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Government-Backed Censors Who Rigged The 2020 Election Are Now Stealing 2024


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/20/government-backed-censors-who-rigged-the-2020-election-are-now-stealing-2024/

Mike Benz and Tucker Carlson talk censorship in the past and 2024 election

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If you didn’t see Tucker Carlson’s interview last week with Mike Benz, you need to take an hour and watch the whole thing. In a mind-bending narrative about the emergence of what Benz calls “military rule” through an online censorship industry in the U.S., he lays out in startling detail just how corrupt and tyrannical the U.S. defense and foreign policy establishment has become. 

Most importantly, Benz, the executive director of the Foundation For Freedom Online, explains how a constellation of federal agencies and publicly funded institutions, under the pretext of countering “misinformation,” rigged the 2020 election and are right now smothering the First Amendment and rigging the 2024 election through massive state-sponsored censorship online. The 2020 election and the Covid-19 pandemic, says Benz, were the “two most censored events in human history.” And 2024 is shaping up to be the same, thanks to the emergence of a federal censorship-industrial complex.

The problem here is profound, with deep historical roots that go back to the aftermath of World War II and the creation of the CIA along with a host of U.S.-funded international institutions. But for our purposes, it suffices to understand the problem in its two most recent stages: the period from 1991 to 2014, and from 2014 to the present.

At the outset of internet privatization in 1991, free speech online was seen as an instrument of statecraft. At that time, says Benz, internet free speech was championed by the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishments as a way to support dissident groups around the world in their efforts to overthrow authoritarian or disfavored regimes. It allowed the U.S. to conduct what Benz calls “insta-regime change operations,” in service of the State Department’s foreign policy agenda. 

The plan worked really well. Among other things, free speech on the internet allowed U.S.-backed groups to assert control over state-run media in foreign countries, making it much easier to overthrow governments. The high-water mark of this way of deploying free speech online, Benz explains, was the Arab Spring in 2011 and 2012, when governments the Obama administration considered problematic — Egypt, Tunisia, Libya — all began falling in so-called Facebook and Twitter revolutions. During that time, the State Department worked closely with these social media companies to keep them up and running in those countries, to be used as tools for protesters and dissident groups that were trying to circumvent state censorship.  

But all of that changed in 2014 after the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine toppled the government of Viktor Yanukovych and there was an unexpected pro-Russia counter-coup in Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. Later that same year, says Benz, when the people of Crimea voted to be annexed into the Russian Federation, “that was the last straw for the concept of free speech on the internet in the eyes of NATO.”

Thereafter, NATO, the CIA, and the State Department, together with the intelligence agencies of our European allies, did an about-face on internet free speech. They began instead to engage in what amounted to hybrid or information warfare to censor what they saw as Russian propaganda online. These efforts quickly spread beyond Ukraine and Eastern Europe to include the censorship of populist groups on the right that were emerging across the EU as a response to the Syrian migrant crisis.

By the time Brexit emerged in the summer of 2016, explains Benz, NATO and the foreign policy establishment felt there was a real crisis afoot; the problem was spreading west from Central and Eastern Europe, and it had to be stopped. If it wasn’t, then Brexit might trigger the collapse of the entire EU, along with NATO and the entire constellation of supranational institutions that relied on NATO. The entire postwar architecture of institutions might come crashing down, all because the hearts and minds of the people were being swayed. So went the thinking, anyway. As far as the national security establishment was concerned, citizens were being swayed by Russian and far-right propaganda, and we can’t have that.

Under these circumstances, free speech was the last thing that could be allowed to flourish online. Censorship became the order of the day. As Carlson put it, these NATO and EU leaders identified their new enemy as democracy within their own countries — their own voters, in other words: “They feared that their people, the citizens of their own countries, would get their way. And they went to war against that.”

And then Trump was elected. From that moment — and indeed, as we know from the Russia-collusion hoax, even before Trump was elected in November 2016 — the U.S. foreign policy and defense establishments, which had done so much to censor and weaponize the internet overseas, turned their attention to American citizens.

Initially, their predicate for domestic surveillance was Crossfire Hurricane, the fatuous notion that Russia had infiltrated the Trump campaign and that Trump was a Russian asset. Once that collapsed, they needed another excuse to spy on and censor Americans who held disfavored opinions or who spread “misinformation,” to put it in the parlance of the censorship-industrial complex. To do that, they had to get around the prohibition against the CIA operating on American soil.

Since they couldn’t very well get away with openly spying on and censoring American citizens, they decided to house the bulk of their censorship operations inside the Department of Homeland Security, specifically in a part of DHS tasked with reducing and eliminating threats to U.S. critical physical and cyber infrastructure. Hence “domestic misinformation” — which is really just a term for opinions and information that the national security state doesn’t like or that run counter to State Department policy — was classified as an attack on “critical cognitive infrastructure,” and could therefore be censored. What it amounted to was an end-run around the First Amendment.

But even DHS couldn’t do this directly, so it outsourced online censorship operations to third parties like the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP, which consisted of four separate organizations: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and a firm called Graphika. These private-sector “partners” did the nitty-gritty work of mapping out entire online networks of people who helped spread certain disfavored opinions, or what the censors called “false narratives.” Essentially they were deputized to censor Americans on behalf of the government. 

It should come as no surprise that the people behind the EIP censorship network are leftists who hate Donald Trump, despise his supporters, and love censorship. For example, former Facebook executive Alex Stamos is the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory. He has compared “over half of the Republicans in Congress” to ISIS, called for Newsmax and OANN to be kicked off the air, and said, “We have to turn down the capability of these conservative influencers to reach these huge audiences.” His views are typical among the managers of the censorship industry.

These managers and their partners inside the U.S. government went about their task with gusto, including a seven-month pre-censorship campaign ahead of the 2020 election. Any content challenging public faith in mail-in ballots, early voting, and ballot drop boxes was flagged for violating new rules about “delegitimizing elections.” The censors, along with the government, had strong-armed the social media companies into adopting these rules, as documented in great detail last year with the release of the “Twitter Files.” 

Indeed, the “Twitter Files” exposed a massive effort by the federal government to deputize Twitter and other social media companies to do what it could not, at least not legally. But in some ways, the “Twitter Files” just revealed the tip of the censorship iceberg.

We at The Federalist were caught up in all this during the 2020 election. As detailed in a recent lawsuit filed in December by The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas, the State Department illegally used a counterterrorism center intended to fight foreign “disinformation” to censor Americans.

The State Department, through grants and product development assistance to private entities like the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard, was “actively intervening in the news-media market to render disfavored press outlets unprofitable by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press,” according to the lawsuit.

In our case, it meant the federal government was using cutouts like NewsGuard to throttle our reporting and commentary on the 2020 election and its chaotic aftermath. Both the GDI and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) developed censorship tools that included “supposed fact-checking technologies, media literacy tools, media intelligence platforms, social network mapping, and machine learning/artificial intelligence technology,” the lawsuit says. The State Department then gave these tools to companies like Facebook and LinkedIn to target disfavored media outlets, including The Federalist.

Through these and other methods, during the 2020 election cycle and the Covid pandemic, the government-backed censorship-industrial complex throttled millions of online posts, suppressing traffic to news sites, and undermined revenue streams for a host of outlets and influencers with disfavored or dissident views.

But this isn’t a thing of the past. All of the censorship infrastructure described above is still intact, still functioning, and is firing on all cylinders right now ahead of the 2024 election. If anything, the censorship-industrial complex is more robust than it was four years ago. Just last week, Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg boasted on CNBC that he currently has some 40,000 employees, which is nearly 60 percent of Meta’s entire workforce, tasked with censoring speech on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Clegg also claimed Meta has spent about $20 billion, including $5 billion in the last year, on its censorship efforts — or what he euphemistically called “election integrity.”

What does that mean in practice? We don’t have to guess. Remember that Facebook infamously censored the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020 at the behest of the FBI. With 40,000 employees now charged with censoring “hate speech” and ensuring “election integrity,” we can be fairly certain that if another Hunter Biden laptop story comes along this election cycle, it too will be quashed by the censors.

Why exactly is our government doing this? It’s not merely a partisan preference for ensuring Democrats stay in power, but something deeper and more insidious. To circle back to Carlson’s interview with Benz, it’s because the national security state has come to regard “democracy” not as the will of the people expressed through elections, but as the constellation of government agencies, government-backed institutions, corporations, media outlets, and nonprofit groups. Protecting democracy, in this view, means protecting these institutions from the people they were putatively meant to serve.

As Benz says at one point in the interview, “The relationship between the managers of the American empire and the citizens of the American homeland has broken down, and that has played itself out in the story of the censorship industry.”

All of this seems rather complex and dense, at least in the details of how it works. But at root it’s very simple: Those who have power don’t want to be held accountable by the unwashed masses, by “populism,” and certainly not by the results of free and fair elections. They will not tolerate anyone, not even a duly elected president, going against the “interagency consensus” — that famous phrase of Alexander Vindman’s from the first Trump impeachment. They don’t think the people have that right, and they intend to use every tool they have to protect their power and privilege.

The stark truth is that if we don’t defeat and dismantle this censorship-industrial complex, it means the end of our republic and the rise of tyrannical military rule in the United States.

If you think that’s an overstatement, go watch the entire Benz interview and consider it in the context of what we have all seen play out in America over the past half-decade or so. There is no language alarmist enough to convey the gravity of what’s happening here. This is a hybrid war being fought mostly online but with real-world consequences that are every day becoming more obvious. We have to win the war to save our country, but we can’t even fight if we don’t know what’s happening, or how, or why.

About 15 minutes into the interview, I was again reminded of something I once heard the late, great Angelo Codevilla say in a lecture. He said our response to 9/11 was fundamentally flawed because it took a “law enforcement” approach to terrorism that required the creation of a vast state security and surveillance apparatus to detect and stop terrorist attacks. Once the terrorist threat subsided, Codevilla explained, this surveillance apparatus would be turned on the American people and destroy the republic it was supposedly designed to protect.

That lecture was in 2013. Codevilla was right. It’s all happened exactly as he said it would. What happens next is up to us.

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 the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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corruption, Political

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Indiana parents warn nation after child is removed from home for improper pronoun usage: ‘Can happen anywhere’


By Kendall Tietz Fox News | Published February 20, 2024 2:11pm EST

A Catholic couple in Indiana is asking the Supreme Court to hold the state accountable for keeping their child out of their home after they declined to use his chosen name and pronouns. In M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services, Mary and Jeremy Cox are appealing to the Supreme Court after they were investigated by Indiana officials for refusing to refer to their son using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biological sex. 

Becket is pursuing the case on behalf of the Coxes, arguing state courts allowed Indiana to keep the child from living in his parents’ home due to their disagreement with the child’s gender identity because of their religious beliefs. Notably, upon completing the investigation, the state determined the allegations of abuse against Mary and Jeremy were unsubstantiated, but still argued that the disagreement over gender identity was distressing to their child. 

Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, told Fox News Digital that no parent should ever have to endure what Mary and Jeremy have been forced to go through. 

RESEARCHERS ARGUE ‘RAPID ONSET GENDER DYSPHORIA’ DOES EXIST, DESPITE NARRATIVE AGAINST IT

Transgender flag gender affirming care
A transgender flag unfurled on a pole.  (Getty)

“Keeping a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs—even when the state admits there was no abuse or neglect—is wrong and it’s against the law,” she said. “The Court should take this case and make clear that other states can’t take children away because of ideological disagreements.”

In 2019, Mary and Jeremy’s son told them that he identified as a girl, but in line with their Catholic religious beliefs that God created human beings with an immutable sex, male or female, they did not believe in referring to him using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biology. 

ACLU SUES CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL FOR HALTING ADULT TRANSGENDER SURGERIES

In addition, the Coxes believed their son was struggling with underlying mental health conditions, including an eating disorder, so they sought therapeutic care for both.

But, in 2021, Indiana officials began investigating the Coxes after a report found they were not referring to their child by his preferred gender identity, removing the teen from their custody and placing him in a “gender-affirming” home. Despite the unsubstantiated claims of abuse, they claimed the Coxes made the child’s eating disorder worse even though it worsened after he was removed and placed in a transition-affirming home.

The Indiana Department of Child Services declined a Fox News Digital request for comment, saying, “DCS does not comment on ongoing litigation.” 

People protesting
Protesters of Kentucky Senate Bill SB150, known as the Transgender Health Bill, cheer on speakers during a rally on the lawn of the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort, Ky., March 29, 2023.  (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)

“This is what every parent is afraid of,” Mary and Jeremy Cox said in a press release. “We love our son and wanted to care for him, but the state of Indiana robbed us of that opportunity by taking him from our home and banning us from speaking to him about gender.”

“We are hopeful that the Justices will take our case and protect other parents from having to endure the nightmare we did,” they added. 

FLORIDA TRANSGENDER ACTIVISTS STAGE DIE-IN OVER RULE PROHIBITING CHANGED TO GENDER ON DRIVER’S LICENSES

When the case was first heard in trial court, Indiana officials argued the child “should be in a home where she is [ac]cepted for who she is” and restricted the Coxes’ visitation time to a few hours once a week, which barred them from speaking to him about their religious views on human sexuality and gender identity. Even though the court determined the Coxes were fit parents, it upheld the removal of their child which was later upheld by the appeals court. 

“If this can happen in Indiana, it can happen anywhere,” Windhamn said. “Tearing a child away from loving parents because of their religious beliefs, which are shared by millions of Americans, is an outrage to the law, parental rights, and basic human decency. If the Supreme Court doesn’t take this case, how many times will this happen to other families?” 

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Kendall Tietz is a Production Assistant with Fox News Digital. 

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Family, LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

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ORWELLIAN: Transgender Efforts to Silence Biological Truth Reach the State Department


By: Tyler O’Neil / @Tyler2ONeil / February 20, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/20/transgender-language-police-secretary-state-forbids-staff-using-terms-manpower-brave-men-women/

Antony Blinken in a blue suit purses his lips in front of an American flag and a NATO symbol.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken—seen here on the final day of foreign affairs ministers’ meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Nov. 29—reportedly sent a memo urging staff to avoid using terms like “brave men and women” and “manpower.” (Photo: Omar Havana/Getty Images)

Someone needs to tell the Biden administration that George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” isn’t an instruction manual.

The administration, and the Left more broadly, has adopted a form of totalitarian “newspeak” that aims to make criticism of transgender orthodoxy unthinkable by eliminating gendered words from the English language. This echoes the totalitarian government of “Nineteen-Eighty-Four,” which systematically seeks to destroy words in order to render criticism of the government unthinkable.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly sent a memo directing staff at the State Department—the government agency that represents America around the world—to avoid using “problematic” terms that suggest human beings are male and female.

National Review’s Ryan Mills first reported Blinken’s Feb. 5 memo, “Modeling DEIA: Gender Identity Best Practices.” Blinken reportedly claims he sent the memo to “support an inclusive work environment.” The State Department told National Review that it does not comment on leaked documents, which appears to confirm the memo’s legitimacy. DEIA stands for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.

Blinken instructs staff to use “gender-neutral language whenever possible,” warning that making assumptions about a person’s gender “can be problematic” and send a “harmful, exclusionary message.”

He recommends staff avoid terms such as “manpower,” “you guys,” “ladies and gentlemen,” and gender-specific words such as “mother/father,” “son/daughter,” and “husband/wife.” He suggests they use “labor force,” “everyone,” “folks,” “you all,” and terms such as “parent,” “child,” and “spouse” or “partner.”

In a hilarious twist of fate, Blinken’s memo urges staff to “avoid using phrases like ‘brave men and women on the front lines,’” in favor of “more specific language such as ‘brave first responders,’ ‘brave soldiers,’ or ‘brave DS agents.’” DS stands for diplomatic security.

Blinken appears not to have gotten the memo. On Nov. 11, just three months before sending the memo, he celebrated Veterans Day, posting on X, “we stand united in honoring the brave men and women who served our country.” How “problematic.”

Blinken’s slip-up illustrates the absurdity of attempting to root out biological truth from the English language. Human beings are male and female, and human reproduction requires male and female gametes. A small minority of people have disorders of sexual development, but these people do not represent a “third sex.” Most languages have three “genders”—male, female, and neuter, generally using the latter for inanimate objects. As the word itself implies, “neuter” represents the absence or removal of sex or gender, not a novel gender or sex.

Advocates of gender ideology aim to erase these biological facts from existence, acting as though banning the use of gendered terms will somehow magically change the way the world works. Ironically, they often do so in the name of “inclusivity,” even though telling people that they can’t tell the truth excludes all but the most ideologically pure acolytes.

The fact that Blinken himself used the forbidden term “brave men and women” underscores the ultimate futility of this brazen act of censorship. Blinken may instruct staff to use pronouns like “they/them” and “ze/zir,” but he knows that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. If he truly believes the nonsense he spouted in this memo, he’ll have to watch his own language 24/7 to make sure he doesn’t slip up and mistakenly refer to his child-assigned-female-at-birth as his “daughter.”

The language police in Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” demonstrate the potential abuses of unchecked government power, but they also show the ultimate futility of attempting to silence all dissent from government propaganda. The government succeeds in silencing the main character, the dissenter Winston Smith, yet the cost of doing so—an invasive surveillance apparatus and a Ministry of Truth dedicated to erasing all evidence contrary to the government’s version of the past—illustrates how difficult it is to silence the truth.

The transgender movement’s attempts to silence dissent by rendering basic biology unthinkable are dangerous but ultimately doomed to failure—not because they are “too inclusive,” but because they exclude the one thing that ultimately matters: the truth.

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LGBTQ+ AND TRANSGENDER, Political

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‘Outrage’ That Once Fueled Democrat Voters Is Slowly Fading as Another Trump Election Looms


By: Jason Cohen / February 20, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/20/outrage-that-once-fueled-democrat-voters-is-slowly-fading-as-another-trump-election-looms/

Bill Wood demonstrates with an anti-Trump sign near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Liberal voters are expressing a sense of fatigue in their ongoing resistance against former President Donald Trump as the 2024 election approaches, The New York Times reported on Monday. Fury propelled voters to cast ballots against Trump in the 2020 presidential election and Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, according to Democrats the Times spoke to. However, this fervor has diminished since then as the effort required to maintain it has been draining to these voters.

dailycallerlogo“Some folks are burned out on outrage,” Rebecca Lee Funk, founder of the Outrage, a progressive activism organization, told the Times. “People are tired. I think last election we were desperate to get Trump out of office, and folks were willing to rally around that singular call to action. And this election feels different.”

President Joe Biden is attempting to rally the anti-Trump vote by portraying the former president as an existential threat to democracy but the message is struggling to fuel Democrats thus far, according to the Times.

Trump was ahead of Biden by 4.3 points in the RealClearPolitics average in late January, which is his largest lead this cycle against the president. He never led Biden in the RealClearPolitics average during the 2020 election.

“Exhaustion is underlying the entire attitude toward our presidential election,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres told the Times. “When you’ve got two people that are opposed by 70 percent of Americans who want a different choice, it creates frustration, anxiety, and discouragement.”

Americans across party lines are concerned about Biden’s age and some Democrats are failing to maintain their outrage against Trump as the sentiment has dragged on for the better part of a decade at this point, according to the Times.

Among American adults, 86% believe Biden is “too old” ahead of the 2024 election, compared to 62% who said the same of Trump, an ABC News/Ipsos survey recently found.

“We’re kind of, like, crises-ed out,” Pittsburgh security guard and Democrat Shannon Caseber told the Times. She described the likely Trump-Biden rematch as a “dumpster fire,” adding, “It’s crisis fatigue, for sure.”

“Any sense of urgency that we had with the 2020 election—I think it’s still there in the sense that no one wants Trump to be president, at least for Democrats, but it’s exhausting,” she told the Times.

Nearly 40% of Democrats selected “exhaustion” as their sentiment about the 2024 election compared to 26% of Republicans, according to a September Yahoo News/YouGov poll.

During Biden’s presidency, there has been an ongoing border crisis, war between Ukraine and Russia, and war between Israel and terrorist group Hamas.

“We’ve dealt with so many emergencies these past few years: national emergencies, perceived emergencies, real emergencies—it’s just kind of like, that is not really a strong motivator for me anymore,” anti-Trump Los Angeles voter Mr. Dower told the Times. “A lot of us would like a more positive thing to motivate us … Not just purely, ‘Do this or else this bad thing is going to happen.’”

Over 85% of Republicans and conservatives said they were “extremely/very motivated” to vote in the 2024 election compared to 74% of Democrats and liberals, according to a recent CNN poll.

The Outrage did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Climate Conundrum of Project Tundra: More Emissions Than Solutions


By: Jonas Bubach / Miles Pollard / February 20, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/20/the-climate-conundrum-of-project-tundra-more-emissions-than-solutions/

A project in North Dakota wins a $350 million Energy Department grant despite emitting three times more carbon dioxide than it captures and stores. Pictured: President Joe Biden talks about “investments” in green energy while flanked by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Oct. 19, 2022, at the White House. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

A “green energy” project in rural North Dakota is yet another such initiative that misses the mark.

Despite the Energy Department’s admission that the Tundra Project would emit three times more carbon dioxide than it captures, a department grant worth up to $350 million is going to this proposed carbon capture and storage endeavor. The venture is backed by two American companies, Minnkota and Kiewit, as well as Canada’s TC Energy and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

But Project Tundra, planned for North Dakota’s Oliver County, presents a climate problem of its own. The project could emit more greenhouse gases than it stores because of the energy it takes to transport the carbon dioxide.

“There is an expected 3.23 kg of CO2 emitted per kg of CO2 stored,” the Energy Department’s environmental assessment of the project states.

Under Project Tundra, a lignite coal station would be modified to fulfill unachievable mandates for net-zero carbon emissions. The process would employ “point source carbon capture,” in which carbon emissions are captured immediately after production.

Once the coal is used to produce energy, Project Tundra would employ the Fluor Corp.’s Econamine PG Plus system, which captures CO2 and sulfur hexafluoride using a fluoride-amine solvent, reheats the solvent, isolates the captured gases, and pumps the gases for storage one mile below ground.

However, according to the Institute for Energy Economic and Financial Analysis, Fluor’s system was tested on a slipstream 10 times smaller than the retrofitted North Dakotan plant. Upscaling the technology often leads to unanticipated problems, as previous tests of such facilities have shown.

Project Tundra would emit more greenhouse gases than it saves, but some carbon capture and storage facilities both have reduced emissions and provided marginal economic benefits.

For example, Petra Nova in Texas received $190 million in Energy Department grants to reinject captured carbon into oil reserves to store the gases and flush out the hydrocarbons. From 2017 to 2020, Petra Nova exchanged 3.9 million short tons of captured CO2 with 4.2 million barrels of oil while reducing total emissions by 33%.

Although carbon capture and storage facilities such as Petra Nova provide some natural resources to offset the retrofitting cost, Project Tundra would rely solely on government grants and federal “45Q” tax credits, which provide $85 per ton of CO2 permanently stored underground.

The initial estimated cost in 2022 of $1 billion for Project Tundra has risen to $1.9 billion. Despite the increased cost, it received authorization for a $150 million loan from the North Dakota Industrial Commission last July through the state’s Clean Sustainable Energy Authority. In December, Project Tundra secured the additional $350 million from the Energy Department.

Even with the infusion of more taxpayer funds, there is substantial worry that Minnkota customers also would have to finance this new carbon capture and storage facility. In some states, climate initiatives force citizens to pay almost 20% more for green energy projects at a time of unprecedented inflation.

Despite these increased costs, Project Tundra’s carbon capture goals actually have decreased. Originally, it was supposed to reduce carbon emissions by 95%. Today, the goals have decreased to a 74% reduction, a drop of 21 percentage points before construction of the facility has begun.

This decline relates to a troubling trend that appears when examining major carbon capture and storage projects. According to the National Energy Technology Library, 175 such CCS facilities are planned or operational in the U.S.

Among 13 flagship CCS facilities capturing roughly 55% of total carbon captured worldwide, only a few have been sustainable even with carbon taxes or subsidies. Others either failed or are performing 20% to 50% below original target rates due to unscalable capture technology.

These same technological hurdles contribute to lower carbon capture goals for North Dakota’s Project Tundra, which looks to be yet another underperforming carbon capture and storage venture.

Yet, the federal government continues to throw taxpayer dollars at failed climate initiatives while simultaneously attacking sound energy projects.

Investors in Project Tundra will decide whether to move forward a little later in the year. Foreign and domestic firms are certainly free to invest in Project Tundra and other such pilot technology.

However, distributing more than half a billion in taxpayer dollars to a carbon capture and storage venture that emits three times the amount of carbon it sequesters is completely unwarranted anytime—especially when Americans are suffering through a period of unprecedented inflation caused by government spending.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Wedge Issue

A.F. BRANCO | on February 20, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-wedge-issue/

MAGA vs Globalism
A Political Caroon by A.F. Branco 2024

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The reason they, the Washington D.C. elite Uni-Party, hate Trump and will do whatever it takes to stop him and MAGA, is because he stands in the way of their communist-globalist agenda, which is ultimately more power and money for them and less money and power for We The People. Endless wars, open borders, mass censorship,  the climate change hoax, anti-2nd Amendment laws, and digital currency are all designed to limit our individual freedoms and expand their power and control over us.

“The War Room Is Not Here to Unite the Country; The WarRoom Is Here to Fight Your Cultural Marxism, Your Globalism” – Steve Bannon Responds to Biden (VIDEO)

By Joe Hoft Jan. 20, 2022 6:00 pm

Steve Bannon shared a video of Joe Biden claiming to want to bring the country together yesterday.  This is something impossible for Biden to do.  You cannot steal an election and then call for peace.  The only possible way would be to resign, admit you stole the election, and ask for forgiveness, which is something the Democrats will never do. Bannon responded to Biden with this: 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.

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30 Questions Likely To Stump The ‘Sharp’ And ‘Vigorous’ Joe Biden


BY: SHAWN FLEETWOOD | FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/19/30-questions-likely-to-stump-the-sharp-and-vigorous-joe-biden/

Biden sits down for 60 minutes interview

Joe Biden has the greatest mental acuity of any president in the history of the United States — at least that’s what the White House wants you to believe. Throughout the past week, regime-approved media and administration officials have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to gaslight Americans into believing Biden is as “sharp” and “vigorous” as he’s ever been, despite incident after incident showing he’s in mental decline. These laughable claims come in response to the release of the Hur report, which found that Biden mishandled classified documents but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter” because the president “would likely present himself to the jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” federal prosecutors claimed.

[READ: 4 Lies Joe Biden Spouted Off In Angry Special Counsel Press Conference]

Despite the White House’s attempted spin, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes and ears that Biden’s mental faculties are rapidly waning. Recent polling has shown the vast majority of Americans (76 percent) have “major or moderate concerns” about the president’s overall physical and mental fitness.

While corporate media will never admit it, Biden can barely answer basic questions, let alone complete a sentence. So, to bring a little humor to your day, The Federalist has compiled a list of 30 questions likely to stump America’s befuddled commander-in-chief.

1. What day is it today?

2. What are the names of your grandchildren? (And how many do you have…?)

3. When is your birthday?

4. What is a woman?

5. Who’s the president of France?

6. What year is it?

7. When were you first elected to the Senate?

8. What are the main ingredients in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

9. What is aluminum foil made out of?

10. How many fingers are on your left hand?

11. What year did you fight Corn Pop?

12. What color is the White House?

13. What is the shape of the Oval Office?

14. What NFL team just won the Super Bowl?

15. What’s the opposite of up?

16. What numbered day in July does the Fourth of July fall on?

17. What’s the name of your vice president?

18. Why do Christians celebrate Easter?

19. Where do babies come from?

20. What does 5+5 equal?

21. What state were you born in?

22. What’s the difference between “effect” and “affect”?

23. Where does Santa Claus live?

24. How many hours are in a day?

25. Are you wearing an adult diaper right now?

26. How many inches are in a foot?

27. How do you pronounce your press secretary‘s last name?

28. How many sides does a pentagon have?

29. How do you spell “Mississippi”?

30. What continent is South Africa on?

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

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Devil In Disguise

A.F. BRANCO | on February 18, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-devil-in-desguise/

Equal Rights Amendment – Cartoon
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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ERA would create a ‘blank check’ to discriminate against people of faith, expert warns.

ERA would create ‘blank check’ to discriminate against people of faith, expert warns. The proposed amendment does not include any protections against religious discrimination.

By  Luke Sprinkel February 16, 2024

The Minnesota Queer Caucus held a press conference Thursday to reaffirm their support for the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” (ERA). Attempting to enshrine abortion and gender identity into Minnesota’s constitution, the ERA is a major priority for the Democratic majorities in Minnesota’s state legislature.

“We are going to pass the most inclusive, comprehensive ERA off the floor that we can this year,” said Rep. Leigh Finke, a transgender legislator and chair of the Queer Caucus. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – While America Burns

A.F. BRANCO | on February 19, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-while-america-burns/

Border vs Ukraine Ergency
A Political Cartoon by A.F Branco 2024

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Washington D.C. seems to be more concerned with Ukraine’s borders than the millions invading their own U.S. borders from countries around the world with military-age men, crime, Fentanyl killing our kids, human trafficking, and Terrorism threats. Nor are they troubled by the $33 trillion debt that has grown out of control.

Biden Border Crisis: Military-Age Syrian Men Illegally Cross Into San Diego (VIDEO)

By David GreysonFeb. 18, 2024

Three Syrian men were encountered by Griff Jenkins of Fox News at the southern border. The invasion of illegals has spiked in Jacumba (east San Diego County) since Texas has locked up the border.

“Where are you from?” Griff Jenkins asked. “From Syria,” the illegal said. Syria is a country known for its ties to terrorism yet military-age men from this region are pouring over the border on Joe Biden’s open border invitation. San Diego County has seen an increase of illegals coming through the southern border. TGP previously reported that in one week’s time illegals from 73 different countries were reported in San Diego. 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.

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Education, Political, Religion

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MUST SEE AND SHARE


February 17, 2024

This is a video of the professor who wrote the report about bias in Police Shootings, that I published yesterday (https://whatdidyousay.org/2024/02/16/harvard-professor-says-all-hell-broke-loose-when-his-study-found-no-racial-bias-in-police-shootings/). You need to hear him. You need to share this.

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SUMMING UP THE WEEK OF POLITICALLY INCORRECT CARTOONS


February 17, 2024

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What do secular critics of ‘Christian Nationalism’ really want?


By William Wolfe, Op-ed contributor Friday, February 16, 2024

Read more at https://www.christianpost.com/voices/what-do-secular-critics-of-christian-nationalism-really-want.html/

A Christian flag flies below the flag of the United States. | (Photo: Pixabay / SESpider)

Apparently, any Christian who wants to see just laws grounded in biblical principles and Christian morality enacted in America these days is now a scary “Christian nationalist,” according to secularists.

As Dr. Mark David Hall explained in his white paper on Christian Nationalism for the Freedom Center’s Theology of Politics series, “Christian nationalism is an amorphous concept that is primarily used to tar Christians who are motivated by their faith to advocate for policies that critics don’t like.”

Now, many politically engaged conservative Christians either don’t like — or outright reject — the label of “Christian nationalism.” Many argue that it’s unhelpful, too vague, too provocative, ill-defined, etc. That’s a debate for another day, and there are reasonable arguments on both sides.

But what I think all Christians need to understand is that what the secular opponents of Christian nationalism mean when they use that phrase is just “conservative Christians who vote their values.” One of the main ways they hide this, and simultaneously try to shame and silence conservative Christians, is by accusing them of “lusting for power.”

In this article, I am going to show you, from the primary sources, how these radical secularists do this and then provide a biblical critique of their rhetorical trick.

Because what these activists masquerading as “scholars” want is nothing less than to silence politically engaged conservative Christians. We can’t let that happen. Because what America needs now, more than ever, is even more Christians voting their values and bringing their faith into the public square. That’s not a quest for power, it’s just biblical faithfulness.

Power politics

So, what exactly is this form of “Christian nationalism” that threatens to “destabilize democracy” in the United States? In Taking America Back for God, sociologists Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead define Christian nationalism as a “cultural framework — a collection of myths, traditions, symbols, narratives, and value systems — that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity with American civic life.” Their 2020 book sought to expose the “underlying causes and social consequences” of Christian Nationalism by “systemically and empirically [examining] Christian nationalism and its influence in American social, cultural, and political life.”

The empirical basis for their data was built on a six-question survey that asked respondents to weigh in on statements ranging from “the federal government should declare the United States a Christian nation” to “the federal government should enforce strict separation of church and state” to “the success of the United States is part of God’s plan.” Depending on how strongly a respondent agreed or disagreed with the statements, Perry and Whitehead would categorize them as either “Rejectors, Resisters, Accommodators, or Ambassadors” of Christian nationalism.

Interestingly, Perry and Whitehead separate what they understand as Christian nationalism from American “civil religion.” While they appear generally favorable towards civil religion, which they call “America’s dominant self-understanding and ethical lodestar,” they argue that the Christian nationalism they expose — and is dominant in our society — “includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.”

And here is where their book, despite any useful data it may contain, begins to go astray. Bundled into their working definition of “Christian nationalism” are foundational and incontrovertible expressions of biblical Christian ethics, such as opposition to abortion and homosexual marriage. Furthermore, front-loaded into the book’s first main argument, “that understanding Christian nationalism and its consequences is essential for understanding much of the polarization in American popular discourse,” is the blatantly political assumption that desiring an enforced physical barrier along the United States southern border is proof-positive of “xenophobia.”

They ask, ‘Why do so many Americans advocate so vehemently for xenophobic policies, such as a border wall with Mexico?” The answer, according to Perry and Whitehead? Christian nationalism.

This is hardly an empirical statement of fact; rather, it is an explicitly political opinion. So we see that, even in the earliest pages of their work, they begin to allow “apparent personal biases [to] color their assessment of what constitutes Christian nationalism,” in the words of Dr. Andrew Walker, professor of ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as quoted in a book review in the Oxford Academic Journal of Church & State.

These biases work their way out onto full display in their chapter “Power.” They argue that “Americans who adhere most strongly to Christian nationalist ideals have political interests primarily in mind. Religious interests rank second if they rank at all.”

But what are the indicators of political interest superseding religious motivations? It’s support for Donald Trump, a desire for a pro-American immigration policy that properly vets refugees, opposition to abortion, and support for the Second Amendment, and so forth. Ultimately, they dismiss any rational biblical basis for these positions and conclude that “Christian nationalism is all about power.”

Similar allegations abound in Katherine Stewart’s book The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. Stewart argues that:

“For too long now America’s Christian nationalist movement has been misunderstood and underestimated. Most Americans continue to see it as a cultural movement centered on a set of social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, preoccupied with symbolic conflicts over monuments and prayers. But the religious right has become more focused and powerful even as it is arguably less representative. It is not a social or cultural movement. It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power.”

Here again is that word: power. As she examines the rise of the Moral Majority and their opposition to abortion, support for traditional (biblical) gender roles, etc., it is all viewed through the lens of power. In an interesting admission of disinterest at best and ignorance at worst, Stewart acknowledges that she will “leave it for theologians to decide whether their views are consistent with Christian teachings.”

One would think that the question of whether or not widely held Christian positions on relevant political issues are theologically informed, or even constrained, by Christian theology would be of primary interest to a chronicler of Christian nationalism. Because if so, then said positions are a matter of faithful discipleship, not power politics. But Stewart shows no interest in answering this question.

When describing a visit to a local Baptist church in Unionville, North Carolina, Stewart recounts that a local pastor running for political office gave a speech in which he argued that “God’s straightforward message for women is that they should ‘submit’ to their husbands” and “oppose abortion.” In the next paragraph she notes that “these views may seem far from mainstream … Yet [his] outlook is far from the fringe within Christian nationalist circles.”

This same message — equating pro-life positions, opposition to homosexual marriage, and support for biblical views on gender roles and marriage with a dangerous and destructive Christian nationalism — runs through the entirety of Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s recent critique of white evangelicalism and “militant masculinity.” In the book, Du Mez argues that “Christian nationalism … is linked to opposition to gay rights and gun control … and traditionalist gender ideology.”

Critiquing Billy Graham’s message that “the stability of the home was key to both morality and security,” Du Mez casts Graham’s teaching as a “patriarchal interpretation” that “reflected the more reactionary tendencies of early-20th-century fundamentalism.” But Graham took it one step further, Du Mez argues, claiming that he “added a new twist … by wedding patriarchal gender roles to a rising Christian nationalism.”

Apparently, from Billy Graham to your faithful Baptist grandfather, the overriding feature of politically active evangelicalism is a thirst for power made manifest in “Christian nationalism” as a means to achieve certain desired political and cultural dominance.

A biblical critique

What Perry and Whitehead, Stewart, and Du Mez — and all those who echo their characterizations and critiques of what they define as Christian nationalism — fail to address is the stubborn fact that the Bible either explicitly constrains Christians to adopt, or provides more than reasonable support for, the political positions they see as being weaponized for the sake of maintaining power.

In Walker’s review of Taking America Back for God, he provides a critique that applies to all three of the books considered here:

“Their arguments about abortion, same-sex marriage, gender complementarity, and a host of other issues in Christian ethics that they deem elements of Christian nationalism belie the fact that Christians who are pro-life, for example, are not so out of reasons of Christian nationalism but for reasons of creedal orthodoxy.”

Over and against Perry, Whitehead, Du Mez, Stewart, and company, I want to underscore that Christians must unapologetically and wholeheartedly love and embrace God’s created order, vision, and commands for human flourishing — and work to manifest that vision, as faithfully as they can, in their national environment.

This means Christians must embrace a pro-life political posture as an unavoidable outworking of Exodus 20:7, Leviticus 18:2, Leviticus 20:1-5, and Psalm 139:13-16.

Christians must also acknowledge God-given binary gender reality and embrace complementarian gender roles because of the clear teachings of Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 2:21-25, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, Ephesians 5:22-33, and 1 Timothy 2:12.

Christians must oppose homosexuality and transgenderism as sin because we are constrained by Genesis 1:26-27, Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:24-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Because each of these issues touches on the sacred nature of the Imago Dei and the marriage of our spiritual and physical realities, I argue that to subvert the priority of these concerns to lesser political interests, whether economic, environmental, or even related to the tone and tenor of the political candidate at hand, is to fail to exercise moral judgments in the political realm as guided by Scripture.

Conclusion

Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the “Christian nationalism” that contemporary secular critics deride — that is, Christians who advocate for laws that protect life, honor marriage, and acknowledge biological reality both through the national culture and the laws of the land — is nothing more than faithful Christians seeking to steward their God-given political talents in America in such a way as to love God and their neighbor.

As Jason Mattera wrote in his excellent article for the Standing for Freedom Center, “The Canard of Christian Nationalism”:

“Those throwing the biggest temper tantrums regarding Christian nationalism are doing so because they despise any push by Christians to ‘reproduce’ other biblically grounded Christians in the areas of law, politics, and culture.

The real target isn’t Christian Nationalism, whatever that is. Or even ‘people of faith’ in politics.
The real target is conservative Christians in politics.”

You don’t have to adopt, or even like, the term “Christian nationalism” to be able to see that this is what’s really going on.

These secular scholars aren’t trying to silence “Christian nationalists” — they are trying to silence you, the average conservative Christian who reads and believes your Bible and then votes accordingly.

Don’t let them. Fight for the unborn. Fight for marriage. Fight for just laws grounded in Christian morality. And fight for your freedom to live out the one true Christian faith in the public square. Do that — and then don’t care what they call you.

Originally published at the Standing for Freedom Center. 

William Wolfe is a visiting fellow with the Center for Renewing America. He served as a senior official in the Trump administration, both as a deputy assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon and a director of legislative affairs at the State Department. Prior to his service in the administration, Wolfe worked for Heritage Action for America, and as a congressional staffer for three different members of Congress, including the former Rep. Dave Brat. He has a B.A. in history from Covenant College, and is finishing his Masters of Divinity at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Follow William on Twitter at @William_E_Wolfe

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Your Government Needs You Angry At Foreign Tyrants So You Won’t Notice The Ones Ruling You


BY: SEAN DAVIS | FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/16/your-government-needs-you-angry-at-foreign-tyrants-so-you-wont-notice-the-ones-ruling-you/

Biden gives a speech in front of red backlighting

In response to reports that Putin critic Alexei Navalny has died in a Russian prison, your rulers in Washington want you to be angry.

  • Your corrupt government, which is at this very moment working to put your Christian neighbors in prison for protesting abortion, wants you to be very angry at a foreign leader nearly 6,000 miles away so you won’t pay attention to what your leaders are doing to you in your own backyard.
  • Your government, which wants to disarm you and prevent you from defending yourself, wants you angry at a leader who has no power over you whatsoever. The government that censors you and lies to you about viruses it helped create wants your focus elsewhere. The government that sold your economy off to China and then destroyed the value of your currency wants you mad at someone else.
  • The government that banned you from going to church and then tried to fire you for not taking its worthless “vaccine” wants to whip you into a frenzy over literally anything else other than what it’s doing to you right now.
  • The government that opened your borders to invasion and looked the other way as violent crime enveloped your cities wants you to believe that crime on another continent is the only crime you should care about. And that the borders of a country half a world away are the only borders worth protecting.
  • America’s government would never treat its citizens like foreign tyrants do, you’re supposed to keep comfortably believing. It would never imprison an individual whose life and knowledge suddenly became a huge liability to the regime. And it would definitely never kill him in prison, wipe the video cameras that recorded his death, then claim he committed suicide.
  • And the American government would certainly never try to ban its chief political opponent from the ballot, try to bankrupt him with frivolous lawsuits, or attempt to imprison him to prevent him from winning an election. The American government would never tap attorneys appointed by the president’s hand-picked lawyers to absolve the president of a whole host of crimes committed by the president and his family.
  • On top of that, the American government would never imprison thousands of political dissidents for protesting against the regime’s history of rigging elections or refer to them as a bunch of filthy kulak wrecker insurrectionists. And you better believe the American government would never ally with corrupt oligarchs who owe their fortunes to monopolies protected by the government to censor the government’s political opponents to prevent them from talking about the corruption of the family running the government.

They’re manipulating you, gaslighting you, and trying to emotionally blackmail you into going along with their nonsense because those things are only supposed to happen in other countries. Stop letting them get away with it.

Sean Davis is CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. He previously worked as an economic policy adviser to Gov. Rick Perry, as CFO of Daily Caller, and as chief investigator for Sen. Tom Coburn. He was named by The Hill as one of the top congressional staffers under the age of 35 for his role in spearheading the enactment of the law that created USASpending.gov. Sean received a BBA in finance from Texas Tech University and an MBA in finance and entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School. He can be reached via e-mail at sean@thefederalist.com.

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Special Counsel Indictment Looks Just As Bad For David Weiss As The Charged FBI Informant


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/16/special-counsel-indictment-looks-just-as-bad-for-david-weiss-as-the-charged-fbi-informant/

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On Thursday, Special Counsel David Weiss unsealed an indictment charging a longtime confidential human source (CHS) with making false statements. But it wasn’t Christopher Steele, the CHS who threw the country into turmoil for four years by peddling the fraudulent Steele dossier. Former CHS Stefan Halper, who helped further the Russia-collusion hoax, also wasn’t the subject of the indictment. Nor was CHS Rodney Joffe, who sought to destroy the Trump presidency with the Alfa Bank hoax.

No, it was the CHS who, on June 26, 2020, told his handler that the owner of Burisma claimed he had paid Hunter and Joe Biden each $5 million in bribes in exchange for protection from being investigated by the Ukrainian prosecutor.

Thursday’s indictment revealed the name of that CHS for the first time — Alexander Smirnov — and alleged that Smirnov’s aforementioned statements, which were memorialized in an FD-1023 report, were false. 

False Statements Allegations

Since news first broke of the existence of that FD-1023 last summer, House Republicans championed the CHS’s reporting as further evidence of Biden family corruption, while Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley focused on the Department of Justice’s apparent failure to investigate the veracity of the FD-1023 as part of their probe into Hunter Biden’s business affairs.

Weiss’s indictment presents a powerful case that Smirnov lied on June 26, 2020, when the CHS told his handler he’d had conversations with Burisma executives in 2015 and 2016: An investigation by Weiss’s team concluded Smirnov did not meet the Burisma executives until March 1, 2017, meaning the earlier conversations could not have occurred. The indictment references introductory emails that established the alleged accurate timing of events, as well as travel records of other individuals, which contradict Smirnov’s claims. That evidence, the special counsel’s office concluded, was sufficient to charge Smirnov with making false statements and creating a false record.

If Smirnov lied to his handler in June 2020 about his conversations with Burisma executives, the indictment is well deserved. Not only did Smirnov’s alleged lies violate the federal criminal statute that prohibits false statements, but they also proved especially damaging to society as a whole by interfering in the House’s impeachment inquiry. 

The harm here is not merely that investigators wasted time chasing apparently false leads, or that Hunter and Joe Biden suffered from Smirnov’s allegedly false accusations, but also that Smirnov’s lies may overshadow the other unrelated — and substantial — evidence implicating the Bidens in a pay-to-play scandal, rendering it more difficult to obtain justice.

What About Other CHS Lies?

Smirnov, however, is but one CHS whose alleged lies have created havoc for our country. 

Consider the lies peddled in the Steele dossier to our FBI. CHS Christopher Steele represented his sourcing as trusted, reliable, and well-placed when it was none of those things. That dossier led to the DOJ obtaining four unconstitutional surveillance warrants against an innocent American, resulted in our government spending millions investigating a hoax, and impaired the functioning of the Trump administration. Yet even after Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham referred the matter to the Department of Justice for a criminal investigation, Steele reaped no consequences for the lies he sowed. 

Then there was CHS Stefan Halper who, according to an electronic communication, told the FBI the Russian-born Svetlana Lokhova had “latched” onto Michael Flynn at a Cambridge academic gathering and then, after the dinner, “surprised everyone and got into [Flynn’s] cab and joined [Flynn] on the train ride to London.” Halper, however, never attended the dinner, so he could not have witnessed any of the happenings, and the supposed cab ride was completely fictional. 

The FBI’s summary of his debriefing also memorialized Halper claiming Trump volunteer Carter Page asked Halper during a July 18, 2016, meeting whether he “would want to join the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser.” In an exclusive interview with The Federalist in 2020, however, Page, “unequivocally denied asking Halper ‘to be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign.’” 

Add to those two sources Rodney Joffe, the CHS who helped concoct the Alfa Bank hoax. That fairytale went that the Trump organization had a secret communication channel with Putin operating through the Russian-based Alfa Bank. Joffe peddled that tale to the FBI and, with the help of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, pushed the CIA to investigate this second Russia hoax just as the Trump presidency was beginning. 

As I wrote in 2022: “Justice Won’t Be Served In SpyGate Without John Durham Investigating More Confidential Human Sources.” But alas, Durham’s investigation ended without any reckoning for Steele, Halper, or Joffe. 

Weiss Must Go

While the double standard is infuriating, assuming the allegations against Smirnov are true, charges are eminently justified. Also justified? Impeaching David Weiss.

Thursday’s indictment established that no one in U.S. Attorney Weiss’s office investigated Smirnov’s serious claims against Hunter and Joe Biden until after Grassley released a copy of the FD-1023 on July 20, 2023. It would be over a month later before FBI investigators would speak with Smirnov’s handler about the FD-1023. And, according to the indictment, it was not until Sept. 27, 2023, that the FBI interviewed Smirnov. That timeline confirms the incompetence of Weiss in handling the investigation into Hunter Biden because in October 2020, Weiss’s Delaware office received “a substantive briefing” concerning the FD-1023 from the Pittsburgh U.S. attorney’s office. 

In the run-up to the 2020 election, then-Attorney General William Barr tasked then-Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney Scott Brady with screening evidence related to Ukraine. Last year, Brady testified before the House Judiciary Committee about that screening process, including how his team handled the FD-1023.

Brady explained the Pittsburgh FBI office sought to corroborate anything they could from the FD-1023, but he noted that his office lacked the authority to use a grand jury for the screening process. Brady’s team nonetheless succeeded in obtaining travel records of the CHS and “interfaced with the CHS’s handler about certain statements relating to travel and meetings to see if they were consistent with his or her understanding.” 

What they were able to identify, Brady testified, was consistent with the CHS’s representations in the FD-1023. Additionally, the CHS was a longtime source for the FBI and considered “highly reliable” — something the indictment confirms given his length of service and the government authorizing Smirnov to commit crimes while operating as a CHS. 

Brady further testified that his office had vetted the FD-1023 and the CHS “against known sources of Russian disinformation.” To conduct that analysis, his team worked with the Eastern District of New York. “It was found that it was not sourced from Russian disinformation,” Brady told the House Judiciary Committee.

Then when his team finished screening the FD-1023 and other evidence related to Ukraine, a Pittsburgh assistant U.S. attorney briefed Weiss’s office on the evidence, explaining how they had screened it, and noting they concluded it had “some indicia of credibility” and should be investigated further.

Thursday’s indictment of Smirnov suggests the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office sat on the FD-1023 for nearly three years, until after Grassley released a copy to the public. Instead, Weiss’s office offered Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea agreement, which fell apart only because the federal judge assigned to the case inquired into the strange arrangement that appeared to give Hunter Biden blanket immunity in a pretrial diversion agreement — something she had never seen before.

Special Counsel Weiss clearly knows how bad this looks because, in the indictment, he tried to spin the assessment into the FD-1023 as being closed out by the Pittsburgh FBI office, implying that is why his office did not conduct any further investigative steps. 

“By August 2020, FBI Pittsburgh concluded that all reasonable steps had been completed regarding the Defendant’s allegations and that their assessment, 58A-PG-3250958, should be closed,” Weiss wrote. “On August 12, 2020, FBI Pittsburgh was informed that the then-FBI Deputy Director and then-Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States concurred that it should be closed.”

However, as former Attorney General Barr has made clear numerous times, the Pittsburgh office was merely charged with screening the evidence, and the investigation into the FD-1023 “wasn’t closed down.”

“On the contrary,” Barr stressed, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

No further investigation occurred, however. That alone should justify Weiss’s removal — and not merely for what he failed to do, but also because the country can’t trust that his special counsel team will follow all the leads, including the ones we don’t know about. 

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Harvard professor says ‘all hell broke loose’ when his study found no racial bias in police shootings


Nikolas Lanum By Nikolas Lanum Fox News | Published February 16, 2024 2:28pm EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/media/harvard-professor-all-hell-broke-loose-study-found-no-racial-bias-police-shootings

A Harvard professor said that “all hell broke loose” and he was forced to go out in public with armed security after he published a study that found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings.  

During a sit-down conversation with Bari Weiss of The Free Press, Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer discussed the fallout from a 2016 study he published on racial bias in Houston policing. The study found that police were more than twice as likely to manhandle, beat or use some other kind of nonfatal force against blacks and Hispanics than against people of other races. However, the data also determined that officers were 23.8 percent less likely to shoot at blacks and 8.5 percent less likely to shoot at Hispanics than they were to shoot at whites.

When Fryer claimed the data showed “no racial differences in officer-involved shootings,” he said, “all hell broke loose,” and his life was upended.

HOUSE REPUBLICAN SUBPOENAS HARVARD LEADERS FOR ‘FAILING TO PRODUCE’ SUFFICIENT DOCS IN ANTISEMITISM PROBE

Harvard professor Roland Fryer
Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Roland Fryer speaks during the annual Clinton Global Initiative in New York, New York.  ((Photo by Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images))

Fryer received the first of many complaints and threats four minutes after publication.

“You’re full of s—t,” the sender said.

Fryer said people quickly “lost their minds” and some of his colleagues refused to believe the results after months of asking him not to print the data.

“I had colleagues take me to the side and say, ‘Don’t publish this. You’ll ruin your career,'” Fryer revealed.

The world-renowned economist knew from comments by faculty that he was likely to garner backlash. Fryer admitted that he anticipated the results of the study would be different and would confirm suspicions of racial bias against minorities. When the results found no racial bias, Fryer hired eight new assistants and redid the study. The data came back the same.

After the report was published, Fryer lived under police protection for over a month. He had a seven-day-old daughter at the time and went shopping for diapers.

FETTERMAN SLAMS HARVARD FOR HOSTING PALESTINIAN PROFESSOR WHO BLAMED ISRAEL FOR OCT. 7 HAMAS ATTACKS

Claudine Gay
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who made headlines for refusing to say if genocide of Jews was against Harvard policy during a congressional hearing, was also accused of multiple accounts of plagiarism. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

“I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with the armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy,” he said.

Fryer, who became the youngest tenured Black professor at Harvard at age 30, was suspended for two years from the university in 2019 after he allegedly engaged in “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. He continues to deny the allegations. At the time, then-Harvard dean Claudine Gay claimed Fryer’s research and conduct with other employees “exhibited a pattern of behavior” that failed to meet expectations within the community.

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“The totality of these behaviors is a clear violation of institutional norms and a betrayal of the trust,” she said.

Gay resigned from her position as Harvard president in early January after widespread plagiarism allegations and criticism of her testimony to Congress, where she failed to fully clarify whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment.

Weiss, referencing Gay in her conversation with Fryer, asked him if he believes in karma.

“I hear it’s a motherf—er,” he replied.

Harvard did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment, 

Nikolas Lanum is an associate editor for Fox News Digital.

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Trump Verdict: Penalty More Than $364M in N.Y. Civil Fraud Case


Friday, 16 February 2024 03:36 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-fraud/2024/02/16/id/1153930/

A New York judge ruled Friday against Donald Trump, imposing a $364 million penalty over what the judge ruled was a yearslong scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated the former president’s wealth. Trump also was barred from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation for three years.

Judge Arthur Engoron issued his decision after a 2½-month trial that saw the Republican presidential front-runner bristling under oath that he was the victim of a rigged legal system.

The stiff penalty was a victory for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, who sued Trump over what she said was not just harmless bragging but years of deceptive practices as he built the multinational collection of skyscrapers, golf courses and other properties that catapulted him to wealth, fame and the White House.

Trump’s lawyers had said even before the verdict that they would appeal.

In a statement Friday, lawyer Alina Habba said this: “This verdict is a manifest injustice – plain and simple. It is the culmination of a multi-year, politically fueled witch hunt that was designed to ‘take down Donald Trump,’ before Letitia James ever stepped foot into the Attorney General’s office. Countless hours of testimony proved that there was no wrongdoing, no crime, and no victim.

“Given the grave stakes, we trust that the Appellate Division will overturn this egregious verdict and end this relentless persecution against my clients.”

James sued Trump in 2022 under a state law that authorizes her to investigate persistent fraud in business dealings. The suit accused Trump and his co-defendants of routinely puffing up his financial statements to create an illusion his properties were more valuable than they really were. State lawyers said Trump exaggerated his wealth by as much as $3.6 billion one year. By making himself seem richer, Trump qualified for better loan terms, saved on interest and was able to complete projects he might otherwise not have finished, state lawyers said.

Even before the trial began, Engoron ruled that James had proven Trump’s financial statements were fraudulent. The judge ordered some of Trump’s companies removed from his control and dissolved. An appeals court put that decision on hold.

In that earlier ruling, the judge found that, among other tricks, Trump’s financial statements had wrongly claimed his Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size and overvalued his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, based on the idea that the property could be developed for residential use, even though he had surrendered rights to develop it for any uses but a club.

Trump, one of 40 witnesses to testify at the trial, said his financial statements actually understated his net worth and that banks did their own research and were happy with his business.

“There was no victim. There was no anything,” Trump testified in November.

During the trial, Trump called the judge “extremely hostile” and the attorney general “a political hack.” In a six-minute statement during closing arguments in January, Trump proclaimed “I am an innocent man” and called the case a “fraud on me.”

Trump and his lawyers have said the outside accountants that helped prepare the statements should’ve flagged any discrepancies and that the documents came with disclaimers that shielded him from liability. They also argued that some of the allegations were barred by the statute of limitations.

The suit is one of many legal headaches for Trump as he campaigns for a return to the White House. He has been indicted four times in the last year — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels on his behalf.

On Thursday, a judge confirmed Trump’s hush-money trial will start on March 25 and a judge in Atlanta heard arguments on whether to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from his Georgia election interference case because she had a personal relationship with a special prosecutor she hired.

Those criminal accusations haven’t appeared to undermine his march toward the Republican presidential nomination, but civil litigation has threatened him financially.

On Jan. 26, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. That’s on top of the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.

In 2022, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud and fined $1.6 million in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives dodge taxes on extravagant perks such as Manhattan apartments and luxury cars.

James had asked the judge to impose a penalty of at least $370 million.

Engoron decided the case because neither side sought a jury and state law doesn’t allow for juries for this type of lawsuit.

Because it was civil, not criminal in nature, the case did not carry the potential of prison time.

James, who campaigned for office as a Trump critic and watchdog, started scrutinizing his business practices in March 2019 after his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress that Trump exaggerated his wealth on financial statements provided to Deutsche Bank while trying to obtain financing to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.

James’ office previously sued Trump for misusing his own charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Trump was ordered to pay $2 million to an array of charities as a fine and the charity, the Trump Foundation, was shut down.

Trump incorporated the Trump Organization in New York in 1981. He still owns it, but he put his assets into a revocable trust and gave up his positions as the company’s director, president and chairman when he became president, leaving management of the company to sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

Trump did not return to a stated leadership position upon leaving the White House in 2021, but his sons testified he’s been involved in some decision making.

Engoron had already appointed a monitor, retired federal judge Barbara Jones, to keep an eye on the company.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Denver’s Financial Apocalypse from Illegal Immigration Is a Disaster of Its Own Making


By: Jarrett Stepman / @JarrettStepman / February 15, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/15/denvers-financial-apocalypse-from-illegal-immigration-is-a-disaster-of-its-own-making/

Venezulean illegal immigrants wait to get paperwork to be admitted to shelters at a processing center on May 9 in Denver. (Photo: Helen H. Richardson/Media News Group/The Denver Post/Getty Images)

Denver is buckling under a financial crisis caused by illegal immigration. But the fault lies not in the stars, but with the city itself.

“Denver will cut hours at recreation centers, end in-person vehicle-registration renewals and eliminate spring flower beds to save $5 million this year, a response to the migrant crisis that is expected to cost the city $180 million,” the Colorado Sun reported.

But the city isn’t just cutting corners on niche city services.

According to KUSA-TV, the local NBC News affiliate, the city is asking nearly every city department—from animal shelters to the police department—to make budget cuts so they can meet the cost of the new arrivals.

City officials are also asking for the department that oversees elections to cut nearly a million dollars in an election year. The District Attorney’s Office has been asked to make a 5% cut, despite the fact that the city has been racked by violent crime.

Since Biden has been in office, we see what it’s like when local and federal authorities are equally lawless: Unchecked catastrophic chaos and financial implosion. Denver’s current mayor, Democrat Mike Johnston, perhaps not surprisingly, is pointing the finger at former President Donald Trump and Republicans for the mess his city is in. He blamed them because they refused to support the so-called Senate border bill—probably better described as a massive foreign aid and nonprofit organization slush fund bill—that would have helped codify illegal immigration and bogus asylum-seeking, rather than stop them.

“The choice by Republicans in Congress to purposefully kill a historic, bipartisan border deal … will have a devastating impact in Denver,” Johnston said after Republicans blocked the deal, Fox News reported.

Of course, Johnston insisted that the problem is in no way caused by the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who have come to the Colorado city. In one sense, I agree: If he’s looking for blame, he should look in the mirror and at his friends running the White House. Democrats and left-wing activists have no desire to halt the unprecedented spike in illegal immigration. They just want it to look less chaotic so voters won’t be quite as angry about the disaster. And sanctuary city and sanctuary state leaders want a big federal bailout funded by the American taxpayer to deal with the massive holes in their budgets. They want you to pay for their mess. We borrow and spend so much money these days, nobody will know the difference, they must think.

Denver has tried to shunt their problem onto other Colorado communities. This testimony from a Lakewood, Colorado, resident on Tuesday sums up the dynamic. It was posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by LibsofTikTok.

Typical.

If we, the people, want any control over this situation, then we have to make sure that the Denver, New York City, and other besieged blue cities pay for their own self-inflicted problems. Don’t let them shift the burden, financial and otherwise, elsewhere.

I’ll add that the sheer cost of the border crisis isn’t even the worst part of this whole disaster. They want you to pay while they hack away at the foundation of our free society. The complete evaporation of border enforcement portends something much worse than just the immediate effects of bloated budgets, cut services, dysfunctional cities and increased crime, as bad as all those things are. What it signals is a demolition of even the concept of citizenship.

Denver gives us another glimpse into the next stage of this farce. While Colorado has a law on the books preventing noncitizens from voting, Denver is potentially throwing open the door for noncitizens to become police officers and firefighters. I wish I were joking. According to Axios, two City Council members proposed on Monday “striking language from the city charter preventing the city’s police and fire departments from hiring noncitizens.”

Keep in mind, this is the same City Council that has tried several times to defund the police as crime spun out of control. Yet, the Left wants to make it so people who have broken our laws and who have demonstrated no loyalty to the United States can be the police officers of the future. This police and fire proposal is nearly as perverse as a proposal from Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to allow illegal immigrants join the military. They really just want troops and members of our protective services to be loyal to their regime, don’t they?

This is end-stage Roman Empire stuff, brought to you by the Democratic Party. For people who obsess over the destruction of “our democracy,” the Left sure seems to have little regard for, well, democracy.

The Biden-caused border crisis isn’t just an economic or law enforcement problem; it’s a direct attack on self-government. It’s an effective tool to water down and obliterate the meaning of citizenship. It’s an attempt to transform the United States from a free republic based on deliberation and consent of the governed into a vast economic zone of farcical ballot-harvesting and technocratic rule from on high.

Denver sowed the seeds for this illegal immigration crisis years ago, just as many other big, blue cities have done. Federal policies exposed the reality of the problem. They are now paying a price for their decisions—as they must, if we as a nation have any hope of pulling out of this catastrophe.

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Climate Activism Fund Financing Literal Attacks on US Constitution


By: Miles Pollard / Alexander Frei / February 15, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/15/climate-activist-fund-financing-literal-attacks-constitution/

Two police officers carry a male demonstrator off the roadway
The Climate Emergency Fund pays activists to vandalize national treasures and create disruptive protests globally, raising concerns over tax break-backed climate activism. Pictured: Police officers carry demonstrators from the German climate change group “Last Generation” off the roadway after they blocked a highway exit in Berlin on July 15, 2022. (Photo: Paul Zinken, picture alliance/Getty Images)

This week, a group of activists called Declare Emergency, funded by the Climate Emergency Fund, poured red powder on the case housing the Constitution in the National Archives and blocked the George Washington Parkway, which is perpetually filled with Washington, D.C., commuters. This follows climate change protests where activists smeared red paint on the African American Civil War Memorial honoring black soldiers last November.

The Climate Emergency Fund is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that declared revenues of $6 million in its latest published tax form in 2022. It has received over $1 million from John Paul Getty’s granddaughter, Aileen Getty, who is repudiating the oil legacy of her grandfather. And left-wing filmmaker Adam McKay, producer of the movies “The Big Short” and “Anchorman,” has pledged to donate $4 million to the fund.

The fund has used its nonprofit tax advantage to finance 116 left-wing climate organizations globally, including Britain’s Just Stop Oil and Germany’s Letzte Generation. Its main goal is to infuse money into climate organizations that engage in vandalism and what it calls “nonviolent” civil resistance—although vandalizing valuable objects with paint constitutes violence. The fund emphasizes the need for disruptive protest in the name of climate change while praising the deadly 2020 Black Lives Matter riots for increasing votes for Democratic candidates. As a nonprofit entity, the fund’s financial activities are disclosed in public tax documents. Revenues have grown rapidly, from $2.3 million in 2021 to $6 million in 2022. Of this $6 million, nearly $4 million was spent on donations to foreign entities. Domestic entities such as Declare Emergency received $1 million.

Britain’s Just Stop Oil made headlines in 2022 for drenching Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting in tomato soup and blocking London’s bridges, including Westminster Bridge, close to Parliament.

In Germany, “Letzte Generation,” or “Last Generation,” has become a household name. Last Generation’s disruptive climate change protests, which include vandalizing buildings and famous paintings, are featured prominently on social media. For the average German, Last Generation supporters are most well-known for causing traffic jams by gluing themselves to major roadways.

These European tactics are now being emulated in America. Traffic blockages will inevitably block firetrucks and ambulances, as protesters did on the Waterloo Bridge in London in November, harming or killing innocent civilians. Bystanders who remove the protesters from the street by force can face criminal penalties.

According to its official website, Last Generation’s mission is to “no longer accept this crime against humanity [climate change] without resistance.” The organization’s leaders are frequently invited to debate on major German talk shows, further increasing the group’s reach and influence. It has over 105,000 followers on X and over 65,000 on Instagram. During these media appearances, the group advocates for the use of renewable energy while ignoring challenges that come with the technology.

Despite its media following, Last Generation may have fewer than 100 official members and relies on funding from the Climate Emergency Fund.

Last Generation realized that the negative publicity in Germany from people frustrated by traffic disruptions and attacks on paintings necessitated a change in tactics. Starting in March, the group is shifting from blocking roads to obstructing “places of fossil destruction,” such as airports. Time will tell whether the Climate Emergency Fund’s disruptive protests in America will do the same—and whether they will also target airports carrying private jets owned by the wealthy elite.

The Climate Emergency Fund through Declare Emergency is now attacking the physical Constitution itself, the proverbial heart of our republic. The nonprofit attempted to damage the Constitution to further its own elitist agenda, even though the Constitution upholds America’s rule of law, its system of checks and balances, and even the tax structure that encourages contributions to such nonprofits. By risking the destruction of our founding document, these radical climate activists show their true colors and their intent to destroy the very fabric of our republic.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – The Three Amigos

A.F. BRANCO | on February 15, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-the-three-amigos-2/

Biden, China, and Iran Hate Trump
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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Crooked Biden, Xi of Chin, and the Ayatolha of Iran all would hate Trump to be reelected, and all for the same reason. Trump would put America first. Our enemies do not want America with an America First agenda, they would rather us have a weak president who is compromised that they can push around.

Putin Further Destroys the Trump-Russia Collusion Hoax — Says He Prefers Joe Biden to Win Than Trump Because He’s More “Predictable”

By Jim Hᴏft Feb. 14, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin has further destroyed the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, stating a preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump due to the current U.S. president’s predictability and experience. During a state television interview reported by the Financial Times on Wednesday, Putin broke his silence on the U.S. political landscape. He described Biden as “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician.” “Biden, he’s more experienced, more predictable, he’s a politician of the old formation,” Putin said.“But we will work with any U.S. leader whom the American people trust,” he added. 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.

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Chinese Nationals Are Surging Over the Border — This Isn’t a Crisis, It’s an Invasion.


BY: JORDAN BOYD | FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/14/chinese-nationals-are-surging-over-the-border-this-isnt-a-crisis-its-an-invasion/

Chinese nationals illegally cross U.S. border

The uptick in Chinese nationals illegally crossing the southern border proves the record-breaking number of foreigners walking into our nation and being shipped by border agents to American cities with little to no vetting is no longer a crisis but a full-fledged invasion.

The Biden administration’s long-held talking point is that the current border crisis is fueled by a surge of struggling migrants from unstable Latin American countries. Chinese migrants, however, not natural disaster victims in Central America, have become the fastest-growing people group to take advantage of the lapsed southern U.S. border.

Border Patrol agents in San Diego alone recorded encounters with 269 Chinese nationals on Monday, Fox News’s Bill Melugin reports. Since the 2024 fiscal year began, Customs and Border Protection clocked more than 20,000 Chinese nationals illegally crossing into the U.S. via the southern border. Some of them crossed with the help of the Chinese Communist Party-linked app TikTok.

The 2024 number is already dangerously close to the 24,000 Chinese border crossers who were apprehended in the 2023 fiscal year and up significantly from the 450 Chinese arrests border agents made during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

Likely, not every illegal border crosser from China is a Communist Party-linked spy. But to assume the CCP spent years carefully surveilling and infiltrating key American institutions like government, academia, pharmaceuticals, Wall Street, sports, Big Tech, Hollywood, and media but hasn’t figured out how to plant its operatives among the millions of illegal border crossers exploiting Biden’s open border policies would be a mistake.

In January alone, border agents encountered 176,205 illegal border crossers. That number may be a significant drop compared to recent record-breaking months, but it still exceeds 23 of the last 24 Janauries on record.

Border Patrol chiefs in several high-traffic sectors have warned that the overwhelming number of foreign illegal border crossers entering the U.S. puts our nation at risk because “information can be hidden” and “their agendas, their ideologies, the reason for them coming could be missed.” Gloria Chavez, chief patrol agent for Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol, complained to the House Homeland Security Committee last year that the influx of specifically Chinese migrants has slowed her agents’ interview process to seven hours to ensure some level of vetting.

Even then, CBP does not turn them away. Instead, busloads of Chinese nationals are dropped off in the heart of the U.S. and told to appear for an immigration court date that is often set years in advance.

“My Committee has been informed that some of these Chinese nationals have even been found to be affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—and those are just the ones we’ve been able to vet,” Chairman Mark Green noted. “As the CCP works to undermine and infiltrate our institutions and even military installations, Secretary Mayorkas has made it clear to the entire world that our borders are open. This is simply unsustainable, and the national security risks are massive.”

America’s number one foreign enemy isn’t just sending spies through gaps in the abandoned border wall. It’s also actively fueling the death and destruction at the open southern border. Communist China has long taken advantage of Biden’s lax policies to poison hundreds of thousands of Americans with one of the most potent, lucrative, and lethal drugs on the black market.

One gram of fentanyl alone, about the size of a pack of table sugar, can kill approximately 500 people. Yet, in 2023, CBP seized 27,000 pounds of fentanyl, nearly twice as much as they seized in 2022. Since Biden was elected, CBP has reported record-breaking fentanyl seizures nearly every month, marking an 800 percent jump since 2019.

Cartels do most of the fentanyl smuggling, but their operations are directly sustained by investors linked to the Chinese Communist Party, who fund thousands of illegal marijuana-growing and selling operations in Mexico and the U.S. They produce the precursor chemicals required to make fentanyl in Asia and then ship them to packaging facilities close to the southern American border.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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Sources Say U.S. Intelligence Agencies Tasked Foreign Partners with Spying on Trump’s 2016 Campaign


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/14/sources-say-u-s-intelligence-agencies-tasked-foreign-partners-with-spying-on-trumps-2016-campaign/

Donald Trump in 2016

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The U.S. Intelligence Community asked fellow members of the “‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies,” sources told a small team of independent reporters who broke the story yesterday. 

In “CIA Had Foreign Allies Spy on Trump Team, Triggering Russia Collusion Hoax, Sources Say,” journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag reported that top-line takeaway, along with several other key details. According to the authors, “multiple credible sources,” said that “the United States Intelligence Community (IC), including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), illegally mobilized foreign intelligence agencies to target Trump advisors long before the summer of 2016.” 

The article, published on Shellenberger’s Substack, noted, “Until now, the official story has been that the FBI’s investigation began after Australian intelligence officials told US officials that a Trump aide had boasted to an Australian diplomat that Russia had damning material about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” That probe, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, launched on July 31, 2016, although Special Counsel John Durham would later conclude the Australian tip failed to justify the investigation into the Trump campaign. 

Spying on Trump

However, British intelligence sources began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies possibly as early as 2015, according to Tuesday’s blockbuster article. Several outlets had previously reported that the British Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, had discovered “alleged ties between Trump and the Russian government.”

According to the British-based Guardian, “a source close to UK intelligence” claimed, “GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious ‘interactions’ between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents.” Yet the Guardian reported:

GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the US.

Not so, according to Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag’s sources, who were familiar with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s investigation. “In truth, the US IC asked the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies,” the journalists reported their sources as saying, with the Five Eyes nations being the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Sources also claimed, according to Tuesday’s article, that “President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target.” According to the journalists, a source confirmed the IC had “identified [those associates] as people to ‘bump,’ or make contact with or manipulate,” and claimed the individuals were “targets of our own IC and law enforcement — targets for collection and misinformation.”

A source close to the investigation reportedly told the team of journalists that “[t]hey were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” and “sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. The MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up.”

Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag further reported their sources’ claim that “[u]nknown details about the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and raw intelligence related to the IC’s surveillance of the Trump campaign are in a 10-inch binder that Trump ordered to be declassified at the very end of his term.” The three journalists stressed that this new information “is supported by testimony already in the public record.” In fact, much of the article confirms theories developed from the evidence gleaned over the years.

Years of Evidence

For instance, in “All The Russia Collusion Clues Are Beginning To Point Back To John Brennan,” I highlighted Brennan’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017 that he had “encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about.” Brennan told the committee back then that he didn’t know whether there was collusion with Russia, but that he passed the information on to the FBI. As I wrote at the time:

The evidence suggests, however, that Brennan’s CIA and the intelligence community did much more than merely pass on details about ‘contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign’ to the FBI. The evidence suggests that the CIA and intelligence community — including potentially the intelligence communities of the UK, Italy, and Australia — created the contacts and interactions that they then reported to the FBI as suspicious.

The known entities of this apparent conspiracy included Stefan Halper, an American confidential human source (CHS) informant for the FBI who, as I wrote at The Federalist, “worked at Cambridge University alongside Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of the British intelligence service MI6, and Christopher Andrew, the official historian for the British counterintelligence group MI5.” 

It has long been known that Halper reached out to several members of the Trump campaign as a CHS for the Crossfire Hurricane team. But Halper’s efforts to ingratiate himself began before the official launch on July 31, 2016. In mid-July 2016, Halper approached Carter Page at a conference at Cambridge. American Steven Schrage, who organized that conference, detailed the happenings in the article “The Spies Who Hijacked America.” 

As Schrage told it, “For most of the conference, Halper couldn’t be bothered with Page, about whom he made snarky comments about behind Page’s back.” But that changed after Dearlove arrived at the conference and spoke with Halper. Halper then “seemed desperately interested in isolating, cornering, and ingratiating himself to Page and promoting himself to the Trump campaign,” Schrage wrote.

While Halper’s outreach to Page came only a couple of weeks before the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, the apparent targeting of Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos first occurred in March 2016. Open-source material reveals that “on March 14, 2016, George met London-based college Professor Joseph Mifsud while traveling in Italy.” At the time, “Mifsud, then director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, claimed connections to the Russian Government.”

According to Papadopoulos, he had traveled to Italy, specifically Rome, at the encouragement of “a woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.K.” That initial meeting of Mifsud led to several more, including the fateful one where Mifsud supposedly told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton — the conversation the FBI claimed justified the launching of Crossfire Hurricane.

As has been detailed at length, most comprehensively by Lee Smith at RealClearInvestigations, Mifsud has numerous connections to Western intelligence services and has taught at the Link Campus University in Rome, a university whose “lecturers and professors include senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries, especially Italy and the United Kingdom.”

Confirming Theories

These details closely match the information that sources revealed to Shellenberger, Taibbi, and Gutentag. And should the raw intelligence reports exist, as those sources claim, there will be concrete confirmation that foreign intelligence services targeted the Trump campaign, which in turn will confirm many of the theories posited about the real start of the Russia-collusion hoax.

It seems unlikely there will be anything in writing to establish John Brennan or another member of the U.S. Intelligence Community solicited assistance from the other members of Five Eyes. Nonetheless, Americans deserve to know what was in that 10-inch binder and which foreign intelligence services interfered in our 2016 election by “bumping” members of the Trump campaign to craft the Russia hoax. 

The now-known significance of that binder also raises the specter that the search of Mar-a-Lago wasn’t to protect classified materials but to protect intelligence agencies — American and foreign. 

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Newt Gingrich Op-ed: The Senate’s contempt for America is on full display once again


Newt Gingrich  By Newt Gingrich Fox News | Published February 14, 2024 2:47pm EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/senates-contempt-america-full-display

22 Republican senators appear clueless about Americans’ fears when it comes to our ballooning national debt. The U.S. Senate once again proved its contempt for the American people. 

After the collapse of the phony border security bill that would institutionalize the failing policies of the Biden administration, the Senate has passed a $95.3 billion foreign aid package — with zero offsets to pay for it.

The gap between the senators and the American people can be seen by looking at a poll we did at America’s New Majority Project from Nov. 3 to Nov. 6.

SENATE PASSES CONTROVERSIAL FOREIGN AID BILL SENDING BILLIONS TO UKRAINE, ISRAEL AND TAIWAN

The American people are increasingly frightened because the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress keep spending more money as the national debt grows bigger. Interest payments on the national debt will soon be larger than the total cost of our national security system.

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When asked if voters would prefer a Republican who insisted on spending offsets to a Democrat who wanted to spend more money on foreign aid without offsetting it, they chose the Republican by 50% to 34% over a Democrat. This was a 13-point swing from the generic ballot.

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Apparently, 22 of the Republican senators did not get the message that their constituents believed it should be possible to find offsets in a $6 trillion budget. After all, if the aid to Israel and Ukraine (and the secondary amounts for Taiwan) are so important, aren’t there lower priority items in the budget that could be postponed or just dropped to make way for the foreign aid?

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Not only did 56% of the American people favor the spending offsets in the America’s New Majority Project poll, but 50% preferred to have no bill if it could not be offset. 

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Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republicans are clearly listening to the American people. They should continue to fight for offsets — and for fundamental changes on the southern border.

Eventually, our senators are going to realize they should listen to the people who elected them — or find themselves looking for work.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM NEWT GINGRICH

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of Gingrich 360.

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Kellyanne Conway warns GOP ‘better learn’ some lessons after Democrats flipped NY House seat


By Fox News Staff Fox News | Published February 14, 2024 2:00pm EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/media/kellyanne-conway-warns-gop-better-learn-lessons-democrats-flipped-ny-house-seat

Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway urged Republicans to use the loss of a New York House seat as a teaching moment on “America’s Newsroom” on Wednesday after former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi won a closely watched special election against GOP rival Mazi Pilip. Conway said Suozzi successfully flipped the seat previously held by former Rep. George Santos by taking advantage of early voting rules and distancing himself from the Biden administration’s border policies.  

DEMS FLIP SEAT AS SUOZZI WINS CRUCIAL SPECIAL CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION IN NEW YORK

KELLYANNE CONWAY: Suozzi did two things that were smart that the Republicans better learn from: number one, early voting. He killed it by two to one, I think, in Queens, and by 16% in Nassau County, or vice versa. The [snowstorm] yesterday in New York, where all three of us were, proves that this bank your vote early, getting that early vote and making Republican and center-right voters comfortable with voting early is incredibly important. 

Number two, Suozzi, instead of lying like every other Democrat seems to be doing these days, ‘Mayorkas is doing a great job. There’s no crisis at the border. The border czar Kamala’s wonderful. Biden’s right.’ What did he do? He said, I better go against my party on the border. And he did it. Paid advertising, mailers, press conferences, public appeals. So he has shown the Democrats how to run on the border. I think Republicans should do the same thing with abortion. Instead of being ostriches and pretending, with their head in the sand, they should be peacocks and say, look, this is what it means to be pro-life in 2024. This is what it means to be pro-choice in 2024. And instead of hiding, own it and message it. I think he did a great job on that going against his party. Let’s see how many Democrats follow suit. 

split image NY3 candidates
Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican Mazi Pilip met face to face in the first and only debate, which aired Thursday night, in the special election for New York’s 3rd Congressional District. (Getty Images)

Conway added that Pilip erred by taking a “wishy-washy” stance on whether she supports former President Donald Trump’s candidacy. 

“When you sit in the middle of the highway, you become political roadkill,” she added.

The Associated Press projected that Suozzi would defeat county lawmaker Pilip to win back his old job, with the call coming Tuesday night just over an hour after the polls closed.

With the GOP hanging on to a razor-thin majority in the House, national Republicans and Democrats poured big bucks into a race in suburban New York City where immigration and border security, crime and abortion were the top issues, and where the election was seen as a bellwether ahead of the all-but-certain November White House rematch between Trump and President Biden.

With the Republican majority in the House slipping to 219-213 once Suozzi is sworn in, the pickup by the Democrats now puts the GOP’s grip on the chamber further in peril.

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Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

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This article was written by Fox News staff.

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Rep. Donalds to Newsmax: Expect More Threats Under ‘Weak’ Biden


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Wednesday, 14 February 2024 02:53 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/byron-donalds-joe-biden-security-threat/2024/02/14/id/1153601/

Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., while not commenting directly on calls from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner’s call for President Joe Biden to declassify information about a “serious national security threat” Wednesday, told Newsmax that the foreign policy status of the U.S. under Biden has been “real slippery.”

“These things are not isolated incidents,” Donalds said on Newsmax’s “Newsline.” “When you leave Afghanistan the way that Joe Biden left, the disastrous withdrawal, it demonstrates to our enemies that America is not as strong as it used to be.”

Donalds noted that the situations in Israel and Ukraine, “are not isolated incidents. This is what happens when you have weak leadership in the White House.”

The world has taken note of Biden’s weaknesses and is pushing to see what it can get away with doing, he added. 

“There’s this constant debate in our politics right now between isolationism and being a neo-con,” Donalds said. “I am neither. What I’m for is prudent national security and a strong America. … We need sound leadership in the White House and the United States doesn’t have it today.”

Donalds also on Wednesday discussed the House vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and called on the Senate to hold a full trial before lawmakers vote, rather than to call a quick vote to end the matter. 

Donalds also commented on reports concerning Biden’s mental fitness for office, following a damaging report by special counsel Robert Hur that discussed the president’s age and memory capabilities. 

The White House says Biden is getting a physical, but it does not include a cognitive test, and Donalds said he does not agree with that.

“The American people deserve to know if Joe Biden has the mental capabilities to serve as commander in chief,” he said. “It’s that simple. If he does not, then it is incumbent upon Vice President [Kamala] Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment and have the Cabinet vote on whether he should be removed from office.”

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. 

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Size Matters

A.F. BRANCO | on February 14, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-size-matters-2/

Biden Shrinkflation – Cartoon
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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Biden can’t do a softball one-on-one interview on CBS just before the Super Bowl but does a silly commercial complaining about shrink-flation on snacks and soda that he caused by the inflation his own Bidennomic policies created.

Bidenomics CAUSED Shrinkflation, Joe!

POSTED ON  BY GUEST CONTRIBUTER

Shrinkflation: Reduction of quantity/quality of a good without corresponding price reduction

In economics, shrinkflation, also known as the grocery shrink ray, deflation, or package downsizing, is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, or even sometimes reformulating or reducing quality, while their prices remain the same. The word is a portmanteau of the words shrink and inflation. Joe Biden is against it and wants to blame greedy corporations. Nice try, Joe.

Don’t let President Biden gaslight you. ‘Shrinkflation’ is not the problem, Bidenomics is. Businesses are trying to stay competitive in the market by limiting how much they raise prices to offset the cost increases they’ve encountered thanks to Biden’s economic policy decisions. 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.

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Dispatch From Eagle Pass: Biden Officials Won’t Enforce Laws But ‘Don’t Want Anyone Else To’ Either


BY: M.D. KITTLE | FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/13/dispatch-from-eagle-pass-biden-officials-wont-enforce-laws-but-dont-want-anyone-else-to-either/

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In his appearance Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” embattled U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas did what any failed political leader possessing little integrity and less self-awareness would do: He blamed others for his mistakes. Asked whether he bears any responsibility for the nightmare the Biden administration has wrought at the U.S. southern border and beyond, Mayorkas effectively said, don’t look at us. 

“It certainly is a crisis and we don’t bear responsibility for a broken system, and we’re dealing a tremendous amount within that broken system,” he told moderator Kristen Welker. 

Maybe the secretary should talk to the people living in and around the border towns, local law enforcement, and his own U.S. Border Patrol agents. 

Ira Mehlman and the folks from FAIR — the Federation for American Immigration Reform — did just that earlier this month. 

“Ask the people at the border in Texas. They think the blame belongs squarely with [the Biden administration],” the FAIR media director told me Monday morning on “Need to Know With Jeff Angelo” on NewsRadio 1040 in Des Moines. 

Earlier this month, Mehlman and his traveling companions saw the illegal immigration crisis firsthand at Eagle Pass, a south Texas city of about 28,000 people bordering Piedras Negras, Mexico, across the Rio Grande. As the Dallas Morning News explained, “Eagle Pass, with two small international bridges, features relatively gentle Rio Grande currents that invite migrant crossings. It became a focal point of Texas action in December when the arrival of tens of thousands of migrants over multiple weeks overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and city resources.”

The border town has become a hive of humanity, as its population swells from a wave of illegal aliens pouring over the border on promises of easy entry from President Joe Biden and his nearly impeached Homeland Security chief. U.S. Customs and Border Protection still has yet to post numbers for January apprehensions at the Southwest border, but December saw a new all-time monthly record with more than 300,000 migrant apprehensions. Eagle Pass and its Del Rio sector alone have recorded a whopping 152,252 encounters in the first three months of the federal fiscal year, beginning in October, according to the agency.  

Eagle Pass is now ground zero in a standoff between the state of Texas and the Biden administration, just as it is Exhibit A in the administration’s chaotic immigration policy. Gov. Greg Abbott, backed by several states, ordered state National Guard troops to stand guard at Eagle Pass’s gates and erect razor wire to check the invasion. A divided 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court order gave the administration the go-ahead to cut the wire, but Abbott is holding firm, arguing his state is under attack and the president is doing nothing to stop it. Abbott stands on his constitutional obligation to defend and protect his state, and the United States at large, from invasion.  

“The message from the Biden administration is: Not only don’t we want to enforce immigration laws, we don’t want anyone else to do it,” Mehlman said. 

The immigration reform activist says, from what he saw on his latest trip to Eagle Pass, Abbott’s strategy is working. And, from what’s he’s heard from law enforcement officials, there have been few attempts from federal authorities to remove the deterrents Texas has put in place. Abbott has said his Operation Lone Star has reduced illegal immigration numbers, a claim backed by a new Washington Examiner analysis. 

“The numbers show how the percentage of arrests in Texas versus other border states has shifted. In 2021, 69% of illegal immigrant arrests across the southern border occurred in Texas,” the publication reported on Monday.

“As Abbott stepped up security at the start of the Biden administration in 2021, arrests of illegal crossers began to fall and dropped to just 34% last month.”

“This is a manageable problem, as Gov. Abbott has now demonstrated. If you deter people from coming across you will see the results almost immediately,” Mehlman said. 

Mehlman does acknowledge, however, that the migrants are simply rerouting to Arizona and California, border states led by leftist governors committed to Biden’s open border policies. 

Shifting blame, Mayorkas insists Congress is the “only one who can fix” the five-alarm border fire that he and Biden have dumped gasoline on. The secretary conveniently omits the many Trump-era policies the president has reversed and the orders he could sign to turn the tide of the illegal immigration flood. My colleague Tristan Justice last week detailed the dozens of times Biden has gutted border security since he took the oath of office. 

The U.S. Senate’s bad joke of a border deal that died an ignominious death last week would have essentially codified the Biden administration’s awful policy to date. Mehlman and other critics say it would have exacerbated the crisis. He said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his top negotiator, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., “sold out” the House’s “good” version of the bill, creating a “lose-lose situation” for lawmakers serious about border security. 

Meanwhile, last week’s failed effort by House Republicans to impeach Mayorkas is regrouping. Speaker Mike Johnson appears to believe his fellow Republicans will have the numbers —narrowly — this time around as Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., is back to political business after undergoing cancer treatment during last week’s vote. 

Mehlman said Mayorkas deserves to be impeached. 

“He has undermined the enforcement of our immigration laws, he has violated his oath of office and he’s been derelict in his duty as secretary of Homeland Security,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform official said. 

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

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Liz Peek Op-ed: Trump could ride Special Counsel’s report all the way to the White House but only if he avoids these potholes


Liz Peek  By Liz Peek Fox News | Published February 13, 2024 5:00am EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-ride-special-counsels-report-way-white-house-avoids-potholes

Former President Donald Trump can ride Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Joe Biden’s “diminished faculties” all the way to the White House if he does these three things:

1. Leans into voters’ concerns about the disastrous border crisis – and tells them how he’ll fix it.

2. Talks up his plan to keep the economy humming through deregulation, keeping taxes low and also by pushing his “Drill Baby Drill” plan to expand America’s energy stockpile and independence, and…       

3. Shuts up about everything else. Don’t feed Democrat narratives with threats to abandon NATO or impose 60% tariffs on China. Stop whining about the 2020 election, stop denigrating rival and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s husband and wardrobe, and lay off President Joe Biden. The president is destroying his reelection hopes all by himself; he doesn’t need any help. 

Also, talk less about what a great job you did before and more about how you’ll do it again, even better. Voters want to know and they want optimism.

TRUMP HAD ONE OF HIS BEST WEEKS AS CASES AGAINST HIM APPEARED TO IMPLODE

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. My view – don’t interrupt Biden’s decline and fall. 

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Odds makers have Donald Trump in the lead, with one site giving him a 52% chance of winning in November, against 27% for Biden. Shockingly, Michelle Obama is next most likely to become president, with a 15% chance. That says everything. 

Democrats are in disarray, with many turning on their standard-bearer for letting them down. But really, it is the Democratic universe – the leadership, Dem donors in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, White House aides, the liberal media, Jill Biden and the whole dishonest crew – that has nurtured this cancer in their midst. They knew the president was in decline but have lied repeatedly about his vigor and his sharpness – even to themselves — and conspired to hide it from the public. 

‘THE VIEW’ HOST POSTS PANICKED HANDMAID’S TALE MEME OVER BIDEN POSSIBLY LOSING TO TRUMP

If you receive your news from MSNBC, you might have no idea Joe Biden can barely finish a sentence without stumbling. You don’t know that the White House has been shielding his decline by limiting his interactions with the press, using more easily-managed stairs to deplane and stage-managing his appearances to prevent him looking befuddled and lost.  

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On social media, clips of Biden’s deterioration are everywhere. His miscues are no longer “gaffes”; believing you just sat down with France’s former President Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996, is senility mixing up the channels.

There’s been a lot of chatter about what Joe Biden should do to confront the terrible blow delivered by Special Counsel Hur. There has been less commentary about how the presumed GOP nominee should navigate this gift from the blue. 

Reliable lefties like Ross Douthat at the New York Times are openly calling for Biden to step aside at the convention, allowing delegates to choose another candidate. Maureen Dowd, also at the awakened (panicked) Times, says Biden’s denial of his infirmities isn’t going to beat Trump, though she fails to provide a better plan. 

BIDEN LASHES OUT AT REPORTERS ASKING ABOUT AGE CONCERNS AFTER SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT: ‘THAT IS YOUR JUDGMENT!’

Trump can capitalize on Biden’s slide. But he must stop stepping in the middle of the story, such as he recently did when he recalled telling NATO members that if they didn’t pay their share of the alliance’s defense budget he would not protect them from Russia aggression. That, of course, made headlines of just the sort Democrats savor – Trump is reckless! Trump cannot be trusted!

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Trump must keep the spotlight on the president’s age and on the horrors perpetrated by Biden – the millions of illegals swarming across the border, the soft-on-crime approach of this White House, the resulting mayhem in places like Chicago and New York and the hugely inflated prices of everything. These issues are shipping voters into the “R” column. They remember these problems didn’t exist under Trump.

Meanwhile, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East demolish Biden’s absurd claims of diplomatic know-how. Rather, those conflicts showcase the extreme cost to the world of a weak man sitting in the Oval Office. Biden touts his “experience”; what good is experience if you can’t remember?

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Donald Trump is not a weak man. He is powerful – as a speaker and as a leader – ready to use the might of the U.S. presidency to close our borders. He has done it before and can do it again. Joe Biden has the same tools at his disposal, but refuses to take them out of the tool box. Trump should lay out how he will convince Mexico to host asylum-seekers on their side of the border, how he would deport criminals in the country illegally, and how he would team with Greg Abbott to prevent crossings instead of taking the Texas governor to court as Biden is doing.

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Similarly, Trump should push for a reasoned America-first approach to energy. Rather than chasing oil supplies from enemies in Iran and Venezuela, the United States should exploit our abundant natural resources here at home. Open up new federal lands to drilling, accelerate permits and back off Biden’s costly new fees and regulations which are making it more costly to drill.

Greenlight LNG exports which help the U.S. reduce our trade deficits with China and Japan, are critical for our European allies, and which actually help the climate as natural gas backs out coal. Ease Joe’s fuel efficiency mandates which are costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars and which may well kill U.S. automakers. When Ford is losing $60,000 on every EV it is forced to make, something is very wrong.

Finally, tell voters about Joe Biden’s plan to hike taxes, which will slow growth and cost jobs. The next president needs to extend the Trump tax cuts; the former president should make that happen.

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Trump right now has the wind at his back. Jamie Dimon, one of the world’s financial leaders, told the shocked elites at Davos that Trump had been right on a lot of issues; he was correct. 

If former President Trump can focus on those issues that worked for our country – the border, the economy and energy specifically – he can win in November. 

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.

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House Dems Eye Discharge Petition to Advance Aid Bill


By Sandy Fitzgerald    |   Tuesday, 13 February 2024 02:06 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/democrats-house-discharge-petition/2024/02/13/id/1153429/

Senior House Democrats are considering the use of a discharge petition to get around Speaker Mike Johnson if he refuses to introduce the $95 billion overseas aid bill approved by a 70-29 vote in the Senate on Tuesday.

Johnson, R-La., has not said if he will bring the bill up for a House vote, but on Monday, he said the legislation, which provides aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, is silent on illegal immigration, “the most pressing issue facing our country,” reported Newsweek.

A discharge petition would require support from 218 House members, including at least four Republicans. If approved, the Senate bill could be voted on like any other legislation, likely not before the end of this month.

The Senate’s bill allows $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $8 billion for Taiwan, and less than $10 billion in wider humanitarian assistance, including in Gaza.

Johnson, in a statement Monday, said that House Republicans were “crystal clear from the very beginning of discussions that any so-called national security supplemental legislation must recognize that national security begins at our own border.”

Without any border policy changes from the Senate, he said, “the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters. America deserves better than the Senate’s status quo.”

Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., posted on X that if Johnson won’t bring the “critical aid package to the floor, I stand ready to sign a discharge petition to get the job done. The world is watching.”

“We must deliver critical security assistance to our partners and humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” he added.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told CNN Monday that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “said he has not ruled out using a discharge petition, which is a parliamentary maneuver to try and bring a bill to the floor.”

In addition, pro-Ukraine conservatives have also called for a discharge petition, including former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who on X called Johnson an “idiot” and said it’s “time for a discharge petition, or for three Republicans to vote against every rule until he agrees. You will not win unless you fight fire with fire.”

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. 

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5 Charts Show Why Congress Must Stop Deficit Spending


By: David Ditch / @davidaditch / February 13, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/13/5-charts-show-why-congress-must-stop-deficit-spending/

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is joined by fellow Senate Republicans for a May 3, 2023, news conference where he urged the White House and Senate Democrats to pass House GOP legislation that would raise the debt limit but cut federal spending. More than nine months later, federal fiscal sanity is still in short supply. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Both chambers of Congress are locked in fierce battles over spending legislation.

A “supplemental” package has found bipartisan support in the Senate after the removal of flawed border and immigration provisions. However, its $95 billion price tag—$60 billion of which would go to Ukraine—means there will be stiff resistance in the House.

Meanwhile, Congress is also working on regular spending bills (known as appropriations) that fund national defense and federal agencies. The most recent deal funds part of the federal government through March 1 and the rest through March 8.

It remains to be seen whether these bills will be honest—or loaded with gimmicks, such as phony “emergency” spending in an attempt to trick the public about what’s going on.

The spending bills aren’t happening in isolation. Decades of budget gimmicks, spending sprees, and handouts to far left institutions have put America in an unsustainable position, as these new charts show.

While the federal government has a sorry track record of running deficits most of the time, the size

of the gap is also important. When deficits get too high, as happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, it adds to inflationary pressures on the economy.

If current trends continue, driven by the growth of spending as a share of the economy, deficits will balloon even in years without a recession or a major war.

The first-ever $1 trillion deficit happened in fiscal year 2009 and helped fuel the tea party movement in response.

Incredibly, not only are $1 trillion deficits now standard operation procedure, but the federal government is set to crack $2 trillion deficits every year as soon as 2031—even sooner if any new legislation expands the swamp.

Years of hefty deficits have added to the national debt. Relative to the size of the economy, the public national debt is now nearly as large as it was during World War II. However, there’s a vital difference between then and now: Once the war was over and civilization was saved, federal spending came down and the debt receded.

In contrast, most current federal spending is for categories where Uncle Sam has made firm commitments in the future, such as Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt. In turn, these categories represent the vast majority of expected spending growth, which is what drives long-term debt and deficits.

Both the Social Security and Medicare trust funds are on pace to go bust within the next decade, a reality that most of Washington would rather not talk about. While there are ways to save money on the programs that would retain the core safety-net aspect for seniors, addressing these imbalances will require political courage.


While the growth of the national debt is an important factor behind the recent rise of interest payments, the spike in interest rates is especially concerning.

Incredibly, the Congressional Budget Office revealed that the federal government will likely spend more on interest payments in 2024 than on national defense. And if debt and deficits continue to grow out of control, that will remain the case.

Interest payments don’t help protect the nation or fund public investments. Instead, they represent the bill coming due on big-government spending from the past. If Congress remains asleep at the wheel, rising interest costs will continue to snowball and threaten the fundamentals of the entire economy.

Legislators will have important opportunities over the next few weeks to start the process of tapping the brakes on deficits. That means:

  • Saying “no” to new deficit spending, which includes balancing any potential increases in one area with real cuts somewhere else.
  • Getting rid of earmark boondoggles that waste taxpayer money on political cronies and white elephant projects.
  • Cutting subsidies for unnecessary government operations, especially those captured by activists.

With Washington’s culture used to easy money, going the other direction will not be easy. However, it is absolutely necessary for America’s fiscal health and prosperity.

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Today’ Politically INCORRECT Cartoon by A.F. Branco


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Dodderer in Chief

A.F. BRANCO | on February 13, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-dodderer-in-chief/

Too Senile to Prosecute
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

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A.F. Branco Cartoon – Biden was deemed too old and senile to prosecute by Special Counsel Robert Hur but okay to continue leading the country according to the corporate leftist media, CNN, MSNBC, etc., and the Democrat party.

Special Counsel Hur Finds Joe Biden “Willfully Retained” TOP SECRET Military and National Security Information – DOJ Defends Lack of Criminal Charges Against Biden, a “Well-Meaning, Elderly Man with a Poor Memory”

By Cristina LailaFeb. 8, 2024

Special Counsel Robert Hur on Thursday released a 345-page report on Biden’s stolen classified documents investigation. Joe Biden STOLE SCIF-designated classified documents and improperly stored them at the Penn Biden Center, his Delaware garage, his Virginia home, and his lawyer’s Boston office. At least 5 White House aides, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus were involved in Biden’s classified documents scandal.

Hur found that Joe Biden “willfully retained” classified information, however, he decided not to charge him. Hur said there is evidence Biden retained classified notebooks, “knowing he was not allowed to do so.” 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.

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Joe Biden’s Classified Docs Provide More Evidence Hunter’s Pay-To-Play Was A Family Affair


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 12, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/12/joe-bidens-classified-docs-provide-more-evidence-hunters-pay-to-play-was-a-family-affair/

Joe Biden

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The special counsel report on Joe Biden’s unauthorized removal and disclosure of classified documents exposed much more than our president’s mental deficits and the breadth of his irresponsible handling of top-secret and classified information. The report revealed a close nexus between Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and his father’s responsibilities and access to intel during the elder’s term as vice president.

On Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur released the results of his investigation into the president stemming from the discovery of top-secret and classified documents at Biden’s D.C.-based Penn Biden Center, his private Delaware home, and the University of Delaware. While the specific details in the recovered documents remain unknown, the nearly 400-page report provided an extensive enough summary of the materials to confirm an overlap in the timing and topics of Joe Biden’s vice presidency and Hunter Biden’s “business” enterprises.

Ukraine Overlap

Appendix A of the report provided a table summary of the documents recovered. Many of the top-secret and classified documents concerned Ukraine during the time frame when Hunter Biden acted as an intermediary between Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, and the vice president. Recall that Hunter’s business partner, Devon Archer, told the House Oversight Committee that in early March 2014, he met Zlochevsky while in Moscow. And soon after, he and Hunter Biden joined Burisma’s board, receiving $83,000 per month.

The following month, Hunter Biden sent Archer an email dated April 13, 2014 — one week before Joe Biden would travel to Ukraine and meet then-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Referring to “my guys upcoming travels,” Hunter then elaborated on “22 points about Ukraine’s political situation, with detailed information about the upcoming election and predicting an escalation of Russia’s ‘destabilization campaign, which could lead to a full-scale takeover of the eastern region, most critically Donetsk,’” according to the New York Post.

Among the material recovered from President Biden’s unauthorized storage locales were several top-secret and otherwise classified or confidential documents discussing Ukraine. One undated document discussed issues related to Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Another, dated Sept. 17, 2014, consisted of a “Memorandum for the Vice President from staff members, with subject ‘U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine.’” Also dated Sept. 17, 2014, was an “event memo” from a vice-presidential national security staffer, titled, “Lunch with Ukrainian President Poroshenko,” which was scheduled for the following day.

The overlap between Joe Biden’s Ukraine-related work and Hunter Biden’s Burisma profiteering became more pronounced in 2015. On Dec. 2, 2015, the lobbying firm Blue Star Group, which Hunter Biden had arranged to work with Burisma, wrote to Burisma that it had “participated in a conference call today with senior Obama Administration officials ahead of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Ukraine next week.” The memorandum provided a summary of the conference call, telling Burisma that “Michael Carpenter, Vice President Biden’s Special Advisor for Europe and Russia, and Dr. Colin Kahl, the Vice President’s National Security Advisor, presented the agenda for the trip and answered questions about current U.S. policy toward Ukraine.” 

Two days after receiving this memorandum, Burisma executives Zlochevsky and Vadym Pozharskyi, on Dec. 4, 2015, pushed Hunter Biden to call his father. The Burisma executives, according to Archer, expressed concern over the pressure they were under from Ukrainian investigators.

Shokin’s Firing

During Biden’s visit to Ukraine the following week, the vice president threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees from the country unless the Ukrainian president fired the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. Shokin was later fired, and Biden bragged about his role in the termination.

Last week, the special counsel reported recovering documents classified as “secret,” dated circa Dec. 12, 2015, “setting forth the purpose and talking points for a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.” A transcript of the call between Biden and Yatsenyuk was attached, with a handwritten post-it note showing the then-VP had directed his executive assistant: “Get copy of the conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.” 

That transcript, labeled “CONFIDENTIAL” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY,” according to the special counsel, included “pleasantries” exchanged between the two, “and the Prime Minister heaped praise upon Mr. Biden for his December 9, 2015 speech to Ukraine’s parliament.” 

In that speech, Biden told Ukrainian lawmakers, “[I]t’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption. The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

A Change in U.S. Policy

Biden continues to maintain that his demands to Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, represented U.S. policy. But that policy seemed to have made a sharp turn from just months earlier. For instance, according to the House Oversight Committee, in “June 11, 2015, then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland wrote Prosecutor General Shokin, applauding his office’s progress in anti-corruption efforts.”

Then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt would likewise publicly state in September 2015, “[W]e want to work with Prosecutor General Shokin so the [Prosecutor General Office] is leading the fight against corruption.” That same month, “the Interagency Policy Committee asserted Prosecutor General Shokin had made sufficient progress in combating corruption to warrant a third guarantee of a $1 billion loan,” according to House Oversight Chair James Comer.

As part of its impeachment inquiry, the House Oversight Committee has been seeking records to establish how American policy shifted from supporting Shokin to demanding his firing. And now that Special Counsel Hur’s investigation into Biden has ended, Comer is demanding “unfettered access to these documents to determine if President Biden’s retention of sensitive materials were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling.” As Comer stressed, in addition to the Ukraine-related documents, top-secret and classified documents connected to China — another key source of Hunter Biden’s millions — were recovered.

Comer had previously asked Hur whether any of the classified records “were related to the countries that his family conducted business with,” but the special counsel’s office refused to provide details on the seized material. Comer told The Federalist that “[w]hile the Justice Department has closed its investigation, the Oversight Committee’s investigation continues.”

More to Probe 

“Important questions remain about the extent of Joe Biden retaining sensitive materials related to specific countries involving his family’s influence peddling schemes that brought in millions for the Bidens,” Comer told The Federalist. “We will continue to provide the transparency and accountability owed to the American people.”

The key here, however, is not whether Joe Biden retained the documents to further Hunter Biden’s selling of access, but whether he shared details he had learned from his position as vice president with Hunter. Given the thousands of emails VP Biden exchanged using pseudonyms, the fact that he had no problem sharing classified information with his ghost writer, and that he has lied repeatedly about his involvement with Hunter Biden’s business affairs, it isn’t a stretch to believe he shared confidential information with his son to advance Hunter’s pay-to-play scheme.

But the special counsel’s report makes one more thing clear: Joe Biden will never face a jury — not because he is innocent, but because he lacks the mental competence. Attorney General Merrick Garland apparently concurred in that assessment, as he approved Hur’s report. So surely then, Garland, as a member of the Cabinet, is discussing with his fellow cabinet members, the need to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment… Right?

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Ga. Judge: ‘Possible’ Evidence May Disqualify Willis


By Mark Swanson    |   Monday, 12 February 2024 03:46 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/georgia-judge-hearing/2024/02/12/id/1153275/

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said Monday that it’s “possible” the evidence that surfaced against District Attorney Fani Willis could disqualify her from the prosecuting the election interference case against Donald Trump and the remaining co-defendants. At issue is whether Willis’ admitted relationship with top prosecutor Nathan Wade “resulted in a financial benefit” to Willis by hiring him, McAfee said.

“What remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit, again if there even was one,” McAfee said regarding his decision to move forward with a hearing.

“Because I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant [Mike Roman] could result in disqualification [for Fani Willis]. I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish the record on those core allegations,” the judge said.

Willis had asked McAfee to quash the subpoenas against her, Wade, and employees in the DA’s office and cancel Thursday’s hearing. McAfee rejected that.

The attorney for Roman filed a motion weeks ago for Willis to be disqualified over the relationship, which Willis finally admitted to on Feb. 2. The situation took a turn Friday when Roman’s attorney said Wade’s former law partner will “refute” claims Willis and Wade made that their relationship started after the prosecutor was appointed to lead the case against the former president.

“(Terrance) Bradley has non-privileged, personal knowledge that the romantic relationship between Wade and Willis began prior to Willis being sworn as the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia in January 2021,” wrote Ashleigh Merchant, Roman’s lawyer.

Friday’s filing asserts their relationship began in 2019. Wade’s firm has been paid more than $653,000 since being hired by Willis in November 2021.

Records show that Wade purchased plane tickets for he and Willis to Aruba in October 2022 and San Francisco in April 2023. Roman alleges Wade spent more than $16,000 on cruises and trips in his filing, which accuses Willis of honest services fraud.

Mark Swanson ✉

Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Welcome Mat

A.F. BRANCO | on February 11, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-welcome-mat/

Minnesota A Sacutuary State? – Cartoon
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

Democrats are sponsoring a bill that would make Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for immigrants who enter the country illegally artfully sidestepped a question from media Thursday as to whether the legislation will have full support from their DFL colleagues in the state Senate. Democrats outnumber Republicans 34-33 in that upper chamber.

Will all 34 Senate Democrats vote ‘yes’ on illegal immigration ‘sanctuary’ bill?

By  Hank Long – February 9, 2024

“North Star Act” chief authors Sen. Omar Fateh and Rep. Sandra Feist intimated they are still working to get full support from their DFL colleagues in both chambers.

A pair of Democrat legislators sponsoring a bill that would make Minnesota a “sanctuary state” for immigrants who enter the country illegally artfully sidestepped a question from media Thursday as to whether the legislation will have full support from their DFL colleagues in the state Senate. Democrats outnumber Republicans 34-33 in that upper chamber.

Will Sen. Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, chief author of the proposal he’s coined “The North Star Act,” obtain all 34 Democrat votes he needs to pass the bill in the Senate?

“So far I have received a lot of enthusiastic feedback right now,” Fateh told media at a press conference on the bill he and Rep. Sandra Feist, DFL-New Brighton, held at the Capitol Thursday, just four days before the legislative session begins. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Benched

A.F. BRANCO

 on February 12, 2024 at 5:00 am

Killing Democracy
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

The Democrat Party, who claim to be the guardians of Democracy, have done their best to shut down any fellow democrat candidates such as R. Kennedy, M. Williamson, and D. Phillips, from running against Biden. Strangely, they’re likely to find a way to remove Biden at some point and insert a viable candidate of their choosing at a convenient time to elicit the most powerful impact. That sounds like the opposite of democracy to me.

FASCISM: Democrats in Four States Including Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Massachusetts Decide to Have Only Joe Biden on the Primary Ballot

By Jim Hᴏft Dec. 21, 2023 3:20 pm

Four states—Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Massachusetts—have decided to force voters with a single option for the Democratic primaries: Joe Biden. The decision, which effectively crowns Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee in those states without primary contestation, has incited allegations of disenfranchisement and questions about the democratic process within the party.

The true threat to the demise of our democracy lies with the Democrats, not Donald Trump. The communist party will now decide the Democratic Party’s nominee and who they install into the White House. The Florida Democratic Executive Committee announced that in the upcoming primary elections, the ballot will only feature the name of Joe Biden, effectively excluding any potential challengers within the party. 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.

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Some Politically INCORRECT Cartoons for you this Saturday Morning, February 10, 2024


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SUMMING UP THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT HUMOR FOR THE WEEK OF FEBRUARY 9, 2024


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Democrats Spun Biden’s Classified Docs As ‘Six Items,’ But Special Counsel Report Reveals It Was 300-Plus


BY: MARGOT CLEVELAND | FEBRUARY 09, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/09/democrats-spun-bidens-classified-docs-as-six-items-but-special-counsel-report-reveals-it-was-300-plus/

Joe Biden with his hand raised looking frail and confused

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Thursday’s bombshell report by Special Counsel Robert Hur concluded that “President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” And though the material concerned “issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods,” and presented “serious risks to national security,” Hur recommended against charging Biden in his 380-plus-page report, saying it would be “difficult to convince a jury” to convict such “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur’s damning assessment of Biden’s degenerative mental state launched a media frenzy concerning his fitness for office, prompting the president to angrily condemn the report for including what he called “extraneous” matters in a hastily arranged press conference Thursday evening. 

Coming on the heels of Biden claiming he had recently conversed with two long-dead foreign leaders, Hur’s conclusion that the president suffered from a “significantly limited” memory as early as 2017 should lead the country — and the Cabinet — to consider Biden’s fitness for president. But the focus on the passages related to Biden’s mental infirmities has distracted from another huge takeaway from the report: the vast amount of top-secret and classified material Biden had removed, stored in unsecured locations, and communicated to the ghostwriter of his memoirs.

Following the FBI’s surprise raid on Mar-a-Lago, headlines blared that former President Trump had retained “more than 300 classified documents” after leaving the White House. In contrast, when news broke that Biden’s attorneys had alerted the National Archives to the discovery of classified documents in a closet at a Washington, D.C., think tank, the accomplice media repeated claims by Biden’s attorney that “’a small number of documents with classified markings’ were discovered as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices of the Penn Biden Center.” 

A Biden lawyer would later report finding a few additional classified documents at the President’s Delaware home, prompting the FBI to conduct a 12-plus-hour search of the residence. After the search, Biden’s attorney issued a statement acknowledging the “DOJ took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials.” The DOJ also seized “for further view personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” Biden’s personal attorney announced at the time.

We now know, though, that the “six items” and the “personally handwritten notes” consisted of hundreds of top secret or classified documents, including notebooks filled with Joe Biden’s summary of classified briefings. A quick count from the special counsel’s appendix reveals the government recovered more than 300 pages of top-secret and classified documents. The FBI also seized a hard drive, but the appendix lacks any details on its contents.

The top-secret and classified documents, as well as many others marked confidential, were discovered at the Penn Biden Center, the University of Delaware, and Biden’s Delaware home, including in his garage. According to the special counsel report, the material included notes from classified briefings that discussed “U.S. intelligence sources, methods … capabilities,” and activities, as well as the activities of foreign intelligence services. Other notes discussed “U.S. military programs and capabilities, foreign military programs and capabilities,” and “plans and capabilities of foreign terrorist organizations.”

The quantity and significance of the recovered material far exceed what Biden’s lawyers and their media accomplices had led Americans to believe — that it was but a few documents inadvertently retained. The special counsel’s report also reveals that Biden knew about at least some of the classified documents as early as 2017, when he told the ghostwriter of his book about discovering them.

Yet when asked about Trump’s retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Biden asked rhetorically how “anyone could be that irresponsible.”

“What data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?” Biden added about the materials Trump retained.

Hur also tried to distinguish Trump’s situation from Biden’s, noting that Trump retained the documents after being asked for them to be returned and then allegedly had them moved. According to Hur’s report, though, Biden knew he had the classified documents as early as 2017 and didn’t try to return them.

Further, as the House Oversight Committee revealed last year, the then-White House Counsel Dana Remus had tasked Joe Biden’s former vice-presidential assistant, Kathy Chung, with retrieving boxes from the Penn Biden Center as early as May 2022. That was a full six months before Biden’s attorney would acknowledge the discovery of the classified documents. 

James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told The Federalist that this fact and the House’s investigation “unravel the White House’s and President Biden’s personal attorney’s narrative of events.” And even though “Joe Biden willfully retained classified documents for years in unsecure locations and intentionally disclosed them,” he “faces no consequences for his actions.” 

“Americans expect equal justice under the law and are dismayed the Justice Department continues to allow Joe Biden to live above it,” Comer added.

This is all true. But there may well be something Americans expect even more and something they refuse to allow Biden to deprive them of — a mentally cognizant commander in chief.

Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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Biden Cried ‘Book Ban,’ Then Pressured Amazon to Ban His Opponents from World’s Biggest Bookstore


BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | FEBRUARY 09, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/09/biden-cried-book-ban-then-pressured-amazon-to-ban-his-opponents-from-worlds-biggest-bookstore/

Joe Biden talks to woman in a library

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Democrats and their accomplices in the media have expended an awful lot of ink, breath, and energy trying to convince voters that people on the right want to “ban books.” The leftist firestorm attacks concerned parents working to eradicate pornography and other age-inappropriate books from taxpayer-funded schools and libraries. These works include titles such as All Boys Aren’t Blue, which contains descriptions of rape, incest, and pedophilia, and Gender Queer, which shows graphic depictions of oral sex, masturbation, and homosexual acts.

Democrat activists have come out in full-throated defense of explicit sexual content for children and likened conservatives who oppose it to Nazis who want to burn books. Last month, MSNBC host Joy Reid grilled the co-founder of Moms for Liberty about why parents should have any say in how their tax dollars are used and argued that kids who identify as LGBT “feel seen” by stories about child rape.

One Democrat governor ironically argued that Republican efforts to shield children from age-inappropriate content are “castrating them.” President Joe Biden has also smeared Republicans for “banning books,” and even announced during “pride month” that he would appoint a “book ban coordinator” to make sure schools weren’t removing filth from their shelves.

That’s why it was so ridiculous to learn this week that all while Democrats were shrieking about pornography “book bans,” the Biden White House was actively “pressuring” Amazon, the world’s largest bookseller, to nuke books that raised concerns about experimental Covid-19 shots. It’s a pretty good bet that’s not the only topic the White House pressured Amazon to ban, either. According to internal documents and emails subpoenaed by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, senior Biden official Andy Slavitt, who pressured Facebook to censor speech, was pushing Amazon to ban books disagreeing with Democrat policies.

Because Slavitt didn’t like the “concerning” results that turned up when he searched Amazon books for “vaccines,” he emailed the corporation on March 2, 2021, to ask to whom Biden officials could speak about “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon.” The vaccine debate was, and is still, ongoing. But the White House was mad that Amazon didn’t slap a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention onto books that stepped out of line from the government’s Covid claims.

At first, Amazon opted not to manually censor books. But as House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan wrote on X, it wasn’t “out of any commitment to free speech, but because doing so would be ‘too visible’ to the American public and likely to spur criticism from conservative media.” Amazon noted it was already taking heat for censoring Ryan T. Anderson’s book on the transgender debate, When Harry Became Sally, the month prior. The White House fired back, irritated that Amazon didn’t editorialize its book product pages with context tags, the way X and Facebook propagandist “fact-checkers” do. As Jordan pointed out, the administration couldn’t have Americans thinking for themselves.

Biden’s team was so demanding that by the time Amazon met with White House officials the next week, the company’s No. 1 question was, “Is the Admin asking us to remove books?” And the demands apparently worked. March 9, the same day as Amazon’s meeting with administration officials, it opted not to “promote” books the Democrat administration didn’t like. Just a few days later, it said it was looking into other steps “to reduce the visibility” of books that ticked off the Biden regime.

So just to be clear, at the same time the propaganda press and Democrats were crying “book ban” because rightly concerned parents were trying to eradicate taxpayer-funded gay porn from school libraries, the Biden administration was colluding with the world’s biggest bookstore to bury non-leftist viewpoints from sight.

Since we’re talking about Amazon, here’s another thing. Democrats, who claim to be mad that you don’t want your kid waltzing into the library and willy-nilly snagging a picture book about one little boy giving another little boy a blow job, can effortlessly nab a copy of any of these books with the click of a button and have them Amazon “Primed” to their doorsteps overnight. These graphic books aren’t “banned” in any sense of the word.

Meanwhile, Democrats are willing to exert undo pressure from the highest office in the land to ensure mainstream viewpoints it doesn’t like are as difficult as possible to find — or nuked from Amazon’s mega bookstore altogether. Maybe there is such a thing as a “book ban.” But it’s not on gay porn for kiddos.

Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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House Republicans Seek Access to Biden’s Classified Documents


By Fran Beyer    |   Friday, 09 February 2024 02:52 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-hunter-biden-ukraine/2024/02/09/id/1153001/

House Republicans on Friday demanded access to classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home amid the Oversight panel’s probe of the Biden family. In a social media post by the GOP-majority House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, chaired by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the panel demanded the Department of Justice Department provide Congress with access “to Joe Biden’s stashed classified documents to determine if they were used to help the Bidens’ influence peddling schemes.”

The move follows Comer’s request that “Special Counsel Robert Hur provide our committee with information about whether President Biden retained classified materials related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business schemes that brought in millions for the Biden family,” the panel wrote — and that the DOJ “refused to provide this information under the guise of ‘an ongoing investigation.'”

The committee said that since the probe is now over “and the Special Counsel’s report reveals Joe Biden kept classified materials related to Ukraine and China, two countries where the Bidens made millions,” the DOJ “must provide Congress with unfettered access to these documents.”

Hur released his report to the public on Thursday, but didn’t recommend criminal charges against Biden for mishandling and retaining classified documents — and stated he wouldn’t bring charges against Biden even if he were not in the Oval Office. 

The records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other countries, among other records related to national security and foreign policy, which Hur said implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.”

They also included documents related to Ukraine and China.

Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in June 2014 and also had joint business ventures with Chinese energy firms.

According to the full special counsel report, a “VP Personal” file folder contained a telephone call sheet from Dec. 12, 2015, talking points for a call with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, and a handwritten note attached addressed to Biden’s executive assistant that states: “Get copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.” The note is signed “Joe.” That document was marked as “Secret.”

Attached to that document was another, dated Dec. 11, 2015. The report describes that document as “a transcript documenting the substance of a Dec. 11, 2015 call between Mr. Biden and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.” The document is marked “CONFIDENTIAL” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY.”

Biden gave a speech on Dec. 9, 2015 in which he discussed corruption in Ukraine. 

“And it’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption,” Biden said in the speech. “The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform.”

At the time, Burisma Holdings was under investigation by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Several months later, in March 2016, Biden successfully pressured Ukraine to remove Shokin. At the time Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings, and Hunter Biden had a highly lucrative role on the board.

Biden, at the time, threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.

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Climate Models Exaggerate Effects of Global Warming


By: Roy Spencer / @RoyWSpencer / Kevin Dayaratna / @kdd0211 / February 09, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/09/climate-models-exaggerate-effects-of-global-warming/

Climate models overestimate the effects of global warming, a Heritage Foundation research paper shows. We need the best available science. (Photo illustration: Alistair Berg/Getty Images)

Policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to minimize the effects of climate change should be guided by the best available science.

A new research paper from The Heritage Foundation provides compelling evidence—as indicated in the chart below—that warming in the past 50 years or so has been overestimated by most computer models when compared to temperature observations by thermometer.

The Heritage Foundation’s Backgrounder paper, written by the first author of this commentary, is titled “Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)

A vocal minority of scientists often criticizes work such as this paper because their careers depend upon continued climate alarmism.

For example, NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, a mathematician by training who now oversees a subset of the climate models at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, took issue with a few of the Heritage paper’s arguments, to which the author responded in detail here and here.

>>> Read the entire Heritage Backgrounder here.

So, how well do climate models predict the warming that actually has occurred?

Let’s look at trends in surface air temperature, averaged over the United States since 1945. Why 1945? For two reasons. First, CO2 emissions began to dramatically increase after World War II. Second, when one compares the future warming response in 33 computer models to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 above preindustrial levels (called “2x CO2“), 1945 is the starting year that produces the highest correlation between those warming trends and the eventual total amount of global-average warming in response to 2xCO2.

In other words, 1945 is the starting date when computer models’ past warming trends best predict future rates of global warming. The distribution of those past model trends is shown here:

Note that 33 out of 34 climate models produced warmer trends than those observed in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official reanalyzed thermometer data. The warming trend produced by the computer models (1945-2023) is 64% greater than the observed temperatures.

If we instead (as Schmidt suggested) restrict analysis to those computer models deemed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to have the most likely response to 2X CO2 (2 to 5 degrees Celsius of net warming), then the model-average warming trend is still 54% greater than that observed, with 25 of 26 models producing more warming than was observed.

Why is this important? Well, for example, the United States does a congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment, now in its fifth iteration, in which a panel of climate activists interpret what the U.N. organization’s projections of climate change mean for U.S. residents.

A reading of the National Climate Assessment leaves one with the impression that every weather disaster, whether floods or hurricanes or wildfires or whatever, now can be blamed on climate change caused by humans.

No mention is made of the fact that almost all climate models exaggerate warming and associated effects in the U.S. In fact, the National Climate Assessment tends to lean toward the model projections showing the greatest projected effects in the U.S.

More fundamentally, regardless of one’s perception of climate change, carbon-based regulation in the U.S. will not alter global temperatures. 

Heritage Foundation research has shown that using the Environmental Protection Agency’s preferred Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change, the associated policies would reduce global temperatures by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, even using alarmist assumptions about the extent of climate change. 

At the same time, China will continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere as it has done for years. 

Policies such as congressional Democrats’ proposed Green New Deal would reduce household income by at least $165,000 over 20 years. Similar policies suggested by lawmakers also would have detrimental effects economically.

Computer models can be useful for understanding real-world phenomena. However, until scientists and lawmakers stop relying on demonstrably biased climate models, such models can’t be trusted to guide public policy.

Read the entire Heritage Backgrounder here.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Losing Streak

A.F. BRANCO | on February 9, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-losing-streak/

Nikki Haley Loses Nevada
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco 2024

Nikki Haley has yet to win a state in the primary but because of dark money, the Support of anti-Trumpers, support of the Military Industrial Complex, RINOS, and Democrats she dares to move ahead with little chance of winning.

Neocon Nikki Haley Lashes Out After Humiliating Loss in Nevada — Claims Primary Process Was a “Scam” and “Rigged from the Start” for Trump (VIDEO)

ByJim Hᴏft Feb. 7, 2024 9:00 pm

In an interview with Elex Michaelson on The Issue is Show, neocon Nikki Haley publicly denounced the Nevada primary process, labeling it a “scam” and asserting it was “rigged from the start” to favor former President Donald Trump.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that perhaps the most embarrassing moment of Nikki Haley’s entire political career occurred Tuesday night in the Nevada Primary, and President Trump was not even on the ballot.

Despite being the only major candidate on the ballot, Haley was overwhelmingly defeated, with many voters opting for “None of These Candidates” over her. 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.

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Democrat Lawyer Admits At Supreme Court That Only One Party Can Be Allowed To Rig Elections


BY: EDDIE SCARRY | FEBRUARY 08, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/08/democrat-lawyer-admits-at-supreme-court-that-only-one-party-can-be-allowed-to-rig-elections/

Supreme Court

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There was never a purer demonstration of how traitorous Democrats are about “defending democracy,” or whatever corny phrase they like to use, than what just happened at the Supreme Court.

At the very end of oral arguments in the Colorado case determining whether the state had the right to remove former President Donald Trump’s name from the 2024 ballot, Justice Samuel Alito asked the state’s solicitor general, Shannon Stevenson, what’s going to happen if other states “retaliate” by, say, removing Joe Biden from theirs. Elected officials in at least six states have suggested it as a course of action.

It’s an obvious question that Stevenson either wasn’t prepared for or knew it would expose her state’s case as a tragic joke. “Your honor, I think we have to have faith in our system that people will follow their election processes appropriately, that they will take realistic views of what insurrection is under the 14th Amendment,” she said. “Courts will review those decisions, this court may review some of them.”

What she said next should have resulted in her being laughed out of the room. “But,” she said, “I don’t think that this court should take those threats too seriously in its resolution of this case.”

Alito challenged Stevenson on whether she thought the suggestion of retaliation, coming from places like Florida, Arizona, and Georgia, all potentially swing states in the next election, was truly unfounded.

“Um, I think we have processes—” she said, before being interrupted.

“We should proceed on the assumption that it’s not a serious threat?” said Alito.

Stevenson said there are “institutions in place” that should “handle” such matters. Asked to specify which institutions, she said, “Our states, their own electoral rules, the administrators who enforce those rules.” She also said voters would have to rely on “courts.”

In essence, to believe this entire case by Democrats is an effort to safeguard democracy, rather than rig an election, is to trust that Republicans would never dare try doing the same. If they did, it would ruin Democrats’ plot. Alternatively, if such threats were made good, we should expect enough opposition to render them neutral.

In fairness, a lot of Republicans are naive morons who time and time again respond to Democrats politically kicking their teeth in by saying, “Well, if we do anything back, we’re no better than them.” So, Stevenson’s is not a terrible gamble.

But there’s a long way to go before the election. Attitudes change, and they will rapidly if Colorado is successful and other Democrat states decide to follow the example of unilaterally determining Trump is ineligible to run for a second term, all because he rejected the accuracy of election results (as Democrats do on a routine basis).

The media’s fixation on the Colorado case has focused solely on the legal merits of the case, when the more urgent matter has always been not what happens if it’s ruled legal to keep Trump off a ballot, but what it means for future democratic elections if he is.

There’s a reason until recently it was not only abnormal but unthinkable in America for one political party to use the justice system to exterminate its opponent. The reason is self-evident— mutually assured destruction. If they can do it to us, we can do it to them. It’s what they do in the Congo and every other war-torn state across the globe.

Alito intentionally invoked that perilous likelihood. Stevenson’s response — “I don’t think that this court should take those threats too seriously” — showed just how seriously Democrats take “defending democracy.”

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”

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Biden ‘did not remember when he was vice president,’ when his son Beau died, during special counsel interviews


By Joe Schoffstall , Brooke Singman Fox News | Published February 8, 2024 4:24pm EST

Read more at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-did-not-remember-when-he-was-vice-president-when-his-son-beau-died-during-special-counsel-interview

According to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents released Thursday, Biden could not remember key details, such as when he was vice president, during interviews with investigators. 

Hur has been investigating Biden’s improper retention of classified records since last year. The papers included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other national security and foreign policy records, which Hur said implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” He announced he would not seek criminal charges against Biden.

The report, however, also contains an eye-opening portion on how Biden struggled to remember when he served as vice president in the Obama administration while being interviewed for the investigation. Additionally, Hur’s office believed Biden’s lawyers would use those “limitations” in his recall if it went to trial.

NO CHARGES FOR BIDEN AFTER SPECIAL COUNSEL PROBE INTO IMPROPER HANDLING OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” the report states. “He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report continued. “And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”

“In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,” the report said.

GARLAND SAYS SPECIAL COUNSEL PROBING BIDEN CLASSIFIED RECORDS HAS SUBMITTED REPORT, UNDER WHITE HOUSE REVIEW

President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden speaks during a press conference after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders week in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

While Biden will not face charges, Hur said his investigation “uncovered evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”

The materials included “marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods.” 

Hur said FBI agents recovered the materials from “the garages, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilimington, Delaware home.” 

President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden arrives for a memorial service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University on November 28, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Brynn Anderson-Pool/Getty Images)

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He added that the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Joe Schoffstall is a politics producer/reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Joe.Schoffstall@Fox.com and on Twitter: @joeschoffstall

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Special Counsel: Biden ‘Willfully’ Disclosed Classified Docs, but Criminal Charges Unwarranted


Thursday, 08 February 2024 03:33 PM EST

Read more at https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/biden-hur-garland-classified-documents/2024/02/08/id/1152868/

President Joe Biden “willfully” retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan and other sensitive national security matters, according to a Justice Department report that nonetheless says no criminal charges are warranted for him or anyone else.

The report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, represents a harshly critical assessment of Biden’s handling of sensitive government materials, but also details the reasons why he should not be charged with the crime.

The findings will likely blunt his ability to forcefully condemn Donald Trump, Biden’s likely opponent in November’s presidential election, over a criminal indictment charging the former president with illegally doing much the same thing with classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur wrote.

Hur’s report says evidence suggests that many of the classified documents recovered by investigators at the Penn Biden Center, in parts of Biden’s Delaware home, and in his Senate papers at the University of Delaware were retained by “mistake.”

The report comes after a yearlong investigation into the improper retention of classified documents by Biden, from his time as a senator and as vice president, that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a private office that he used in between his service in the Obama administration and becoming president.

Though the allegations look similar, the investigation into Biden is separate from special counsel Jack Smith’s inquiry into the handling of classified documents by Trump after Trump left the White House. Smith’s team has charged Trump with illegally retaining top secret records at Mar-a-Lago home and then obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.

A notable distinction raised by Trump’s legal representatives and by the ex-president: Trump, when president, had authority to declassify documents, while Biden, who was vice president at the time of the security breaches, did not.

In an afternoon statement on Hur’s report, Biden’s lawyers did take exception to the special counsel’s characterization of their client’s memory as hazy and lacking precision, calling the language highly prejudicial in referring to a common occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall over years-old events.

The lawyers said the president did well, considering the Oct.7 Hamas attack on Israel had just happened the day before and he was focused on that and other matters of state.

“Your treatment of President Biden stands in marked contrast to the lack of pejorative comments about other individuals.”

Background

After Biden’s lawyers uncovered classified documents at his former office, Biden’s representatives promptly contacted the National Archives to arrange their return to the government. The National Archives notified the FBI, which opened an investigation. Biden made his homes available to agents to conduct thorough searches, and that is how the most sensitive documents came to the attention of the Justice Department.

Hur assessed that the evidence did not support that Biden willfully retained some of the classified documents that were recovered — including the ones at the Penn Biden Center that sparked the probe.

Biden could not have been prosecuted as a sitting president, but Hur’s report states that he would not recommend charges against Biden regardless.

“We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president,” the report said.

We are pleased that this investigation has concluded and that the Special Counsel found “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” even if the President were out of office and a private citizen.

White House lawyer Richard Sauber said Biden takes classified information seriously and “strives to protect it,” but making mistakes when packing documents at the end of an administration can be a common occurrence, as the report noted.

“We disagree with a number of inaccurate and inappropriate comments in the special counsel’s report. Nonetheless, the most important decision the special counsel made — that no charges are warranted — is firmly based on the facts and evidence,” Sauber said.

Part of the report centers on Biden’s handling of classified documents about Afghanistan — specifically, the Obama administration’s decision to send additional troops there — that he retained after he left office as vice president in his Delaware home. Biden preserved materials documenting his opposition to the troop surge, including a 2009 classified handwritten memo to then-President Barack Obama.

“These materials were proof of the stand Mr. Biden took in what he regarded as among the most important decisions of his vice presidency,” the report said.

The documents have classification markings up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Level and were found in a box in Biden’s Delaware garage “that contained other materials of great significance to him and that he appears to have personally used and accessed.”

Photographs included in the report showed some of the classified Afghanistan documents stored in a worn cardboard box stored in his garage, apparently in a loose collection with other household items, including a ladder and a wicker basket.

Classified documents from the Obama administration were also found in Biden’s basement den, according to the report. Classified documents from his time in the Senate in the 1970s and 1980s were also found in his garage .

Multiple reasons

Despite signs that Biden knowingly retained and disclosed classified materials, Hur’s report said criminal charges were not merited for multiple reasons. Those include the fact that as vice president, and during his subsequent presidency when the Afghanistan records were found, “he had the authority to keep classified documents at his home.”

As part of the probe, investigators reviewed a recording of a February 2017 conversation between Biden and his ghostwriter in which, referring to the 2009 memo to Obama, Biden said that he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Biden was renting a home in Virginia at the time and consolidated his belongings in Delaware when he moved out in 2019. Prosecutors believe that Biden’s comment was a reference to the same classified records that FBI agents later found in his Delaware home.

Though the best case for charges could involve his possession of the Afghanistan documents as a private citizen, prosecutors said, it was possible that Biden could have found those records at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after.

“This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully,” the report.

The report said there was some evidence to suggest that Biden knew he could not keep classified handwritten notes at home after leaving office, citing his deep familiarity “with the measures taken to safeguard classified information and the need for those measures to prevent harm to national security.” Yet his kept notebooks containing classified information in unlocked drawers at home.

“He had strong motivations to do so and to ignore the rules for properly handing the classified information in his notebooks,” the report said. “He consulted the notebooks liberally during hours of discussions with his ghostwriter and viewed them as highly private and valued possessions with which he was unwilling to part.”

While the report removes legal jeopardy for the president, it is nonetheless is an embarrassment for Biden, who placed competency and experience at the core of his rationale to voters to send him to the Oval Office.

“Mr. Biden was known to remove and keep classified material from his briefing books for future use, and his staff struggled — and sometimes failed — to retrieve those materials,” the report states. “And there was no procedure at all for tracking some of the classified material Mr. Biden received outside of his briefing books.”

In declining to prosecute Biden, Hur’s office also cited what it said was Biden’s “limited memory” both during his 2017 recorded conversations with the ghostwriter and in an interview with investigators last year.

“Given Mr. Biden’s limited precision and recall during his interviews with his ghostwriter and with our office, jurors may hesitate to place too much evidentiary weight on a single eight-word utterance to his ghostwriter about finding classified documents in Virginia, in the absence of other, more direct evidence.”

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” investigators wrote.

There is recent Justice Department precedence for criminal charges against individuals accused of sharing classified information with biographers or ghostwriters. Gen. David Petraeus pleaded guilty to doing exactly that in 2015 and was sentenced to probation. Yet in this instance, prosecutors say, Biden could have plausibly believed that the notebooks were his personal property and belonged to him, even if they contained classified information.

In an interview with prosecutors, the report said, Biden was emphatic with investigators that the notebooks were “my property” and that “every president before me has done the exact same thing.”

White House lawyers and Biden’s personal attorney were given the opportunity to review and comment on the report. Biden chose not to assert executive privilege over any portion of the report, White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 named Hur, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, to handle the politically sensitive Justice Department inquiry in an attempt to avoid conflicts of interest. It is one of three recent Justice Department investigations into the handling of classified documents by politically prominent figures.

Newsmax contributed to this report.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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EU Lawmakers Warn Sanctions Could Be Imposed on Tucker Carlson for Putin Interview


By: Jake Smith / February 08, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/08/eu-lawmakers-warn-sanctions-could-be-imposed-on-tucker-carlson-for-putin-interview/

Tucker Carlson may be threatened with sanctions by the European Union after traveling to Moscow to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pictured: Carlson speaks at a Turning Point Action USA conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 15, 2023. (Photo: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson could be threatened with sanctions by the European Union over his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to current and former members of the European Parliament.

Carlson traveled to Moscow and met with Putin for a yet-to-be-released interview about the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and its global perception. Carlson could face sanctions or a travel ban to Europe from the EU governing bodies over his interview with Putin, former and current parliamentary members told Newsweek.

dailycallerlogo“As Putin is a war criminal and the EU sanctions all who assist him in that effort, it seems logical that the External Action Service examines [Carlson’s] case as well,” Guy Verhofstadt, former Belgian prime minister and current EU Parliament member who has called for a travel ban to be imposed on Carlson, told Newsweek.

“Carlson is not being a real journalist since he has clearly expressed his sympathy for the Russian regime and Putin and has constantly disparaged Ukraine, the victim of Russian aggression,” Urmas Paet, former Estonia foreign minister and current Parliament member, told Newsweek. “So, for such propaganda for a criminal regime, you can end up on the list of sanctions. This concerns primarily travel ban to EU countries.”

In order to impose sanctions on Carlson, the EU External Action Service must consider the available evidence and then turn the case over to the European Council, made up of the bloc’s leaders, for a final decision, according to Newsweek; Members of Parliament cannot impose sanctions on an individual at their sole discretion.

One EU official told Newsweek that it would be necessary to implicate Carlson for his ties to Russia’s war effort, which would be “difficult and hard to prove.” Still, other former and current EU Parliament members insist Carlson is aiding in Russia’s hostilities and needs to face consequences for it.

“He is no longer a newsman, but a propagandist for the most heinous regime on European soil and the one which is most dangerous to our peace and security,” Luis Garicano, a former Parliament member, told Newsweek.

Carlson said on Wednesday he did not interview Putin out of support for the dictator but rather because he felt the need to show the U.S. and the West aspects of the war. Carlson feels that Western media has left important aspects of the war out of their coverage and said most people are either misinformed or not informed at all about the issue.

Carlson also warned that the war in Ukraine has “reshaped the global military and trade alliances” that have “upended the world economy.” He criticized Western media for positively portraying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “demand that the U.S. enter more deeply into a war in Eastern Europe and pay for it.”

The EU External Action Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Black Votes Matter

A.F. BRANCO | on February 7, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-black-votes-matter-2/

Biden Black Vote
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco

Biden is losing more of the Black Vote every day to Trump along with other minorities according to recent polls. Mainly because of his disastrous economy and open-border policies.

Black Voters in South Carolina Turn on Joe Biden Ahead of Democrat Primary (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila Jan. 27, 2024 7:40 pm

Black voters in South Carolina are turning on Joe Biden ahead of the Democrat primaries set for February 3. “Biden just wants to cause more bills for everybody, and he’s got a lot of homeless people out here,” one black South Carolina voter told the media of Joe Biden losing support among blacks. “It ain’t the Black community — it’s everybody’s community,” he said.

As TGP’s Kristinn Taylor reported, a poll released last month by Morning Consult shows Joe Biden losing support among black voters while President Trump is gaining support. Over the past year, Biden is down nine points, from 70 to 61 percent while Trump is up seven points, 15 to 22 percent. READ MORE…

A.F. Branco Cartoon – Line Boss

A.F. BRANCO |  on February 8, 2024 | https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-line-boss/

02 Biden Seal DT 1080
A Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco

The border crisis is 100% caused by Biden. He ended Trump’s policies that kept the border secure, and for 3 years continued to allow millions of illegal immigrants into the U.S.. Biden’s refusal to close the border with existing tools at his disposal is allowing rising crime, human trafficking, and Fentanyl into our country, killing and destroying the lives of millions of Americans.

BIDEN BORDER CRISIS: A Record 302,034 Illegal Aliens Encountered at Southern Border in December

ByCristina Laila

A record 302,034 illegal aliens were encountered at the US-Mexico border in December. It has been estimated that more than 11 million illegal aliens – mainly military-age males – have crossed over the border since Joe Biden was installed in January 2021. The Biden Regime waited more than 3 weeks to release the numbers and then decided on a Friday news dump. 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.

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EJ Antoni Op-ed: Caught in Crosshairs of a Cost-of-Living Crisis


EJ Antoni / @RealEJAntoni / February 06, 2024

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/06/caught-in-crosshairs-cost-living-crisis/

President Joe Biden stands behind a podium wearing a bright blue jacket.
Americans’ main concern today isn’t internet speed, as Preisdent Joe Biden seems to think, but their inability to afford necessities such as food and housing. Pictured: Biden speaks Jan. 24 about his economic agenda and recent infrastructure funding in Superior, Wisconsin. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

President Joe Biden recently took to a stage in North Carolina to tout his economic agenda, which includes bringing high-speed internet to rural America. But that’s hardly what Americans struggling with a cost-of-living crisis need to hear.

Millions of Americans have been terribly frustrated with the economy over the last three years, as witnessed by countless economic polls. While several aggregate numbers like gross domestic product and its largest component, consumer spending, may paint a rosy picture, millions of Americans are economically worse off than they were three years ago.

After annual inflation outpaced earnings growth for a record 26 consecutive months, real (inflation-adjusted) incomes are down about 4.5% compared to January 2021. Yet Biden claims “we’re doin’ pretty damn well economically.”

While Biden claims that real earnings have risen for the bottom half of workers, data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics mere hours before Biden spoke show real earnings have fallen 1% for the bottom half of workers during his tenure.

People are struggling to make ends meet, with credit card debt at a record $1.1 trillion while 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. This is despite a record number of Americans having multiple jobs as they try to boost their lagging real incomes.

Having maxed out their credit cards, Americans turned to alternative financing options, like buy-now-pay-later plans, to cover their holiday spending. Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans still haven’t even paid off their holiday debt from 2022.

It’s no wonder that defaults and delinquencies on consumer debt like credit cards are rising at the fastest pace since the Global Financial Crisis.

However, official inflation metrics like the consumer price index are understating the cost-of-living crisis by underestimating inflation, mostly because of methodological changes over the years. This is especially true for housing, which has seen affordability plummet over the past three years.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the median-priced home is affordable with the median income in only one metropolitan area (population of at least 500,000) in the whole country. Families are maxing out credit cards just to pay their rent.

This debt-fueled consumer spending binge of the past three years mirrors federal government spending. The national debt has breached $34 trillion, with another $1 trillion being added every 100 days or so. Interest on the debt is now $1 trillion annually, the third-largest budget item behind only the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The explosions in government and consumer debt are related. Runaway federal spending prompted the Federal Reserve to create trillions of dollars for the Treasury Department to pay its bills. That drove inflation to 40-year highs, which robbed workers of their purchasing power, prompting them to take on debt to maintain their standard of living.

Ironically, Biden cited his American Rescue Plan and the infrastructure bill he signed as two critical components of Bidenomics that have aided in his quest to expand high-speed internet access. Of course, these multitrillion-dollar spending packages also supercharged inflation.

From his podium, Biden predicted that everyone in North Carolina would have high-speed internet access by the end of the decade. Unfortunately, because of the explosion in government spending, the federal debt will exceed $52 trillion by that time.

The never-ending flood of government debt will bring more rounds of inflation and only worsen American families’ financial situations as prices and interest rates fluctuate violently.

Americans’ main concern today is not their internet speed but their inability to afford necessities such as food and housing. The only way to reverse this cost-of-living crisis is to reverse what got us here: runaway government spending.

This commentary, distributed by Tribune News Service, originally was published by msn.com

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A Real Border Solution Would Punish Mexican Cartels, Not Bribe Them


BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON | FEBRUARY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/06/a-real-border-solution-would-punish-mexican-cartels-not-bribe-them/

AMLO

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A lot of ink has been spilled in recent days about the Senate’s $118 billion border bill, most of it detailing just how awful the proposed legislation is — awful, that is, if your goal is actually to secure the border. The bill creates a new baseline of admitting 1.8 million illegal immigrants annually, doles out work permits and green cards on the whim of federal bureaucrats, and funnels billions of tax dollars to the same NGOs that have for years facilitated mass illegal border crossings. And that’s just for starters.

But not much has been said about Mexico’s role in the new immigration regime this legislation would create. In fact, Mexico is barely mentioned at all in the 370-page bill. That’s odd considering that no border enforcement mechanism that actually keeps illegal immigrants out of the U.S. will work without some level of Mexican involvement.

Consider that the so-called “bipartisan” legislation, crafted behind closed doors by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, includes a “border emergency authority” to shut down the border if 5,000 illegal immigrants are arrested daily over seven consecutive days or 8,500 are arrested in a single day. Setting aside that this would cement into law nearly 2 million illegal immigrants every year, what would happen to all those illegal immigrants arrested in the U.S. after the border is “shut down” under this emergency authority?

Apparently, they would all be sent back to Mexico. But why would Mexico agree to that? Admitting hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals into northern Mexican border towns after they’ve already crossed into the U.S. would create massive problems for a country already beset by record-breaking violence and crippling levels of corruption.

The answer is that the Senate bill hopes to bribe Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Buried in the bill (on page 85) is a $415 million slush fund “to increase foreign country capacity to accept and integrate returned and removed individuals.” The unnamed foreign country here is almost certainly Mexico, which is where the “removed individuals” would be sent once the border is “shut down.” Another $850 million in the bill is set aside for undefined “International Disaster Assistance” to “address humanitarian needs in the Western Hemisphere.” Again, the likely recipient of the bulk of these funds will be Mexico.

For his part, López Obrador, popularly known as AMLO, has been candid about his desire for the United States to pay for Mexico’s cooperation on the border. Last month, following a high-level visit of Biden officials to Mexico City in December, AMLO reportedly demanded $20 billion from the Biden administration to help tackle the “root causes” of illegal immigration, as well as sweeping reforms to U.S.-Cuba policy and 10 million visas for Mexican nationals currently living in the United States.

In this context, it’s hard not to see the hundreds of millions of dollars set aside in the border bill as a down payment on AMLO’s demands. At best, it’s a quid pro quo for cooperation on the border. At worst, it’s a ransom payment to a hostile neighbor with ill intent.

Now, one might argue that Schumer and McConnell and the Biden administration are just doing the practical thing here and securing Mexico’s cooperation. But such a view belies a misunderstanding of the relevant history and Mexico’s malign role in the border crisis.

For many decades now, the default assumption in Washington was that Mexico is our partner, that we can’t solve illegal immigration without Mexico’s help. But that’s only half true. The reality is that Mexico is not a partner, not a friendly neighbor with whom we can cooperate to solve this problem, but an antagonist. Over the last 15 or so years, the merging of Mexico’s most powerful cartels with certain elements of the Mexican state means that much of the border crisis is being directed and facilitated by the cartels in collaboration with Mexico’s National Guard and the National Institute of Migration, the federal agency in charge of migration in Mexico.

On top of that, it’s now a well-established fact that AMLO himself is cooperating with the Sinaloa cartel, the country’s most powerful, and has been for many years. A long and detailed report published by ProPublica last week chronicled Sinaloa’s bankrolling of AMLO’s 2006 presidential campaign, which appears to have been the beginning of a long partnership that has now borne fruit — for both parties. Sinaloa has helped consolidate electoral victories for AMLO’s left-wing Morena party in the last two election cycles, while AMLO has pursued a policy of placating the cartels and disavowing the drug war — “hugs, not bullets,” as he put it on the campaign trail in 2018.

That AMLO’s administration has been compromised by its association with the cartels, or that the cartels have figured out how to monetize illegal immigration, isn’t some conspiracy theory but well-established fact. Given that reality, it stands to reason that if AMLO is going to cooperate with the Biden administration to reduce the flow of illegal immigration into the U.S. at the expense of the cartel networks with which he is politically allied, he’s going to want compensation. After all, the illegal immigrant black market was worth an estimated $13 billion a year as of July 2022, and is likely much more than that now, not counting the $56 billion in remittances to Mexico from the U.S. every year.

Put bluntly, that’s what the $415 million slush fund is really for, to make up for lost revenue that would otherwise go to the cartels, smuggling networks, and corrupt elements of Mexican officialdom. And it’s likely just a first installment.

Given all this, what other ways could we secure Mexico’s cooperation on the border crisis? Recent history suggests that sticks work better than carrots. In 2019, amid a much smaller border crisis, President Trump famously threatened to slap a tariff on all Mexican goods coming over the border unless the Mexican government did more to crack down on the caravans wending their way north through the country. If Trump had followed through, it would have collapsed the Mexican economy in short order, and everyone knew it.

Sure enough, the newly elected AMLO got the message. Arrests at the border soon began to plummet. The caravans were dispersed, and most never made it to the border. By the time Trump left office, illegal border-crossings were at historic lows.

That changed the month after Biden took office, and we have more or less been in crisis since then. Under Biden, almost nothing has been asked of Mexico, even as illegal immigration reached historic levels. Yet Biden hasn’t threatened AMLO’s government with a thing, and of course, the lack of consequences has incentivized more bad behavior from a corrupt Mexican state and the cartels that profit off the crisis.

If Senate Republicans were serious about convincing Mexico to accept expelled or deported illegal immigrants under a new U.S. border policy, they would treat our southern neighbor as the antagonist it actually is and threaten massive tariffs or some other economic penalties. As for the cartels, Republicans need to start making a more forceful case for going to war with them. Otherwise, there’s no way to get either the fentanyl or border crises under control.

The last thing you would do with such a neighbor, under these circumstances, is offer a bribe, validating the corruption right at the heart of the border crisis. Yet that’s exactly what the Senate bill does.

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 the forthcoming book, Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come, to be published in March 2024. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Senate Border Bill Is Nothing but a Democrat Propaganda Op


BY: KYLEE GRISWOLD | FEBRUARY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/06/senate-border-bill-is-nothing-but-a-democrat-propaganda-op/

Biden walking along the border

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After the much-anticipated “bipartisan” Ukraine and border bill finally dropped on Sunday, it took little time to confirm that all 370 pages are worse than intelligent observers predicted. The $118 billion boondoggle is dead on arrival in the House. For Democrats and their accomplice media, however, the legislation and House Republicans’ response to it are going exactly as planned.

Not only did national disgrace Sen. Mitch McConnell (feat. useful idiot James Lankford) work tirelessly with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on this bill to keep America’s borders open, give out amnesty Oprah-style, and write more blank checks to Ukraine and Hamas sympathizers in the Middle East, they also helped the corrupt corporate media run a propaganda operation against House Republicans and the rest of the GOP. Worse, they’re deliberately running it during an election year to boost Joe Biden on the border issue — which the near-dead incumbent has aided and abetted, and voters say is top of mind next to Bidenomics.

The Republican-majority House predictably isn’t going for the bill. Why would they? It would allow nearly 2 million illegal aliens into the country in one year — as long as the numbers stay below 5,000 entries per day for seven consecutive days, or below 8,500 border encounters in a single day — before triggering “emergency authority” for the Department of Homeland Security and closing the border. Even then there are exceptions.

Worse, if Biden decides it’s in the “national interest” to beckon some more Democrat representation padding and likely future voters across the Rio Grande, he can unilaterally suspend the border closure for 45 days per year. There’s more where that came from.

If GOP members of Congress had taken the bait, Democrats would have come out on top, having

convinced their political foes not only to continue funding a no-win forever war in Eastern Europe but also to keep letting illegal aliens into the country virtually unrestricted. Bonus: A codified open border could hamstring “the fixer” Donald Trump if he wins the general election later this year, zapping his political power to rehabilitate U.S. security and sovereignty.

Yet even without the House conceding to the bill, Democrats win anyway. Now Biden and his accomplice media can simply blame Republicans for not solving the crisis this administration caused. That’s exactly what’s happening, starting with Biden pointing fingers at Republicans:

Working with my administration, the United States Senate has done the hard work it takes to reach a bipartisan agreement. Now, House Republicans have to decide. Do they want to solve the problem? Or do they want to keep playing politics with the border?

Biden’s media lapdogs dutifully advanced the narrative, which they’d already been spinning before the text of the bill was even released.

“GOP Blames Biden for Border Crisis That GOP Refuses to Solve,” blared one Daily Beast headline. “Republicans are yelling about a crisis at the border. But they’re also unwilling to do anything to address it for fear that it’d give Joe Biden a political win,” the subheading continued, taking its talking points straight from the president and Senate Democrats like Chris Murphy.

“Why Republicans Don’t Want To Solve the Border Problem — But do want to make deals to cut taxes,” read another headline in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer by Jonathan Chait.

“Republicans Who Screamed About A Crisis On The Border Now Oppose A Plan To Fix It,” said HuffPost, claiming Republicans oppose the border bill not because it’s nightmarish but because they want to hurt Biden. “Border Patrol Supports ‘Strong’ Immigration Deal. Republicans Don’t Care,” wrote Rolling Stone.

Vanity Fair claimed, “Republicans Don’t Want to Lose Their Favorite 2024 Talking Point,” with Bloomberg opting for a simple, “House Republicans Don’t Want to Fix the Border.”

Cable television has been as bad. A host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said the “bipartisan border deal is doomed to fail … because Republicans have turned on it.” The “Today” show framed the gridlock as Republicans “threaten[ing] to block the border bill they negotiated,” as if McConnell and his sidekick colluding with Democrats behind closed doors amounts to a good-faith bipartisan negotiation.

This run-of-the-mill propaganda is to be expected from the corporate media, but it’s just so brazen considering Republicans’ efforts to secure the border earlier in Biden’s term and Democrats’ subsequent refusal to cooperate.

We’re all old enough to remember less than a year ago when the House passed a stronger border bill that would have restarted Trump-era border wall construction, required aliens to remain in Mexico while waiting out their usually fraudulent asylum claims, restricted asylum eligibility to legal ports of entry, enacted harsher punishments for overstaying expired visas, kept Title 42-esque “expulsion authority” in place, and supplied border authorities with additional grant funding. Senate Democrats wouldn’t lift a finger.

But sure. It’s Republicans “playing politics.”

Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.

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Nothing About the Rigged Senate Border Bill Is In The ‘National Interest’


BY: DAVID HARSANYI | FEBRUARY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/06/nothing-about-the-rigged-senate-border-bill-is-in-the-national-interest/

Illegal immigrants crossing the river

Can you imagine Senate Democrats ever supporting a bill that gave President Donald Trump the power to temporarily ignore provisions he didn’t believe were in the “national interest”? Of course not. Yet one of the most conspicuous parts of the new bipartisan border bill allows Joe Biden to do just that.

Once there is a rolling average of 5,000 border encounters per day for a week, or 8,500 encounters in a single day, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be given “emergency authority” and compelled to turn away anyone else who crosses (though there are many exemptions). Most conservatives believe this threshold is already too high. Under 5,000 daily crossings can still amount to nearly 2 million entries per year, which is around double the number of Green Cards we hand out annually.

Yet, on top of that, Biden has the power to unilaterally suspend the closure (for 45 days each year) if he deems it “in the national interest.”

You know, the reason we have political debates in the first place is so we can figure out how to protect the “national interest.” If we had a common understanding of the idea, we’d be a one-party state. But as with other political phrases these days — the “common good” or “democracy,” come to mind — the term “national interest” is meaningless. Democrats, for instance, believe it’s in the national interest to regulate gas stoves and “misinformation.” I believe it’s in the national interest for the executive branch’s power to be limited to its constitutional role and mind its own business.

Indeed, the president can already declare national emergencies. Trump did on the border in 2019 and was called an authoritarian by Democrats. Congress could stop this from happening again by repealing the National Emergencies Act, not by doubling down and handing the executive branch even wider latitude to interpret laws whenever they find it convenient.

Most of the provisions in the bill are so loophole-riddled they are worse than irrelevant. One provision allows administration officers to grant asylum without any oversight from judges, who (at least, theoretically) use a set of criteria to adjudicate these cases. “Asylum” might have been stripped of any real meaning, as well, but it’s a mystery why James Lankford wants to hand Alejandro Mayorkas more autonomy on this front. Or any front. (Again, can you imagine Democrats signing onto a bill that handed Chad Wolf more discretion over asylum cases?)

Then again, if there are any legal fights over the implementation of the law, Democrats have cherry-picked the court that will adjudicate. No, not the Fifth Circuit, which inconveniently sits on the border, but the left-wing D.C. District Court will have exclusive authority over “written policy directive, written policy guideline, written procedure” and their implementation.

Meanwhile, Democrats are acting as if they’ve made some giant, historic concession even deigning to address the crisis. But where is the compromise? They’ve rigged the bill, making it so malleable that Biden can basically interpret and implement its provisions in any fashion he chooses. (Only on the enforcement side, naturally. There is no opting out of Ukraine aid or more taxpayer-funded asylum lawyers.) Then, Democrats ensured that the court hearing any disputes over that implementation would almost surely side with them.

And lest anyone think I’m some kind of hardline closed-border type, I’m fine with more asylum-seekers and more immigration and more work visas. High walls and wide gates, etc. Like many Americans, though, I’m just not a fan of policies that perpetuate anarchy. 

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books—the most recent, Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent. Follow him on Twitter, @davidharsanyi.

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The Border Crisis Is The Definition Of A Foreign ‘Invasion’


BY: JOSHUA S. TREVIÑO | FEBRUARY 06, 2024

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/06/the-border-crisis-is-the-definition-of-a-foreign-invasion/

On Monday, February 25, 2019, a group of illegal aliens were apprehended by Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents near Yuma, AZ. The Yuma Sector continues to see a large number of Central Americans per day crossing illegally and surrendering to agents. CBP photo by Jerry Glaser.

When the Rev. Al Sharpton used the word “invasion” to describe the onslaught of migrants at the southern U.S. border on Monday, his MSNBC guest suddenly stopped nodding along. And then the fast blinking began — he was triggered. Because to the American left, the word “invasion” is off-limits and even “violence-inciting.”

But the word — and the concept — are at the heart of what’s happening in Texas, as Gov. Greg Abbott stands up to the Biden administration and its open border policies. He rightly contends that according to the U.S. Constitution, Texas does not merely have the Constitutional power to defend itself — it has a constitutional and moral responsibility to do so.

To qualify as an invader in the constitutional framework requires two qualities: entry into a sovereign territory, and enmity toward the sovereign. An immigrant without enmity is not an invader, nor is an enemy that stays outside our borders.

Consider some examples of what the Founders did consider invaders: foreign powers, pirates, and hostile tribes. In today’s context, a vast multinational criminal cartel whose activities and personnel enter America, harm Americans, destroy or commandeer property, defend routes on private and public lands, coerce American officials through extortion or bribery, and do so with the collaboration and collusion of a foreign state power is absolutely an invader, and would have been immediately recognized as such by the American Founders.

Sharpton wasn’t siding with Abbott, however; he was pushing the new Senate border bill.

But that bill misses the mark almost entirely on all these points. With its stupefying allowance of several million illegal entries per year, its comically constricted “border emergency” framework, its loosening of the asylum process, its billions in funding for the human-trafficking complex, and its wildly permissive structure for allowing the executive branch to override even its own minor strictures, the bill is right now Exhibit A in the contention that the border crisis is a choice made by Washington, D.C.

The border-security crisis is also a choice by Mexico’s own powerholders, stemming from two major motivations. The first motivation is simple: money. We must understand this very clearly: The Mexican state and the Mexican cartels are the same — including the president of Mexico himself.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has repeatedly sided with the criminal cartels, particularly the Sinaloa cartel. This includes his rhetorical generosity toward it, his public visits to honor the aged mother of the jailed drug lord El Chapo, and his political party’s use of its sicario enforcers to kill opposition candidates and rig elections.

AMLO’s policy of “abrazos no balazos” (hugs, not bullets), effectively prevents the use of force against cartel violence; he has handed over civil powers to his own army apparatus, which itself is a major trafficking organization and uses violence against Mexican civilians who defend themselves against cartels; and he has vowed to use the Mexican armed forces to defend Mexican cartels against the Americans.

The second motivation for Mexico City is leverage: leverage versus the United States, which is the only power capable of arresting and disincentivizing Mexico’s slide into narco-state status.

Mexico City understands two things very well: It makes billions off the border-security crisis, especially in human trafficking, and the crisis gives it leverage over U.S. officeholders, especially as the latter come under pressure from the American people to secure the border and defend our communities.

Texas has undertaken a variety of efforts in defense of itself and its citizenry that the federal government has refused to do:

  • Texas has illuminated the national scope of the border crisis, and invoked the principle of equity within it, by its transportation of migrants to leftist-run localities across the country.
  • Texas has used its military forces for their proper and primary purpose, in the defense of its own territory and citizenry, with the use of the Texas Military Department, including the personnel of the Texas Army National Guard, in Operation Lone Star.
  • Texas has built effective border-barrier infrastructure not once, but twice — with its innovative buoy barriers in the Rio Grande, and its barriers on the river’s north bank.
  • Texas has a new law that allows Texas law enforcement to intercept and de facto deport illegal entrants into Texas.

The federal government ought to be doing all these things — but it is not, and therefore Texas must see to its own self-defense. As Abbott has noted, in failing to do so, the federal government has abdicated its own Constitutional responsibility to the states.

Make no mistake, Texas is faithfully executing the law — both its own, and the Constitution’s, which provides in Article I, Section 10, for a state to defend itself against invasion.

Read the author’s full testimony on the border security crisis delivered to the U.S. Congressional Border Security Caucus on Feb. 6.

Joshua S. Treviño is the Chief of Intelligence and Research and the Director for Texas Identity at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

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


A.F. Branco Cartoon – Son of a Beach

A.F. BRANCO | on February 6, 2024 |https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-son-of-a-beach/

Biden on the Beach – Cartoon –
A Political Cartoon b A.F. Branco 2024

Biden is too busy to visit East Palestine Ohio, shut down the border, or give press conferences, but has plenty of time to hang out at the beach. It’s reported that Biden has declined an interview before the Super Bowl for the second year in a row. Is he not up for the task?

Biden Skips Super Bowl Interview for Second Year in a Row

By David Greyson Feb. 3, 2024

For the second year in a row, Joe Biden declined to be interviewed before the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is scheduled for Sunday, February 11th, and will air on CBS. The matchup will be the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs. After CBS recently discussed it with the White House, Biden decided against the interview. This would have given him a very large viewing audience, considering it is the biggest TV event of the year.

There has been a long-time tradition of the President being interviewed by the station airing the big game going back to 2009 with Barack Obama. 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.

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