl Marx’s Jewish parents did), and some simply chose not to raise their children as Jews.

Today, there are Jews who choose to identify with the Jews’ enemies. More than a few young Jews on college campuses, for example, undoubtedly believe—consciously or not—that they will be more secure if they align themselves with the Jews’ enemies.

To those who seek to annihilate Israel and its Jews, there is no one as valuable as a Jew who sides with them—and many young Jews know, or at least sense, this. By aligning themselves with today’s Nazis—and lest you think that is too strong a term, vis-a-vis the Jews there is no difference between the Nazis and the Iranian regime, Hezbollah, and Hamas—they go from being hated by Israel-haters to being loved by them (for now).

2. Ideological Explanations

Not all Jews side with the would-be exterminators of the Jewish people for psychological reasons. Many Jews who are in the pro-Palestinian, Israel-hating camp are there for ideological reasons: They are leftists (not liberals, who generally remain what they have always been: pro-Israel). And leftism is one of the two primary sources of Israel-hatred and Jew-hatred today. The other is fundamentalist Islam.

This is true around the world. The most anti-Israel leaders outside of the Muslim world are leftists.
The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, described by The New York Times as “Colombia’s first leftist president,” has severed his country’s relations with Israel and not only used the “genocide” libel against Israel but accused Israel of engaging in “the extermination of an entire people.”

(As I have noted for decades, truth is a liberal and conservative value; but it is not, and has never been, a left-wing value.)

The leftist president of Bolivia, Luis Arce, severed his country’s relations with Israel less than three weeks after Oct. 7. Bolivia perfectly illustrates the universal left-wing hatred of Israel: Bolivia’s previous left-wing president, Evo Morales, severed Bolivia’s relations with Israel in 2009; and Morales’ conservative successor, Jeanine Anez, restored relations with Israel in 2020.

Meanwhile, the most pro-Israel leader in the world today is the conservative president of Argentina, Javier Milei.

Most American Jews are liberal, but many are leftist, and they embrace the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas line. (At this time, “pro-Palestinian” means “pro-Hamas” just as, during World War II, “pro-German” meant “pro-Nazi.”)

For many Jews who abandon belief in the Torah, leftism fills the religious hole created by that abandonment. This is equally true for many non-Jews, but there is a major difference: Christians who abandon Christian faith do not still call themselves Christian, nor does anyone else; but Jews who abandon Jewish faith often continue to call themselves Jews (especially when attacking Israel), and so do others.

Psychopathology and left-wing ideology are the two primary explanations for why Jews such as those in groups like “Jewish Voice for Peace” and “IfNotNow” willingly serve as useful idiots for those who wish to exterminate the Jewish state and the Jewish people. Including them.

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This is Antifa: Journalist and Others Attacked at UW Event


By: Jonathan Turley | May 8, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/08/this-is-antifa-journalist-and-others-attacked-at-uw-event/

The University of Washington became the latest scene of Antifa violence this week with an attack on a conservative reporter and several other people. Antifa often attacks reporters who are critical of their actions and the videotape shows at least one person bleeding after the attack on reporter, Jonathan Choe, and his team. The attack came before an event Tuesday at the University of Washington featuring Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, which released the video.

The University of Washington issued a statement that campus police “are busy keeping the Turning Point USA event and other areas of campus as safe as possible. We take any assault seriously, and UWPD will be investigating these incidents, gathering statements and video footage that may be available.”

Despite the denial of its existence by figures like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), I have long written and spoken about the threat of Antifa to free speech on our campuses and in our communities. This includes testimony before Congress on Antifa’s central role in the anti-free speech movement nationally.

As I have written, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association.  Yet, FBI Director Chris Wray has repeatedly pushed back on the denials of Antifa’s work or violence. In one hearing, Wray stated “And we have quite a number” — and “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction.”

We have continued to follow the attacks and arrests of Antifa followers across the country.

Some Democrats have played a dangerous game in supporting or excusing the work of Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer. During a prior hearing, Democratic senators refused to clearly denounce Antifa and falsely suggested that the far right was the primary cause of recent violence. Likewise, Joe Biden has dismissed objections to Antifa as just “an idea.”

It is at its base a movement at war with free speech, defining the right itself as a tool of oppression. That purpose is evident in what is called the “bible” of the Antifa movement: Rutgers Professor Mark Bray’s Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.

Bray emphasizes the struggle of the movement against free speech: “At the heart of the anti-fascist outlook is a rejection of the classical liberal phrase that says, ‘I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’”

Bray admits that “most Americans in Antifa have been anarchists or antiauthoritarian communists…  From that standpoint, ‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.” It is an illusion designed to promote what Antifa is resisting “white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, ultra-nationalism, authoritarianism, and genocide.” Thus, all of these opposing figures are deemed fascistic and thus unworthy of being heard.

Bray quotes one Antifa member as summing up their approach to free speech as a “nonargument . . . you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

We previously discussed the case involving another Antifa member who was convicted after taking an ax to the door of Sen. John Hoeven’s office in Fargo. He was given no jail time, and the FBI even returned his ax. He later mocked the government by posting on social media “Look what the FBI were kind enough to give back to me!

For those who have sought to deny the existence of Antifa, this is Antifa.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Top Dog

A.F. BRANCO | on May 8, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-top-dog/

Speaker Johnson or Jeffries
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon—Speaker Johnson has turned out to be weaker than expected, unwilling to fight for the values the conservative base elected him to promote. Many say he has become the lapdog of Rep. Jeffries and the Democrats and, out of weakness or naivete, has yielded to the Deep State, such as the warrantless FISA bill.

BREAKING | Rep. MTG Announces Motion To Vacate For Speaker Johnson Next Week: “Americans Are “Unable To Trust Mike Johnson” (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft – May 1, 2024
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) joined Steve Bannon on The War Room on Wednesday to discuss her plan to call for a motion to vacate the speakership next week.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), the Uniparty, RINOs and Democrats passed another massive spending bill last week to fund the war in Ukraine, fund Israel, fund Taiwan, and nothing for secure America’s southern border.
This is national suicide. READ MORE…

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

South Carolina Agency: The Feds Force Us to Give Voter Registration to Foreign Nationals


BY: M.D. KITTLE | MAY 07, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/07/south-carolina-agency-the-feds-force-us-to-give-voter-registration-to-foreign-nationals/

South Carolina state welcome sign.

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As South Carolina law enforcement investigates allegations a state agency is handing out voter registration forms to foreign nationals, an agency official tells The Federalist that federal law has tied the state’s hands. 

Jeff Leieritz, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, says the department, as the state’s Medicaid agency, is mandated to provide voter registration information under Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act Of 1993. The information apparently goes out to everyone applying for the benefits, including foreign nationals.

Section 7 requires each state to designate voter registration agencies, including all state offices providing public assistance, unemployment compensation, or disability services; state or local government offices; federal and nongovernmental offices; and armed forces recruitment offices. 

“SCDHHS does not believe the state Medicaid agency should have a role in voter registration. However, absent the legal authority to make this change, SCDHHS remains required by federal law to provide voter registration application forms with each Medicaid application,” Leieritz said in a statement Monday to The Federalist.

‘That’s Insane’

South Carolina state Rep. Adam Morgan has been pushing for answers after a refugee reported receiving a packet of information, including voter registration forms, at the Health and Human Services office. Morgan did not return The Federalist’s requests for comment, but he did speak about the issue last week on FrankSpeech. 

“The refugee was actually confused. They were like, ‘Am I supposed to fill this out?’ They asked a relative, and the relative is a citizen who said, ‘No, you can’t fill this out. You’re not a citizen.’ [The refugee] said, ‘Why are they giving this out to noncitizens?’ And we were, like, “Exactly! That’s insane,” Morgan told The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson. 

Morgan said the refugee mailed the forms back to the Medicaid office advising that the government agency shouldn’t be giving voter registration information to people who are not eligible to vote. The office sent the refugee even more information in response, Morgan claims. 

“It’s just infuriating that the government is actually sending these forms out and literally confusing people who may not be trying to do wrong, or opening the door wide open for somebody to do wrong and get people who are not citizens to vote in the election,” said the president of the South Carolina Freedom Caucus and a Republican candidate for a U.S. House seat. 

On, Wednesday, the Freedom Caucus sent Gov. Henry McMaster letter expressing its “grave concern with this breach of election integrity.” They asked that the state inspector general’s office launch an immediate investigation and that the governor order state agencies to “cease and desist distributing voter registration and voter declination forms to non-citizens.”

McMaster, a Republican, quickly responded, saying he has asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division to immediately contact Morgan to “provide SLED with any and all evidence, documents and information that you possess in order to evaluate the authenticity of your allegation of illegalities.”  

“SLED has received the Governor’s letter to Representative Adam Morgan and will review the allegations provided,” the Law Enforcement Division told The Federalist in an email Monday. 

‘Overreaching Federal Requirements’

Leieritz, the spokesman for the state health department, said the agency is aware of reports circulating on social media about the refugee receiving voter registration forms. He said the department does not process or submit voter registration forms for Medicaid applicants or members. That is the domain of the South Carolina Election Commission.

“SCDHHS is investigating what has been reported on social media,” the spokesman said, adding that the agency believes the 30-year-old National Voter Registration Act needs to be amended “to repeal these overreaching federal requirements.”

“South Carolina’s citizens would be better served by a state Medicaid agency that is able to focus singularly on efficiently operating the state’s Healthy Connections Medicaid program,” Leieritz said. 

Morgan and the Freedom Caucus are proposing adding a provision in the state budget prohibiting state money from funding the distribution of voter registration information to foreign nationals at South Carolina agencies. 

“But isn’t it insane that we have to do that,” the lawmaker told Robinson.  “It’s crazy to me that we are at a place in America where we have government employees and government agencies who are willing to actively give out voter registration forms to noncitizens. And if it’s happening in South Carolina, you’d better believe it’s happening all over especially the swing states.”

It is, via federal executive fiat. 

‘Bidenbucks’

Beyond the NVRA, President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019 commands federal agencies to do what some legal experts say the executive branch does not have the legal authority to do: expand voter registration and turnout — using White House “approved” third-party organizations connected to Democrats. The sweeping initiative has been billed “Bidenbucks,” since it uses federal dollars. Think of Executive Order 14019 as Zuckbucks on steroids, using your money.

“This is clearly weaponization of the government for a partisan purpose,” Dave Craig, a senior legal fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, told me in February

On the swing state front, the Michigan Department of State earlier this year signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Small Business Administration “to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan.” The agreement, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman, is a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” for the federal agency. It is expected to run through Jan. 1, 2036. Such constitutionally suspect “agreements” between the Biden administration and left-led state executive branches are part of Biden’s unprecedented executive order. 

‘Non-issues’ Becoming ‘Major Issues’

The South Carolina State Election Commission (SEC) last week said it had received several questions and concerns about foreign nationals registering to vote in defiance of basic election integrity protections. 

“The SEC is actively auditing voter data through the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) Program database to ensure that only U.S. citizens are included on the active list of registered voters. Regardless of the method of registration, no voter may be registered in South Carolina without signing an oath swearing that they are a citizen of the United States,” the agency states on its website. “The auditing process ensures that any bad actors are removed from voter rolls and held accountable through state and federal election law statutes.” 

The elections regulator said it has not received any “specific information that non-U.S. citizens are fraudulently being registered to vote” in South Carolina.  

“The SEC will not allow fraudulent voter registration to happen on our watch,” said Howie Knapp, executive director of the SEC. “Should we receive or discover information that non-U.S. citizens are being registered to vote in our state, we will immediately report to our law enforcement partners for investigation and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”

South Carolina is looking to join a growing list of states passing resolutions for constitutional amendments barring foreign nationals, including illegal immigrants, from voting in local elections. 

“Many said this was a non-issue. Then we discovered state agencies sending voter registration forms to non-citizens. These ‘non-issues’ keep turning out to be major issues,” Morgan recently tweeted on his X account. 


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Sends Taxpayer Funds to On-Campus Mobs


BY: CHRISTOPHER JACOBS | MAY 07, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/07/bidens-loan-forgiveness-plan-makes-taxpayers-fund-on-campus-mobs/

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In remarks regarding the growing unrest on college campuses nationwide last Thursday, President Biden denounced the violent acts associated with many of the demonstrations and the growing wave of antisemitism on college campuses.

But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap. There’s one simple way to give his position teeth: Congress should enact legislation prohibiting the Department of Education from making taxpayers assume or otherwise modifying student loans for any student found responsible by his university or a court of law for acts of antisemitism, trespassing, property damage, intimidation, or violence.

Loan Giveaways Encourage Campus Chaos

Biden might be loath to admit it, but in many ways the campaign for mass student loan forgiveness has helped cause the current campus debacle. This year’s seniors entered college during the 2020 election campaign, meaning that most students currently on campus spent their college career hearing promises that much if not all of their debt would be forgiven.

This leftist movement to make American taxpayers pay off other people’s college debt has further weakened the already-tenuous link between a degree and its earning potential. If they believe the government will ultimately forgive the cost of their education, students have no reason not to major in Grievance Studies, or some similar Marxist-adjacent course of study. Assuming their loan debts will get nationalized also makes students less concerned about potential employers refusing to hire them due to their participation in on-campus riots.

With less incentive for students to choose practical degrees, and officials prioritizing woke nostrums over intellectual rigor, colleges have given up all pretense of ideological balance. As a result, some institutions have become less like universities and more like madrassas, places that inculcate and radicalize youths rather than educate them.

The way Biden has continued to pursue loan forgiveness, despite a rebuke of his unconstitutional plan by the Supreme Court, set an example that demonstrators have replicated. The president may now deprecate the mob’s actions, and call for respect for the rule of law, but when he publicly brags that the nation’s highest court “didn’t stop me” from pursuing his objectives, can anyone blame the would-be jihadis on campus for thinking themselves entitled to take the law into their own hands?

Restore Sanity to Campuses

Congress can and should take a stand, by cutting off the financial spigot for participants in the bedlam. If Biden opposes the chaos on campus so strongly, he should be willing to take a break from buying votes via taxpayer loan payoffs to cut off access for those creating mayhem. And if Democrats on the left like Rep. Ilhan Omar wish to exclude from loan payoffs any participants in Islamophobic or other offensive acts, few Republicans — who oppose Biden’s forgiveness proposals outright — will object.

Some might fear this proposal would encourage already-timid university administrators to take a weaker line against the demonstrators because individuals held responsible could face significant financial repercussions. But in some cases, civil authorities may be able to act irrespective of whether the higher education institutions in question do. More importantly, this measure should deter students as much as university officials, if not more so.

Another potential concern, that Congress prohibiting loan bailouts for a narrow sliver of the population might be viewed as lawmakers permitting Biden’s power grab for other students, doesn’t appear to pass muster, either. The House passed a bill last spring disapproving Biden’s original student loan payoff plan, but the fact that the measure didn’t get enacted into law didn’t stop the Supreme Court from striking the plan down as an unconstitutional power grab.

Finally, this proposal focuses solely on actions, not speech. Like all other Americans, students can and should have the right to protest, and to express their views, however offensive others may find them. But when speech crosses into intimidation, or encampments that create safety and health concerns, let alone breaking into buildings, those actions should bring consequences — in this case, financial ones.

A Practical Solution

Prohibiting student loan payoffs is less expensive and more practical than the other alternative: giving demonstrators a one-way ticket to the Gaza Strip. It would also send a message in clear and uncertain terms about what the American people, through their elected representatives, think of the mayhem that has unfolded in recent weeks.

In the longer term, the recent campus chaos should prompt Congress to consider repealing the student loan program entirely, a reform that would incentivize students and universities to prioritize college affordability, while saving taxpayers at least $300 billion over the coming decade. But at minimum, lawmakers should act now to ensure that hard-working taxpayers are not subsidizing participants in violent demonstrations on campuses nationwide.


Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book “The Case Against Single Payer.” He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.

Sen. Josh Hawley Demands DOJ Probe Anti-Israel ‘Dark Money’


By Nicole Wells    |   Tuesday, 07 May 2024 02:13 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/us/josh-hawley-merrick-garland-israel/2024/05/07/id/1163801/

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called on the Department of Justice to investigate the third-party funding behind the antisemitic protests that have taken college campuses by storm in recent weeks. The Missouri Republican sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, demanding he open a probe into the funding. Alleging the demonstrations are “not just spontaneous student unrest,” Hawley reminded Garland that he sent a similar letter seeking information on “how many pro-terrorist student organizations … received significant funding from third-party groups” in October.

“Now, we have answers — just not from your Department,” Hawley wrote. “Earlier this week, Politico detailed the vast amounts of dark money subsidizing this mayhem. Their report found that key groups backing the campus protests — like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow — received financial support from George Soros’ Tides Foundation, David Rockefeller’s Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Democrat megadonors Susan and Nick Pritzker were also cited in the report.”

Hawley said the “pattern is disturbing” and “almost certainly illegal,” given that IRS Revenue Ruling 75-384 established that “no organization may retain its tax exemption if it backs protests at which members are urged to commit acts of civil disobedience.”

He said the IRS “explained at length that illegal acts are ‘inconsistent with charitable ends'” and “stressed that ‘illegal activities … are contrary to the common good and the general welfare’ and are therefore not approved methods of ‘promoting the social welfare.'”

“In short, by supporting illegal acts while enjoying tax-exempt status, dark-money groups and foundations are defrauding the American people and putting Jewish students and faculty at risk,” Hawley said.

In the letter, the GOP senator told the attorney general he must “immediately provide answers” as to how many anti-Israel protests are currently receiving funds from third-party groups and which groups are providing such support.

Hawley also wanted to know what steps the Justice Department will take to “immediately enforce” IRS Revenue Ruling 75-384 against the groups that are sponsoring or funding the ongoing violent protests at universities nationwide.

Nicole Wells 

Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.

Columbia Caves: Commencement is Canceled Due to Pro-Palestinian Protests


By: Jonathan Turley | May 7, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/07/columbia-caves-commencement-is-canceled-due-to-pro-palestinian-protests/

Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up.” Yesterday, Columbia University established its academic corollary: 80 percent of defeat is not showing up. In a disgraceful decision that deprived students of one of the most memorable moments of their lives, the university yielded to protesters who have occupied parts of the campus and buildings. Instead, graduates will be allowed to go to small-scale graduations. It is a profile of cowardice that will stain the record of Columbia for years to come.

Notably, the graduation is ordinarily held on the space where students set up an encampment, but that space was finally cleared by police last week. It did not matter. Columbia stated that “holding a large commencement ceremony on our campus presented security concerns that unfortunately proved insurmountable…Like our students, we are deeply disappointed with this outcome.”

“Insurmountable?” It is your campus. These are your students. Hold the damn commencement.

Columbia said the security advisers identified “too many variables” for holding the commencement and that adding security would only trigger the protesters. So, the solution, once again, is to do precisely what the protesters wanted.

Schools like University of Southern California said late last month that it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, citing similar security concerns. Protesters disrupted the commencement at University of Michigan this weekend. However, Michigan did not yield. They handled the disruption and held their ground. They held their commencement.

The decision by Columbia is consistent with how administrators have approached disruptive protests for years. While some of us have called upon schools to suspend or to expel students preventing others from speaking on campus, universities have yielded over and over again. Indeed, citing security concerns became an easy way for schools to cancel conservative speakers while professing neutrality on the content of their views. Faculty have not only encouraged but participated in such cancel campaigns.

Even classes have been stopped by protesters at places like Northwestern without any repercussions for the students. Northwestern (my alma mater) is the ultimate example of administrators picking the path of least resistance in the face of radicalized students. Recently, seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned in protest.

Under the controversial agreement, the school will admit five Palestinian students each year, support two Palestinian faculty members annually, create special housing for Muslim students, and add students to Committees to review purchases from Israeli businesses.

Columbia has been consistently ranked at the very bottom of schools for free speech due to its intolerance for opposing viewpoints and failure to protect a diversity of opinions on campus. Even the dean of its leading journalism school has warned against the “weaponization of free speech.” One of Columbia’s centers publicly complained when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was allowed to speak on campus.

When Columbia finally drew the line at protesters damaging and taking over buildings, the response from many students and faculty was outrage.

After Hamilton Hall was cleared by police, the editors of Columbia Law Review asked for the cancelation of exams because they were emotionally compromised. The editors wrote that the clearing of the unauthorized encampment constituted traumatic “violence” that left them “irrevocably shaken” and “unable to focus.” They were joined by editors of five other law journals, including the Columbia Human Rights Law Review & A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual.

They portrayed the trauma as the appearance of counter protesters and police on campus, accusing a “white supremacist, neo-fascist hate group” of “storming” campus. The Columbia students told the university that “many are unwell at this time and cannot study or concentrate while their peers are being hauled to jail.”

Columbia then faced threats of protests at the commencement, so it solved the problem by doing what the protesters were demanding. Of course, it did not solve the problem. Columbia is the problem. It is an example of how administrators have yielded control over their campuses to the loudest and most aggressive elements in their community.

Higher education is not supposed to be an academic version of the Hunger Games where the last person standing wins in a contest of attrition.

It is perhaps only appropriate that Columbia’s final lesson for graduates should be a continuation of years of yielding to the demands of those who dictate what can be said or done on campus.

Many of these students were denied commencement ceremonies four years ago. They worked to get into Columbia and many of their families had to make huge sacrifices to allow them to study at the university. As protests ramped up, they found themselves barred from campus and told again to take remote classes.  A Jewish professor’s access card was deactivated because his presence on campus was viewed as too inflammatory for the protesters.

When they are finally ready to celebrate that moment, they have been told, again, that commencement is cancelled. However, this is not due to a pandemic but protesters. They will have to go to smaller graduations that are less objectionable to the radical elements of the student body.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” It has the same effect on higher education. There was a clear path open to Columbia. Hold the commencement and hold any disrupters accountable. In choosing to yield, President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik has abandoned not just these graduates but the integrity of Columbia.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Kristallnacht-ing at the Door

A.F. BRANCO | on May 7, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/branco-cartoon-kristallnacht-ing-at-the-door/

Jewish Hate, Then and Now
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – It’s beginning to look a lot like Kristallnaught from the 1930s Germany with the protest and violence erupting in and around our universities across the nation.

“Let 10 Million Cop Cars Burn!” – Radical Pro-Hamas Terror Group ‘Rachel Corrie’s Ghost Brigade’ Admits to Torching 15 Portland Police Cars in ‘Preemptive Attack’

By Jim Hoft – May 6th, 2024

Fifteen police vehicles were torched at the Police training facility near the Portland Airport last week.

The case was being investigated as arson. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

Most Powerful Anti-Biden Video to Date


By: Kevin Jackson | May 4, 2024

 Read more at https://theblacksphere.net/2024/05/most-powerful-anti-biden-video-to-date/

Biden, Kevin Jackson

Joe Biden is becoming universally hated. And you can bet that Democrats are scared to death at what happened recently at a protest.

Two opposing groups managed to find common ground in their disdain for Joe Biden. Watch here, as University of Alabama protesters who differ dramatically on issues managed to chant the same thing:

Perhaps Joe Biden is the uniter he’s always claimed to be? Because he managed to get pro-Trump and LGBTQ+ groups to agree to one common theme: “F Joe Biden!”

No wonder Biden desperately woos young students by (unconstitutionally) erasing their tuition debt.

The game with this move is to have Trump rescind the free money, thus transferring blame to Republicans for undoing an illegal act. Clever when you think about it. Except, people aren’t falling for it anymore, as most people resent paying for other people’s debt. Particularly indoctrination debt.

Obviously, the Biden ploy isn’t gaining him any sway with the youth vote, as protests all over America continue against Biden’s policies. Polls with youth continue to provide bad news for Biden. So his policies are seen as a pander, more than real initiatives to help students and ultimately the country.

Whether the students are right or wrong in their protest is immaterial to me in the discussion. The fact that they see Biden as wrong benefits America.

Trump supports Israel.

Why haven’t Democrats even attempted to play this card? Trump has been vocal in his support of Israel. And let’s face it, he kept terrorism at bay for the most part during his tenure.

Biden’s problem? It’s difficult on the Biden administration who purports to support Israel while funding terrorists. And oh, the irony that Biden can’t take credit for his support of Hamas and Iran, less he admits to suborning the enemy.

Biden funded Iran who funds Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Iran is the George Soros of funding terror; except they have a deep pockets partner in Joe Biden.

As for the college students, admittedly they are morons. But they represent the enemy of my enemy as it relates to Biden. So, I’m actually happy they targeted him, regardless of their warped reasons.

The by-product of the student (terrorist) protests is the attack on academia, as well.

Colleges and universities birthed these idiot ingrates and raised them to be void of critical-thinking skills. I enjoy seeing Leftists feed off each other, as academia as we know it today begins its death spiral.

I’m tired of funding ignorance and indoctrination. We pay a fortune to train students on how to give up on real dreams and instead get indoctrinated.

Perhaps we finally are getting our money’s worth? Because it appears that Leftist chickens have come home to roost. And they are serving up crow.

Filings: Jack Smith Tampered with Evidence In Get-Trump Classified Documents Case


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/06/filings-jack-smith-tampered-with-evidence-in-get-trump-classified-documents-case/

Mar-a-Lago

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Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted federal prosecutors tampered with evidence in his criminal case alleging former President Donald Trump mishandled classified documents.

According to a Friday court filing, prosecutors said documents the FBI seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence are no longer in the same order in which they found them, and some are mislabeled and may even be misplaced. A government “filter team” that dealt with the boxes once the FBI took them “was not focused on maintaining the sequence of documents within each box,” the special counsel’s office wrote in the filing.

Later the filing says, of early inventories and scanned records of the seized document boxes, “Because these inventories and scans were created close in time to the seizure of the documents, they are the best evidence available of the order the documents were in when seized. That said, there are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” A footnote on this last sentence says: “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court.”

The filing also suggests the Department of Justice and FBI may have lost and mislabeled some of the documents. When the agencies first took the documents at Mar-a-Lago, government employees used many blank sheets of paper as substitutes and cover papers for what they decided might be classified documents.

After the FBI brought the document boxes to Washington DC, federal employees and contractors began replacing these “handwritten sheets” with proper classified document covers. At that point, the filing says, “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.” This indicates the special counsel’s office disclosed it isn’t sure whether some it lost or mislabeled some of the allegedly classified documents it seized in the Trump raid.

In response, Trump’s defense team filed a motion to dismiss the case over prosecutorial misconduct.

Smith charged Trump last June with 37 criminal counts related to the former president’s handling of classified documents. In July, Smith added three more counts against Trump as Democrats strategize to retain the presidency by imprisoning their chief political opponent in an unprecedented lawfare campaign. New evidence shows the Democrat White House worked closely with the DOJ and National Archives and Records Administration in crafting the documents case against Trump.

The classified documents case is Trump’s largest election-year court battle, as nearly half of the 88 total charges against him currently are related to the records. Federal prosecutors confiscated 33 boxes of documents from the hostile raid on Trump’s home in August 2022, according to Fox News. The Department of Justice has spent more than $23 million in taxpayer dollars for Smith to investigate Trump.

In April, Federalist Elections Correspondent Brianna Lyman outlined three major revelations to emerge from the classified documents case to date, including deep state pressure to move forward with Trump’s prosecution and White House involvement.

“President Biden also retained classified documents after leaving the vice presidency,” Lyman reported. “Yet he was not charged because prosecutors say they believed he would ‘present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’”

The Department of Energy allegedly revoked the former president’s security clearance retroactively once Trump was indicted.

In February, journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported the FBI raid may have been orchestrated to cover up the intelligence state’s role in the Russia hoax. The article posted on Shellenberger’s news website, Public, outlined how intelligence officials fretted over the presence of a classified “binder” in Trump’s possession that former CIA Director Gina Haspel was careful to protect for years.

“Transgressions [the feds might have wanted to cover up] range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian ‘influence activities,’” Public reported.

The binder was “Trump’s insurance policy,” according to an unnamed source cited as “knowledgeable about the case.”


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

The Real Threat to the U.S. Economy Isn’t Election Integrity, It’s Joe Biden


BY: M.D. KITTLE | MAY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/06/the-real-threat-to-the-u-s-economy-isnt-election-integrity-its-joe-biden/

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yell addressing the press in India.

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week warned that “threats to democracy” will imperil U.S. economic growth. Yellen’s admonishment is a less-than-veiled finger wag at former President Donald Trump and anyone who would dare question the official lie that the 2020 election was “one of the most secure elections in history.” 

The real threat to the economy is Joe Biden, his buffoonish treasury secretary, and the rest of the capitalism-crushing useful idiots in this dangerous administration.

As Democrat Party public-relations firm the Associated Press reported, Yellen used “economic data” in her address Friday in Arizona to “paint a picture of how disregard for America’s democratic processes and institutions can cause economic stagnation for decades.”

“Yellen, taking a rare step toward to [sic] the political arena, never mentioned Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, by name in her speech for the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum, but she hinted at the former president’s potential impact if he regains the White House,” the AP’s Fatima Hussein and Josh Boak propagandized in a shared byline. 

The former Federal Reserve chairwoman, who has routinely injected herself into the “political arena,” used the speech to “serve as a sort of warning for business leaders who may overlook Trump’s disregard for modern democratic norms because they prefer the former president’s vision of achieving growth by slashing taxes and stripping away regulations.”

Yellen’s comments, and the AP article marketing them, are as nakedly political as they are hilariously absurd. Trump’s assertions that the 2020 election was rigged — by shattered election laws in swing states, unprecedented infusions of leftist third-party cash in election administration and election interference by the same rotten-to-the-core corporate media peddling Yellen’s assault on democracy diatribe — are more dangerous than Bidenomics? Americans and economic data disagree. 

‘Transitory’ Regret

Yellen’s comments preceded Gallup’s latest Economy and Personal Finance poll showing Americans’ trust in Biden’s leadership at an all-time low.  The poll, conducted April 1-22, finds just 38 percent of respondents say they have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence that Biden would do or recommend the right course for the economy. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican opponent Democrats and their pals in the Deep State are trying to throw in jail, is polling at 46 percent on the economic question. 

Understandably, Americans are downright cranky about the shaky state of their personal economy, compliments of the Biden administration’s prosperity-crippling policies.

“With Americans less optimistic about the state of the U.S. economy than they have been in recent months and concern about inflation persisting, their confidence in President Joe Biden to recommend or do the right thing for the economy is among the lowest Gallup has measured for any president since 2001,” Gallup reported Monday. 

Over the past three years, Americans learned to be confident that Biden would do the wrong thing. And his bungling treasury secretary has provided plenty of political cover. What is stunning is that a majority of Americans (57 percent) until 2022 had confidence in the Dementarian’s management of the economy. Only President George W. Bush had a lower rating, with a meager 34 percent confidence number at the end of his second term amid the real estate bubble-burst recession. 

As inflation began to climb in 2021, economics genius Yellen described the soaring cost of things as a “transitory” problem. She doubled and tripled down as inflation ballooned to levels not seen since the real Great Recession of the 1980s, caused in large part by the policies of a lousy president Biden is often compared to: Jimmy Carter. 

Yellen earlier this year offered her “regret” for saying what was patently false. It didn’t take a PhD from Yale and a University of California, Berkeley professor to know that higher prices were — and remain — here to stay under Bidenomics

“I regret saying it was transitory. It has come down. But I think transitory means a few weeks or months to most people,” Yellen said during an interview with Fox Business in March.

No Sale

Inflation has come up since Yellen expressed her regret. Soaring mortgage rates have priced Americans, particularly young families, out of home ownership. The housing crisis could be the “death knell for America’s middle class,” Newsweek warned in December.

American workers have seen any income growth devoured by rising costs for everything from gas to Happy Meals. Yes, Democrats’ massive expansion of government regulations on business — especially small business, climate change cultism, foreign policy debacles, and unsustainable spending — has everything to do with why middle-income earners are feeling the pain and increasingly frustrated.

Just as frustrating, you have the accomplice media covering for the bungler-in-chief, telling Americans what they’re experiencing is simply not real. The New York Times’ gag-worthy piece last month claiming Biden has a positive story to tell on the economy is political propaganda of the most ludicrous order. No one should be surprised about such absurd water-carrying by a Biden-backing corporate media that has pushed Democrats’ perfect election narrative despite Democrats’ many, many imperfections. 

Now the tone-deaf treasury secretary wants to tell American businesses that tax-cutting, “election denier” Trump is more of a threat to the U.S. economy than the economic menace that is Joe Biden. America isn’t buying what Yellen is selling. They can’t afford to. 


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

“Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!”: GW Protesters Call for the Heads of President and Others to be Cut Off


By: Jonathan Turley | May 6, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/06/guillotine-guillotine-guillotine-gw-protesters-call-for-the-heads-of-president-and-others-to-be-cut-off/

For years, I have written about the analogy of what is happening on our campuses to the French Revolution, including faculty enablers becoming the targets of radical groups. Many faculty were silent as conservatives and libertarians were purged from faculties. Some even supported cancel campaigns against professors and speakers with opposing views. Now the analogy has become even more poignant on my campus of George Washington University after protesters held mock tribunals and called for the heads of the President, Provost, and Board of Trustees to be cut off by guillotine. A video has emerged over the weekend from the enactment outside of my office with students gleefully cheering for the beheading of faculty, administrators, and board members. They specifically “convicted” President Ellen Granberg, Provost Christopher Bracey, the Board of Trustees, @GWPolice, and others according to the poster of the video.

I discussed earlier how the D.C. police refused to clear the street outside of the law school and next to the quad. In D.C., it often matters what you are protesting in determining whether action will be taken.

As for the guillotine video, the Post Millennial reported on the scene:

In the mock tribunal, the woman asks, “How do the people find you?”

The crowd shouts, “Guilty!” then “Guillotine! Guillotine! Guillotine!”

“Bracey, Bracey, we see you! You assault students too. Off to the motherf*cking gallows with you,” the woman chants, along with the gleeful activists.

Moving on to the Board of Trustees, she states “On the charges of having a vested interest in the genocide of Palestinian people as they profit off Zionist weapons and purchases that you refuse to divest the apartheid as they line their pockets. The people find you.”

“Guilty!” The crowd screams with a mix of mob rage and joy.

“To the Guillotine!” the girl yells. “Board of Trustees, we charge you with genocide. I hope all that money is gonna save you when you’re rotting in jail.”

The crowd calls out President Grandberg, as well. “On the charges of using our tuition dollars to fund genocide, and selling out students to Zionist interest, the people find you?”

“Guilty!” The crowd yells.

“As you already know where I am sending her,” she adds, referring to the guillotine. “Her and her f*ck *ss bob.”

Fortunately, we got rid of shop in many schools years ago so the actual construction of a gallows may prove challenging. Amazon can deliver a guillotine but it is only five inches tall so it might be a bit of a Spinal Tap moment for the new Jacobins.

Few of us expect tumbrils to roll in Foggy Bottom. These students clearly thought that this was funny and no one believes that they are turning into little Robespierres. However, the rhetoric of these protests have displayed violent and unhinged elements – fueled by radical activists from Antifa and other organizations.

The protesters have already succeeded in forcing concessions from universities like Brown, Northwestern, and Rutgers. The growing protests have also clearly spooked the White House, particularly with the chant “Genocide Joe” catching on across the country. At GW, that image was projected over the large flag hung by the school.

The protesters are likely to take solace in the fact that the Biden Administration just reportedly put a hold on an ammunition transfer to Israel. It is not clear if this will be a mere symbolic hold that will be lifted or something more significant. Israel is preparing the long-announced offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza where the remaining Hamas fighters are located.

Jonathan Turley Op-ed: A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court and Asks to Take an Oath…Seriously, No Joke


By: Jonathan Turley | May 6, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/06/a-disbarred-serial-perjurer-walks-into-a-courtroom-and-asks-to-take-an-oath-seriously-no-joke/

C-Span/YouTube Screenshot

Below is my column in The Hill on the expected appearance of Michael Cohen in the Manhattan trial of former president Donald Trump. It will be a scene that is both mesmerizing and repellent for many, particularly in the bar.

Here is the column:

A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke. Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history.

Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments. The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.

So, Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice. This would be difficult even for a competent and ethical lawyer. For Cohen, it is utter insanity. But Bragg is betting on a New York jury looking no further than the identity of the defendant to convict.

Cohen has an impressive history of lies and exaggerations that may be unparalleled. Just weeks ago, another judge denounced him as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system. This is not the defendant, mind you, but Alvin Bragg’s star witness.

I have been an outspoken critic of Cohen going back to when he was still representing Trump. His unethical acts were matched only by his unprofessional demeanor. In 2015, after students on the Harvard Lampoon played a harmless prank on Trump, Cohen was quoted by a student on the Lampoon staff as threatening them with expulsion.

When a journalist pursued a story Cohen did not like, he told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?”

It is not hard to “understand” Cohen. He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say. He is a convicted perjurer who seems to lie even when the truth would do. Each time he is caught lying, he claims to be the sinner who has finally seen the light, seeking redemption.

When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department (for lying), Cohen was again accused of perjury. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), warned Cohen repeatedly that he had better tell the truth this time. Cohen then testified that Trump wanted him to work in his administration and offered him multiple jobs, which he turned down. He also claimed, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.” Multiple sources have said that Cohen’s lawyer pressed the White House for a pardon, and that Cohen unsuccessfully sought a presidential pardon after FBI raids on his office and residences last year.

Even after being stripped of his law license and sentenced to three years in prison, Cohen continued the pattern. In 2019, Cohen failed to appear to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing an inability to travel due to surgery. He was then seen partying before the hearing date with five friends.

Even while in jail, Cohen was accused of lying to a court, in violation of an order for early release due to medical problems. He was ordered back into custody after being spotted at a high-end restaurant.

But the most impressive moment came when Cohen was put back on the stand under oath and matter-of-factly claimed that he had lied in his prior hearing, when he pleaded guilty to lying.

In his 2018 guilty plea before U.S. District Judge William Henry Pauley III, Cohen admitted to this conduct under oath.

Then, when Cohen was asked by Trump’s counsel, “Did you lie to Judge Pauley when you said that you were guilty of the counts that you said under oath that you were guilty of? Did you lie to Judge Pauley?”

Cohen responded, “Yes.”  He was then again asked “So you lied when you said that you evaded taxes to a judge under oath; is that correct?” He again responded, “Yes.”

Most of us expected the Justice Department to bring new perjury charges at that point. It is rare that a defendant will actually take the stand and confess to perjury. However, Cohen was now useful again. This time, he was willing to deliver Trump. The Justice Department and Manhattan prosecutors were clearly willing to tolerate a little perjury for that prize.

Cohen’s conduct has already loomed large in the Manhattan proceedings. When Keith Davidson took the stand — the attorney who represented both Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — he recounted how Cohen was furious about not being offered a job in the White House. That directly contradicts Cohen’s congressional testimony. Davidson said that Cohen believed he might be named attorney general.

The account, if true, shows that Cohen is not only unethical, but also delusional. Cohen was found incapable of being an attorney, let alone an attorney general.

As prosecutors set the table for the grand arrival of their star witness, the testimony only got worse. David Pecker, the former owner of the National Enquirer, said charitably that Cohen was “prone to exaggeration.”

Davidson described Cohen’s profane and unprofessional conduct, stating that “the moral of the story is nobody wanted to talk to Cohen.” That may be the first time the word “moral” was used in the same line with Cohen.

Former Trump associate Hope Hicks mocked Cohen on the stand. She said that he constantly tried to insinuate himself into the campaign, without success, and that he “used to like to call himself Mister Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it.” Mind you, these were his fellow prosecution witnesses, not the defense.

These witnesses also contradicted the basis for the prosecution. Pecker said that he killed stories for various celebrities for years, and that he did so for Trump for over a decade before he ran for office. Davidson testified that he did not consider the deal to be “hush money” but simply “consideration” to kill bad press.

Hicks testified that she believed Trump wanted to kill the stories in significant part to protect his family from embarrassment.

Cohen could not even maintain a consistent position during the trial. Many of us have denounced the gag order on Trump that prevents him from responding to Cohen’s unrelenting attacks in the media. Cohen then promised to stop any further comments. That promise may have set a record for Cohen. He kept it for roughly three days before being accused of trolling for dollars on social media by attacking Trump.

District Attorney Bragg will now call this disbarred, serial perjurer to make the case against a former president. Under New York law, the oath administered by the court is supposed “to awaken the conscience and impress the mind of the witness in accordance with that witness’s religious or ethical beliefs.”

Before the bailiff administers the oath to Cohen, Judge Juan Merchan may have to warn spectators in the courtroom not to laugh. For anyone familiar with Cohen, it will sound like the ultimate punchline to a bad joke.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Lawn Lawfare

A.F. BRANCO | on May 5, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-lawn-lawfare/

01Mower Ban AN 1080
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Hennepin County Board candidate and current Minnesota Rep. Heather Edelson is co-sponsoring legislation that would ban the sale of gas-powered lawn and gardening tools in Minnesota.

Hennepin County candidate is co-author of bill banning sale of gas-powered lawn mowers

By Luke Sprinkel

Hennepin County Board candidate and current Minnesota Rep. Heather Edelson is co-sponsoring legislation that would ban the sale of gas-powered lawn and gardening tools in Minnesota.

Currently running in a special election for the District 6 seat on the Hennepin County Board, Edelson faces conservative newcomer Marisa Simonetti.
Serving in her third-term as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, Edelson signed on as a co-author of HF 1715 in the early days of Minnesota’s 93rd Legislative Session. Under that proposed law, the sale of new gas-powered lawn mowers, leaf blowers, hedge clippers, chainsaws, and other “law and garden equipment” would be banned in Minnesota on and after Jan. 1, 2025. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Recipe for Disaster

A.F. BRANCO | on May 6, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-recipe-for-disaster/

University Disaster
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Universities across the nation are facing a meltdown due to the Marxist rot they are injecting into young students’ minds to the point kids are now advocating for Hamas’ terrorism against Jews in the form of violent protests and occupation of campuses. This seems to be having a negative effect on the democrat party and Biden’s poll numbers.

Watch: Dr. Phil Rips ‘Liberal Woke’ Universities for Fostering Anti-Semitism, ‘Intellectual Rot’

By Ken Kew – The Western Journal

Dr. Phil has launched a full frontal attack on America’s “liberal woke” universities.

The popular television host, whose full name is Phil McGraw, said in a video message this week that he was appalled by the “sickening smugness” displayed by leaders of elite universities they were testifying on Capitol Hill about the issue of campus anti-Semitism.
McGraw declared that these prestigious institutions have become “liberal woke hotbeds fostering intellectual rot rather than critical thinking.” READ MORE…

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

10 Lies Democrats Tell About Our Elections (And How to Refute Them)


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | MAY 03, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/03/10-lies-democrats-tell-about-our-elections-and-how-to-refute-them/

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There is almost no subject the left won’t lie about. Whether it’s denying basic biology or fabricating “bloodbath” hoaxes about their top Republican rival, no topic is off limits for the Democrat “disinformation” police — and that includes elections.

Since the 2020 election, Democrats and their media allies have worked overtime to smear Americans concerned about the integrity of U.S. elections. No matter how legitimate these concerns may be, the left slanders anyone who challenges controversial elections won by Democrats as so-called “election deniers.”

Putting aside the fact that Democrats have questioned elections they don’t win (see the Trump-Russia collusion hoax), it’s important to highlight that the left regularly lies about America’s elections to further their party’s goal of acquiring and maintaining government power. In service of this goal, no falsehood is too great.

Here are the 10 biggest lies Democrats tell about U.S. elections so you can identify and combat these mistruths.

1. Election Integrity Laws ‘Suppress’ Voters

Under the guise of Covid, many states expanded the use of unsupervised mail-in voting, permanently changing the electoral landscape and how modern elections are conducted. With Covid-era lockdowns now in the rearview mirror, many Republican-controlled states have spent the past several years returning their election systems to pre-Covid practices and moving away from unsupervised methods.

With their election machine that thrives off the insecure mail-in system threatened, Democrats have taken to dishonestly attacking GOP-backed election integrity laws. The most common of these smears is the debunked claim that voter ID laws suppress voters, especially those who aren’t white. Of course, there’s no evidence to support such assertions, as multiple court rulings have found.

One of the more egregious examples of these attacks came from President Joe Biden, who grossly labeled a benign 2021 Georgia election law as “Jim Crow on steroids.” Contrary to Democrats’ smears, Georgia experienced record early voter turnout during the state’s 2022 midterms. A poll conducted after the election also revealed that zero percent of black Georgia voters said they had a “poor” experience voting.

2. The 2020 Election Was the ‘Most Secure in American History’

This claim from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — the “nerve center” of the federal government’s censorship operations — is just as inaccurate today as the day it was issued nearly four years ago.

From illegal election rule changes in Michigan and Pennsylvania to the unauthorized use of ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin, the 2020 election was fraught with mischief and irregularities. In unprecedented fashion, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg poured hundreds of millions of dollars into left-wing nonprofits, which funneled most of these “Zuckbucks” into election offices in Democrat-majority localities to push Democrat-backed voting policies and get-out-the-vote efforts.

There was also heavy involvement from U.S. intel agencies and officials to help Joe Biden leading up to the election.

Weeks ahead of the 2020 contest, the New York Post dropped a bombshell story documenting the Biden family’s foreign business dealings. Despite having authenticated the laptop as early as November 2019, the FBI spent months leading up to the election pressuring Big Tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter (now X) to be on the lookout for so-called “Russian propaganda” and “hack and leak operations.” Zuckerberg all but admitted during a 2022 interview with podcaster Joe Rogan that the company’s decision to suppress the Post story was based on the FBI’s warning.

The CIA — while allegedly coordinating with the Biden campaign — purportedly solicited signatures for a letter issued by 51 former intel officials claiming Hunter’s laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Meanwhile, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss reportedly delayed his investigation into Hunter’s alleged tax law violations to avoid negatively affecting Joe’s electoral prospects.

[READ: Docs: CISA Knew Risks Of Mail-In Voting In 2020, But Got Posts About Them Censored Anyway]

3. Voter Fraud Doesn’t Exist

When it comes to defending the chaotic and irregular 2020 election, legacy media have adopted the strategy of pretending that voter fraud never happens. But recent cases of such illegalities show that isn’t true.

In December, the Louisiana Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision that the existence of voter fraud in a local sheriff’s race warranted a new election. While initial results in Caddo Parish’s November sheriff’s race indicated that Democrat Henry Whitehorn defeated Republican John Nickelson by one vote, a lawsuit filed by Nickelson and subsequent legal proceedings revealed there were enough illegal votes to call into question the election outcome.

The judge overseeing the case ultimately determined there were 11 unlawful votes cast in the race, and as such, ordered that a new election be held.

Another recent incident of voter fraud occurred in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Democrat mayoral primary. Surveillance footage released after the September election showed what appeared to be a city employee affiliated with the incumbent mayor’s campaign “stuffing ballot boxes.” The matter prompted a superior court judge to order a new election.

4. Election Workers Are Under Siege

As America edges closer to the 2024 election, Democrats are ramping up their attacks on election oversight. On an almost weekly basis, regime-approved media outlets run article after article lamenting an alleged wave of “threats” against election workers that they blame on Trump’s 2020 election criticisms.

Of course, these same doomsday predictions didn’t materialize during the 2022 midterms. But that hasn’t stopped the press from continuing to repeat the narrative they have little evidence to support.

As I previously wrote in these pages, Democrat claims that election workers have experienced a spike in threats since the 2020 election are primarily based on “surveys” issued by leftist organizations and unsubstantiated statements from Democrat election officials. Moreover, data produced by the Biden Department of Justice indicates the issue is minimal.

5. Ranked-Choice Voting Is ‘Fair’

Often referred to as “rigged-choice voting” by its critics, ranked-choice voting (RCV) is a system whereby voters rank candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes in the first round of voting, the last-place finisher is eliminated, and his votes are reallocated to the voter’s second-choice candidate. This process continues until one candidate receives a majority of votes.

RCV’s (mostly Democrat) proponents have deceptively attempted to garner support for the system by claiming it brings “fairness” to the voting process. But a quick look into RCV’s history reveals anything but a fair system.

RCV has produced election results that contradict the desires of voters, especially Republican ones. Since adopting the system, Alaska and Maine have produced elections in which the Democrat candidate was the declared winner despite the Republican candidate winning more votes in the first round of voting.

Jurisdictions employing RCV have also experienced inaccurate election results and high rates of discarded ballots.

6. Contingent Electors Are ‘Fake’ and Unlawful

After Arizona Democrat Attorney General Kris Mayes released an indictment alleging 18 Republicans illegally participated in a so-called “fake elector scheme,” media hacks are once again using this dishonest terminology to characterize Trump’s challenging of the 2020 election results as unlawful and unprecedented.

But there’s no such thing as a “fake elector,” and the naming of contingent Republican electors during the 2020 election was neither unprecedented nor unlawful. The process undertaken in states such as Georgia closely mirrored efforts taken during the 1960 presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

[READ: The Left’s 2020 ‘Fake Electors’ Narrative Is Fake News]

Had courts ruled in Trump’s favor in lawsuits disputing the election results in battleground states, the alternate electors would have been in place to ensure the will of the people was exercised.

7. ERIC Is ‘Nonpartisan’

The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) has become a favorite tool of the Democrat election machine — so naturally, the media have rushed to smear its opponents as unhinged crazies.

Deceptively marketed to states as a means to keep their voter rolls updated, ERIC is a widely used voter-roll “management” system founded by far-left activist David Becker that places a higher priority on registering new voters than on cleaning up existing voter rolls. The program inflates voter rolls by requiring member states to contact “eligible but unregistered” residents and encourage them to register to vote.

Concerns about ERIC’s ties to Becker and its refusal to change its bylaws prompted numerous GOP-led states to depart the organization. To salvage ERIC’s reputation, the media launched a seemingly coordinated campaign to position the group as “nonpartisan” and cast its opponents as “conspiracy theorists.” Of course, this coverage fails to disclose ERIC’s relationship with the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), another Becker-founded nonprofit most notable for its “Zuckbucks” interference in the 2020 election to help Biden and other Democrats.

As The Federalist previously reported, ERIC sends the voter-roll data it receives from states to CEIR. Upon receiving the data, CEIR “then develops targeted mailing lists and sends them back to the states to use for voter registration outreach.” In other words, CEIR — a highly partisan nonprofit with a history of left-wing activism — is creating lists of potential (and likely Democrat) voters for states to register in the lead-up to major elections.

8. Mail-In Voting Is Secure and Reliable

Much like the issue of voter fraud, Democrats have gone to great lengths to convince the American public that mail-in voting has zero problems and is 100 percent secure. But according to left-wing media’s own reporting, that narrative isn’t true.

In recent months, outlets such as NBC News and CBS News have published stories highlighting insecurities within the U.S. postal system. While NBC addressed the effect postal delivery delays could have on mail-in voting during the 2024 election, CBS explored the increasing problem of mail theft.

NBC even cited remarks from Rep. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, who expressed concern that mail delivery delays could present “difficulties” and “barriers” to voters during the November election.

9. Democrats Are the Party of ‘Democracy’

Biden and Democrats love to contend that “democracy is on the ballot” this November. The insinuation, of course, is that the republic as we know it will collapse if Trump and Republicans emerge victorious at the ballot box. Yet, for all their professed concerns about “democracy,” Democrats are doing everything in their power to destroy it.

In unprecedented fashion, the left is abusing the legal system in an attempt to imprison and bankrupt their chief political rival ahead of a major election. Spanning dozens of counts, a roughly half-a-billion-dollar fine, and five judicial venues, the Biden Department of Justice and leftist prosecutors are waging lawfare against Donald Trump to hinder his reelection prospects.

10. Biden’s Federal Election Takeover Is Just a ‘Nonpartisan’ Outreach Effort

The seriousness of Executive Order 14019 cannot be overstated. Signed by Biden in March 2021, the directive ordered hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using taxpayer dollars to engage in voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities — a policy Congress never authorized.

Under the edict, each department was instructed to draft “a strategic plan” explaining how it intended to fulfill Biden’s order, and to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the administration to supply “voter registration services on agency premises.” While Biden and his lackies claim these outside groups are “nonpartisan,” the facts tell a different story.

Good government groups and conservative media have discovered that many of the organizations collaborating with the administration are extremely left-wing, indicating an effort to identify and register likely-Democrat voters. Among those identified are the ACLU and Demos, both of which contributed to a “progress report” tracking agencies’ compliance with the “Bidenbucks” order.


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

Gregg Jarrett Op-ed: NY vs. Trump: DA Bragg’s web of deceit starts to unravel


Gregg Jarrett  By Gregg Jarrett Fox News | Published May 3, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ny-vs-trump-da-braggs-web-deceit-unravel

Liars don’t win trials. The truth does. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway.

Fulfilling that maxim is the challenge for the defense in the Manhattan trial of Donald Trump. Lawyers for the former President are tasked with exposing the legal deceit of District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the chronic dishonesty of his star witness, Michael Cohen. Compounding the challenge is a presiding judge, Juan Merchan, whose anti-Trump bias is conspicuous and disgraceful.

Back on the stand Thursday was the Beverly Hills attorney who negotiated payments for two women who demanded exorbitant cash from Trump in exchange for their silence about purported affairs. But the witness, Keith Davidson, admitted he had no contact whatsoever with the defendant and never met him. He dealt exclusively with Trump’s ex-lawyer, Cohen, who appeared to be acting entirely on his own.  Nothing in his testimony involved crimes allegedly committed by Trump.  

NY VS. TRUMP: A TRIAL IN SEARCH OF AN IMAGINARY CRIME

Davidson’s description of Cohen was both accurate and scathing —profane, offensive, unceasingly angry, and often threatening. Importantly, he depicted Cohen as a liar who turned bitter toward Trump when the newly elected president refused to take him to Washington, D.C. Jurors learned that Cohen had delusions of grandeur, envisioning himself as White House chief of staff or even attorney general of the United States.  

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When his bubble burst, Cohen detonated like a nuclear device with seething hatred for his former boss that became a maniacal obsession. He raged to Davidson, “Jesus Christ, can you f***ing believe I’m not going to Washington after everything I’ve done for that guy?”  Cohen seemed suicidal.  This helps shape the defense theory that Cohen’s real objective in testifying against Trump is vengeance, not truth.   

It’s hard to imagine that any sentient or ethical prosecutor would ever rest his case on the slumped shoulders of an unhinged and inveterate liar like Cohen. After confessing in 2018 to a string of shameful fabrications under oath, he was dispatched to prison for perjury and fraud. He is exactly what a federal judge called him recently, “a serial perjurer.” He’s the Talented Mr. Ripley…without the talent.  

MICHAEL COHEN TIKTOK VIDEOS, FUNDRAISING STUN LEGAL OBSERVERS: MAY HAVE ‘TORPEDOED CASE AGAINST TRUMP’

After appearing incessantly on television shows trashing Trump and calling him a criminal, Cohen has taken to TikTok during the trial to comment on the testimony and escalate his Trump tirades.  His social media rants reap financial profits, which means that now, more than ever, he has an economic motive to lie.  Indeed, his livelihood depends on it. Prosecutors’ heads must have exploded when they discovered what he was doing.  What little credibility Cohen might have brought to the courtroom has vanished.   

Michael Cohen
FILE – Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to former President Donald Trump is seen outside federal court in New York City on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023.  (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The mere mention of Cohen’s name in a court of law should equal “reasonable doubt.” He’s the definition of untrustworthy. Without him there is no legitimate case to be prosecuted. But instead of throwing in the towel by admitting that their central witness has gone rogue and self-destructed, Bragg persists in his contemptible pursuit of Trump. The D.A. is like an attack dog who won’t let go.        

If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat. 

If Bragg thought that Davidson would be a stellar witness for the prosecution, it may have backfired. He refused to call the Stormy Daniels payment “hush money or a payoff” while insisting that its proper definition is “consideration.” That is a fancy legal term in contract law that simply means an exchange of benefits.  Here, it was compensation in return for a non-disclosure agreement. Booking it as a legal expense would, therefore, be manifestly proper.  

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MORNING GLORY: THE SHOW TRIAL OF DONALD TRUMP

This key testimony blows a gaping hole in all of Bragg’s 34 charges against Trump that he falsified private business records.  What was false?  The Daniels deal was a legal settlement negotiated by two lawyers that culminated in the execution of a legal document.  Of course, it was a legal expense.  What else would it be?

On cross-examination, Davidson melted like a Joe Biden ice cream cone when confronted with evidence that he was once investigated by law enforcement for criminal extortion, although never charged.  He admitted that much of his practice involved “extracting” money (he preferred to label them “settlements”) from celebrities.  He also “brokered sex tapes.”  For the defense, it fits a pattern of squeezing prominent people for cash during times of vulnerability.  People such as Donald Trump.

Video

If there is a sleaze factor to the trial, it has rubbed off on Bragg’s witnesses more than Trump. Increasingly, the defendant resembles a victim of blackmail, which the law defines as a demand for money under threat.  In 2016, as the presidential election neared, the cash ultimatums intensified and, in the case of Daniels, Trump reluctantly capitulated.  

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However, that does not mean that Trump himself committed any crimes. His personal reimbursements to Cohen did not constitute a violation of election laws, as Bragg contends.  The two government departments that have exclusive authority over such matters —the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department— correctly concluded that the payments to Daniels did not constitute an unlawful contribution.  

In other words, there’s no there there. But Alvin Bragg could care less. He deliberately commandeered a state statute that has no application to a federal election and twisted it into a pretzel to bring a preposterous charge against Trump that is utterly unsupported by the facts and the law.

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The consternation for the defense is the jurors who may be predisposed to convict in a politically charged case involving a presidential candidate they might dislike.  Are they capable of setting aside their personal beliefs to see through the prosecution’s charade? Or will they be snookered into believing that there is an election crime here, even though there is none?

When an unscrupulous prosecutor contorts statutes and deploys nefarious or lying witnesses to fool a jury into convicting an innocent defendant, it is an assault on the rule of law and an abuse of our justice system. In Manhattan, the crooked cards are stacked against Trump.  

We’ll see whether liars win trials…or the truth.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM GREGG JARRETT

Gregg Jarrett is a Fox News legal analyst and commentator, and formerly worked as a defense attorney and adjunct law professor. His recent book, “The Trial of the Century,” about the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” is available in bookstores nationwide or can be ordered online at the Simon & Schuster website.  Jarrett’s latest book, “The Constitution of the United States and Other Patriotic Documents,” was published by Broadside Books, a division of HarperCollins on November 14, 2023.  Gregg is the author of the No. 1 New York Times best-selling book “The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump.” His follow-up book was also a New York Times bestseller, “Witch Hunt: The Story of the Greatest Mass Delusion in American Political History.” 

Trump’s 12th Amendment Problem: The VP Short List Has a Residency Dilemma


By: Jonathan Turley | May 3, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/03/trumps-12th-amendment-problem-the-vp-short-list-has-a-residency-dilemma/

The Trump short list for vice presidential candidates is reportedly down to Ohio Senator, J.D. Vance, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum. Rubio is a favorite for many due to his record in the Senate and his appeal to hispanic voters (where the GOP is hoping to make gains in the coming election). The problem is not Rubio or his record, but his residence.

The Twelfth Amendment contains a habitation or “favorite sons” provision: “The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”

The risk is that Florida’s electoral votes could be challenged in any election since both Trump and Rubio reside in the state. That is a chunk of 30 votes in a close election. In addition other states which sought to block Trump from the ballot like Colorado could try this new tack to derail his campaign.

The most obvious option is for either Trump or Rubio to move. The easiest would be for Trump to move since Rubio represents Florida. That could include either New York or New Jersey (where his Bedminster property is located).

That option would be costly for Trump in terms of taxes. Moreover, Trump is desperately trying to get out of New York where he is effectively shackled to the defense table as his opponent, President Joe Biden, campaigns around the country.

The funny thing is that Trump has been campaigning in New York and drawing some large crowds. It would be the height of irony if Trump ends up making New York competitive with a mix of the time forced to be in the state and a change of residency.

Alternatively, Rubio could resign from the Senate and focus on running with a residence in a different state. He could also attempt a more creative approach and just change residency for the election.

Under Article I, Section 3, Clause 3:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Rubio can argue that he was “an Inhabitant” of Florida “when elected.” Given the recent controversy over the appointment of Democratic Senator  Laphonza Butler, it could be hard for some Democrats to object.

Yet, there will be some who will no doubt try. In 2000, Dick Cheney was challenged by three Texas residents when he moved back to Wyoming. They failed.

Ultimately, it could also be challenged in Congress under the Electoral Count Reform Act.

Despite declaring the challenge to the Biden election was an attack on democracy, Democratic members previously challenged Republican presidents in Congress, including Jan. 6th committee head Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)

In other words, it could be done but it would likely draw challenges. Then again, why should this part of the election be any different from every other part?

‘Death to Israeli real estate,’ ‘Death to America’ signs found on NYU property, NYPD says


By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi Fox News | Published May 3, 2024 10:48am EDT | Updated May 3, 2024 1:39pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/us/death-israeli-real-estate-death-america-signs-found-nyu-property-nypd

Police officers involved in clearing out protesters at a New York City college campus are sharing signs recovered from the scene bearing terrorist slogans.

New York Police Department officers broke up an “illegal encampment” at New York University on Friday, with cleaning crews called in to remove tents and sweep away the belongings of the protesters. NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry shared various photos of “inflammatory literature and signage” found at the protest.

BLACK STUDENT ERUPTS ON ANTI-ISRAEL ‘WHITE LIBS’ FOR BLOCKING PATH ON CAMPUS: ‘COSPLAYING AS THE OPPRESSED’

NYU posters
A piece of protest literature recovered from the anti-Israel encampment at New York University. (New York Police Department)

“The NYPD proudly protects everyone’s right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Daughtry said in the post, before sharing the signage.

One piece of literature found on the site explicitly calls for “Death to America” and “Death to Israeli real-estate.”

NYPD Chief John Chell spoke to reporters on Friday and confirmed the NYPD had two operations “at the request of school presidents,” including at New York University and The New School in New York.

OVER 2,000 ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS HAVE BEEN ARRESTED DURING ANTISEMITIC PROTESTS ON US COLLEGE CAMPUSES

nyu protest in park
Hundreds of students rally in Washington Square Park along with faculty in response to the mass arrests at NYU. (Fox News)

He confirmed that officers arrested 56 people, with no incidents. The police chief noted that “99%” of those arrested were students.

“You will not find a truce from us,” one sign recovered from the protest area said.

“Enough with De-Escalation Trainings: Where are the Escalation Trainings!” added another.

NYU posters
A photo shows a poster put up on the New York University campus during anti-Israel protests. (New York Police Department)

On April 22, police went to NYU and arrested more than 100 students who held a demonstration in solidarity with the students at Columbia University and to oppose Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Fox News correspondent Alexis McAdams reported from the campus that the anti-Israel agitators had re-established the encampment.

Editor’s note: This headline has been updated for accuracy.

Fox News Digital’s Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at timothy.nerozzi@fox.com

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – WarRoom vs Fake News

A.F. BRANCO | on May 3, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-warroom-vs-fakenews/

Steve Bannon Warroom Cartoon
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Steve Bannon is continuously under attack by the Fake News legacy media CNN, MSNBC, etc. accusing him of being racist and a Nazi when in reality, he is exposing them, Biden, and his deep-state apparatus for their corruption.

It’s Obama… The New York Times Admits Obama is Running the Deal — Steve Bannon Weighs In on What We Already Knew (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft | Mar. 27, 2024

The fake news New York Times said the quiet part out loud today.

Steve Bannon has made bold claims regarding Barack Obama’s involvement in efforts to undermine former President Donald Trump.

According to Bannon, a recent New York Times article by Katie Rogers provides groundbreaking insight into Obama’s behind-the-scenes activities, suggesting a direct link between Biden and current actions against Trump. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

NY v. Trump: Witness says Cohen dreamed of White House job despite denying ambitions in House Testimony


By Emma Colton Fox News | Published May 2, 2024 1:52pm EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ny-v-trump-witness-says-cohen-dreamed-white-house-job-despite-denying-ambitions-house-testimony

A witness in the NY v. Trump case in Manhattan testified that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen wanted a job in the 45th president’s administration, despite previously denying wanting a White House role during congressional testimony. 

Keith Davidson, an attorney who represented former pornographic actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, continued his testimony before the court Thursday, when he said that Cohen had been hopeful that he would land a position as White House chief of staff or attorney general in the lead-up to Trump’s inauguration. 

Davidson also recounted that Cohen had been upset he was “not going to Washington” following Trump’s win in 2016. 

“Can you f—ing believe I’m not going to Washington after everything I’ve done for that guy? I can’t believe I’m not going to Washington… I’ve saved his a–…,” Davidson recounted of a conversation he had had with a “despondent and saddened Michael Cohen” in December following the 2016 election. 

Michael Cohen
Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, appears outside federal court in New York on Dec. 14, 2023. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Davidson testified that Cohen had called him while shopping in a California store memorably decorated with an “Alice in Wonderland”-type theme. 

The NY v. Trump case focuses on Cohen paying Daniels $130,000 to allegedly quiet her claims of an alleged extramarital affair she had with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels.

TOP REPUBLICANS DOUBLE DOWN ON CALL FOR DOJ PROBE INTO BRAGG’S ‘STAR WITNESS’ MICHAEL COHEN

Cohen lamented to Davidson in the December call that he had not yet been reimbursed for the sum he had paid Daniels, according to Davidson’s testimony. 

Donald Trump sits in the courtroom for the first day of opening arguments in his Manhattan criminal trial.
Former President Donald Trump awaits the start of proceedings at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 22. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool)

Prosecutors allege that the Trump Organization reimbursed Cohen and fraudulently logged the payments as legal expenses. Prosecutors are working to prove that Trump falsified records with the intent to commit or conceal a second crime, which is a felony, in violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or prevent election.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. 

Davidson’s testimony that Cohen sought a White House job stands in stark contrast to what the former Trump attorney told Congress back in 2019. 

TOP REPUBLICANS DOUBLE DOWN ON CALL FOR DOJ PROBE INTO BRAGG’S ‘STAR WITNESS’ MICHAEL COHEN

“Sir, I was extremely proud to be personal attorney to the President of the United States of America. I did not want to go to the White House. I was offered jobs,” Cohen told Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, in 2019 during a House Oversight Committee hearing. 

Michael Cohen and Donald Trump split image
Michael Cohen, who is supposed to be a star witness in NY v. Trump, might have “torpedoed” the case before taking the stand by ranting about it on TikTok, according to legal observers. (Getty Images)

“I can tell you a story of Mr. Trump reaming out Reince Priebus because I had not taken a job where Mr. Trump wanted me to, which is working with Don McGahn at the White House general counsel’s office, he continued. “What I said at the time — and I brought a lawyer in who produced a memo as to why I should not go in, because there would be no attorney/client privilege. And in order to handle some of the matters that I talked about in my opening, that it would be best suited for me not to go in and that every president had a personal attorney.”

NY V. TRUMP: HOUSE JUDICIARY INVESTIGATES BRAGG PROSECUTOR WHO HELD SENIOR ROLE IN BIDEN DOJ

“I did not want to go to the White House,” Cohen added later in his testimony to Congress. “I retained, I brought an attorney in, and I sat with Mr. Trump, with him for well over an hour, explaining the importance of having a personal attorney, that every president has had one in order to handle matters like the matters I was dealing with.”

Cohen’s comments came after he pleaded guilty to five counts of willful tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a bank, one count of causing an unlawful campaign contribution and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution in 2018. He again pleaded guilty in November of that same year to lying to Congress about testimony regarding the work he had done on a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. 

A court sketch depicts former President Donald Trump’s appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court
A court sketch depicts former President Donald Trump’s appearance in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York on April 19. (Christine Cornell)

Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison and has since been released.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., are currently demanding the Justice Department investigate Cohen. They allege that he committed perjury and “knowingly” made false statements while testifying before Congress in 2019.

MICHAEL COHEN TIKTOK VIDEOS, FUNDRAISING STUN LEGAL OBSERVERS: MAY HAVE ‘TORPEDOED CASE AGAINST TRUMP’

Turner and Stefanik argue that Cohen is being used as the prosecution’s “star witness” in the NY v. Trump case, despite his previous conviction. 

Trump, meanwhile, has slammed the trial as a “scam” and “hoax” promoted by the Biden administration and led by a “conflicted judge.” 

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower
Former President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to attend his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs in New York on April 22. (Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

“This is a hoax. This is a judge who is conflicted — badly, badly, badly conflicted. I’ve never seen a judge so conflicted and giving us virtually no rulings,” Trump said outside the courtroom on Tuesday morning. 

“I’m going to sit in the freezing cold icebox for eight hours, nine hours or so. They took me off the campaign trail. But the good news is my poll numbers are the highest it’s ever been. So, at least we’re getting the word out. And everybody knows this trial is a scam. It’s a scam. The judge should be recused; that he should recuse himself today, he should recuse himself today. And maybe he will,” Trump said.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report. 

Documents Reveal Biden WH Worked With Archives on Trump Case


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Thursday, 02 May 2024 02:21 PM EDT

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/politics/trump-documents-nationalarchives/2024/05/02/id/1163276/

A trove of unsealed documents connected with the investigation into allegations that former President Donald Trump mishandled classified materials has revealed that several top Biden administration officials were working with the National Archives to help bring Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against him.

Lawyers representing Trump in the Florida case compiled court exhibits consisting of more than 300 pages of unredacted items, including emails and other correspondence showing that Deputy White House Counsel Jonathan Su had been regularly communicating with National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) National Archive officials, as had the Department of Justice, reports Real Clear Investigations’ Julie Kelly. The correspondence also indicates that the Department of Justice had been communicating with NARA throughout most of 2021, even though it had claimed it became involved only after the Archives had sent in a criminal referral on Feb. 9, 2022. The referral was based on the Archives reporting that records with “classified markings” were included among the 15 boxes of materials Trump had turned in.

President Joe Biden, who denied involvement in the investigation, was not specifically named in the exhibits, which Trump’s attorneys filed in January.

The items were at first heavily redacted, but the team asked U.S. District Court judge Aileen Cannon, the judge presiding over the case to remove many of the redactions.

Meanwhile, Smith claimed that releasing the materials would jeopardize his investigation, reveal potential witnesses, and potentially subject them to risks of harassment and intimidation.

Cannon, however, posted the mostly unredacted archives on April 22, and a comparison of the redacted and the unredacted materials showed the coordination between NARA and the DOJ, the White House, and the intelligence community.

The documents revealed that shortly after Trump left office in 2021, Biden’s Office of Records Management and the National Archives started making demands to the former president’s transition team and Mark Meadows, his chief of staff. Archives general counsel Gary Stern emailed Trump’s team in May 2021, the unredacted documents show, and asked the attorneys to account for almost 2 dozen original presidential records that were not transferred.

He did not specify any particular records except for “original correspondence between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jung-un” and “the letter that President Obama left for President Trump on his first day in office.”

One of the unsealed FBI reports indicated the Archives also wanted to get hold of a map that Trump had drawn on with a Sharpie during a 2018 briefing on the track of Hurricane Dorian.

David Ferriero, a national archivist appointed by Barack Obama in 2009, warned the Trump transition team in June 2021 that he was “running out of patience, and on Aug. 30 told Trump’s team that he assumed the boxes were destroyed and he would have to report the loss to lawmakers, the DOJ, and the White House.

Other documents showed evidence that White House lawyers were advising the archives, including a draft letter accompanying a Sept. 1, 2021 email where Stern said he had advised White House counsel about the documents.

The letter, from Ferriero to Attorney General Merrick Garland, said that presidential records “may have been unlawfully removed from U.S. government custody or possibly destroyed.”

Sandy Fitzgerald 

Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics. 

Biden Botched Financial Aid Rollout. And it’s Parents and Students Who Are Paying the Price.


By: Kevin Roberts @KevinRobertsTX / Lindsey Burke @lindseymburke / May 02, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/02/biden-botched-financial-aid-rollout-and-its-parents-and-students-who-are-paying-the-price/

Completed FAFSA applications were down nearly 30% as of April 19. (Photo Illustration: Richard Stephen/Getty Images)

In a normal year, May 1 is known as National College Decision Day, the deadline for students to commit to enrolling at a college, guided in part by their financial aid awards. But the Biden administration’s disastrous rollout of a new financial aid application has left tens of thousands of families in the dark about their students’ future and prompted several universities to push back their enrollment deadlines.

As of April 19, completed FAFSA applications were down nearly 30%. At best, it means many students and parents don’t know how much it will cost to attend college in the fall. Even worse, it may lead frustrated young people to skip college altogether.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is a notoriously cumbersome form that all prospective college students must fill out if they want federal loans or grants. Previously more than 100 questions long, FAFSA’s current crisis can be traced to 2020, when the FAFSA Simplification Act dropped the number of questions on the form to about 40.

Ironically, because of the Biden administration’s incompetence, the simplification has led to massive complications and confusion for families this year as they apply for college. Focused on other priorities, the Biden administration failed to update the FAFSA website before October, when most students start applying.

In fact, the “improved” FAFSA website didn’t go live until the end of December, and even then, only in 30-minute increments. This was presumably so that the department could meet the statutory deadline for release, as Inside Higher Ed reported. When the website finally became available in a more final form in January, the Department of Education still wasn’t processing applications or relaying students’ financial information to colleges. It said it’d be able to do that by mid-March.

President Biden’s FAFSA Chief Steps Down

With the May 1 deadline now here, the Biden administration is still running behind, prompting the bureaucrat in charge of the new form to resign last week. But it’s students and their families who are paying the real price of this debacle.

Couple that reality with what families are now seeing at America’s universities—protests featuring ugly displays of antisemitism—and it appears that higher education is experiencing the same “Zoom moment” that K-12 schools experienced during COVID-19. Parents now see up close what schools are teaching and the values they relay. All of this is the perfect recipe for a significant decline in college enrollment this year.

That might not be such a bad thing. Far too many students feel that pursuing higher education is their only option for success, and if this FAFSA debacle ushers in a much-needed course correction, that would be a welcome silver lining.

But for those students still pursuing traditional higher education, this academic limbo is maddening.

Colleges Push Back Enrollment Deadlines

Colleges are trying to adjust, and many have extended their decision deadlines, some as far out as July. Department of Education officials had to explain the disastrous rollout in congressional hearings, more of which should come soon.

All of this is yet another reminder of the pitfalls of the federal government’s involvement in higher education. Today, the federal government originates and services most student loans. But the Department of Education wasn’t designed as a bank, nor Uncle Sam as a lender. And it’s clear the agency isn’t up to the task.

The FAFSA debacle conjures up memories of the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare portal a decade ago.

As dual trainwrecks of the FAFSA rollout and antisemitic university protests play out simultaneously, there’s no better time for Congress to cut off the open spigot of federal funds to universities and protect future American students.

Originally published by USA Today

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Dog Lives Matter

A.F. BRANCO | on May 2, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-dog-lives-matter/

Kristy Neom  Puppy Cartoon
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Democrats and the legacy media flipped out over Gov. Kristi Noem putting down her puppy 20 years ago, but they have no problem with putting down millions of babies every year by way of abortion.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Stirs Controversy With Tale of Killing Her ‘Untrainable’, ‘Dangerous’ 14-Month-Old Hunting Dog and a Goat

By Kristinn Taylor – April 27, 2024

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R), who has been mentioned as a possible Trump vice presidential pick, wrote in her new book that she shot and killed her “untrainable” and “dangerous” 14-month-old wirehair pointer hunting dog named Cricket after it killed a neighbor’s chickens and attacked Noem, as well as a killing a goat the same afternoon.

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

Left-Wing Dark Money Groups Are Bankrolling Anti-Israel Demonstrations


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | MAY 01, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/01/left-wing-dark-money-groups-are-bankrolling-anti-israel-demonstrations/

Encampment

Author Tristan Justice profile

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Left-wing dark money networks are funding the outbreak of anti-Israel protests spreading at college campuses across the country.

Last week, Fox News reported the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), “a national organization affiliated with around 200 independent chapters” including Columbia University, raked in “a six-figure donation from a nonprofit bankrolled by the George Soros network.”

According to Influence Watch, the group orchestrates student activism on university campuses, accuses Israel of committing genocide, and compares Palestinians to black Americans under the Jim Crow era.

“In addition to Columbia, NSJP has been protesting and setting up encampments at other universities across the country, including UCLA and USC in California and at the University of Texas in Austin, where over 50 people were arrested this week,” Fox News reported.

The University of Texas said in a statement Tuesday that 45 of the 79 people arrested on the school’s Austin campus Monday “had no affiliation with UT Austin.”

“These numbers validate our concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country,” the university said.

The New York Post reported Tuesday that police have arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators across more than 25 U.S. campuses. At Columbia University in Manhattan, which became the epicenter of anti-Israeli encampments when school leadership testified about antisemitism to Congress, police arrested nearly 300 protestors Tuesday night.

According to Fox News, “Another group active at Columbia, Jewish Voice for Peace, has brought in at least $650,000 from Soros-linked groups since 2016. JVP has also taken in hundreds of thousands from the billionaire-fueled Rockefeller Fund, which is boosted by millions of dollars from a dark money funding network.”

“Another Soros-backed group, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, has paid what it calls ‘fellows’ to organize and attend anti-Israel protests across the country,” Fox also said, citing New York Post reporting.

On Wednesday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the People’s Forum, another non-profit in New York that “received more than $12 million from Goldman Sachs’ charitable arm[,] encouraged anti-Israel activists to re-create the violent protests of ‘the summer of 2020.’”

The sustained demonstrations breaking out across American campuses have led some schools to cancel in-person classes and have jeopardized graduation ceremonies. Columbia University has shifted to a hybrid model for the remainder of the semester and announced final exams will be held remotely.

At the University of Southern California (USC), officials announced the school’s primary graduation ceremony will be canceled. The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) also canceled classes Wednesday after fighting erupted on campus.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

Swing States Are Using Taxpayer Money to Turn Out Democrat-Leaning Young Voters


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | MAY 01, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/01/swing-states-are-using-taxpayer-money-to-turn-out-democrat-leaning-young-voters/

College students

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Democrat election officials in Arizona and Nevada are using taxpayer resources to register and turn out Democrat-favorable young voters ahead of the 2024 election.

On Monday, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, announced that his office is partnering with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge to launch the “Arizona Campus Voting Challenge.” According to an office press release, this allegedly “nonpartisan initiative” is designed to increase voter engagement among students attending accredited universities throughout the state.

Young voters (18-29) broke for Democrat House candidates over Republican ones by a nearly 2-to-1 margin during the 2022 midterms, according to estimates by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.

Participation in the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge is free and allows participating colleges to become “eligible for awards based on voter turnout and registration rates on their campuses for the November 5, 2024 election.” Federal law makes it illegal to “make[] or offer[] to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote.”

Students who join will also be “provided guidance and tools to create an action plan for increasing student engagement on their campus,” according to Fontes’ office.

“By signing up for the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge, all accredited, degree-granting higher education institutions across the state can improve, measure, and celebrate efforts to institutionalize nonpartisan civic learning, political engagement and informed voter participation,” the presser reads. “Institutions that sign up for the Arizona Campus Voting Challenge will also be automatic participants in the nationwide ALL IN where awards are issued for highest voter turnout, most improved voter turnout, and highest rate of voter registration. As well as state-specific awards for meeting objectives mapped out in an institution’s nonpartisan democratic engagement action plan.”

Despite being marketed as “nonpartisan,” the initiative appears to be anything but. As I previously wrote in these pages, ALL IN is an enterprise of Civic Nation, a left-wing nonprofit headed by Valerie Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. The initiative has previously produced Democrat talking points, such as the baseless claim that “strict voter ID requirements” are “barriers” to voting.

ALL IN’s leadership team is also comprised of Democrats. Founding advisory board member Alicia Kolar Prevost, for example, previously served in the Clinton administration and worked at the Democratic National Committee.

Not Democrats’ First Rodeo

Fontes is hardly the only left-wing election official using his office to turn out a demographic favorable to Democrats.

Earlier this year, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, also a Democrat, announced his office would be accepting applications to join his “Youth Advisory Task Force” to engage young voters ahead of the 2024 election. According to an office press release, the task force’s priorities include “identifying and proposing programs that support participatory democracy and solutions to any problem concerning the level of participatory democracy of young voters,” and “supporting projects … that encourage and advance participatory democracy of young voters.”

Task force members were appointed by Aguilar earlier this month and include “high school and college students, as well as non-students, between the ages of 17 and 24.” There are roughly 118,000 students enrolled in Nevada colleges, according to Univstats.

Michigan Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson launched a similar task force in October.

Democrats Use Taxpayer Dollars to Target Young Voters

At the same time Democrat officials like Fontes and Aguilar target young voters with taxpayer dollars in their respective states, President Joe Biden is weaponizing the federal government to take these efforts nationwide.

Signed in March 2021, Executive Order 14019 directed hundreds of federal agencies to interfere in state and local election administration by using taxpayer funds to boost voter registration and get-out-the-vote activities. Agencies were instructed to collaborate with so-called “nonpartisan third-party organizations” that have been “approved” by the White House to provide “voter registration services on agency premises.” Of course, many of these “nonpartisan” groups have been identified as extremely left-wing, such as the ACLU and Demos.

As part of its compliance with the “Bidenbucks” order, the Department of Education issued a memo in February announcing that Federal Work-Study funds — which are used to provide part-time campus jobs to help students with tuition costs — may be used to employ students by government agencies for work such as “supporting broad-based get-out-the-vote activities, voter registration, providing voter assistance at a polling place or through a voter hotline, or serving as a poll worker.” The agency also released a “toolkit” that included guidelines for universities on how to increase voter registration and turnout on their campuses.

A Nationwide Strategy

Through the use of these taxpayer-funded GOTV operations and voter registration drives conducted by left-wing nonprofits such as the Voter Participation Center, Democrats are hoping young voters can make the difference for Biden in the battleground states needed to win the presidency this November.

In the 2020 election, for example, Biden won Arizona by less than 11,000 votes, or 0.4 percent. The Grand Canyon State also experienced close elections in the 2022 midterms, in which Democrat Kris Mayes defeated Republican Abe Hamadeh in the attorney general’s race by just 280 votes.

Given these slim margins and college students’ history of (mostly) backing Democrats, it’s no surprise Biden and Co. have made them a major focus of 2024 GOTV operations. With many students living near or on university grounds, campuses make for the perfect Democrat Party registration hubs and offer the party an opportunity to expand their chances of electoral success.


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

Weissmann: “One Vote Away from … the End of Democracy”


By: Jonathan Turley | May 1, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/01/weissmann-one-vote-away-from-the-end-of-democracy/

When Robert Mueller appointed Andrew Weissmann as one of his top advisers, many of us warned that it was a poor choice. Weissmann seemed intent to prove those objections correct in increasingly unhinged and partisan statements. This week, he ratcheted up the rhetoric even further in claiming that the nation is “one vote away” from the end of democracy if the Supreme Court does not embrace the sweeping claims of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

At the time of his appointment, many Republicans objected to Weissmann’s status as a democratic donor, including his reported attendance of the election night party for Hillary Clinton in 2016. My objection was not to his political affiliations but to his professional history, which included extreme interpretations that were ultimately rejected by courts. Weissmann was responsible for the overextension of an obstruction provision in a jury instruction that led the Supreme Court to reverse the conviction in the Arthur Andersen case in 2005.

Weissmann then became a MSNBC analyst and a “professor of practice” at New York University. In his book, he attacked prosecutors for refusing to take on his extreme views. Weissmann called on prosecutors to refuse to assist John Durham in his investigation.

Now he is predicting the end of democracy if the Court remand the immunity case for further proceedings. Weissmann told MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki on Sunday:

I think that it’s important to remember that at the outset, the court had already given Donald Trump the win that he was seeking, which is the delay of the DC trial.

So going into this, this was all upside for him. I mean, I think he had to be thinking, I’m making this really outlandish argument, with ramifications that couldn’t possibly be squared with the text and history. The text of the Constitution or the history of the presidency? So, it’s all upside if the court would actually bite on this. And so, what was surprising is that there were justices who actually were taking this seriously. And it just was, frankly, shocking.

Remember, going into this, the given was that private conduct was certainly not, immunized from criminal liability. What everyone’s talking about now is, hey, maybe they think that some of this is private and they can go forward, but that was what was given going into this. And the reason people are thinking that is because there seem to be four justices who were really taking Donald Trump’s claim of criminal immunity seriously. And we are.

I mean, I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I think your opening is so correct that we are essentially, as Neil put it, one vote away from sort of the end of democracy as we know it with checks and balances. And to say it’s an imperial presidency that would be created is, it’s frankly saying it would be a king, he would be criminally immune. And that that is what is so shocking is how close we are.

And we are really on the razor’s edge of that kind of result. But for the chief justice.

Just for the record, it sounds less “like hyperbole” than hysteria. The justices were exploring the implications of the sweeping arguments on both sides of the immunity question. What they were not willing to do (as does Weissmann) is simply dismiss any arguments of official status on the part of the accused.  That would establish a dangerous ambiguity for the future as prosecutors claim that political statements are private matters for the purpose of prosecution.

Ironically, Weissmann’s lack of concern for the implications of such an interpretation is reminiscent of his prior sweeping arguments as a prosecutor that led to the stinging defeat in the Anderson case.

Of course, there is another possibility is that the justices were not seeking the end of democracy. The Court was honestly trying to get this standard correct not just for this case but future cases. To do so, it will require a record on the underlying actions rather than the categorical threshold judgment made by the district court. The argument showed justices exploring how to avoid a parade of horribles on either extreme with a more moderate approach.

As I previously noted, it has been almost 50 years since the high court ruled presidents have absolute immunity from civil lawsuits in Nixon v. Fitzgerald. That protection applied to acts taken “within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”

Apparently, that immunity did not endanger democracy.

In United States v. Nixon, the court also ruled a president is not immune from a criminal subpoena. Nixon was forced to comply with a subpoena for his White House tapes in the Watergate scandal from special counsel Leon Jaworski. Since then, the court has avoided any significant ruling on the extension of immunity to a criminal case — until now.

There are cliffs on both sides of this case. If the court were to embrace special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments, a president would have no immunity from criminal charges, even for official acts taken in his presidency. It would leave a president without protection from endless charges from politically motivated prosecutors.

If the court were to embrace Trump counsel’s arguments, a president would have complete immunity. It would leave a president largely unaccountable under the criminal code for any criminal acts.

The first cliff is made obvious by the lower-court opinion. While the media have largely focused on extreme examples of president-ordered assassinations and coups, the justices are clearly as concerned with the sweeping implications of the DC Circuit opinion.

Chief Justice John Roberts noted the DC Circuit failed to make any “focused” analysis of the underlying acts, instead offering little more than a judicial shrug. Roberts read its statement that “a former president can be prosecuted for his official acts because the fact of the prosecution means that the former president has acted in defiance of the laws” and noted it sounds like “a former president can be prosecuted because he is being prosecuted.”

The other cliff is more than obvious from the other proceedings occurring as these arguments were made. Trump’s best attorney proved to be Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg — the very personification of the danger immunity is meant to avoid..

Weissmann is not concerned with the clear politicization of the criminal justice system by Bragg just before one of the most consequential elections in our history.

No, the threat is that justices may want to balance the interests over immunity by rejecting the extreme arguments on both sides. They may try to pursue a course that allows for immunity for official acts or functions while rejecting immunity for non-official acts. Some or all of Trump’s actions or statements could well fall into the unprotected category.

The sense of alarm expressed by legal experts is that the Court would not simply sign off on the absolutist arguments of Smith and, most importantly, allow for a trial before the election.

So how will democracy end if the Court adopts a middle road on immunity? It appears to come down to the loss of a possible conviction to influence the outcome of the election.

At the same time, MSNBC guests are also calling, again, for the packing of the Supreme Court. While conservative justices have repeatedly voted with the Biden Administration, it does not matter. They want the Court packed to guarantee outcomes with the appointment of reliable liberal justices. All of this is being defended in the name of democracy, as was ballot cleansing.

The problem with the escalating rhetoric is that there is not much room for further hysterics. Where does Weissmann and others go from here after predicting the imminent death of democracy?

Pundits have now predicted the creation of camps for democrats, killing journalists and homosexuals, the death of the free press, and tyranny. That leaves only systemic mutilations and Roman decimation. For lawyers to fuel this hysteria is a sad commentary on the state of our country. Whether a true crisis of faith or simple opportunism, it disregards centuries of constitutional history in overcoming every threat and obstacle. We have the oldest and most stable constitutional system in the world. To suddenly embrace tyranny would require all three branches, and the citizens as a whole, to shred an elaborate system of checks and balances.

We are better than that . . . and these inflammatory predictions.

The Path of Least Resistance: Northwestern Reaches Controversial Settlement With Pro-Palestinian Protesters


By: JonathanTurley.org | May 1, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/01/the-path-of-least-resistance-northwestern-reaches-controversial-settlement-with-pro-palestinian-protesters/

Northwestern University has agreed to a controversial settlement with pro-Palestinian protesters encamped on its campus this week, including

  • a commitment for scholarships for Palestinians,
  • Palestinian faculty appointments,
  • and special housing for Muslim students.
  • The protesters will also be allowed to continue their protests while agreeing to stay in a particular area of campus. 
  • It will also put the students and supporting faculty on bodies to review any university investments and purchases, a major demand from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Previously, protesters had reportedly prevented some students and faculty from entering buildings and engaged in property damage.

The Daily Northwestern reported the details of the deal and noted

“The University has committed to provide a conduit for students to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. It will also re-establish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility this fall, which will include students, faculty and staff.

In addition, the University committed to some support for Palestinian students and faculty in the agreement. NU will ‘support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk,’ and will provide the cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern.

The University also committed to providing an ‘immediate temporary space for MENA/Muslim students’ — a longtime demand from students on campus — and will provide and renovate a house for MENA/Muslims students as soon as possible. The final house is expected to come in 2026.”

It also includes a commitment of the university to intervene with employers to guarantee that students suffer no consequences for participating in protests in their jobs and internships.

Northwestern (my alma mater) has always chosen the path of least resistance when it comes to protesters, including at times surrendering core academic functions. I have been particularly critical of the loss of freedom of speech and academic integrity on campus.

Students previously succeeded in cancelling a speech by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Student Zachery Novicoff embodied the rising intolerance to free speech on campus. He is quoted as saying “There’s a limitation to free speech. That ends at overtly racist old white dudes.”

criticized former Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro for his lack of support for free speech on campus. Schapiro denounced what he called “absolute” free speech positions and endorsed speech sanctions, including treating speech as a form of assault.

During his tenure, the university often seemed a mere pedestrian to mob action taken against dissenting voices. For example, we previously discussed a Sociology 201 class by Professor Beth Redbird that examined “inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class and gender.”  To that end, Redbird invited both an undocumented person and a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  It is the type of balance that is now considered verboten on campuses.

Members of MEChA de Northwestern, Black Lives Matter NU, the Immigrant Justice Project, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, NU Queer Trans Intersex People of Color and Rainbow Alliance organized to stop other students from hearing from the ICE representative.  However, they could not have succeeded without the help of Northwestern administrators (including  Dean of Students Todd Adams).  The protesters were screaming “F**k ICE” outside of the hall.  Adams and the other administrators then said that the protesters screaming profanities would be allowed into the class if they promised not to disrupt the class.  Really?  They were screaming profanities and seeking to stop the class but would just sit nicely as the speaker answered questions?

Of course, that did not happen. As soon as the protesters were allowed into the classroom, they prevented the ICE representative from speaking.  The ICE official eventually left, and Redbird canceled the class to discuss the issue with the protesters that just prevented her students from hearing an opposing view.

The comments of the Northwestern students were predictable after being told by people like Schapiro that some offensive speech should be treated as a form of assault.  SESP sophomore April Navarro rejected that faculty should be allowed to invite such speakers to their classrooms for a “good, nice conversation with ICE.” She insisted such speakers needed to be silenced because they “terrorize communities” and profit from detainee labor. Here is the face of the new generation of censors being shaped by speech-intolerant academics like Schapiro:

“We’re not interested in having those types of conversations that would be like, ‘Oh, let’s listen to their side of it’ because that’s making them passive rule-followers rather than active proponents of violence. We’re not engaging in those kinds of things; it legitimizes ICE’s violence, it makes Northwestern complicit in this. There’s an unequal power balance that happens when you deal with state apparatuses.”

Last year, the Northwestern student body banned press from meetings to protect students from the harm of media coverage. The students also have previously frozen funds of conservative groups.

The Northwestern journalism faculty is little better.  Steven Thrasher, the Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern, who trashed a reporter who waited for the facts before reporting on a police shooting.

Of course, it is not just conservative speakers that the students want to ban. In 2021, they called for the removal of the President of the Board of Trustees. Despite being a major donor and supporter of the school, J. Landis Martin was denounced as a Republican who donated money to former President Donald Trump.

The university issued a statement that “This path forward requires the immediate removal of tents on Deering Meadow, cessation of non-approved use of amplified sound and a commitment that all conduct on Deering and across campus will comply with all University rules and policies. Compliant demonstration can continue at Deering Meadow through June 1.”

The university has long lacked the fortitude to stand up to students engaging in disruptive protests. The danger of such passivity is evident on our campuses. As Henry David Thoreau warned, “all rivers and most corrupt men follow the path of least resistance.”

Here is the Northwestern agreement.

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Team OBiden

A.F. BRANCO | on May 1, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-team-obiden/

Biden’s Voters
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The “Death to America” crowd will most likely vote for Biden since they have similar anti-American views, and he’s willing to forgive their student loans.

BREAKING: Biden Regime is Considering Flooding US with ‘Refugees’ From Gaza

By Cristina Laila – April 30, 2024

Here we go…. The Biden Regime is considering ‘welcoming’ so-called ‘refugees’ from Gaza into the United States. According to internal federal documents obtained by CBS News, the Biden Regime is considering resettling Palestinians who have family members in the US. Egypt doesn’t even want to take in refugees from Gaza!

The US will work with Egypt to resettle Palestinian refugees who have escaped there. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

Poll: Election-Shifting Percentage of Voters Admit to Illegal Voting In 2020


BY: JUSTIN HASKINS | APRIL 30, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/30/poll-election-shifting-percentage-of-voters-admit-to-illegal-voting-in-2020/

mail-in voting

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For the past three years, the corporate press and numerous officials in the Biden White House have asserted there is no evidence widespread voter fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. Some have even gone so far as to call it the “most secure” election in U.S. history.

However, a poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports — a survey I wrote with a team of experts at the Heartland Institute and discussed last week on Tucker Carlson’s show — not only calls into question that often-repeated claim, it shows the opposite could have been true. According to its findings, voter fraud, especially fraud related to mail-in ballots, may have been common in the 2020 election. This conclusion isn’t based on questionable allegations but on voters’ own responses to the poll questions.

The Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey, which was conducted from Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, asked likely voters who cast ballots in 2020 questions about fraudulent activities, without telling them such actions were a form of voter fraud. The results were stunning. One in five people who voted by mail admitted to engaging in at least one kind of potential voter fraud, seriously calling into question the security of widespread mail-in balloting.

For example, one question asked, “During the 2020 election, did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident?” Such an action nearly always constitutes fraud. Incredibly, 17 percent of voters said “yes.”

Another question asked if “a friend or family member” filled out a respondent’s ballot, “in part or in full,” on behalf of the respondent, which is illegal in some states. Nineteen percent of mail-in voters who responded to the survey answered “yes.”

Even more remarkably, 21 percent of respondents admitted to filling out a ballot for someone they know, such as a spouse or child, and 17 percent confessed to signing a ballot or ballot envelope “on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission” — both potential forms of illegal voting.

Taken together, these results strongly indicate fraud and illegal voting heavily affected mail-in balloting in the 2020 election. Even if a fraction of the people admitting wrongdoing here are actually guilty, that would still equal the electoral margin for 2020.

It’s an incredibly important finding since that contest involved more mail-in ballots than any other election in U.S. history. Election officials report that of 159 million ballots cast in 2020, more than 68 million were submitted by mail, about 43 percent of the total. In addition, as the MIT Election Data and Science Lab noted, “the dramatic increase in the raw number of absentee ballots cast was accompanied by a significant decrease in the overall absentee rejection rate for the country: from 0.96 percent in 2016 to 0.79 percent in 2020.”

If the recent Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey is accurate and one in five ballots were, in fact, fraudulent, that would suggest greater than 13 million ballots should not have been counted nationwide in 2020. That’s far more than the margin of victory for President Biden in the popular vote, about 7 million.

As troubling as these findings are, however, additional questions in the Heartland Institute/Rasmussen survey suggest voter fraud and illegal voting may have been even worse than the one-in-five figure suggests. For instance, 8 percent of all respondents — not just those who voted by mail — said they were offered “pay” or “reward” in return for voting.

Equally disturbing, 10 percent of voters said, “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to them that he or she “cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence.” Eleven percent said that “a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance” admitted to filling out someone else’s ballot.

These questions could indicate far more fraud occurred than anyone previously thought.

It’s also worth remembering that presidents are not elected by a national popular vote but through the Electoral College. The three states in which Trump and Biden were closest — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — were all decided by fewer than 21,000 votes.

Biden narrowly won each of those contests, but if he had lost those three states, he wouldn’t have reached the 270 electoral vote thresholds needed to win the presidency. Instead, the Electoral College vote would have been a tie, pushing the decision to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. With such razor-thin margins and the results of the recent Heartland/Rasmussen voter fraud survey in mind, it’s hard not to wonder how big of an effect fraud truly had on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

But regardless of how much fraud occurred, one thing is absolutely certain: States must take appropriate legislative action to protect the integrity of the next presidential election so that all Americans can be confident that the winner of the 2024 campaign will capture the White House fair and square.

There is already substantial evidence that voter fraud could play a significant role in 2024. Another survey conducted in March and April by the Heartland Institute and Rasmussen shows that 28 percent of likely voters now say they would commit at least one form of illegal voting during the 2024 election, “if given the opportunity.” Interestingly, respondents’ willingness to commit fraud was similar among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

There is some good news, however. The threat of voter fraud can be limited dramatically by changing mail-in ballot rules. Voters who are physically able to cast their ballots in person should be required to do so, or they should be mandated to have their ballot signature notarized, significantly reducing opportunities for fraud. Lawmakers could fund public programs to increase access to free notaries for those who need them.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, just three states require notaries for mail-in ballots — Mississippi, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Only nine additional states mandate that a voter obtain one or more non-notary witness signatures when casting a ballot by mail. Most states require neither a witness nor a notary to verify signatures.

Lawmakers must ensure widespread voter fraud does not happen in future elections. That can only occur if mail-in voting systems are radically improved. Time is running out for legislators to fix these major threats to American self-government.


Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is the director of the Socialism Research Center at The Heartland Institute and a New York Times bestselling author.

Liz Peek Op-ed: Biden White House signals pessimism about election in surprising way


Liz Peek  By Liz Peek Fox News | Published April 30, 2024 5:00am EDT

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/biden-white-house-signals-pessimism-election-surprising-way

It’s not just atrocious polls that suggest President Joe Biden will lose in November; it’s also the behavior of the White House. In just the past few weeks, the Biden administration has rolled out over a dozen new initiatives and rules, many of them – like banning development of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve – likely to impact our country far into the future. It’s a startling avalanche of executive activity.

Call me crazy, but that looks like a White House panicked that its days are numbered.

Who can blame them? A new national CNN poll shows Trump leading the president by six points, one of the biggest gaps yet; more important, Fox News surveys have Trump inching ahead in several critical swing states. 

NEW POLL REVEALS WHAT BIDEN HAS IN COMMON WITH THESE ONE-TERM PRESIDENTS

Bad polls, an unpopular president, disruptive protests at home and rising threats around the world, sinking consumer confidence and resurgent inflation; all signs point to defeat in November. Hence, the whirlwind of regulations, which includes the following:

1. New FTC rules that ban non-compete agreements;

2. A re-write of Title IX;

3. EEOC charges of racism against a company because they avoided hiring criminals;

4. More federal help on student loans;

5. FTC preventing the merger of two luxury goods makers;

6. New overtime rules;

7. New regulations detailing airline refunds;

8. New decision restricting drilling in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve;

9. FTC blocking hospital group mergers;

10. New power plant emissions rules;

11. Putting on hold a ban on menthol cigarettes;

12. A revamp of school lunch mandates, reducing sugar and salt.

The Biden administration appears to be preparing for the worst, pushing through policies that could be overturned if passed later in the year. Congress has 60 days to nix rules promulgated by federal agencies with a simple majority; if there’s a red wave, Biden diktats adopted in the traditional “lame duck” session would likely disappear. The Trump administration employed that tool successfully, ditching several policies rolled out late in President Obama’s second term; Biden returned the favor when he came to office.

ABC’S GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS SAYS 2024 RACE CAN’T BE TREATED NORMALLY AFTER BIDEN URGES PRESS TO ALTER COVERAGE

Some decisions, like forgiving student loans or not banning menthol cigarettes which are favored by Blacks, are obviously meant to attract targeted voters. Others seem to scratch a progressive itch, like the upending of long-standing employment laws. 

Voters should wonder: Is all of this activism well-thought-out? The answer is almost surely no. After all, these are the folks that forced Detroit automakers to go all-in on EVs, sure that Americans were ready to abandon their gas-guzzling SUVs.  

Consider the FTC, led by the reckless ideologue Lina Khan. Under Khan’s guidance, the FTC has clamped down on corporate merger activity. Most recently, the agency sued to block luxury fashion firm Tapestry’s acquisition of Capri. Tapestry owns Coach, Stuart Weitzman and Kate Spade, while Capri owns the Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors labels.  

Lina Khan testifies before the House Judiciary Committee
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on July 13, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

BIDEN ADMIN ABRUPTLY DELAYS PLAN TO BAN MENTHOL CIGARETTES AMID WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION

Henry Liu, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition claims, “This deal threatens to deprive consumers of the competition for affordable handbags…” Forgive me, but only a man could utter such nonsense. Any woman will tell you that there are a gazillion handbag makers, and that they compete mainly on style and image, not price. And, frankly, that few of them are “affordable.” 

This is one of many examples of the FTC interfering with the normal pursuit of business. Fashion is fickle; companies continually add names and brands to survive. Liu has no idea what he is talking about. 

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But we cannot dismiss this FTC intervention as insignificant. The Biden White House, just like that of President Obama, is tragically lacking in business leaders, and in common sense. 

Lina Khan is a typical progressive Biden appointee, who is now compiling an impressive record of overreach and defeat. She failed to prevent Meta from acquiring the virtual reality company Within, failed to keep Microsoft from buying Activision and will probably fail in her effort to keep grocers Albertson and Kroger from combining.  She denies that mergers can create efficiencies and lower costs for consumers. As an undergraduate, she wrote a paper criticizing Amazon for being big; if Khan had been in charge, Americans would not be enjoying the obvious convenience of the world’s largest online retailer. 

It isn’t just the FTC which, by the way, is also behind the outrageous and sure to be overturned ban on non-compete agreements. Consider the new Department of Transportation demands that airlines must “immediately” refund money for delayed or canceled flights and reimburse passengers for equipment issues like non-working TVs. Talks about adding headaches to an industry constantly toggling between profits and losses! What the government should be doing is investing in critical air traffic control equipment and infrastructure; let consumers punish airlines that don’t treat them fairly. 

Some of the White House’s most enduring and damaging new rules have to do with energy. Biden is desperate to shore up his bona fides with the environmental lobby, and so has added new restrictions on domestic oil and gas development. Consequently, he just banned exploration of a vast swath of Alaska’s huge National Petroleum Reserve, even though the region contains some of our country’s most promising prospects and despite support for drilling from the state’s native population. 

In addition, the president’s EPA has recently issued new power plant emissions rules that could force the closure of many coal-fired power plants, even as demand for electricity expands. It also requires by 2032 wide-spread use of carbon-capture technology that does not yet exist on a large scale.  Similar rules adopted by the Obama administration were overturned by the Supreme Court in 2016; critics claimed executive overreach. The Biden team’s approach, which could undermine the nation’s energy security, is likely to meet the same fate.  

These are not sensible policies; they are the wish-list and fantasies of a progressive White House not likely to pay the price for their damaging meddling. Here’s hoping.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM LIZ PEEK

Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.

Texas Lawmaker Reminds GOP of Madison’s Words About Power of the Purse


By: Fred Lucas @FredLucasWH / April 30, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/30/chip-roy-reminds-gop-madisons-words-power-purse/

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas—seen here at a news conference outside the Capitol in September—took issue Tuesday with some fellow Republican lawmakers on their unwillingness to fight to control federal spending. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

For Rep. Chip Roy, it’s a frustrating conversation that happens all too often with fellow lawmakers on his side of the aisle. 

“‘Chip, we have a razor-thin majority. We just have to win the White House; we just have to win the Senate,’” the Texas Republican recalled in a speech Tuesday. 

When he hears colleagues concerned about the narrow 217-212 House Republican majority, he notes the Democrats’ narrow Senate majority—51 senators in the Democratic caucus compared with 49 Republicans. 

“Well, when do they ever look across there and say Chuck Schumer has a razor-thin majority?” Roy said of the Senate Democratic leader from New York. “When do they ever look and say, ‘You’re actually in charge of the House of Representatives, which James Madison told you in [Federalist Paper 58] actually has the power of the purse. Do something with it. Stop making excuses.”

That prompted applause from the audience at The Heritage Foundation at an event, “Defunding the Left.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) 

Roy had earlier quoted Madison—father of the Constitution and later the fourth president of the United States—who wrote in Federalist 58

The House of Representatives can not only refuse, but they alone can propose the supplies requisite for the support of government. … This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any Constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

Though the GOP mostly prevented nondefense spending hikes, and kept the political focus on border security, he said irresponsible spending is a bipartisan problem that “infests the entire swamp” in both parties. 

“The fundamental problem is not just the weakening of the dollar and the strength of our financial system. It’s actually the radical Left funding the tyranny, funding the government that’s at war with your way of life.”

He noted the Republican-controlled House approved $62 billion in funding for the Department of Homeland Security amid rising crime and fentanyl deaths in the U.S. resulting from the border crisis

The House majority also went along with $200 million to fund a new FBI headquarters and overall about $40 billion for the Justice Department, despite concerns about politicized lawfare. He noted $824 billion went to the Defense Department with no demands to scrap its focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that are hurting armed forces recruitment. 

The House majority allowed $80 billion for the Department of Education; $9 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency; and $117 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services, while requiring no accountability for mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic by departmental subordinate agencies, such as National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

While his GOP colleagues often talk about the need to win the next election, Roy said, conservative control of both houses of Congress and the White House are not guaranteed to reverse the trend. 

“Literally, on Day One, they are going to say, ‘Chip, we can’t do all you want to do because we don’t have 60 in the Senate. You’ve got to be reasonable.’” Roy predicted. “I promise you that’s coming. So, we have to win majorities. But we have to plan now for driving a steamroller over the weak-kneed individuals in Congress that will use 60 [as a premise] not to fight for you.”

In the Senate, 60 votes are required to end filibusters. 

Roy noted there were some positive accomplishments, however. Since winning the majority, House Republicans have for the most part “kept the ball on our side of the field,” he said.  

Nondefense spending was largely held flat, while increased defense spending in 2023 was initially paid for by taking money out of the Internal Revenue Service and unspent COVID-19 funding. 

That occurred after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., put caps in place, even though the caps were discarded in January. Further, Roy noted that House Republicans didn’t let Democrats redirect the border debate to one of amnesty for illegal immigrants. 

“Amnesty was off the table. All we talked about this last year was border security. We didn’t achieve it, but we didn’t allow the Democrats to start moving the ball down the field and have a debate about amnesty,” Roy said.  “It matters where you set the goal post and how you set your mission.”

The Texas lawmaker criticized the recent $95 billion foreign aid package that passed without the support of most Republicans. He said that too often, members of Congress “default to fear” on defense spending. 

“I want the strongest military that we can possibly produce. I want it to be sparingly used,” Roy said, adding:

I don’t want to use it often, but if we do, I want it to destroy everything in its path.  But we just default to fear, and we use the national security-defense complex to run over everything else.

“People literally come into [House Republicans’] meetings and say, ‘We just can’t risk defense.’ Well, if that’s what you do, you’re never going to change the town,” he continued, “because they are always going to use defense as the leverage to say, ‘We’re not going to cut [the Justice Department]; we’re not going to cut education; we’re not going to make reforms.”

MSNBC’s Wallace: “All of the Conspiracy Theorists are Republicans.”


JonathanTurley.org | April 30, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/30/msnbcs-wallace-all-of-the-conspiracy-theorists-are-republicans/#more-218424

There has been a notable shift toward more and more extreme rhetoric in the media from predicting that democracy will end with this election to “disappearing” journalists and gays to ending all rights for everyone. On Monday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace added to this litany with a claim that “as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”

After discussing how GOP candidates have stated that they believe that the last election was “stolen,” Wallace added “It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”

It was a crushingly ironic moment. Wallace has been repeatedly criticized for spreading false news. For example, the “Deadline: White House” host told viewers that they should not take the Hunter Biden laptop seriously: “We shouldn’t look at it as anything other than a Russian disinformation operation.”

Wallace heralded the Mueller investigation while pushing the now debunked Russian collusion claims. However, on the Durham investigation, she told viewers that they could ignore it despite the fact that the report stands uncontradicted:

“Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at.”

Wallace and MSNBC also pushed false claims about Bill Barr clearing Lafayette Park for a Trump “photo op.”

On August 5th, 2019, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claimed that Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.”

Wallace and MSNBC pushed the false story of border agents whipping migrants in Texas.

Wallace claimed that the lab theory of the Covid 19 was a “conspiracy theory.” It has been embraced by various federal agencies despite being called racist by many experts.

Many on the left now routinely call opposing views as spreaders of disinformation or conspiracy theories. The Biden Administration has funded various groups to blacklist or bar those with opposing views as disinformation, malinformation, or misinformation.  Indeed, new groups are being formed before the election to echo these claims, including one headed by the former “Disinformation Czar.”

Today’s Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Ship Sliding Away

A.F. BRANCO | on April 30, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-ship-sliding-away/

Bidenomics Sinking Economy
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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Bidenomics, with its high inflation and high cost of living, is wreaking havoc on the U.S. economy. Though the left continues to gaslight and cook the books in their favor, Americans can feel this economic disaster.

POLL: Biden Trails Trump in Six Swing States – 70% Say Economy is on the “Wrong Track”

BY JORDAN CONRADSON – APRIL 26, 2024

According to a recent poll, President Trump currently holds a lead in six of the seven key swing states that are expected to determine the 2024 Presidential Election.

The results of the Bloomberg/Morning Consult swing state poll  are as follows:

  • Trump leads Biden by seven points in Arizona (49%-42%).
  • Trump leads Biden by six points in Georgia (49%-43%).
  • Trump leads Biden by eight points in Nevada (51%-43%).
  • Trump leads Biden by ten points in North Carolina (51%-41%).
  • Trump leads Biden by four points in Wisconsin (48%-44%).
  • Trump leads Biden by one point in Pennsylvania (47%-46%).

Biden only leads Trump in Michigan by just two points with 47%-45%.

Joe Biden won with massive voter fraud in all of these states in 2020 except for North Carolina. READ MORE…

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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.

DOD Prompts Gender Dysphoria in Military Kids and Hides Health Records from Parents


BY: AMY HAYWOOD | APRIL 29, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/29/dod-prompts-gender-dysphoria-among-military-kids-and-hides-health-records-from-parents/

Ft Belvoir Community Hospital

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Parents across the United States are being restricted from accessing their adolescent children’s online electronic health records. Not only are military parents barred from accessing all but basic information on their 13- to 17-year-olds in the military’s online health care portal, but the adolescent minor also is not allowed to have a user logon until 18. Though elected officials are tackling this issue on the state level, military parents will need to be their own advocates as they appeal to Congress to restore their parental rights.

Military insurance provider Tricare finally issued a press release in March explaining Department of Defense (DOD) policies that restrict parents from adolescent records in the portal, Military Health System (MHS) Genesis, as well as from “sensitive” physical records.

Last year, I wrote about my experience of spending months trying to obtain the official policy that barred parents from these records. Now that the policy is out in the open, it must not be allowed to stand, as it is ultimately harmful to children.

Many military parents object to providers’ having a confidential relationship with their children because they do not trust activist MHS doctors who believe a child can be born in the wrong body to counsel their children on anything in secret — as some are doing.

One sobering example of what can happen when parents are excluded occurred in Louisiana, where two civilian parents were treated as the enemy. After less than an hour behind closed doors with their 13-year-old, the provider tried to manipulate them into affirming their daughter’s new identity as a boy by asking them if they would “rather have a dead daughter or a live son.” One of the doctors involved, Dr. Ryan Pasternak, is a leader in adolescent medicine and has co-written recommendations for the Society of Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) on the management of electronic health records. SAHM’s ideal method includes permitting full access only to the adolescent, while actively blocking parents so they receive only nonconfidential information.

Even as state legislatures are moving to restore parental access to unemancipated minor medical records, the MHS seems to be plowing ahead with its efforts to keep parents in the dark. With all I’ve uncovered about adolescent confidentiality and gender activists within the MHS, parents are right to be concerned.

Congress Fails to Act

In 2017, the Defense Health Board, a federal committee that advises the secretary of defense, acknowledged in a report that the emerging field of adolescent medicine had “recently made a profound shift from its traditional role. Instead of providing preemptive guidance to parents, providers now work to reduce risk-taking behaviors with their focus aimed directly at the adolescent.” The board also recommended expanding the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to address gender dysphoria and suggested possibly including surgeries for gender-confused children in the future. The board pointed out that the Tricare Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Treatment final rule on Sept. 2, 2016, “permits ‘coverage of all non-surgical medically necessary and appropriate care in the treatment of gender dysphoria.’” This was a final rule that came from unelected bureaucrats — not Congress.

Nevertheless, recent efforts in Congress to prohibit coverage for transgender procedures for minor military children were removed by the Senate from the House-passed fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. Language to prevent the Exceptional Family Member Program from being used to facilitate child transgender transitions was also removed.

Bases, Schools Push Transgenderism

Today, adolescents can receive confidential care on military bases and in school-based clinics. For example, Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s Madigan Army Medical Center’s adolescent clinic offers subspecialty care for transgender confusion, sexuality issues, and substance use, among other services. Madigan also runs a system of school-based health clinics in 10 area schools; dependents on Tricare Prime insurance can visit the clinic once each week.

If military parents aren’t “affirming” of a transgender identity, activist group PFLAG recommends that children talk with “a school counselor, the on-base youth Military Family Life Counselor (MFLC), a chaplain (if from an affirming denomination), or an online friend or peer.” PFLAG also reveals that MHS Genesis “now allows patients to mark their gender identity in addition to their sex assigned at birth.” This will “allow transgender youth to receive appropriate care without as many obstacles.” And “military LGBTQ+ organizations are currently working with DoDEA [schools for children of military families] to incorporate the same procedures in school documents.”   

In the school-to-scalpel age, confidential care being provided to adolescents should cause alarm bells to go off. Ian Prior, founder of Fight for Schools, in his article, “Queer Whistleblower Exposes Evils of the School to Scalpel Pipeline,” shows how indoctrination into transgenderism can begin at school as young as kindergarten. In many cases, children are encouraged to socially transition at school. By the time parents find out, children can be convinced they were born in the wrong body, and doctors who favor the “gender affirmation” approach steer parents and their dysphoric children down that path of care.

Thanks to an official Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) teacher training in May 2021, we know that secret transgender transitions are happening in overseas schools for military children. Former Rep. Vicky Hartzler wrote a letter to DOD in 2021 asking why teachers were being trained at a DODEA teachers summit to transition children at school without parents’ knowledge. She never received a response — and DODEA has avoided accountability even to this day.

I spoke with a military mom whose daughter, Cami (not her real name), was enrolled in a public school in Fairfax County, Virginia, that concealed from her parents that she had transitioned to a boy at school. Though the mother only wanted Cami to see a therapist to address her depression, military medicine additionally referred her to a so-called gender clinic in the Washington, D.C., area. When the mother didn’t take her daughter to the clinic, she received a call from a military doctor who suggested Cami might need puberty blockers to give her time to decide about her sex. At the time of our conversation, the family was still reeling from the harm that “trusted” adults at school had caused.

MHS Treats Thousands of Confused Dependents

Armed with this information about a gender clinic on base, I found research conducted by active-duty medical doctors and a medical school professor that mentioned a regional referral-based adolescent medicine clinic that opened in 2014 and serves dependents between the ages of 9 and 24. It provides “services including diagnosis, puberty suppression, affirming-hormone treatment, reproductive health services … and affirming counseling, and refers for surgical, ancillary (e.g., voice therapy) and complex mental health services.”

Ft. Belvoir in Virginia fit the clinic’s description, and transgender-confused children do, indeed, seek care there. Dr. David Klein was chief of adolescent medicine at Ft. Belvoir in 2016. He and his associates have diligently documented their research on transgender-identifying military dependents. They reveal that from 2009 until 2017, more than 2,500 military dependents, ages 4 to 25, sought treatment for gender confusion from the MHS. When Tricare began to pay for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for dependents in 2016, they observed a marked increase in the number of patients seeking such care. One can only imagine how high the figures are today when taking into account estimates that the number of transgender-identifying youth in the United States nearly doubled between 2016 and 2022.

Another Klein study looked at 53 gender-confused adolescents and measured parental support for their care. Researchers looked at MHS data from 2014 to 2017 and rated strong support of parents for initiation or continuation of “gender transition” at 55.8 percent, non to moderately supportive at 25 percent, and conflicted support at 19.2 percent.

Though numerous studies show that military kids suffer from a higher rate of anxiety and depression than their civilian peers, key recommendations from Klein and his co-authors provide advice to doctors as if wrongly named “gender affirmation” is the only approach for treating gender dysphoria. They claim a transgender diagnosis is not necessarily related to other mental health concerns and that attempts “to convert a person’s gender identity to align with their sex assigned at birth are unethical and incompatible with current guidelines and evidence.”

Klein and colleagues made the news last year and caught congressional attention when they stated in their latest research, in a discussion about understanding the risks and benefits of “gender-affirming” care, that 7-year-olds can begin participating in medical decision-making. Fortunately, as former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard pointed out to Tucker Carlson, 53 percent of MHS physicians in that study said they would refuse to prescribe hormones even if trained to do so. Sadly, others would be willing to, and Klein is now the Family Adolescent Medicine Program director at Travis Air Force Base in California — training the next generation of military physicians.

Falling out of Favor Around the World

Even as MHS leaders continue to promote this harmful medicating of children, it is rapidly falling out of favor among doctors around the world, who are opting for psychotherapy as a first line treatment for gender dysphoria, after studies have shown “no demonstrable, long-term benefit” on “psychosocial well-being of adolescents with gender dysphoria.”

Additionally, the leading organization for transgender care, WPATH, was recently exposed for its lack of evidence and safeguards that led to members performing pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments on minors. And, similarly, the Cass Review, released this month, detailed how England’s leading specialist youth transgender “clinic,” now permanently closed, was untethered from evidence-based medicine.

As the rationale for transgender drugs and surgeries unravels, a legal reckoning is being led in the United States by detransitioners such as Chloe Cole, who began transitioning at 12 and had a double mastectomy by 15. DOD and affirming doctors in the MHS must be included in this reckoning and held accountable for any harm suffered by military dependents under their care.

Laws and policies that allow medical records and medical treatment of adolescents to be hidden from parents are potentially harmful to children and destructive to families, and this is why military parents must urge Congress to strike DOD’s policies that drive a wedge between them and their children and to pass legislation that clarifies their right to guide the medical care of their children.


Amy Haywood is a former senior legislative assistant for a U.S. House representative. She writes The Primary Educator newsletter, which can be found at theprimaryeducator.com.

Sleepy Joe Rests After Vowing He Won’t Until Every Hostage Is Home


BY: M.D. KITTLE | APRIL 29, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/29/sleepy-joe-rests-after-vowing-he-wont-until-every-hostage-is-home/

President Joe Biden speaks at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.

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President Joe Biden has a message for the 133 hostages held by the monsters of Hamas: He will not rest until they are “back in the arms of their loved ones.” 

“They have my word. Their families have my word,” Biden pledged Saturday on the POTUS X account before heading to a posh, black-tie White House Correspondents’ Dinner to rub elbows with the corporate media sycophants who have been carrying water for him.

Such a vow from the vaguely alert octogenarian known for being full of crap must have been comforting to the families of the people who have spent the better part of the past seven months in an unimaginable hell while the Biden administration has been sweet-talking the same people who want to wipe out Israel and annihilate Jews. 

Biden tirelessly avoided any talk of the political headaches of hostages and Israel’s right to exist during the annual fete of self-important politicians, journalists, and celebrities at the Washington Hilton. Reportedly on the menu, Terrine of Jumbo Lump Crabmeat as an appetizer, an entree of Smoked Paprika Rubbed Filet with Foraged Wild Mushroom Ragout and Pancetta & Gala Apple Demi, washed down with some very fine Chateau Ste. Michelle, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Safe to say the menu for Hamas’ captives was not nearly as epicurean. 

But pretending to think about hostages works up a man-sized, elitist appetite.

“And let there be laughter. I hope for lots of side-splitting, light the internet on fire laughter,” Kelly O’Donnell, NBC senior White House correspondent and president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, insipidly said in her opening remarks.

But not a word about the goings on in Gaza and Israel from Biden or the assemblage of narcissists, to the chagrin of the hundreds of Hamas sympathizers protesting outside the high-priced Hilton. 

“Shame on you!” shouted the protesters adorned in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, the Associated Press reported. Their renunciations, like those of the professional protesters at Columbia and other college campuses, were reserved for Israel, the United States, and anybody who dares do business with them.

It was tough all over. Some of the correspondents’ dinner guests had to “hurry through hundreds of protesters outraged over the mounting humanitarian disaster for Palestinian civilians in Gaza,” in the AP’s telling. The self-loathing reporters forced to cover the glitzy affair couldn’t help but make the story about the protesters and the poor Palestinians, most of whom have been cheerleaders for the genocidal “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” campaign. 

‘Take This Serious’

Biden could muster all of 10 minutes in his stand-up routine, and much of that was to knock the political opponent he’s trying to imprison. The dinner is designed to be a good-natured roast, but Biden’s speech took a grim turn as he warned of the kind of horror only Democrats and the reporters assembled at the Washington Hilton could invent: a J6 apocalyptic future under another Donald Trump presidency. The room of accomplice media members surely shuddered thinking about the hellscape that life under Trump would unleash — like a booming economy, low inflation, a safer world, and a closed U.S. border. 

“We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after Jan. 6,” Biden told the attendees with a straight face. Know this, White House correspondents and esteemed corporate media reporters: Biden will never rest until every one of those Jan. 6 grandmother rebels, Capitol sightseers, and the Republican presidential candidate leading the current White House occupant rot in prison. 

Trump did not attend the dinner. That might have something to do with the fact that he’s been forced to defend himself in a Democrat-led banana republic while trying to find time to campaign for president. But as AP pointed out, Trump never attended the smorgasbord of smugness during his presidency. 

“In 2011, he sat in the audience, and glowered through a roasting by then-President Barack Obama of Trump’s reality-television celebrity status. Obama’s sarcasm then was so scalding that many political watchers linked it to Trump’s subsequent decision to run for president in 2016,” the story asserts as if communicating facts. We all know the No. 1 reason presidential campaigns launch is out of spite. Franklin Pierce jumped in the 1852 race after Whig Millard Fillmore dogged the Democrat about his raging alcoholism. Hell hath no fury like a Jacksonian Democrat scorned by “scalding sarcasm.” 

Biden did spend time on Sunday telling Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how to run Israel’s war on terror. You’ll recall how much the United States appreciated similar meddling by other nations after 9/11. According to The Times of Israel, Biden spoke to Netanyahu about his joint statement with the leaders of 17 other nations calling on Hamas to immediately release the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza amid the human shield Palestinians. Israel would grant a ceasefire if the hostages are released. And that’s what an unpopular American president drowning in bad polls really wants: a ceasefire. The release of the hostages is a means to his political ends, which is to get two critical contingencies — Muslims and Jews — off his back. 

And the hostages and their families can rest assured, tough-talking Joe Biden won’t rest until he secures freedom for his political aims. *Not including his daily rests and swanky dinners.


Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.

6 Reasons Chinese Nationals Are Illegally Crossing California’s Southern Border


By: Virginia Allen @Virginia_Allen5 / April 28, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/28/6-reasons-chinese-nationals-illegally-crossing-californias-southern-border/

An illegal alien from China arrives Oct. 10 at a San Diego train station with a group of other illegal immigrants. (Photo: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinese nationals are crossing America’s southern border at a rapid rate. On Wednesday alone, the U.S. Border Patrol encountered 206 Chinese nationals crossing into the San Diego sector, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin reported.  But the illegal entry of Chinese nationals into America through the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector isn’t new. Chinese individuals long have worked with criminal cartels to get into the U.S., former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott says, but the numbers have shot up.  

In January, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 3,700 encounters with Chinese nationals on the southern border, nearly all in the San Diego sector.  But back up to January 2021, when Joe Biden became president, and CBP encountered only 17 Chinese nationals at the southern border. So what changed? 

To find out why so many Chinese nationals are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Diego sector, The Daily Signal spoke to Scott as well as to Derek Maltz, a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and to Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.) 

They point to six main reasons.

1. San Diego Infrastructure

“It’s easy,” Scott said of why San Diego is a favorite crossing point for illegal immigrants from China. 

Before serving as the 24th chief of the Border Patrol from January 2020 to August 2021, Scott was chief patrol agent for the San Diego sector from 2017 to 2019.  San Diego, population 1.4 million, long has been a popular illegal crossing point for illegal aliens because it’s easy to disappear on busy city streets, Scott explains.  

“If you’re coming across [the border] in between the ports of entry through traditional smuggling, we used to talk about a vanishing point,” Scott said. “How fast can you get across the border and then blend into society? That’s one of the reasons you look for [urban] infrastructure.” 

San Diego is even more popular now for illegal aliens, given the situation at the border, because “it’s a lower risk,” he said.  

To cross into Texas from Mexico, “you’ve got to come across the river,” the former Border Patrol chief explained, adding that globally, smugglers and others seeking to enter the U.S. illegally have seen Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s response to illegal immigration. In an initiative called Operation Lone Star, the Republican governor placed Texas National Guard troops along sections of the border with Mexico and installed concertina and razor wire, creating a greater challenge for migrants seeking to cross the border illegally.  

And in Arizona, the harsh realities of the desert are a turnoff for illegal aliens trying to cross into the U.S., Scott said. Although such conditions don’t prevent illegal crossings, he said, Arizona is “hot” and “desolate.” 

Mexico’s border with California in the San Diego sector offers a safer, more comfortable crossing option, he said.  

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s nine southern border sectors. (Graphic: CBP/Border Report)

A migrant can go to Tijuana, Mexico, “be in a hotel drinking coffee, watching TV, get the ‘go,’ and in 15 minutes [he] can be in the United States,” Scott said. In 20 more minutes, he said, that same migrant can be getting processed inside a Border Patrol station with “air conditioning, food, and water.”  

When illegal aliens are released in San Diego, the city offers “this massive nongovernmental organizational network system that’s going to provide free bus tickets [and] shelter,” he said.  California also is a sanctuary state, meaning it doesn’t cooperate with federal authorities to enforce immigration law.  

“From a marketing standpoint, it’s the easiest place to convince people to cross illegally,” Scott said of San Diego. “And then from a cartel perspective … that smuggling infrastructure has been well-established for years.”  

2. Money Motivates Cartels

Chinese migrants are “lucrative” to the drug and smuggling cartels in Mexico, Scott told The Daily Signal. 

“It’s pretty hard to get out of China,” the former Border Patrol chief said. “Nobody just goes to an airport and flies to the United States without specific permission from the government, so you have to be smuggled out of China and then into the United States.”  

Chinese nationals buy “travel packages” from the cartels that are similar to commercial vacation travel packages, Scott said, and they pay based on what is included.   For example, he said, one package for Chinese nationals requires them to travel to Ecuador and then on to Mexico. 

“And when they came into Mexico, they got legit legal travel documents so that they could fly on domestic airlines in Mexico. But for a lower fee, you didn’t get that.”  

3. Because They Can

Established smuggling routes, urban or suburban infrastructure, and the cartels’ financial motivation long have driven illegal Chinese migration to the U.S. So again, why the spike now?  

“The difference now,” Scott said, “is there’s no real response from the federal government of the United States to slow it down. There hasn’t been since 2021.” 

Biden, a Democrat, was inaugurated Jan. 20, 2021, and quickly dismantled the border security policies of his defeated Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.  

Now, with a Biden-Trump rematch looming in November, Scott speculated, migrants and smugglers are concerned that U.S. border security will return if Trump or another Republican wins. That may help explain the rapid rise in crossings in recent months.  

Illegal crossings in the San Diego sector by Chinese nationals were relatively few at the beginning of the Biden administration. CBP records only 75 encounters with Chinese migrants in the San Diego sector during fiscal year 2021, which ended that Sept. 30. The number climbed to 942 in fiscal 2022, then exploded to 10,520 in fiscal 2023.  

So far in fiscal 2024, which ends in five months, CBP has encountered 23,890 Chinese nationals in the San Diego sector.  

Cunningham, the research fellow in Heritage’s Asian Studies Center, told The Daily Signal that Chinese nationals “see all over the news that the border is wide open, that Biden is not protecting the border.” 

So the question, he says, is “why wouldn’t they” attempt to cross into the U.S.?  

4. ‘A Better Life’ 

“A lot of people are desperate to get out of China now,” Cunningham said.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese citizens endured about three years of lockdowns and restrictions that dwarfed those in the U.S. These “draconian lockdowns” led many Chinese to lose faith in their communist government, he said.  

China’s older population lived through the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, if not previous repressive political campaigns, Cunningham said, before the regime implemented a strict “zero-COVID” policy.  

“They saw zero-COVID as what it was—a political campaign. And they’re worried about China’s future,” he said of ordinary Chinese citizens. 

Chinese leader Xi Jinping gained an opportunity to rule the nation indefinitely when the communist regime ended formal presidential terms in 2018.  

China’s economy is struggling as young people try to find jobs, the nation’s real estate market is in trouble after the failure of two major property development companies this year, and its stock market saw a $7 trillion decline in just a few years. 

“People for years have wanted to get their money out of China, and it’s very difficult because of capital controls,” Cunningham said. “Now more of them are just wanting to get out of China altogether for a better life.”  

5. Chinese Influence on America 

Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China plans to develop trade routes with other nations, expand infrastructure, and invest in foreign economic development initiatives.  

With Chinese leaders’ end goal of expanding “their power and control dramatically,” Scott said, it is “not a hidden secret that they have long allowed and or even facilitated and helped getting people out of China into the U.S. through whatever means possible.” The former Border Patrol chief pointed to reports that Chinese nationals are “systematically coming into the United States and buying property, buying foreign property, buying property near military bases,” as evidence that they are crossing the border intentionally.  

China owns 384,000 acres in the U.S., about 1% of foreign-held acres, according to a Department of Agriculture report in 2021, the latest data available.  

Although illegal immigrants could achieve some cultural and economic influence on America, Cunningham said, it’s unlikely that significant numbers of Chinese nationals cross the southern border with the intent of spying on the U.S.  

Legal ways to enter the U.S., he said, provide greater opportunity for Chinese spies to access sensitive U.S. data than an illegal alien could get at.  

“The idea that China is desperate to get their spies in the U.S. and so they’re sending them across the border illegally where they’re going to have no identity, they’re not going to be capable of getting the high-access jobs that they want their spies to get—it’s just not reasonable,” Cunningham said.   

But, he added, it’s reasonable to believe that Chinese spies are infiltrated within criminal cartels and are “keeping tabs on some of the Chinese who are coming to America.”  

6. Marijuana Farms  

The Chinese are heavily involved in the domestic growth of marijuana in America, both legal and illegal, federal officials say. In February, 50 members of the House and Senate sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland expressing concern about and asking for answers to “reports from across the country regarding Chinese nationals and organized crime cultivating marijuana on United States farmland.” 

“There’s a new term that’s been used a lot lately in local law enforcement—especially [in] Northern California [and] the inland parts of California—called narco slavery,” Scott told The Daily Signal. “And they’re seeing more and more Chinese that are being brought across and they’re being forced to work these domestic marijuana operations; they’re being forced to shovel money around the United States to pay back the smuggling fee that they couldn’t afford up front.” 

Chinese-run marijuana grow operations “are all over the country,” Maltz, the former DEA official, told The Daily Signal.  This isn’t a coincidence, he said. 

“The marijuana today has high content of THC, much higher than we’ve ever seen,” Maltz said.  THC, formally known as tetrahydrocannabinol, is a psychoactive compound found in cannabinoids. Large amounts increase the effects of marijuana on the user.  

“Marijuana use directly affects brain function—specifically the parts of the brain responsible for memory, learning, attention, decision-making, coordination, emotions, and reaction time,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

Cannabis products have been legalized for medical use in 38 states and legalized for nonmedical use in 24 states. The increased levels of THC in marijuana are “causing issues with the brain more than we’ve ever seen,” said Maltz, who also was in charge of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Division for nearly 10 years.  

“Very smart Chinese Communist Party leaders understand this is another way we could take advantage of America’s addiction to marijuana, and dumb Americans will never figure it out,” he said.  

Jonathan Turley Op-ed: Alvin Bragg and The Art of Not Taking Law Too Seriously


By: Jonathan Turley | April 29, 2024

Read more at https://jonathanturley.org/2024/04/29/alvin-bragg-and-the-art-of-not-taken-law-too-seriously/#more-218348

Below is my column in The Hill on the first week of testimony in the Trump trial. It is making Rube Goldberg’s 13 step self-operating napkin look like a model of efficiency and clarity. It is so convoluted and illogical it is mesmerizing.

Here is the column:

Rube Goldberg, the inventor of bizarre machines that performed simple tasks through dozens of mechanical steps, was once asked about the essence of creating such fantastic, illogical machines. He replied, “An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.” After the first week of testimony, the trial of Donald Trump is increasingly looking like a mad prosecution machine by lawyers who don’t take law too seriously.

I have long been a critic of the Bragg indictment as legally incomprehensible. However, I must confess that after a week of testimony, some of us have developed a weird fascination with the utter madness of the scene unfolding in Manhattan. It was not until the second week of proceedings that Bragg even revealed part of his theory of criminality. For months, even liberal legal analysts have expressed dismay that Bragg’s indictment had not clearly stated what specific crime that Trump sought to conceal by allegedly misrepresenting payments to former adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

The premise of the prosecution always had that Rube Goldberg feel. It was so implausible as to be impossible. After all, the base charge is a simple misdemeanor under a New York law against falsifying business records. Trump paid Cohen hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and costs, including $130,000 for a nondisclosure agreement with Daniels.

Bragg is vague as to what should have been noted on the ledgers for the payments. It is not even clear if Trump knew of this expense’s designation as a legal cost. However, it really did not matter, because the misdemeanor has been as dead as Dillinger for years.

The dead misdemeanor was shocked back into life by claiming that it was committed to conceal another crime. Under New York’s penal law, section 175.10, it can be a felony if the “intent to defraud includes an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof.”

For months, Bragg has suggested that the “other crime” was the violation of federal election laws, suggesting that the payment was really a campaign contribution Trump made to himself that was not properly recorded. The problem is that the Justice Department investigated that crime already and decided that it was not a viable criminal claim. It did not even seek a civil fine.

Bragg’s predecessor and Bragg himself rejected the theory behind this prosecution. But then a pressure campaign led Bragg to green-light a prosecution roughly eight years after the 2016 campaign.

In the trial, Bragg added a type of frying pan flip to his Rube Goldberg contraption by arguing that Trump may have been trying to hide his violation of another dead misdemeanor under yet another New York election law prohibiting “conspir[ing] to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

In other words, Trump was conspiring to try to win his own election. This even though the notations were made after he had won the election, and even though Trump was running for a federal, not a state office.

So again, what is the unlawful means?

The machine then flips you back to the beginning — seeking “to influence the election.” There are still the federal election violations, but that theory was rejected after an investigation. And if it were a real crime, it would be brought by federal, not state prosecutors.

There are also the misdemeanor falsifications of business records under section 175.05. So, Bragg would use one dead misdemeanor to trigger a second dead misdemeanor to create a felony on the simple notations used to describe payments for a completely legal nondisclosure agreement.

This circular reasoning is already incredibly creative, but the actual evidence used to propel this ball through the machine is even wackier. Bragg decided to start with a witness to discuss an affair that is not part of the indictment. David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer tabloid, had supposedly been paid to kill a story of a Trump affair with a different woman, Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model.

Pecker proceeded to make the prosecution case even more convoluted. On cross examination, Pecker admitted that Trump told him that he knew nothing about any reimbursement to Cohen for any hush money, that he had killed or raised such stories with Trump for decades before he ever announced for president and that he had also killed stories for other celebrities and politicians, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Rahm Emanuel and Mark Wahlberg.

He also testified that Trump told him that paying hush money never really worked because stories still get out. And he understood that Michael Cohen was working as Trump’s personal counsel, not his campaign counsel. Finally, he testified that Trump had no direct involvement in arranging any payments to McDougal.

Pecker added that Bragg’s star witness, Michael Cohen, commonly exaggerated and often became loud and argumentative. Cohen will effectively ask the jury to send his former client to jail for following his own legal advice.

Bragg will now call to the stand Cohen, whom a judge just recently denounced as a serial perjurer who is continuing to game the system.

Even as legal experts debate what crime can be found in any of these flips and dips, Judge Juan Merchan seems content to listen as this weird machine bleeps and whirls in his courtroom.

That is why Bragg has created the perfect Rube Goldberg attraction. The artist himself explained his unlikely success by saying, “It just happened that the public happened to appreciate the satirical quality of these crazy things.”

In New York, that appreciation has moved from the satirical to the legal.

Jonathan Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School.

Today’s TWO Politically INCORRECT Cartoons by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Criminal Minds

A.F. BRANCO | on April 28, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-criminal-minds/

DFL Senator Nicole Mitchell Arrested for Burglary
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, has yet to appear on the Senate floor since she was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary in northwestern Minnesota earlier this week. But she’s been the center of attention in the little the Senate has accomplished since it returned from a Passover holiday break on Wednesday.

DFL senator accused of burglary: ‘I do not intend to resign’

By Hank Long – April 26, 2024

Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, has yet to appear on the Senate floor since she was arrested and charged with first-degree burglary in northwestern Minnesota earlier this week. But she’s been the center of attention in the little the Senate has accomplished since it returned from a Passover holiday break on Wednesday.

On Thursday afternoon, the first-term legislator — who represents District 47 (which includes most of Woodbury and a portion of southeastern Maplewood) — distributed a statement to media announcing she does not intend to resign from her seat. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Animal Instincts

A.F. BRANCO

 on April 29, 2024 at 5:00 am

New York Justice
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – The New York Kangaroo justice system has become a national joke, demonstrating beyond any doubt they are a Stalinist-style Banana Republic exercising “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime” tactics against Donald Trump.

SAVAGE ANGEL Alina Habba ERUPTS After Corrupt New York Kangaroo Court Denies Trump the Right to Speak and Slaps Him with $83 Million Judgement! WTH? (VIDEO)

By Jim Hoft – Jan 26, 2024

Trump attorney Alina Habba WENT OFF after the crooked New York City court slapped President Trump with an $83 million judgment for speaking out against the disgusting lies of a crazed woman who said he lured her into a Bergdorf Goodman store some 25 or 30 years ago and raped her in a dressing room where they were trying on lingerie. The entire story lacks credulity and is like something from a Law and Order sketch. READ MORE…

DONATE to A.F. Branco Cartoons – Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!

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.

Democrats React to Trump’s New York City Reception


By: Kevin Jackson | April 26, 2024

 Read more at https://theblacksphere.net/2024/04/democrats-react-trumps-reception-new-york-city/

Trump, #TeamKJ, #KevinJackson

For a man who’s supposedly hated in Democrat-controlled cities, Donald Trump made one helluva splash in The Big Apple.

Look at this reception by onlookers as Trump headed to the kangaroo court set up by Alvin Bragg:

This is an impromptu appearance by Trump, and he draws this fawning crowd. Compare this to the pre-fab nonsense of Biden.

Trump gets exponentially more people waving and praising him than Biden can get at his own family reunion.

As one commenter wrote: “Meanwhile Joe Biden is getting his diaper changed.”

Check out this video that blows up the Leftist narrative:

Watch that video multiple times and gauge the crowd. All 360 degrees of video show people in support of Trump. And there may be thousands of Trump worshippers; all people who recognize the political witch hunt Trump faces in Democrats’ election interference efforts. No need for obscure camera angles to hide the crowd, as the press do with Biden.

Speaking of Captain Demento, while speaking in Pennsylvania he recently lamented people with “FJB” signs and children flipping him off:

I congratulate the parents of the 7 or 8-year-old Biden mentioned who flipped him off. Fitting that children recognize scum when they see it, less they turn into Democrats.

Biden is an indecent man at best. However, what’s worse is he pretends to be decent. But Joe Biden fools nobody.

What bothers Democrats and other Leftists is this is happening all over America. To validate what the “81-million-vote-man” lamented, check out this video of Biden heading into the battleground state of Michigan:

We slowed this video down so you could see the more of the signs. Even at regular speed it’s easy to see the throngs of Trump supporters lined up for what appears to be blocks. These people took the time to dress in patriotic anti-Biden gear, carry American flags, and showcase signs to show how much they detest Biden.

Slow-motion shows thousands of people supporting Trump, hating Biden. And this video captures only a fraction of the distance and people. This video lasted a minute, and you saw a fraction of the thousands of Trump supporters.

By contrast, where are the Biden supporters?

Watch ANY video of Biden and the one thing that will be missing is supporters. This slowed down video show no Biden supporters, because Biden is almost universally despised. I’m actually surprised he admitted it in that earlier video.

If Biden were popular, there would be just as many people holding his signs on the other side of the road. But you never hear of clashes between Trump supporters and Biden supporters for one simple reason: there are no  true Biden supporters.

Biden supporters are either Trump haters or virtue-signalers. They only support Biden when they gain something. Privately, only the biggest fool in the country supports this old fool.

Leftists get mad at me for stating this truth. Because the truth hurts, and people hate being caught in their own lies.

Democrats are panicked.

Democrats may pretend to be Tommy Toughass publicly, but in truth he’s scared of his shadow. That’s why he lies about his life, his son’s life, his uncle’s life, and everything else.

Play all the games the Left will, but they are panicked at the visceral reaction against Biden. Everywhere. And the real polls validate what Democrats know: Biden can’t beat Trump.

The strategy of Democrats has been clear since Biden was cheated into office. Tie Trump up in court, and try to bankrupt him. But that’s not working, nor will it.

As I heard the President of the Claremont Institute say, [pp] “Trump is the perfect man for this time.” He went on to say that Trump may not be the best president for all time, but he is undoubted the man for this time.

How anybody could watch Democrats persecute this man and not see what’s happening shows the real nature of Democrats or anti-Trumpers.

Nothing Democrats do will stop Trump’s second term and the resurgence of America. MAGA.

SUMMING OF THE WEEK OF APRIL 26, 2024 OF POLITICALLY INCORRECT CARTOONS AND MEMES


College Activists Postpone Anti-Israel Encampment Because Students Are Too White


BY: TRISTAN JUSTICE | APRIL 26, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/26/college-activists-postpone-anti-israel-encampment-because-students-are-too-white/

anti-Israel college protest at Columbia university

Students at the University of Washington postponed an anti-Israel demonstration planned for Thursday because too many of the students who signed up are white.

According to MyNorthwest, a Washington-based radio station, the University of Washington’s Progressive Student Union (UWPSU) opted to delay an encampment in solidarity with Palestinian terrorists “to make sure this encampment is a better reflection of the UW community, and having even greater unity with Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students.”

“We want to be part of a much larger coalition of groups and make no mistake, WE WILL HAVE A UW ENCAMPMENT! We want to make sure everyone’s voice is included and this action is as safe, secure, and strong as possible,” read a statement from the far-left student union published by MyNorthwest.

The protest at the University of Washington would have placed the school on the map of more than 40 college campuses where pro-Palestine demonstrations have brought havoc to institutions from coast to coast. These anti-Israel encampments have been reported from Harvard and Yale to Stanford and the University of Southern California (USC), driving a nationwide rise in anti-Jewish hate. According to the Associated Press, students taking over college campuses are broadly demanding schools halt business with Israel or any other groups supporting the Israeli effort to eliminate Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East.

Demonstrations spread from Columbia University, where students began to protest last week as school leaders testified about antisemitism on Capitol Hill. The Ivy League school canceled in-person classes Monday and notified students that classes would be hybrid for the rest of the semester due to ongoing demonstrations. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson visited the university this week to shift attention away from his embarrassing failure to secure any new border fortification amid negotiations that ended with sending more money to Ukraine.

At USC, officials announced the university will cancel the school’s primary graduation ceremony after dozens were arrested in protests Thursday. Other universities may follow suit while some, such as the University of Michigan, are tightening restrictions on prohibited items, including flags and banners.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent a letter to college and university presidents earlier this month to “urge you to take clear, decisive action now to ensure that graduation ceremonies, events, and functions run smoothly, and that all students and their families feel safe, welcomed and celebrated.”

“As leaders in the Jewish community, we ask that you take your role seriously in making sure that Jewish students — and all students — are not robbed of a positive, memorable lifecycle event,” said the ADL.

Meanwhile, schools where demonstrations are taking place are facing financial consequences for their failure to crack down on the encampment protests. Billionaire Columbia University alum Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, said he would stop contributing to his alma mater, and Leon Cooperman, another alum, also pledged to continue a halt in donations shortly after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel. According to The New York Post, other billionaire donors are considering a similar pause on university contributions. With high-dollar contributors pulling back from schools, having too few white students involved in pro-terrorist protests should be the least of their worries.


Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.

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JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON Op-ed: Conservatism’s ‘Three-Legged Stool’ Has No Legs Left


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | APRIL 26, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/04/26/conservatisms-three-legged-stool-has-no-legs-left/

Erick Erickson talking into a mic

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Maybe you saw a recent clip-on X from conservative talk radio personality Erick Erickson criticizing what he calls a “weird movement within conservatism” that questions things like “limited government” and “free markets,” principles long associated with the conservative movement.

If you haven’t seen the clip, take a look. It’s like watching someone talk about the state of conservatism halfway through Obama’s first term, when Republican leaders were vowing to repeal Obamacare and inveighing against Democrats for violating the Constitution with a “socialist” health care scheme. (Obamacare was of course never repealed and is now, all these years later, a permanent feature of America’s health care system.)

Erickson’s point, which he also made in a post for National Review, is that the Republican coalition for decades was built on the “three-legged stool” of fiscal conservatism, traditional values, and a peace-through-strength foreign policy. This is what won the Cold War and unleashed prosperity at home. I’m sure you’ve heard the story.

The problem now, he says, is that some people on the right (whom he doesn’t name) are calling into question these orthodoxies, especially free markets and limited government. They aren’t fighting to cut the size of the government but are instead working to gain control of it and wield power to achieve their preferred outcomes.

Erickson thinks this is bad, a betrayal of the old three-legged stool of Reaganite conservatism. After all, he says, if you use government power when your side is in control, the opposing side will use it against you when they’re in control. And we don’t want that, do we?

It’s hard to overstate how out-of-touch this way of thinking is, as if the past 15 years simply never happened, to say nothing of the past 50. 

Consider the three legs of the stool. On fiscal conservatism, we’re swimming in an ocean of debt that grows no matter which party controls Congress, while inflation is killing middle- and working-class families. On traditional values, we legalized gay marriage and then quickly moved on to normalizing transgenderism and acquiescing to so-called “gender-affirming care,” even for minors. On peace-through-strength foreign policy, we lost the War on Terror and are now funding multiple wars all over the world as part of a crumbling global imperium. The stool has no legs left.

As for limited government, we saw how much the GOP cared about the former during Covid, and even recently when it refused to do anything about our intelligence agencies routinely spying on us and censoring disfavored speech online. And free markets, although fine in theory, have in practice served as a permission slip for massive corporations to hollow out America’s industrial base and ship jobs overseas, enriching the upper and managerial classes while everyone else struggles.

In other words, the conservative movement as its currently constituted has stood athwart history yelling stop, and history has ignored it. Conservatism as Erickson understands and articulates it has not only failed to conserve anything, it has also turned out to be a shell game. Republicans would raise money on promises to repeal Obamacare or restrict abortion or secure the border, but never follow through once in power. They would rail against fiscal profligacy but always end up passing massive budgets with no real reforms or cuts. A strong foreign policy now looks more like a corporate welfare program for Pentagon contractors in a world that’s anything but peaceful.

Now, you could look at all this and dismiss it by saying a failure of Republican politicians to stand up for conservative principles doesn’t mean the principles are bad, it just means we have bad politicians. And that’s true up to a point. But such a critique fails to acknowledge two crucial things.

First is the incompatibility of an American global empire with the notion of “limited government.” After the Allied victory in World War II, and especially after the Cold War, America was never going to have a limited government. Or rather, our ability to limit the government was going to be rather limited. We have seen this play out with our intelligence agencies and the vast surveillance apparatus they wield. That apparatus, once used to topple foreign governments by staging coups and manipulating public opinion overseas, is now being used against American citizens (and of course was infamously used against President Trump).

Second is the plain reality that we are in a life-or-death struggle against the left, and the left is playing by a different set of rules. If the right agrees as a matter of principle that it will not wield government power to achieve its preferred outcomes, but the left vows to use the government whenever and however it can, then the left is going to win every time. And that is exactly what has happened.

So what to do about this? Erickson’s admonition amounts to a posture of permanent defeat. If conservatives can’t wield power to bring about their vision of the good, of a rightly ordered public square and a prosperous society, then the leftist radicals will continue to seize power and press forward with their permanent revolution, as they have been for decades.

Instead, we need to recognize that the conservative movement has failed. It is dead; we have seen it die. The fusionism of the Cold War era, when libertarians and social conservatives made common cause against communism, is finished. So too is the GOP establishment whose first priority was always corporate welfare at the expense of everything else.

As I wrote in these pages nearly two years ago, we have to stop thinking of ourselves as conservatives and start thinking of ourselves, and our movement, as restorationist and counterrevolutionary. In a very real sense, we have to re-found our country, and to do that we will have to seize power from the left — and use it.

It’s understandable if that makes some conservatives uneasy. After decades of repeating the phrases “limited government” and “free markets,” it’s a sobering thing to realize they were just empty slogans, at best just means to some other, higher end.

But the situation is what it is. Following Erickson’s advice, eschewing power because of allegiance to a political fantasy, means certain defeat. It means permanent dhimmitude for conservatives in a country run by people who hate them and are determined to destroy them and their way of life. The other option is to fight back, establish a beachhead, and use whatever power we can marshal to push back the left in hopes that future generations of Americans can live in true peace and prosperity. 


John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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